1 . Do you remember all those years when scientists argued that smoking would kill us but the doubters insisted that we didn’t know for sure? That the evidence was inconclusive, the science uncertain? That the antismoking lobby was out to destroy our way of life and the government should stay out of the way? Lots of Americans bought that nonsense, and over three decades, some 10 million smokers went to early graves.
There are upsetting parallels today, as scientists in one wave after another try to awaken us to the growing threat of global warming. The latest was a panel from the National Academy of Sciences, enlisted by the White House, to tell us that the Earth’s atmosphere is definitely warming and that the problem is largely man-made. The clear message is that we should get moving to protect ourselves. The president of the National Academy, Bruce Alberts, added this key point in the preface to the panel’s report: “Science never has all the answers. But science does provide us with the best available guide to the future, and it is critical that our nation and the world base important policies on the best judgments that science can provide concerning the future consequences of present actions.”
Just as on smoking, voices now come from many quarters insisting that the science about global warming is incomplete, that it’s OK to keep pouring fumes into the air until we know for sure. This is a dangerous game: by the time 100 percent of the evidence is in, it may be too late. With the risks obvious and growing, a prudent people would take out an insurance policy now.
Fortunately, the White House is starting to pay attention. But it’s obvious that a majority of the president’s advisers still don’t take global warming seriously. Instead of a plan of action, they continue to press for more research — a classic case of “paralysis by analysis.”
To serve as responsible stewards of the planet, we must press forward on deeper atmospheric and oceanic research. But research alone is inadequate. If the Administration won’t take the legislative initiative, Congress should help to begin fashioning conservation measures. A bill by Democratic Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, which would offer financial incentives for private industry, is a promising start. Many see that the country is getting ready to build lots of new power plants to meet our energy needs. If we are ever going to protect the atmosphere, it is crucial that those new plants be environmentally sound.
1. What was an argument made by supporters of smoking?| A．There was no scientific evidence of the correlation between smoking and death. |
| B．The number of early deaths of smokers in the past decades was insignificant. |
| C．People had the freedom to choose their own way of life. |
| D．Antismoking people were usually talking nonsense. |
| A．A protector. | B．A judge. | C．A critic. | D．A guide. |
| A．Cautious. | B．Arbitrary. | C．Responsible. | D．Expericed. |
| A．They both suffered from the government’s negligence. |
| B．A lesson from the latter is applicable to the former. |
| C．The outcome of the latter aggravates the former. |
| D．Both of them have turned from bad to worse. |
2 . Although literacy appeared independently in several parts of the prehistoric world, the earliest evidence of writing is the cuneiform Sumerian script on the clay tablets of ancient Mesopotamia, which, archaeological detective work has revealed, had its origins in the accounting practices of commercial activity. Researchers demonstrated that preliterate people, to keep track of the goods they produced and exchanged, created a system of accounting using clay tokens as symbolic representations of their products. Over many thousands of years, the symbols evolved through several stages of abstraction until they became wedge-shaped (cuneiform) signs on clay tablets, recognizable as writing.
The original tokens were three-dimensional solid shapes — tiny spheres, cones, disks, and cylinders. A debt of six units of grain and eight head of livestock, for example, might have been represented by six conical and eight cylindrical tokens. To keep batches of tokens together, an innovation was introduced whereby they were sealed inside clay envelopes that could be broken open and counted when it came time for a debt to be repaid. But because the contents of the envelopes could easily be forgotten, two-dimensional representations of the three-dimensional tokens were impressed into the surface of the envelopes before they were sealed. Eventually, having two sets of equivalent symbols — the internal tokens and external markings — came to seem redundant, so the tokens were eliminated, and only solid clay tablets with two-dimensional symbols were retained. Over time, the symbols became more numerous, varied, and abstract and came to represent more than trade commodities, evolving eventually into cuneiform writing.
The evolution of the symbolism is reflected in the archaeological record first of all by the increasing complexity of the tokens themselves. The earliest tokens, dating from about 10,000 to 6,000 years ago, were of only the simplest geometric shapes. But about 3500 B.C.E., more complex tokens came into common usage, including many naturalistic forms shaped like miniature tools, furniture, fruit, and humans.
1. Which of the following is NOT mentioned about clay envelopes?| A．They contained batches of tokens. | B．They could be reused frequently. |
| C．They had markings on the outside. | D．They could be used to record debts. |
| A．Later tokens were made of many different materials, but earlier ones were made only of clay. |
| B．Later tokens often looked like the commodities that they represented, but earlier ones did not. |
| C．Later tokens represented agricultural products, but earlier ones represented finished products. |
| D．Later tokens were based on pictographs, but earlier ones were based on naturalistic forms. |
| A．Sumerian script, the earliest known form of writing among prehistoric writing systems, was first used on clay tablets for accounting purposes. |
| B．Although the earliest Sumerians engaged in commercial activity and practiced accounting, they were not as literate as people in other parts of the prehistoric world. |
| C．Archaeologists have discovered that literacy was developed in several parts of the world, including ancient Mesopotamia. |
| D．Archaeological detective work has revealed the commercial accounting practices of the Sumerians of ancient Mesopotamia and provided a written record of their intense commercial activity. |
| A．Evidence of the Earliest Writing | B．A long history of tokens |
| C．Evolution of the symbolism | D．Origins of the symbols |
3 . The Poseidon Effect
Late one autumn day at the local swimming pool in Ancenis, France, an 18-year-old named Jean LeRoy came for his regular evening swim in the 25-metre pool.
When people are drowning, they don’t usually shout and
Luckily for him, the swimming pool was
Machines like Poseidon completely change how we live. Think of your life before the answering machine was invented. Think of your grandparents’ lives before the television and the airplane were introduced. The change will be just as great. It is
Soon, machines will recognize our faces and our fingerprints. They will
| A．splash | B．cry | C．yell | D．scream |
| A．soon | B．quietly | C．silently | D．simply |
| A．in | B．within | C．over | D．on |
| A．No matter how | B．However | C．Whoever | D．Whatever |
| A．established | B．installed | C．set | D．equipped |
| A．show | B．film | C．propagate | D．outline |
| A．postulated | B．made | C．programmed | D．relayed |
| A．whether | B．when | C．while | D．if |
| A．alarmed | B．beeped | C．warned | D．alerted |
| A．healthy | B．normal | C．safe | D．well |
| A．always | B．merely | C．readily | D．already |
| A．watch out | B．take care | C．look back | D．go over |
| A．terrorists | B．invalids | C．senators | D．tyrants |
| A．will send | B．to send | C．send | D．sending |
| A．recorded | B．checked | C．monitored | D．supervised |
4 . Rachel Maclean’s toy shop on Ayr high street appears like any other in a town centre at first sight. Step inside and you will notice that familiar promotional entreaties (恳求) are backwards: Don’t Buy Me, Nothing Must Go. Everything is upside down and nothing is for sale.
Matilda Coleman, six, picked up one of the toys—a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Disney princess(公主), and turned her upside down. Underneath the skirt was a pale-faced witchy (女巫的) version. The girl liked it, and then was confused that the toy wasn’t available to buy. Maclean’s work playfully breaks the grasp that consumer culture has on modern minds.
“What art can do best is to make you look at things that you’re very used to in a different way,” said Maclean (b.1987), a Glasgow-based multi-media artist who has rapidly established herself as one of the most distinctive voices in the UK. “Sadly the decline of our city centres is something that is common these days, so I want to bring people into a space where they can reflect on it in a fun way.”
“When the shop first opened, everyone was interested in finding out what it was,” said Parker, a local teenager. “It has lots of different themes about identity, consumerism, capitalism, but they are silent messages and everyone has different thoughts about it.”
Maclean has taken over this former butcher’s shop in Ayr as part of Jupiter Plus, a new arts and education initiative, which aims to reluyenate empty high street shops in towns and cities in Scotland with free art exbibitions and workshops for young people. People’s immediate joy at seeing something happening in here is abivious and it drives conversations about how they remember the high street and how the space could be used again.
1. Why is Matilda Coleman mentioned in paragraph 2?| A．To illustrate consumer culture. | B．To show the girl’s passion for toys. |
| C．To erase doubts about Maclean’s work. | D．To highlight the features of Maclean’s shop. |
| A．By giving examples. | B．By using quotes. |
| C．By making comparisons. | D．By sharing experiences. |
| A．Expand. | B．Refresh. | C．Replace. | D．Surround. |
| A．She has a creative mind. | B．She respects others’opinions. |
| C．She makes profits in a different way. | D．She draws public attention to education. |
5 . Voices offer lots of information. It turns out that they can even help diagnose (诊断) an illness and researchers are working on an app for that. The National Institutes of Health is funding a massive research project to collect voice data and develop an AI that could diagnose people based on their speech.
Everything such as your breathing patterns when you speak offers potential information about your health, says Dr. Yael Bensoussan, the director of the University of South Florida’s Health Voice Center and a leader on the study.“We asked experts: Well, if you close your eyes when a patient comes in, just by listening to their voice, can you have an idea of the diagnosis they have?” says Bensoussan.“And that’s where we got all our information. Someone who speaks low and slowly might have Parkinson’s disease. Depression or cancer could even be diagnosed.”
The project is part of the NIH’s Bridge to AI program, which was launched over a year ago with more than $100 million in funding from the government, with the goal of creating large-scale health care databases for precision (精准) medicine.“We were really lacking what we call open source databases,” says Bensoussan.“Every institution has their own database. But to create these networks was really important to allow researchers from other generations to use this data.”
The ultimate goal of the project is an app that could help bridge access to rural or underserved communities, by helping general practitioners (行医者) refer patients to specialists. To get there, researchers have to start by amassing data, since the AI can only get as good as the database it’s learning from. By the end of the four years, they hope to collect about 30,000 voices.
There are a few roadblocks, however. HIPAA, the law that regulates medical privacy, isn’t really clear on whether researchers can share voices. Every institution has different rules on what can be shared, and that opens all sorts of moral and legal questions.
1. What is the project aimed at?| A．Examining voice data. |
| B．Detecting speech problems. |
| C．Offering health information. |
| D．Developing a medical diagnosis app. |
| A．Doctors work better with their eyes closed. |
| B．Parkinson’s disease can be easily discovered. |
| C．How a person walks shows his health condition. |
| D．The voice of a patient may indicate a certain illness. |
| A．Storing. | B．Analyzing. | C．Collecting. | D．Exchanging |
| A．The difficulty in carrying out the project. |
| B．The need to share voices concerning the project. |
| C．The way to protect medical privacy in the project. |
| D．The proposal for issuing rules related to the project. |
6 . In this period of anxiety about the size of our waists and what we consume, simple dietary rules are appealing.“Eat like our ancestors”is a particularly catchy slogan (口号) to live by.
But who are these ancestors we are supposed to follow? Are they our great-great-grandparents, cooking healthy things? Or are they hairy animals we imagine “cavemen“ to be? The popular ancient diet blames modern health problems on the birth of agriculture, claiming that we should stick to eating meat, nuts and berries.
This kind of stone age trend is based on the false assumption that palaeolithic (旧石器时代的) peoples all ate the same food, regardless of their location. Nevertheless, England’s 9,000-year-old Cheddar Man would not have eaten the same foods as his contemporaries on the Kenyan plain. The amount of meat peoples ate, and how much was obtained by hunting, are also up for debate.
Moreover, the stone age trend is focused on what’s perceived to be good for our bodies, without any concern for the rest of nature, including other humans whose livelihoods are threatened by western overconsumption. Were I to eat like my Punjabi farming great-grandparents, my diet would be based on the wheat and milk products that people in the Punjab have relied on for probably at least the last two thousand years. But delicious and “original” as it might be for me to follow its lead, the morals of industrially farmed milk products in the 21st century make the situation more confusing and complicated.
Now, probably more than ever before, what we eat connects us to the fate of other beings, human and non-human, and to the fate of our planet. A dogmatic (武断的) approach to this would be a mistake. Better to preserve what’s worth keeping and remain clear-eyed about our cooking past, much of which is unknowable, immoral and impossible to follow in any case.
1. What does the text concern?| A．An ancient study. |
| B．An immoral case. |
| C．A balanced diet. |
| D．A popular belief. |
| A．To illustrate an opinion. |
| B．To present a fact. |
| C．To clarify a concept. |
| D．To introduce a theory. |
| A．The eating behavior of our great-grandparents. |
| B．The connection between food choice and nature. |
| C．The relationship among eating,hunting and farming. |
| D．The impact of food overconsumption on the environment. |
| A．Punjabi diet:popular again |
| B．Should we eat like our ancestors? |
| C．Is the fate of the planet in our hands? |
| D．Our cooking past:a complicated history |
7 . When Carson Palmer, a professional American football player, hurt his arm a few years ago, he took a week off from throwing the football. But in his head, Palmer practiced every day. The following weekend, Palmer had the best game of his life.
For more than a century, scientists have been trying to understand how this mental training works. In the 1930s, researchers proved by experiment that when you’re imagining an action, your brain sends signals to your muscles (肌肉) which are too weak to tighten the muscles but might help train the body to perform. In other words, mental practice might create a pattern in your head, like an inner how-to guide for a particular skill.
Sports psychologists have conducted hundreds of studies comparing imagined and physical practice for actions. On the whole, the research shows that mental training works. A 2012 study, for example, compared 32 amateur golfers who practiced hitting the balls to another 32 who merely held a golf club in their hands and visualized (想象) their swings. Under the same training rules, both groups improved their skills by getting the ball about 4 inches closer to the hole.
Visualization has advantages over the real thing: You can do it anywhere, even when injured. It is safe-a major plus for high-risk performers such as gymnasts and surgeons. And you can practice for longer periods of time because you’re not restricted by physical tiredness, That’s not to say it’s easy, we’ve had Olympic-level athletes sitting in our lab, visualizing the movements for two hours,“ says Tadhg Macintyre, a sports psychologist at the University of Limerick in Ireland. “When we’re done, they’re absolutely tired.”
It doesn’t work for everyone, though. “If you’re a novice, the effect can be harmful,” warns Macintyre. If you’re trying to visualize a free throw, and you don’t even know the proper movement, then you’re probably going to mentally practice the wrong skill.”
1. The author introduces the topic of the text by______.| A．giving an example | B．presenting an argument |
| C．explaining a phenomenon | D．making an assumption |
| A．A special skill is quickly acquired. |
| B．A certain model is formed in the head |
| C．The muscles grow increasingly tense. |
| D．The brain sends strong messages to the body. |
| A．Coach | B．Specialist | C．Beginner | D．Judge |
| A．Athletes are likely to win games through imagined practice. |
| B．Practicing a skill properly in mind can produce intended effect. |
| C．Practice whether mental or physical ha its own characteristics. |
| D．Scientists have found a sale way for athletes to practice their skills. |
8 . New Year’s resolutions(决心) have been around long enough that we all tend to stick to the same ones—hit the gym, lay off the candy, read more books, call your mother—regardless of whether we follow through with our intentions.
While January 1st seems like the perfect time to have a new start again, exactly when people developed that mindset(思维模式) isn’t common knowledge. It turns out that the modern belief of a New Year’s resolution isn’t as old as you thought. According to many historians, the ancient Babylonians were the first group of people to make New Year’s resolutions. However, instead of making a commitment to self improvement, they made a commitment to the gods to pay their debts and return any objects they had borrowed.
An ancient Roman tradition from 46 B. C, bears even more likeness to modern resolutions. Emperor Julius Caesar declared January the month of Janus. Romans believed Janus looked backwards into the previous year and ahead into the future. In his honor, they made sacrifices to the god and promises of good behavior for the coming year.
But the modern New Year’s resolution didn’t fully form until centuries later. The practice was common enough by the early 1800s. An article in 1802 states, “Statesmen have sworn to have no other object in view than the good of their country. The physicians have determined to advise the use of medicine no more than is necessary, and to he very reasonable in their fees.”
The first time “New Year’s resolution” appeared as a phrase was in the January 1st issue of a Boston newspaper in 1813. “I believe there are a lot of people,” the article goes, “with a serious determination of beginning the New Year with new resolutions and new behavior, and with the full belief that they shall accept punishment for all their former faults and wipe them away.
So as you make (and possibly fail at) your New year’s resolutions, know that you’re in good company.
1. Whose New Years resolutions were most different from the present common practice?| A．Ancient Babylonians’. | B．Ancient Romans’. |
| C．Statesmen’s in the 1800s. | D．Boston people’s in 1813. |
| A．annual incomes | B．personal ambitions |
| C．professional honesty | D．academic improvement |
| A．To encourage people to make New year’s resolutions. |
| B．To give advice on how to make New Year’s resolutions. |
| C．To compare different New year’s resolutions in history. |
| D．To introduce the development of New Year’s resolutions. |
9 . “Men get all the breaks!” the veteran (老练的) teacher announced to me. A cold greeting. Her stare stabbed like an icicle (冰柱).
“Hello,” I countered, extending my hand. “I guess we’ll be teaching together this year.”
“I swear, all you have to do is wear pants and walk into an elementary school and they hire you! It makes me sick!” I would have responded, but she turned her back to me and stomped off down the hall.
Who would have imagined that the biggest challenge I would face during my first year on the job would not be students, but fellow teachers?
“You can’t put that there!” Another teacher burst into my classroom. “You can’t put the teacher’s desk at the back of the room!”
“Pardon?”
“If you put your desk way back there, you won’t be able to see them cheating!”
Next I was told I must not arrange student desks into abutting clusters because “the students might talk too much.”
At home my wife kept assuring me, “You’re there for the kids. When you meet your students, things will be different.” And she was right. One day the bell rang and there were thirty-five wonderful sixth graders sitting at their desks (still arranged in clusters) and it was different. I was happy.
“Welcome to sixth grade.” I began the year as I’d rehearsed for months. “You’ll notice,” I continued, “my desk is at the back of the room.” They chuckled. “I don’t want that desk between us. I want to be involved in your learning and involved in your lives.”
In the days that followed, I ate with my students at lunch (“Wilcox shouldn’t do that!”); I played with my students at recess (“That’s unheard of!”); I read with my students in the library (“He’s wasting time!”); I even stayed after school with some boys who got in trouble with the principal (“He’s undermining the school’s entire discipline program!”).
I went home to my wife. “Don’t worry,” she said. “They’re just threatened by you because you’re new and you’re good. Let the other teachers know you’re not a threat. Just keep being nice to them.”
Obediently, I pulled out the Golden Rule, dusted it off, and vowed to start again. As I did with the children, I started looking for specific, positive things I could build upon and reinforce sincerely in my colleagues: “Nice job on the announcements this morning!” “Wow! I like that worksheet you made up.” “Man, your kids walked down the hall so quietly.” “I heard your class singing great songs. You do a super job with music!”
“I like your bulletin board,” I said to Mrs. Icicle Eyes.
“Really?” she asked. “It’s just the same old thing I put up every year.” She reached out and straightened a sagging border. Then, not unlike one of my students, she added, “Do you really like it?”
“Yes,” I answered firmly. As sure as sun beams, the Golden Rule was shining, and things were finally warming up.
That very afternoon, a few parents went to the principal’s office asking if their sixth graders could be moved into my class. Of course the students were not transferred, but when the grapevine circulated the request, up went the old barbed wire fence. Complete with machine guns.
I continued to do the best job I could. I worked. I taught. I cared. I waited for a breakthrough moment.
Months passed. It was lunch recess. I asked a boy walking down the hall. “Have you seen Mrs. So-and-So?” I was, in fact, searching for Mrs. Icicle Eyes. I needed to consult with her.
Grinning, he came toward me as if sharing a secret. “She’s outside shooting baskets with the girls!”
“She’s playing basketball with the girls?” I asked incredulously.
“Yeah,” he nodded. I smiled. I didn’t say another word. But my smile inside was even bigger than the one on my face.
1. In the veteran teacher’s eyes, the writer got the teaching job because ______.| A．he was a man |
| B．he wore pants |
| C．he was experienced |
| D．he enjoyed teaching |
| A．the principal |
| B．the writer’s wife |
| C．the writer’s colleagues |
| D．the students’ parents |
| A．he hung around with students |
| B．he was a competitive newcomer |
| C．he ignored their advice |
| D．he was an impolite coworker |
| A．He should encourage the students as much as possible. |
| B．He should separate his colleagues into friends and enemies. |
| C．He should adopt a positive attitude toward his teaching career. |
| D．He should learn to appreciate the shining points in people around him. |
| A．The colleagues became defensive and were ready to attack him. |
| B．The school built fences to ensure the safety of the students. |
| C．The students were immediately moved into his class. |
| D．The school used weapons to protect the children. |
| A．She became interested in sports to amuse him. |
| B．She got closer to students under his influence. |
| C．He could not put his feelings into words. |
| D．He discovered a secret of hers. |
10 . The practice of students endlessly copying letters and sentences from a blackboard is a thing of the past. With the coming of new technologies like computers and smartphone, writing by hand has become something of nostalgic (怀旧的）skill. However，while today’s educators are using more and more technology in their teaching, many believe basic handwriting skills are still necessary for students to be successful---both in school and in life.
Virginia Berninger, professor of educational psychology at the University of Washington, says it’s important to continue teaching handwriting and help children acquire the skill of writing by hand.
Berninger and her colleagues conducted a study that looked at the ability of students to complete various writing tasks---both on a computer and by hand. The study, published in 2009, found that when writing with a pen and paper, participants wrote longer essays and more complete sentences and had a faster word production rate.
In a more recent study, Berninger looked at what role spelling plays in a student’s writing skills and found that how well children spell is tied to know well they can write. “Spelling makes some of the thinking parts of the brain active which helps us access our vocabulary, word meaning and concepts. It is allowing our written language to connect with ideas.” Berninger said.
Spelling helps students translate ideas into words in their mind first and then to transcribe(转换）“those words in the mind written symbols on paper or keyboard and screen,” the study said. Seeing the words in the “mind’s eye” helps children not only to turn their ideas into words, says Berninger, but also to spot spelling mistakes when they write the words down and to correct then over time.
“In our computer age, some people believe that we don’t have to teach spelling because we have spell checks,” she said. “But until a child functional spelling ability of about a fifth grade level, they won't have knowledge to choose the correct spelling among the options given by the computer.”
1. What makes writing by hand a thing of the past?| A．The absence of blackboard in classroom. |
| B．The use of new technologies in teaching. |
| C．The lack of practice in handwriting. |
| D．The popular use of smartphones. |
| A．focused on the difference between writing by hand and on a computer. |
| B．indicated that students prefer to write with a pen and paper. |
| C．found that good essays are made up of long sentences. |
| D．discussed the importance of writing speed. |
| A．Spelling improves one’s memory of words. |
| B．Spelling ability is closely related to writing ability. |
| C．Spelling benefits the translation from words into ideas. |
| D．Spelling slows down finding exact words to express ideas. |
| A．Window. | B．Soul |
| C．Picture. | D．Imagination. |
| A．Computers can help people with their choice of words. |
| B．Spell checks can take the place of spelling teaching. |
| C．Handwriting still has a place in today’s classrooms. |
| D．Functional spelling ability develops fast in the fifth grade. |
