1 . First Year Learning Communities in University of Toronto Scarborough Campus (UTSC)
First Year Learning Communities, also known as “FLCs”, are groups of students from similar programs of study. FLCs focus on building community and working together to build skills for success.
Why Join?
First Year Learning Communities help first-year students to make connections within their program of study while developing academic, career and personal skills. Each year, past participants tell us how the program helped them to get to know their classmates, faculty, staff, and alumni. Students also tell us that the program helped them be familiar with university and enhance their university experience.
About the Program
FLCs meet every two weeks for FLC Meetings, facilitated by their upper-year FLC Leaders. FLCs are divided by program of study, with a maximum of 40 students in each FLC. There is no cost for participating in this program.
The program will begin in early September and will run until April 30. FLC Meetings will take place on campus and in-person. FLC programming may include off-campus trips, special events, and virtual events.
Application Dates & Deadlines
The formal application period will run from June 1 to September 1. Applicants will be notified of their status by September 3.
You can apply at https://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/ first-year-learning-communities-program-flip.
Applying After the Deadline
Students may continue to apply after the application deadline and throughout the school year. Should you apply outside of this period, you will be added to our waiting list and notified if spaces come available.
Eligibility
To participate in this program, you must be an undergraduate, UTSC student in your first year at U’TSC. Transfer students and students with transfer credits are welcome and encouraged to apply.
The First Year Learning Communities Program is open to the following programs of study:
Arts (Humanities, Social Sciences and Visual & Performing Arts)
Computer Science, Mathematics & Statistics
Physical & Environmental Sciences
Psychological & Health Sciences
1. What can the FLCs help first-year students do in UTSC?| A．Adjust to college life. | B．Change programs of study. |
| C．Raise money for universities. | D．Learn college courses in advance. |
| A．June 1. | B．September 1. | C．September 3. | D．April 30. |
| A．A textbook. | B．A course plan. |
| C．An academic report. | D．A program application. |
2 . Andrew Powell was pulling envelopes from the large mailbox outside his contemporary house when he noticed something
“We’ve decided to live here,” the
Over the next few months, additional items mysteriously
More than a year later, Mary and Shelley are still living rent-free in the mailbox, to the delight of the neighbors who now
“It’s just somebody out there who is having some fun, giving us all a little community
Andrew says he now doesn’t want to know who is
| A．alive | B．unusual | C．important | D．unique |
| A．notice | B．board | C．mail | D．message |
| A．by mistake | B．by chance | C．on purpose | D．on sale |
| A．gifts | B．cards | C．dolls | D．posts |
| A．displayed | B．acquired | C．designed | D．decorated |
| A．came back | B．wandered off | C．showed up | D．broke in |
| A．before | B．since | C．unless | D．when |
| A．follow | B．comment | C．download | D．appreciate |
| A．improvement | B．possibility | C．truth | D．progress |
| A．difficulty | B．conflict | C．case | D．mystery |
| A．care | B．humor | C．blessing | D．support |
| A．artistic | B．academic | C．sympathetic | D．realistic |
| A．suitable | B．eager | C．responsible | D．ambitious |
| A．describing | B．imitating | C．celebrating | D．enjoying |
| A．light | B．camera | C．tent | D．bench |
3 . New research has found a direct correlation between how a child visually tracks his mother’s eyes and the condition. How a toddler responds to baby talk could help diagnose autism (自闭症) years before symptoms begin, according to the new research.
A study examined responses to parents’ use of playful, emotional, exaggerated tones, known as “motherese” (mother’s ‘baby talk’), to capture a child’s attention. Eye-tracking tests showed that children who did not respond had weaker social and language abilities. Professor Karen Pierce, of California University in San Diego, co-author of the research, said, “We know the earlier we can introduce treatment, the more effective it is likely to be. But most children don’t get a formal diagnosis until around the age of three or four. There is a real need for easy and effective tools that can be used on young children. Eye-tacking is a great place to start.”
In experiments, 653 toddlers aged one to two years old were exposed to two one-minute videos featuring a woman speaking motherese or abstract scenes. Their eyes controlled which one played. Participants without ASD (autism spectrum disorder) showed consistently high interest in the woman speaking motherese, spending an average 80 percent of the time watching it. They largely ignored the second video which showed a busy highway, abstract shapes and numbers and had accompanying electronic music.
However, attention levels of peers diagnosed with ASD spanned the full range of concentration levels, with some focusing 100 per cent on the random images. A group who fixed on motherese less than 30 per cent of the time could be accurately identified as having ASD through this measurement alone. These children also showed lower scores on subsequent tests of language and social skills.
Whether less attention to motherese is the cause of reduced sociability or merely a symptom has yet to be determined. However, researchers found it appears to be a highly accurate biomarker for the condition. Prof Pierce said, “The fact we can reliably identify children with autism using such a simple and rapid eye-tracking test is really remarkable. In future, we hope to use a child’s attention to motherese as a clue for which treatments they may most benefit from and as a tool for measuring how well those treatments work.”
1. What is the purpose of the study?| A．To diagnose autism early. | B．To check a child’s eyesight. |
| C．To test a child’s reaction to motherese. | D．To catch a child’s attention. |
| A．Eye-tracking test is a good way to cure autism. |
| B．It is essential to bring in ASD treatment in early time. |
| C．There is an urgent need for complex tool applied to young children. |
| D．Most children don’t get an informal diagnosis before the age of three or four. |
| A．They mainly overlooked the second one. |
| B．They fixed 80 percent on the random images. |
| C．They focused on motherese more than 30% percent of time. |
| D．They showed occasionally high interest in the woman speaking motherese. |
| A．How to heal autism. |
| B．The process of eye-tracking test. |
| C．How to improve toddlers’ language and social skills. |
| D．The connection between a child’s reaction to motherese and autism. |
4 . I’d love to have been a journalist, but I wasn’t
I always had the
People
My next move will be to
| A．brave | B．serious | C．creative | D．humble |
| A．listen to | B．refer to | C．put up with | D．come up with |
| A．blindly | B．merely | C．immediately | D．hardly |
| A．gift | B．habit | C．secret | D．style |
| A．start | B．avoid | C．evaluate | D．support |
| A．funny | B．heated | C．simple | D．boring |
| A．get | B．beg | C．force | D．allow |
| A．strict | B．dependent | C．precise | D．bright |
| A．ambition | B．responsibility | C．honesty | D．communication |
| A．failed | B．tended | C．learned | D．refused |
| A．turn | B．reason | C．method | D．chance |
| A．gain | B．share | C．present | D．exchange |
| A．showed | B．made | C．offered | D．brought |
| A．solution | B．discovery | C．success | D．schedule |
| A．quit | B．reflect | C．employ | D．change |
5 . For over a decade, Zubin Kanga, a pianist, composer and technologist, has changed the limits of the forms of musical performances. He has both organized and performed shows that have pushed barriers, with motion sensors, artificial intelligence (AI), live-generated 3D visuals and virtual reality among the technological advancements used to unlock new possibilities of music and performances.
Kanga’s approach to employing cutting-edge technology was first informed by the relative limitations of his chosen instrument. “The piano is a very accurate technology,” he says. “From the early 20th century till now it hasn’t really changed at all. It’s an amazing instrument, but it does have certain limitations in terms of the types of sound you can create.”
One of the early works is Steel on Bone, composed by Kanga himself. He performs the piece using MiMU multi-sensor gloves. “I can put up one finger, and that’ll produce a particular sound,” Kanga explains. “And then I can control that sound just by moving my wrist through the air — I can do that with lots of different gestures.”
“For Steel on Bone, I’m actually playing inside the piano with these steel knitting (编织) needles, and getting all these interesting effects on the strings. Then I’m using samples of them. Sometimes I’m using live delays and operating them. The sound can change depending on how my hands are moving. It allows me to make a very theatrical piece, and people can see this immediate connection between how I’m moving — these very big, almost conductor-like gestures through the air — and the way the sound is changing,” said Kanga.
This is just the start, and Kanga goes on to be enthused with the use of motion sensors to make music, the possibilities that AI offers composers as a tool, and how virtual reality could transform performances and more.
1. What do technological advancements do for music and performances?| A．Remove music barriers. |
| B．Bring new performance forms. |
| C．Popularize musical performances. |
| D．Make performances professional. |
| A．To indicate its stability. |
| B．To prove its rare accuracy. |
| C．To show it has a long history. |
| D．To clarify why he uses technology. |
| A．By moving his hands in the air. | B．By pressing the piano keys. |
| C．By beating the steel knitting needles. | D．By making very small gestures. |
| A．Technology: When It Replaces Music |
| B．Virtual Reality: Future of Performances |
| C．Zubin Kanga: When Music Meets Technology |
| D．AI Music: From Composing to Performing |
6 . Recycling is a great way of doing your bit for the environment and helping to protect the earth’s precious resources. However, a new study has revealed that our desire to be sustainable maybe doing more harm than good. According to waste company Biffa, this is because of “wish-cycling” — assuming that items such as disposable coffee cup sand pizza boxes will be recycled if put in the recycling bin. In fact, pollution from those items or other non-recyclables can result in recyclable items that have been put in the correct bin going to landfill. David Heaton, a business director at Biffa, said: “Pollution happens when items are disposed of in the wrong bins or haven’t been cleaned before being recycled.”
Experts at Biffa analyzed the amounts of non-target and non-recyclable materials that entered UK material recycling facilities between 2016 and 2020. It was found that, in 2016, the average pollution rate of recycling waste was 13.4 percent, rising over four years to 17 percent by the end of 2020. This shows that, even as people are becoming more eco-conscious, wish-cycling is increasing both in households and businesses.
The Biffa experts say that one of the best ways to prevent pollution of recycling is to clean recyclable waste before putting it in the bin. They suggest cutting off the top of old pizza boxes and only recycling that part to avoid pollution from the grease (油脂). Check the on-packaging recycling label to check it can actually be recycled When it comes to plastics, Biffa recommends checking the resin code, the number in the plastic triangle, to know whether it should go in the recycling bin. In general, resin codes 1, 2, 4 and 5 are recyclable, while 3, 6 and 7 are not. Larger items, like electronics, furniture and batteries, can also be recycled but often can not go in household recycling bins as they need specialist separating. These will need to be taken to recycling centers or sustainable waste management companies.
“It’s vital as a nation that we get better at effective ‘pre-cycling’— sorting waste correctly before collection to reduce pollution rates,” added Mr. Heaton.
1. What’s the truth of “wish-cycling” according to the first paragraph?| A．The desire to lead a sustainable life. |
| B．The good intention to help recycling. |
| C．The habit of throwing items that end up in landfills. |
| D．The practice of recycling items that can not be recycled. |
| A．People are becoming more eco-conscious. |
| B．Wish-cycling is on the rise in recent years. |
| C．Pollution happens less frequently in recycling facilities. |
| D．People are used to cleaning recyclable waste before putting it in the bin. |
| A．Dispose of electronics together with household waste. |
| B．Skip the step of checking the on-packaging recycling label. |
| C．Check the resin code of plastics to see whether it is recyclable or not. |
| D．Cutoff the top of old pizza box and throw the rest to the recycling bin. |
| A．Recycling: a Big Project | B．Wish-cycling: a New Trend |
| C．Wish-cycling: a Growing Concern | D．Pre-cycling: an Effective Method |
7 . Radiocarbon dating has revealed two fake (伪造的) paintings in France — probably the first time the technique has been used in a police investigation. The paintings were supposedly works from around the early twentieth century. But a team led by scientist Lucile Beck at the University of Paris-Saclay dated them to sometime within the past 70 years.
The use of radiocarbon dating is gaining popularity, thanks to advances that require smaller samples than ever before. Removing tinier samples from artwork is becoming more palatable to museums and owners of paintings. If there is a chance that a painting is genuine — and therefore valuable — they don’t want the collection of larger samples to damage it.
All living things take in carbon, including radioactive carbon-14, from the atmosphere and from food. When a plant commonly used to make oil painting cloth dies, the carbon-14 that it contained continues to fall off. Radiocarbon dating measures what’s left to estimate the time that’s passed, says Mariaelena Fedi, a physicist at the National Institute for Nuclear Physics in Florence, Italy.
Atomic-bomb (原子弹) testing, which began in the 1940s and took off in the 1950s, quickly increased the amount of carbon-l4 in the atmosphere.Carbon-l4 peaked around 1964and went down after a partial ban on nuclear tests. Researchers can easily identify materials containing modern bomb-produced radiocarbon because their carbon-14 concentrations are higher than pre-1950s levels. Beck’s team tested its samples to see whether they bore the feature of that bomb-produced radioactive carbon-14.
The canvas fiber from the paintings clearly contained carbon from either the mid-1950sor after the year 2000, the researchers reported. Beck acknowledged that, ideally, the team would do further chemical analysis to support its findings, but the researchers were limited by the tight time.
1. What does the underlined word “palatable” in Paragraph 2 probably mean?| A．Impressive. | B．Acceptable. | C．Expensive. | D．Difficult. |
| A．By analyzing samples from artwork. |
| B．By removing the smaller samples. |
| C．By measuring the carbon-14 left. |
| D．By testing the carbon in the sample. |
| A．It produces more carbon-14. |
| B．It helps identify fake paintings. |
| C．it reduces carbon concentration. |
| D．It has been stopped completely. |
| A．Paintings waiting to be identified |
| B．Two fake paintings found in France |
| C．New technology in painting becomes a hit |
| D．Radiocarbon dating proves an anti-fake helper |
8 . Tammy Ruggles always wanted to be a photographer. In her First Person Vox narrative, she writes, “I’d always loved taking pictures. Ever since I was a little girl, taking photos of my family and pets with the Kodak camera has been my favorite hobby.”
But like her driver’s license and social work career, Ruggles accepted that photography was something she would have to give up due to Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP), a progressive blinding disease that worsens the retinas (视网膜) over time. Ruggles is legally blind, only capable of making out unclear shapes. How could she practice an art form that is only dependent on vision, if she had none?
That’s when Ruggles heard of point-and-shoot digital cameras which didn’t necessitate a dark room, exact precision, or changing manual (手动) settings. Ruggles went to her backyard, pressing the shutter at shapes as an experiment. After transferring the images to black and white on her 47-inch monitor (she sees best in contrast), she noticed little things she had never seen even prior to losing her vision—blueberries in some brush, wild pumpkins at the edge of the woods, individual leaves on a tree. And with that her camera became her eyes, capturing things she herself couldn’t see and had never seen.
Ruggles now considers her vision problem a plus to her photography. Unlike most photographers who visualize what they want their photo to look like, Ruggles approaches her art with zero preconceived (预想的) ideas about what she hopes to capture. With her loss of vision, Ruggles gained another pair of eyes—ones that can see the hidden beauty of the world around her.
1. What do we know about Ruggles?| A．She was born blind. |
| B．She is fond of photography. |
| C．She has got her driver’s license. |
| D．She’s still taking pictures with the Kodak camera. |
| A．Brave and ambitious. | B．Confident and optimistic. |
| C．Generous and gifted. | D．Helpful and sincere. |
| A．Ruggles will give up shooting due to her loss of vision. |
| B．Ruggles imagines the photos in her mind before shooting. |
| C．Ruggles views her vision issue as a strength to her photography. |
| D．Ruggles has achieved great success because she can see the hidden beauty. |
| A．To call on people to protect eyes. |
| B．To help people be a good photographer. |
| C．To promote point-and-shoot digital cameras |
| D．To praise the photographer’s bravery and perseverance. |
9 . Scientists have been experimenting with playing sounds to plants since at least the 1960s, during which time they have been exposed to everything from Beethoven to Michael Jackson. Over the years, evidence that this sort of thing can have an effect has been growing. One paper, published in 2018, claimed that an Asian shrub known as the telegraph plant grew substantially larger leaves when exposed to 56 days of Buddhist music — but not if it was exposed to Western pop music or silence. Another, published last year, found that marigolds and sage plants exposed to the noise of traffic from a busy motorway suffered growth difficulty.
Plants have been evolving (进化) alongside the insects that eat them for hundreds of millions of years. With that in mind, Heidi Appel, a botanist now at the University of Houston, and Reginald Cocroft, a biologist at the University of Missouri, wondered if plants might be sensitive to the sounds made by the animals with which they most often interact. They recorded the vibrations made by certain species of caterpillars (毛毛虫) as they chewed on leaves. These vibrations are not powerful enough to produce sound waves in the air. But they are able to travel across leaves and branches, and even to neighbouring plants if their leaves touch.
They then exposed tobacco plant — the plant biologist’s version of the laboratory mouse — to the recorded vibrations while no caterpillars were actually present. Later, they put real caterpillars on the plants to see if exposure had led them to prepare for an insect attack. The results were striking. Leaves that had been exposed had significantly higher levels of defensive chemicals, making them much harder for the caterpillars to eat. Leaves that had not been exposed to vibrations showed no such response. Other sorts of vibration — caused by the wind, for instance, or other insects that do not eat leaves — had no effect.
“Now speakers with the right audio files are more often being used to warn crops to act when insects are detected but not yet widespread,” says Dr. Cocroft. “Unlike chemical pesticides, sound waves leave no dangerous chemicals.”
1. What can we learn about plants from the first paragraph?| A．They may enjoy Western music. | B．They can’t stand Buddhist music. |
| C．They can react to different sounds. | D．They can make different sounds. |
| A．Plants can make a cry for help. | B．Plants evolve alongside insects. |
| C．Plants are sensitive to the sounds. | D．Plants have been studied for years. |
| A．They can recongnize harmful vibrations. | B．They look like laboratory mice. |
| C．They can threaten the caterpillars. | D．They can release poisonous chemicals. |
| A．Disadvantages of chemical pesticides. | B．Application of the experimental results. |
| C．Interaction between plants and insects. | D．Warning system of widespread insects. |
10 . Time to load up some popular games: new research indicates pigs possess the mental capability to play video games. The study, published in Frontiers in Psychology, tested the ability of four pigs (Hamlet, Omelette, Ebony and Ivory) to play a simple joystick (操纵杆) game with their noses, moving a cursor (光标) to four targets on the screen. Although the animals didn’t demonstrate the skills to win a round any time, they did show an understanding of some elementary games. Performing well not by chance, the pigs appeared to recognize the movement of the cursor was controlled by the joystick. The fact that they did so well despite a lack of flexible fingers is “extraordinary”, according to the researchers.
“It is no small achievement for an animal to grasp the concept that the behaviour they are performing is having an effect elsewhere. That pigs can do this to any degree should give us pause as to what else they are capable of learning and how such learning may impact them, “said Purdue University’s Dr Candace Croney, the study’s lead author.
Researchers also noted that while the pigs could be taught to play the game using food as positive motivation, they also responded well to social interaction. In fact, when the game was made more challenging and the pigs became unwilling to participate in it, “only oral encouragement by the experimenter” would see training continue.
These findings are the latest to highlight the intelligence of pigs. Not only have they been shown to use mirrors to find hidden food, but studies have also demonstrated how pigs can be taught to “come” and “sit” after oral commands.
As with any sentient (有感觉力的) beings, how we interact with pigs and what we do to them impacts and matters to them. We therefore have a moral duty to understand how pigs acquire information, and what they are capable of learning and remembering, because it ultimately offers the potential for how they understand their interactions with us and their environments.
1. What can be learned from Paragraph 1?| A．The pigs sometimes won the video games. |
| B．The pigs operated joysticks with their noses. |
| C．The pigs competed with each other in the games. |
| D．The pigs sometimes performed well accidentally. |
| A．Stop us from advancing. | B．Affect us in learning. |
| C．Make us think seriously. | D．Force us to train pigs better. |
| A．Their being inspired by human words. | B．Their being driven by food. |
| C．Their being willing to keep trying. | D．Their being motivated by challenges. |
| A．Smart Pigs: Best Animal Players | B．Flexible Noses: Fun Games |
| C．Oral Commands: Pig Learners | D．Pig Players: Learning Potential |
