1 . Tonal languages use pitch (音调) to distinguish words that otherwise might sound the same. In Mandarin, for instance, mă means horse whereas mã means mother. Nontonal languages like Spanish sometimes include pitch changes to suggest emotion, for example, but not to change a word’s meaning.
As a Mandarin speaker and musician, Jingxuan Liu wondered about the crossover (融合) between language and music. While studying at Duke University, Liu helped analyze the musical abilities of nearly half a million people from 203 countries. Her colleagues had launched an online game in which participants completed several musical tasks, including identifying matching melodies at different pitches and finding beat tracks that fit songs’ rhythms.
On average, native speakers of the 19 represented tonal languages were better at the melody task compared with speakers of 29 nontonal languages. And the effect wasn’t small a tonal first language strengthened melodic understanding by about half the amount that music lessons did, which was also surveyed. But tonal languages speakers tended to be worse at the rhythm task.
Humans must be choosy about what they pay attention to. Pitch patterns are quite important in tonal languages, which might explain the balancing act in music. “You’ve got a finite resource of attention, and you’ve got to divide up that somehow,” says study coauthor Courtney Hilton, a scientist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.
Prior research on language and music often compared just two tongues, usually English and Mandarin. But other cultural influences, such as Eastern and Western music styles, could have affected results. By examining a wide range of people, the new study included languages never estimated in this way and reached more generalizable conclusion.
“Our result here is showing that the language someone speaks which is an important part of culture — also shapes cognition,” Hilton says.
1. Why did Liu’s colleagues launch the online game?| A．To attract more students to do the research. |
| B．To learn about different people’s musical abilities. |
| C．To confirm the role of music in people’s language learning. |
| D．To find the difference between tonal languages and nontonal ones. |
| A．Finding beat tracks. | B．Suggesting emotion. |
| C．Distinguishing word meanings. | D．Figuring out matching melodies. |
| A．Valued. | B．Limited. | C．Special. | D．Potential. |
| A．Ground-breaking. | B．Brain-washing. | C．Inefficient. | D．Unreliable. |
2 . A fourth color might be added to traffic lights to better realize the potential of self-driving vehicles, as stated in a recent paper by researchers at North Carolina State University in the US.
Autonomous vehicles can do more than just drive-they are able to sense their surroundings and upload information. A shared network gives orders to stop at a crossing based on traffic conditions.
The added white lights would be used to signal to human drivers that autonomous vehicles are managing the upcoming traffic flow intelligently. Drivers don’t have to check the traditional lights if the white one is on. “The white lights will tell human drivers to simply follow the car in front of them,” one of the study authors Ali Hajbabaie told the university’s website.
Simulated (模拟的) models showed that autonomous vehicles were able to improve traffic flow on their own. Introducing the white light also has a positive effect on reducing fuel consumption. The higher the percentage of autonomous vehicles at a crossing, the faster the traffic moves, reducing about 40 to 99 percent of the total delay time.
What kind of infrastructure (基础设施) is needed as self-driving technology thrives? In an interview with China Surveying and Mapping magazine, Liu Jingnan at the Chinese Academy of Engineering shared his answers.
To begin with, the vehicle’s network that collects data about the environment and shares the data with other vehicles needs to be intelligent. High-precision maps are needed for autonomous vehicles to plan routes in detail. They can provide both updated information on traditional maps and real-time changes, such as accidents.
For example, when driving around a curve, the navigation (导航) system in the vehicle needs to calculate the safe speed based on the map’s information. And if the area is foggy, the network has to alarm the other cars to slow down.
Other elements on the road need to be upgraded too. For example, road markings should be precise and readable for machines. Sensors should be built on sidewalks and roads to allow vehicles to predict potentially dangerous situations.
1. What is the purpose of adding a white light to traffic lights?| A．To signal to self-driving cars when to stop. |
| B．To help driverless cars assess traffic conditions. |
| C．To tell human drivers to go after the cars in front. |
| D．To signal to human drivers to pass the cars ahead. |
| A．Increased road safety. | B．Reduced fuel efficiency. |
| C．Less time stuck in traffic. | D．Unpredictable traffic patterns. |
| A．To calculate a safe speed for vehicles. | B．To provide real-time weather updates. |
| C．To plan routes for autonomous vehicles. | D．To offer real-time data on road conditions. |
| A．The advantages of autonomous vehicles. |
| B．The role of the navigation system in self-driving cars. |
| C．The application of the infrastructure in self-driving cars. |
| D．The efficiency of self-driving cars handling emergencies. |
3 . Now, Earth Day is celebrated around the world. We still face many challenges, such as climate change, plastic pollution, and deforestation. But we can all make a difference.
Her Trees Save LivesAdeline Tiffanie Suwana was 12 when her family’s home flooded. Indonesia, her island nation, is often hit hard by floods and other natural disasters.
Adeline learned that mangrove trees play a key role in flood protection and rallied classmates to plant 200 trees during a school break. They started a group called Sahabat Alam or Friends of Nature, which works to conserve the region’s biodiversity and combat climate change.
Today. Adeline attends university, studying how businesses can help the environment.
Teens’ Two-Fold InventionEPS—expanded polystyrene foam—is the white, lightweight stuff used to make things like takeout food containers, foam egg cartons, and packing “peanuts”. But it takes up a lot of space and is difficult to recycle. EPS breaks into small pieces as it floats down waterways into oceans, harming wildlife along the way.
Eighth-graders Julia Bray, Luke Clay, and Ashton Cofer looked at EPS’s chemical makeup and saw that it was mostly carbon. That sparked an idea. Could they turn it into activated carbon, a material that filters toxins from water?
After 50 hours of experiments, including one that accidentally set the family grill fire, they succeeded!
Solar for Her SchoolWhen Claire Vlases of Montana was in seventh grade, she learned about plans to expand and modernize her middle school. Claire asked the school board to add solar panels to the project. The board liked the idea but said it could contribute just $25,000, one-fifth of the cost. So Claire organized a group of kids and adults who set to work raising the rest.
They asked for donations, even going door-to-door for them. And they appealed to charitable foundations too. One even donated half the cost!
After two years of hard work, the group paid for the solar panels, which now supply one-fourth of the school’s electricity needs.
1. What do the three groups of teenagers have in common?| A．They are Earth-helping heroes. | B．They are from island countries. |
| C．They are high school students. | D．They are keen on experiments. |
| A．$25,000. | B．$50,000. | C．$62,500. | D．$125,000. |
| A．To give models for colorful school activities. |
| B．To explore the ways to deal with plastic pollution. |
| C．To inspire people to act for environmental problems. |
| D．To display the amazing power of effective cooperation. |
4 . Parents often think that their kids should be good at studies and do well in sports. That’s usually the case because parents feel that could get their children admission to top colleges. However, Melissa and Mark Wimmer think differently.
Their 14-year-old son, Mike, is a prodigy. He is a member of Mensa, which is the world’s top IQ club. He completed his high school, associate’s and bachelor’s degrees all in three years. That’s not all. He also ran two tech companies, founded a third one that works towards controlling the population of lionfish, an invasive (入侵的) species.
But the parents are proud that they were able to help Mike with his social skills along with his intellectual skills. Melissa told CNBC that people expected “Young Sheldon” before they met her son. Young Sheldon is a television show about a child talent who is an indoor man and lacks social skills. “But once they talk to Mike, they understand that he’s just a normal 14-year-old that happens to be able to do amazing things,” said Melissa.
Mark and Melissa got to know about their child’s intelligence when he entered preschool. A child psychologist told them that their son would need a different course to support his fast-track development. Many parents aren’t comfortable with putting their children with 18-year-olds, but Mike’s parents saw the value in letting their child go through it. “I wanted him to be social and be able to deal with all the different personalities in the classrooms with older children,” said Melissa.
The parents shared that they were able to do this by letting Mike find his own voice and put it to use. “We let him order food when he’s 3 or 4 from the waiter or waitress and introduce himself to people. Those kinds of things are done to encourage him to engage with everyone else and be more comfortable talking to others outside of our environment,” said Melissa.
Thanks to his parents, Mike has learned to get along with young and old alike.
1. What do the underlined words “a prodigy” in paragraph 2 refer to?| A．A gifted person. | B．A famous student. |
| C．A brilliant biologist. | D．A successful businessman. |
| A．He likes to make friends. | B．He is a well-rounded man. |
| C．He is a popular child actor. | D．He is poor at dealing with people. |
| A．Through a recommendation from a child psychologist. |
| B．Through observing Mike’s behavior in preschool. |
| C．Through participating in a special educational program. |
| D．Through the information provided by Mike’s school teachers. |
| A．Teach him some communication rules. | B．Encourage him to speak in class. |
| C．Place him in social situations. | D．Let him go to school alone. |
5 . A song called Lonely Warrior (《孤勇者》) is always ringing in my ears. Six years ago, after hosting an annual ceremony for my school, I found that my left leg was a little swollen, and very soon I could barely walk. In fact, the swollen part became a fist-sized meatball that was so painful that I could barely sleep. Of course, I went to a local hospital, where I was given very bleak (不乐观的) news-osteosarcoma, which means bone cancer.
I underwent chemotherapy (化疗) for the next two years, and it was the worst time of my life. Physically, I felt that the side effects of chemotherapy were killing me. I lost all of the hair on my body and I became totally bald. I could barely eat anything, even if felt hungry. I no longer needed an alarm clock to wake up in the morning. Instead, what woke me was my body telling me that I needed to vomit (呕吐).
I had no idea where all this treatment would leave me, and the dreams I had once nursed about the future were entirely wiped out. I wanted to feel the world and experience more, so I stuck to the course of treatment. As time went by, however, I became weaker and weaker. The side effects now were far worse than they had been earlier.
I eventually suggested that the leg be chopped off, and the doctor said that might be the best thing to do, as long as I could cope with the psychological and social pressures afterward. I made my decision very calmly, because I knew things could not be worse than they were at that moment, and I was determined that this was just one more battle I would win.
Now, six years later, I have weathered all these difficulties. I have been so lucky to be able to find the strength to deal with all of this, and what I have to tell anyone still struggling with difficulties is this: have faith in yourself, and do not let bad moments drag you down. Just hang on and you will come through.
1. What can we learn about the side effects of chemotherapy?| A．They made the author suffer a lot. |
| B．They destroyed the author’s faith. |
| C．They were relieved after treatment. |
| D．They were more obvious in the daytime |
| A．Chopping off his leg. |
| B．Turning down the doctor’s advice. |
| C．Giving in to the cancer. |
| D．Seeking psychological assistance. |
| A．resisted | B．survived | C．escaped | D．produced |
| A．A light heart lives long. |
| B．A good medicine tastes bitter. |
| C．Time works wonders. |
| D．One with faith braves any hardship. |
6 . I found a wonderful picture of Maolan karst cones online and presented it to the innkeeper. “You can’t go there,” the innkeeper
Despite our disappointment, we
The next morning, we set off with a local
Our guide, in his 50s, behaved like a botanist, introducing the locally specific plants to us, but I was hardly in the
Sinkholes and entrances to underground rivers kept popping up along our
Wandering in a green chaos without any obvious landmarks is also breathtaking.
1.| A．answered | B．told | C．followed | D．favored |
| A．news | B．matters | C．concerns | D．conclusions |
| A．worked out | B．took in | C．set down | D．ruled out |
| A．unwilling | B．surprised | C．calm | D．inspired |
| A．forgotten | B．promoted | C．interpreted | D．noticed |
| A．shortly | B．lately | C．eventually | D．suddenly |
| A．taste | B．tone | C．smile | D．sigh |
| A．botanist | B．keeper | C．farmer | D．guide |
| A．managed | B．decided | C．planned | D．agreed |
| A．visitor | B．mixture | C．log | D．stranger |
| A．eagerness | B．mood | C．humor | D．pity |
| A．contact | B．energy | C．activity | D．challenge |
| A．prediction | B．line | C．deal | D．secret |
| A．route | B．landmark | C．platform | D．rock |
| A．guarantee | B．ignore | C．doubt | D．appreciate |
7 . Jones Thando was a 16-year-old senior high school student, who had an idea for a new method of finding pancreatic cancer. When Jones was 15 years old, her aunt died of this kind of cancer, which
The way ahead seemed
Another great reward for Jone’s
| A．affected | B．challenged | C．disappointed | D．inspired |
| A．accidentally | B．extremely | C．originally | D．abnormally |
| A．painful | B．precious | C．standard | D．improper |
| A．Recognizing | B．Realizing | C．Hit | D．Warned |
| A．relieve | B．cure | C．treat | D．catch |
| A．awkward | B．smooth | C．tough | D．simple |
| A．even | B．ever | C．merely | D．rarely |
| A．declined | B．desired | C．regretted | D．afforded |
| A．absolutely | B．similarly | C．limitedly | D．endlessly |
| A．researchers | B．patients | C．followers | D．survivals |
| A．neglected | B．responded | C．guaranteed | D．contributed |
| A．access | B．introduction | C．application | D．movement |
| A．fright | B．persistence | C．ambition | D．responsibility |
| A．goal-setting | B．problem-solving | C．world-changing | D．heart-breaking |
| A．also | B．and | C．so | D．but |
| A．hardly | B．fluently | C．occasionally | D．eventually |
| A．All in all | B．First of all | C．After all | D．At all |
| A．ideas | B．dreams | C．personalities | D．advantages |
| A．contacts | B．doubts | C．encourages | D．reflects |
| A．stress | B．career | C．discovery | D．concentration |
8 . Hristo Hristov has been working with wildlife in Bulgaria’s remote Rhodope Mountains for over 30 years. He first came here as a bright-eyed student in the early 1990s, eager to increase the number of griffon vulture (欧亚尤雪). At the time, there were fewer than 20 birds left. Fast forward to November 2020, there were more griffon vultures. At the last count, a record 245 now live in the Rhodope Mountains.
As a rewilding officer, Hristo is responsible for the welfare of the animals in his area, which means constant observation, and lengthy periods out in the wild conducting research. “This process is sometimes long — you have to live together with the animals,” he explains. “Forget everything; you live in nature. It doesn’t matter if they’re horses, wild cattle or European bison (野牛).”
This small corner of south-eastern Europe is one of the continent’s most ecologically diverse areas. Large animals, such as wolves, brown bears, deer, and wild horses, coexist here. It’s also a peaceful place for birdlife, with 300 species recorded. The ultimate goal is to create a habitat where multiple different species depend on one another.
Hristo’s current challenge is to continue the reintroduction of European bison to the wild. Since 2013, Hristo has worked with Rewilding Europe, a not-for-profit organisation which operates across Europe, to bring bison back to the Rhodope Mountains. In 2019, several bison were released into the wild, and three baby bison have already been born, two of those coming in 2020. At the end of last year, another two females were donated to the project from zoos in Hungary and Slovakia. When the new animals are eventually released into the wild, they will number 13.
1. What can be learned about griffon vultures?| A．They are now in danger of dying out. | B．They may live as long as over 30 years. |
| C．They can be seen in the Rhodope Mountains. | D．They were first discovered in the early 1990s. |
| A．Proud but caring. | B．Silent but generous. |
| C．Honest and creative. | D．Devoted and patient. |
| A．Develop the theme with examples. | B．Add some background information. |
| C．Summarize the previous paragraphs. | D．Introduce a new topic for discussion. |
| A．It will be hard to assess. | B．It will start to explode. |
| C．It will show promise. | D．It will be something to worry about. |
9 . Gather together a couple of good friends and take a leisurely stroll through the streets — this is what many youngsters in China enjoy doing when they visit a new city.
To them, Citywalk means “roaming around the city” on foot. Participants can follow a distinctive urban route, soaking up the atmosphere, exploring old buildings, browsing boutique shops, sipping a cup of coffee, or indulging in authentic local snacks.
Citywalk can be a special guided trip for a small group of people, or simply a leisurely stroll for one or two to explore new areas, sticking to the key point: avoiding famous scenic spots and big crowds to gain a more inclusive experience of the places you visit. Besides interacting with a city, Citywalk provides young people with a new social scene, where they who share the same interests and ideas can easily make friends.
In China, the Citywalk trend is spreading from first-tier cities like Beijing and Shanghai to second and third-tier cities, encouraging more participants and event organizers to get involved. Some organizers invite folk culture researchers and enthusiasts to act as tour guides. Xiao Yiyi, a young entrepreneur in Changsha, recently launched six Citywalk routes in different cities on her social media account, with the aim of providing experiences for visitors to “walk in open-air museums”. Her Changsha route features more offbeat sights like historical architecture from the 19th century, artsy old alleys, and even a stop-off to sample the local spicy crayfish specialty.
Even though Citywalk is a relatively new phenomenon, it is offering a positive change to urban travelers as they can better choose the experiences based on their interests and needs. At the same time, Citywalk represents an opportunity for tour guides and travel service providers to offer a more tailored, professional service to meet with ever-changing market demands.
1. Why do young people choose Citywalk?| A．To enjoy a guided tour. |
| B．To cut down expenses. |
| C．To dig deeper into a city. |
| D．To make new friends. |
| A．Doing sightseeing on foot. | B．Avoiding hot scenic spots. |
| C．Taking a local tour guide. | D．Keeping a fixed urban route. |
| A．A tour guide | B．A culture researcher. |
| C．A Citywalk enthusiast. | D．An event organizer. |
| A．Favorable. | B．Dismissive. | C．Doubtful. | D．Unclear. |
10 . Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer (ChatGPT), created by openAI, an AI and research company, is a natural language processing tool driven by AI technology that allows you to have human-like conversations and much more with a chatbot. The language model can answer questions, and assist you with tasks such as composing emails, essays and code.
ChatGPT is powered by a large language model, or LLM, meaning it’s programmed to understand human language and generate responses based on a large amount of data. What makes ChatGPT so impressive is its ability to log context from user’s earlier messages in a thread and use it to form responses later in the conversation.
According to analysis by Swiss bank UBS, ChatGPT is the fastest growing up app of all time. In January, only two months after its launch, UBS analysis estimates that ChatGPT had 100 million active users. For comparison, it took nine months for TikTok to reach 100 million.
Despite looking very impressive, ChatGPT still has limitations. Instead of asking for clarification on ambiguous questions, the model just takes a guess at what your question means. “The primary problem is that the answers that ChatGPT produces have a high rate of being incorrect,” says Stack Overflow moderators in a post. Critics argue that these tools are just very good at putting words into an order that makes sense from a statistical pint of view, but they cannot understand the meaning or know whether the statements it makes are correct. Another major limitation is that ChatGPT’s data is limited to 2021.
ChatGPT is an advanced chatbot that has the potential to make people’s lives easier and to assist with everyday tiring tasks, such as writing an email or having to navigate the web for answers. However, there are certain technical details that have to be figured out before it’s widely used, to prevent negative outcomes such as the spread of misinformation. In general, this AI model relies on lots of training and fine-tuning to reach a level of ideal performance.
1. What can we learn about ChatGPT from the first paragraph?| A．What its potential market is. | B．It is developed jointly by two companies. |
| C．Why it enjoys great popularity. | D．It is a conversational AI tool. |
| A．Context. | B．ChatGPT’s ability. | C．A thread. | D．LLM. |
| A．Low efficiency. | B．Disordered words. |
| C．Poor accuracy. | D．Frequent crashes. |
| A．Unclear. | B．Objective. | C．Doubtful. | D．Satisfied. |
