1 . Several years ago, when someone used camera covers to protect against possible monitoring, it was not popular to talk about it. Today, people use various types of tapes to cover the web cameras and microphones.
There are many types of spyware that can dive into our devices and secretly spy on them, recording everything they do. Such programs may infect not only computers but also smartphones. Your data may be used by hackers who will try to request money for not exposing your private information or by companies like NSO Group who created the Pegasus spyware to “provide authorized governments with technology that helps struggle against terror and crime”.
In my opinion, the described protection technique is highly overestimated. Users tape cameras and microphones due to the lack of understanding of how their devices work and how malware(恶意软件)works. Hackers and even secret services do not have enough resources to monitor all victims using cameras or microphones. If they need to yet any information, they get it by sending a targeted malware to your device, which will not be stopped by the tapes. Such a virus will find what to steal -from personal photos and videos to passwords from social networks, browser history, bank accounts and much more.
It is unwise to believe that attackers will not be able to find a way to spy on you, even if the device, discharged to zero, can still deliver data about your location, using the smartphones of the surrounding people as signal repeaters. Let us face it. we live in an era when it is extremely difficult to hide something and a piece of tape is clearly not the most useful tool in the struggle for your privacy.
Again, to be able to spy on you, attackers need to plant malware in your device. To prevent malware from entering your device, do not click suspected links and email attachments. Use strong passwords for email, social media and online banking accounts.
1. What does the underlined word “them” in paragraph 2 refer to?| A．Cameras. |
| B．Types. |
| C．Programs. |
| D．Devices. |
| A．group of hackers. |
| B．A company developing spyware. |
| C．A group of terrorists and criminals. |
| D．A company fighting against crime. |
| A．People know little about their devices. |
| B．Hackers have no access to others. |
| C．It hardly prevents malware from getting privacy. |
| D．It can't cover the cameras completely. |
| A．Protecting privacy on devices. |
| B．Rising trend of using tapes. |
| C．Monitoring devices via cameras. |
| D．Avoiding clicking distrustful links. |
2 . In January this year, a fire destroyed the building that housed Yossi Heiman’s Fish Market in Borough Park, Brooklyn: The
The merchant Shea Langsam owns a(n)
The story is wonderful and it’s a(n)
| A．explosion | B．battle | C．accident | D．campaign |
| A．attention | B．assistance | C．information | D．income |
| A．similar | B．mysterious | C．online | D．outdoor |
| A．treat | B．acquire | C．depend on | D．give up |
| A．Moreover | B．Therefore | C．Instead | D．Though |
| A．picked up | B．hung up | C．repaired | D．provided |
| A．doubt | B．comfort | C．turn to | D．1augh at |
| A．service | B．spirit | C．orders | D．notes |
| A．replace | B．attend | C．enable | D．join |
| A．maintained | B．recovered | C．reported | D．cut |
| A．example | B．reminder | C．challenge | D．guide |
| A．because of | B．ahead of | C．out of | D．in spite of |
| A．duty | B．fame | C．interest | D．business |
| A．exceptional | B．boring | C．ridiculous | D．old |
| A．losing track of | B．settling for | C．caring for | D．calming down |
3 . Hunter Leininger, from Georgia, USA has been adventure racing(探险速度赛) since he was seven years old. Now, at age 19, he has set world records, traveled around the globe, and
Hunter became interested in adventure racing through his dad. While playing football, Hunter was looking to
He has learned a lot of perseverance through adventure racing. There can be a lot of
As reported by the USARA, Hunter wants to inspire young people that they can
| A．missed | B．reported | C．organized | D．completed |
| A．inspire | B．invite | C．advise | D．order |
| A．interests | B．dreams | C．paths | D．rhythms |
| A．try | B．discover | C．create | D．share |
| A．help | B．meet | C．accompany | D．join |
| A．fun | B．harm | C．pain | D．cooperation |
| A．restart | B．stop | C．change | D．struggle |
| A．replaced | B．supported | C．encouraged | D．caught |
| A．required | B．forced | C．attracted | D．taught |
| A．better | B．tougher | C．special | D．strange |
| A．accept | B．imagine | C．choose | D．achieve |
| A．age | B．level | C．degree | D．status |
| A．wait | B．practice | C．perform | D．compete |
| A．Unless | B．Although | C．Once | D．Because |
| A．avoids | B．prevents | C．results in | D．objects to |
4 . Writer Walter Benjamin argued that what makes certain works of art great is that they contain a mysterious “aura（气息）”. This mystery is part of what makes the works wonderful. However, since the late 1990s, with the spread of high-quality digital photography, there have been many discoveries about famous paintings.
Hieronymus Bosch has been at the centre of art-historical controversy（争论）this year. After an exhibition at the Noordbrabants Museum in the artist’s hometown, a new exhibition at the Prado in Madrid is on the way. The Noordbrabants displayed 17 existing Bosch paintings, while the Prado now exhibits 24. The difference is the result of digital discoveries, first accepted at the Noordbrabants show.
Artists did not regularly sign their works until the 19th century, and attribution（归属）based on a work’s style leaves room for error. Since artists always worked in studios or workshops, students would develop a style very similar to that of their master. Then again, later artists learned by copying past masters, sometimes so well that it’s hard to tell the difference. However, attribution can change, especially when new technology comes to light.
In the case of the Bosch discoveries, some researchers found evidence that led them to downgrade（降级）the attribution of certain works. Extracting the Stone of Madness, which was originally going to be lent by the Prado to the Noordbrabants, is listed as “by Bosch”, and considered to have been painted between 1501 and 1505. But the researchers informed the Prado that they would be listing the painting as “by the workshop or a follower of Bosch”, and dating it 1500-1520 （Bosch died in 1516）. The museum’s director Miguel Falomir said, “It is unacceptable to request a painting as a Bosch and then show it as something different.”
One of the beautiful things about art history is that it can never be an exact science. Digital art-historical discoveries have led to controversy rather than resolutions（问题解决）. The evidence is there, but it’s up to us how we explain it.
1. Why are some artworks great according to Walter Benjamin?| A．They didn’t survive in history. | B．Their styles are kind of mystery. |
| C．They leave room for imagination. | D．Their creators were not well-known. |
| A．It owns the paintings by Bosch. |
| B．It was convinced by the researchers. |
| C．It broke the agreement with the Prado. |
| D．It borrowed all Bosch paintings from the Prado. |
| A．Find out the signature hidden in the picture. |
| B．Consult the museum that has been displaying it. |
| C．Interview the followers of the master who did it. |
| D．Analyze its style and the year when it was created. |
| A．Digital discoveries explain art in a better way. |
| B．Museums have a fierce debate on Bosch paintings. |
| C．Hieronymus Bosch paintings become controversial. |
| D．Digital discoveries destroy the beauty of art history. |
5 . This is the moment a cleaner at a British university burst into tears after students raised $ 2,063 to send him to Jamaica on vacation to see family.
Herman Gordon, who has worked at Bristol University for more than a decade, is described as “one of the most loved” members of its cleaning staff. He is so well liked that a group of students raised money to give him a holiday. A video shows a student hands an envelope of cash to the surprised Gordan with tears rolling down his cheeks. He wipes away tears with a cleaning cloth and hugs the student who gave it to him. Gordan said: “I want to thank every one of you and God bless every one of you.”
The group of students started the fundraising because they liked Gordon so much. A post said: “The Jamaican cleaner in the biomedical library is the jolliest man I have ever met; he makes me smile even when I’m in the deepest depths of sorrow, if you want a reason to smile, go talk to him for a minute or two.”
Anyone who has been to the biomedical library knows who Herman the cleaner is. Simply put, Herman is the epitome（典范）of happiness, “All year round, this man works hours on end to provide us with a clean working space in which to study. But most importantly, his everlasting positive attitude has managed to turn many students’ dark days into positive ones filled with joy,” said a student. Whether you’re just feeling generally down or stressed out due to exams, Herman is always there to encourage you.
This legend proves that happiness is not about what you own, what job you have or how much money you’ve got, but about appreciating what you currently have in life even if it’s small.
1. What was Herman Gordon’ reaction when receiving the fundraising?| A．grateful. | B．stressed. | C．delighted. | D．astonished. |
| A．most miserable. | B．most cheerful. | C．most generous. | D．most glorious. |
| A．Building confidence. | B．Developing exam skills. |
| C．Learning self-control. | D．Gaining biomedical knowledge. |
| A．A biomedical library cleaner. . | B．A group of warm-hearted students. |
| C．Money-raising to send a cleaner on vacation. | D．The most loved cleaning staff. |
6 . Flying can be stressful even for the most experienced business traveler. No matter how many times we
With no
“This was definitely one of our
| A．check | B．make | C．change | D．print |
| A．wild | B．wrong | C．successful | D．creative |
| A．bought | B．picked | C．recovered | D．left |
| A．missed | B．boarded | C．booked | D．scheduled |
| A．painting | B．passport | C．ticket | D．package |
| A．comforted | B．credited | C．contacted | D．cheered |
| A．musician | B．doctor | C．author | D．artist |
| A．reports | B．mails | C．news | D．passengers |
| A．hands | B．eyes | C．home | D．company |
| A．Unluckily | B．Unusually | C．Thankfully | D．Obviously |
| A．proposals | B．clues | C．descriptions | D．efforts |
| A．agreed | B．remembered | C． decided | D．promised |
| A．conducted | B．canceled | C．designed | D．quitted |
| A．damaged | B．unharmed | C．well-decorated | D．well-received |
| A．simplest | B．latest | C．saddest | D．happiest |
7 . We recognize our friends’ faces. And we’re not alone. Many social animals can identify individuals of their own species by features of their faces. That's important, because they need to be able to change their behavior depending on who they meet. And a recent research has shown that some species of monkeys, birds, and domesticated (家养的) animals can even tell different faces apart by looking at photographs alone.
Ethologist Léa Lansade of the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment did an experiment to find out how well horses can recognize individual people in photographs.
She and her team first taught the horses how to “choose” between two side-by-side pictures by touching their noses to a computer screen. The horses were then shown photos of their present keeper alongside faces of unfamiliar humans. They had never seen photos of any of the people before. The horses correctly identified their current keeper and ignored (忽视) the stranger’s face about 75%of the time. In fact, even though the horses didn't get it right every single time, they were at least as correct in picking out their earlier keeper as they were at identifying their present one.
The results suggest that not only can horses differentiate between familiar and unfamiliar human faces, they also naturally understand that photographs are two dimensional representations (二维呈现) of real life, without any other intimations such as smell or sound. And they’re even better at this than our oldest animal parter, the domestic dog.
In addition, horses seem to have a strong long-term memory for human faces, like their long lifespan and history of domestication. In future experiments, the researchers would like to test whether looking at photos of people that they have had bad experiences with in the past might cause horses to act anxious or even avoidance. So maybe think twice before doing anything that might give a horse a long face.
1. Why did researchers show the horses both the keeper’s photos and the strangers’?| A．To find out what horses would do in the experiment. |
| B．To see why horses could recognize the keeper in the pictures. |
| C．To test whether horses could recognize the strangers in pictures. |
| D．To study to what degree horses can make out different people in pictures. |
| A．Clues. | B．Differences. |
| C．Photographs. | D．Senses. |
| A．Whether horses can live longer than other animals. |
| B．Whether horses can remember human's faces for a long time. |
| C．Whether horses can show their emotions at the sight of photos. |
| D．Whether horses are better at recognizing photos than other animals. |
| A．To talk about animals’ species. |
| B．To explain animals’ facial features. |
| C．To show animals’ behaviour for adaptation. |
| D．To introduce animals’ ability to identifying faces. |
8 . Captured(捕获的) carbon dioxide(CO2) could be used to extract(提炼) useful metals(金属) from recycled technology such as smartphone batteries rather than just being buried underground. The technique could help make it more economical to capture the greenhouse gas before it enters the atmosphere.
“If you also extract metals by filling CO2, you add value to a process that is known to be costly,” says Julien Leclaire at the University of Lyon, France.
CO2 is the main cause of modern climate change, so many people have attempted to develop technologies to capture it when it comes from power plants and other major sources. The gas can then be stored underground. The problem is that such carbon capture and storage (CCS) is expensive. “No one wants to pay the price for it,” says Leclaire.
To make CCS more appealing, Leclaire’s team has found a use for the gas.
His team collected CO2 from a car gas, cooled it, then pumped it into a mix of chemicals. The CO2 combined with the mix to make many molecules(分子) of various shapes and sizes.
The team found that this process could sort out mixtures of metals, because one metal would dissolve(溶解) in the liquid while another would form a solid. In a series of experiments, they successfully separated three kinds of metals-all of which are used in batteries, smartphones and computers.
If the process can be widely used, it could be a more environmentally friendly way to recycle batteries and other electrical equipment, says Leclaire. This is normally done using highly reactive chemicals, which are potentially polluting. Replacing them with CO2 should lead to a much lower environmental pollution, he says.
Other researchers and companies are trying to change captured CO2 into useful materials like plastics, which are normally produced from petrol, but this is chemically difficult. Leclaire says his approach is more in line with how CO2 behaves naturally. “Instead of copying what we know how to do better and cheaper with oil, let’s find things you can only do with CO2,” he says.
1. What can we learn from the first paragraph?| A．Extracting useful metals from recycled technology is widely used now. |
| B．Useful metals in the atmosphere are used to make smartphone batteries. |
| C．Abandoned smartphone batteries may have been buried underground before. |
| D．The greenhouse gas CO2 could be cleaned up after entering the atmosphere. |
| A．CO2 is the main cause of modern climate change. |
| B．CO2 can be used to recycle many resources. |
| C．Captured CO2 can be changed to useful gas. |
| D．CO2 is harmful to people’s health. |
| A．It could end the use of plastics. |
| B．It could reduce environmental pollution. |
| C．It could make more metals available to humans. |
| D．It could help reduce the cost of battery production. |
| A．The Ways to Make Smartphone Batteries |
| B．The Reason for Capturing Greenhouse Gas |
| C．Collecting CO? Is Starting to Make New Progress |
| D．Captured CO2 Could Be Used to Help Recycle Useful Metals |
9 . Recently I read Nineteen Eighty-Four, a novel by George Orwell set in a state where even the language they use is controlled. Adjectives are forbidden and instead they use phrases such as ‘ungood’, ‘plus good’ and ‘double plus good’ to express emotions. As I first read this I thought how impossible it would be in our society to have such vocabulary. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realised in its own way it’s already happening. I type messages to my friends and alongside each is the emoji. I often use them to emphasise something, or to not seem too serious, or because this specific GIF conveys my emotions much better than I ever could using just words. And I wonder, with our excessive use of emojis, are we losing the beauty and diversity of our vocabulary?
English has the largest vocabulary in the world, with over one million words, but who’s to say what it’ll be like in the future? Perhaps we will have a shorter language, full of saying ‘cry face’ if something sad happens or using abbreviations (缩写) like LOL (laugh out loud) or BRB (be right back) instead of saying the full phrase. So does this mean our vocabulary will shrink? Is it the start of an exciting new era? Will they look back on us in the future and say this is where it all began – the new language? Or is this a classic case of the older generations saying, ‘Things weren’t like that when I was younger. We didn’t use emoticons to show our emotions’?
Yet when you look back over time, the power of image has always been there. Even in the prehistoric era they used imagery to communicate, and what’s even more incredible is that we are able to analyse those drawings and understand the meaning of them thousands of years later. Pictures have the ability to transcend time and language. Images, be it cave paintings or emojis, allow us to convey a message that’s not restrictive but rather universal.
1. Why does the author mention Nineteen Eight Four?| A．To introduce the topic. |
| B．To show an example. |
| C．To give the reason. |
| D．To describe a phenomenon. |
| A．To reduce the use of words |
| B．To save time of typing |
| C．To express naturally and casually |
| D．To make fun of friends |
| A．Disappear. | B．Reduce. |
| C．Lower. | D．Change. |
| A．Emojis will destroy the variety of our vocabulary. |
| B．Emojis will replace English as the most popular language. |
| C．Emojis are useless and meaningless in modern life. |
| D．Emojis will not restrict our communication. |
10 . I was standing across the lady in the laundry (洗衣店). I got angry as I thought she had
“Can’t you just check to
It’s not the first time I’ve
I always give myself
| A．sold | B．hidden | C．lost | D．stolen |
| A．firmly | B．slowly | C．quickly | D．rudely |
| A．guess | B．request | C．imply | D．see |
| A．if | B．because | C．though | D．when |
| A．returned | B．came | C．left | D．joined |
| A．note | B．plan | C．problem | D．idea |
| A．save | B．call | C．find | D．help |
| A．apologized | B．agreed | C．argued | D．explored |
| A．honestly | B．bravely | C．unfairly | D．finally |
| A．annoyed | B．happy | C．frightened | D．excited |
| A．went around | B．looked around | C．came around | D．turned around |
| A．time | B．energies | C．permission | D．opportunities |
| A．information | B．order | C．translation | D．instruction |
| A．easy | B．unwilling | C．uncertain | D．ready |
| A．ignorance | B．kindness | C．mercy | D．inspiration |
