1 . Education officials and industry experts are debating the future of online learning. The discussion is important because hundreds of universities in the United States have recently moved classes online because of the spread of COVID-19.
For Asha Choksi, the rise of Internet-based or online study programs has led to major improvements in higher education. “It’s actually given a lot more power to students in terms of how, when and where they learn,” the head of research for Pearson Education said.
Classes meet online through video conferencing. In this way, students are able to communicate with each other and their professors even when they are far away from school. However, recent research suggests the majority of college students and professors prefer in-person instruction, because they are concerned that companies supervising(监督) online learning programs are not clear about the policies they have with the schools they serve.
“Students see in-class lectures as opportunities to engage with instructors, peers, and content,” the researchers wrote. In-person learning is especially important in fields like healthcare and teaching. Online education can never really take its place, said Stephanie Hall, a fellow with the independent policy research group The Century Foundation. “Students need to experience...what they’re learning about, reading about or hearing about in the classroom. And I don’t know yet the degree to which technology can facilitate that.”
“When schools make agreements with online program managers to run their online programs, they often do not make important information available to students,” Hall said. This includes how much control the company has over the design of the program or whether the professors leading the classes was involved in their design. In addition, many colleges and universities advertise online programs as a low cost opportunity for students. But in some cases, students attending in-person classes get financial aid（助学金） and online students do not.
1. What does Choksi think of the online study programs?| A．They promote the development of technology. |
| B．They reform the country’s education system. |
| C．They provide advanced scientific knowledge. |
| D．They offer students more choices in study. |
| A．It is convenient. | B．It can better meet school policies. |
| C．It costs less to study. | D．It can improve students’ communication skills. |
| A．Achieve. | B．Apply. | C．Change. | D．Control. |
2 . Earth is experiencing its sixth mass extinction: somewhere between 30 and 159 species disappear every day, and more than 300 types of animals have died out since 1500. This is not good for the future of life on our planet, but what if we could make some of the extinct species come back to life? Thanks to ongoing advances in DNA recovery and cloning technology, de-extinction may soon be realized, and we may see Tasmanian Tigers, or Dodo Birds back into existence in the near future.
Some scientists are confident and optimistic about de-extinction. They think that the best reasons for de-extinction have more to do with ecology than tourism. “If this is always going to be a zoo animal, then stop,” says Ben Novak, the lead researcher at Revive & Restore—a foundation devoted to rescuing endangered and extinct species in San Francisco, California. “The goals have to be about ecological restoration and function.”
Take passenger pigeons for example. Their numbers reached nearly 5 billion at the start of the 19th century, and they played an important role in shaping the forests they inhabited(居住). After their extinction, the forests have never been the same. “The passenger pigeon is a very important ecological species if we want their original habitat back.” Novak says.
However, we need to think twice about Novak’s idea. Any new scientific initiative is bound to have risks, so is de-extinction. Although some assume that de-extinction may help the environment, we can’t be so sure. The de-extinct animals would now be strangers to their habitats. As the habitat is no longer what it was, the species role within the ecosystem may have also changed. This could be actually a threat to the other species within the environment as the de-extinct animals enter the area and compete for food sources. Once again we’re trying to force nature to act in a certain way, rather than letting it remain natural.
Many scientists also believe that priorities(优先权) would change within the conservation of currently endangered species. Would we still put in the effort to preserve living animals if we knew we could just magically bring them back from the dead? Douglas McCauley, an ecologist at University of California, Santa Barbara, stresses this worry. “Honestly, the thing that scares me most is that the public absorbs the misimpression that extinction is no longer scary. The general attitude becomes: Deforest, no worry, we can reforest. If we drive something extinct, no worry, we can de-extinct it.” said McCauley.
It seems that with the subject of de-extinction, we must look at our reasons for doing such a thing. Yes, we may, in the near future, be able to de-extinct the extinct species. But does that mean we should? Are the risks really worth it? Does it make sense to focus on the dead than the living? And who are we truly benefiting in the end?
1. Ben Novak probably agrees that ________.| A．the value of de-extinction lies in tourism |
| B．de-extinct animals are unfit to live in the zoo |
| C．de-extinction aims to bring back former environment |
| D．de-extinction results from the change of ecosystem |
| A．People’s impressions on lost species. |
| B．Change of public attitude towards de-extinction. |
| C．Importance of the conservation of living animals. |
| D．Effects of de-extinction on the protection of endangered species. |
| A．Optimistic. | B．Doubtful. | C．Neutral. | D．Supportive. |
3 . It is a big job to take away a city’s rubbish. Most rubbish is made up of things we can’t eat or use. If we kept these things, we would soon have mountains of rubbish.
In some cities the rubbish is collected and taken outside of the city to a dump. Often the city dump is placed where the ground is low or there is a big hole. The kitchen rubbish is broken into small pieces and sent into the sewage system. The sewage system takes away the used water from toilets, bathrooms and other places.
To keep mice and flies away, some earth is used to cover the newly dumped rubbish. Later, grass may be planted on the rubbish-filled land. Finally, a house or a school may be built there, and then you’d never know that this was an old rubbish dump before.
In other cities the rubbish is burnt in special places. The fire burns everything but the metal. Sometimes the metal can be used again in factories where things are made of metal. The food parts of rubbish are put in special piles where they slowly changes into something called humus, which looks like black earth. It is rich with kinds of things that feed plants and help to make them grow.
1. The best title of the passage is .| A．Need of Rubbish Collection |
| B．Different Ways to Treat Rubbish |
| C．Reuse Rubbish |
| D．Rubbish, a Big Job |
| A．health | B．pollution | C．washing | D．rubbish |
| A．a history book | B．a TV guide | C．a science book | D．a telephone book |
4 . Every month, Mary Davis throws a big rooftop birthday party on Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles, home of some of the worst poverty in the nation.
Mary and her husband Ari Kadin started Morthy of Love, a charity organization that
The Randell family is
When Davis started the monthly birthday party, there were 15 kids at the shelter. Many of them never had a birthday party before, and they were so excited to have one that they made their own
“This rooftop provides a beautiful
After watching more than 6,000 kids blow out
“I want her to grow up knowing that she has to
| A．educates | B．introduces | C．manages | D．believes |
| A．familiar | B．important | C．considerate | D．inspiring |
| A．joy | B．income | C．appointment | D．pressure |
| A．desperate | B．calm | C．sensitive | D．powerful |
| A．putting out | B．setting up | C．staying at | D．taking away |
| A．makes | B．turns | C．attends | D．counts |
| A．brilliant | B．strange | C．hopeful | D．ordinary |
| A．music | B．profit | C．advantage | D．decision |
| A．duty | B．practice | C．landscape | D．business |
| A．contributed | B．expected | C．belonged | D．expanded |
| A．tone | B．mood | C．view | D．dreamland |
| A．party | B．song | C．exhibition | D．dinner |
| A．cigarettes | B．flames | C．candles | D．fireworks |
| A．underline | B．celebrate | C．arrange | D．support |
| A．bring | B．provide | C．comfort | D．check |
5 . Unlike well-trained dogs that are able to distinguish (辨别) between common orders like “sit” and “stay”, some “Gifted Word Learner” dogs can associate objects with words.
One year ago, Shany Dror and her colleagues at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary discovered that some dogs have an obviously excellent natural ability to acquire object names. To study this further — how many words they can learn in a certain period of time and whether they can still remember the words after an extended period — they looked for more “Gifted Word Learner” dogs online and, in the end, they found six qualified dogs.
The researchers sent each dog’s owner six new toys. Owners then had six days to teach their dogs the names of the toys with their usual methods. These generally involved playing with the dog and each toy, often for just half an hour a day. At the end of the six-day learning period, the research team used online video conferencing to test the dogs’ abilities to pick out each toy by name from a number of old and new toys. Each owner sat with their dog in one room and told them to fetch a given toy from a second room. All the dogs successfully brought back at least five of the six new toys. The team then sent another 12 new toys and repeated the process. All the dogs successfully brought back at least 11 of the toys.
Afterwards, half the new toys were stored for one month, and the other half for two months, and the dogs were tested again after each storage period. Five of the dogs remembered all the toy names after one month, and four dogs remembered all or almost all of them after two months.
Dror says these dogs which are raised in the home like human children, provide an excellent animal model (模式) for studying the way humans acquire language. An animal model offers a basis of comparison for understanding which language-learning skills are specific to humans, and which aren’t. “We want to understand what makes humans different,” says Dror.
1. What is the research mainly about?| A．Dogs’ daily behaviors. |
| B．Dog training methods. |
| C．Dog-human relationship. |
| D．Dogs’ learning ability. |
| A．Their talent for learning object names. |
| B．Their ability to recognize human voice. |
| C．Their tendency to follow human orders. |
| D．Their intelligence to interact with human. |
| A．video games |
| B．continuous training |
| C．counting toys |
| D．playing outdoors |
6 . The endangered pandas in the Qinling Mountains might face a new threat: the loss of their food, bamboo, which makes up 99% of their meals.
Adult pandas spend most part of the day eating bamboo and have to take in at least 40 pounds a day to stay healthy. However, a new study published in Nature Climate Change warned that they may soon find their food gone because most of the bamboo in the Qinling Mountains might disappear by the end of the century as a result of rising temperature worldwide.
A team made up of researchers from Michigan State University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences has studied the effects of climate change on the bamboo in the Qinling Mountains. They have found that bamboo is very sensitive to climate changes. “80% to 100% of the bamboo would be gone if the average temperature rises 3.5 degrees worldwide by the end of the century,” said Liu Jianguo, one of the report’s authors.
He added, “This is how much the temperature would rise by 2100 even if all countries will keep their promises in the Paris Agreement. But you know what is happening all around the world.”
In recent years, China has been trying its best to protect the endangered pandas by setting up more and bigger natural reserves.
“But it is far from enough and the endangered pandas need cooperation from the rest of the world, because their future is not just in the hands of the Chinese,” said Shirley Martin from the World Wildlife Fund but not a member of the team.
The Qinling Mountains, in the southwest of China, are home to about 260 pandas. That is about 13% of China’s wild panda population. In addition, about 375 are living in research centers and zoos in China.
1. How many wild pandas are there in China?| A．About 260. | B．About 635. |
| C．About 2,635. | D．About 2,000. |
| A．China needs more help from the World Wildlife Fund. |
| B．It is difficult to control the temperature rise within 3.5℃. |
| C．Bamboo is sensitive to the changes of temperature. |
| D．China is making great efforts to protect the pandas. |
| A．The Qinling Mountains can provide enough bamboo for the pandas. |
| B．Pandas in the Qinling Mountains are only threatened by the loss of food. |
| C．Lots of the bamboo in the Qinling Mountains will probably disappear. |
| D．Pandas have already eaten 99% of the bamboo in the Qinling Mountains. |
| A．The Disappearance of Bamboo |
| B．Necessity to Change Pandas’ Food |
| C．A New Threat Faced by the Pandas |
| D．Efforts Made to Save Pandas |
7 . My family and I never talked about school as the ticket to a future. I was in the classroom, but I wasn’t there to learn to write, read or even speak. When it was my turn to read, I wanted to hide. I was 13 years old, but I already hated being who I was.
I had an English teacher, Mr. Creech, who knew I couldn’t read. In one of my first lessons the teacher said that anyone who had a reading age below six had to stand up. I felt so embarrassed. But at the same time, it made me realize that I needed to change the situation. I was determined it wouldn’t happen again. Later that day, Mr. Creech encouraged me and promised he would try his best to help me learn to read. From then on, I never gave up practicing reading.
Then when I was 41 years old, one day, I planned to fly back to Texas to visit my friends and family. On my way from the airport, I saw Mr. Creech buying himself a drink. I rushed over and reached into my pocket to pay for him. “Do I know you?” he asked. “Yes, sir, you do know me,” I answered excitedly. “My name is Anthony Hamilton. You taught me English.” The look on his face told me that he remembered the boy he’d once encouraged.
“I’m so glad I had a chance to see you,” I said. “And Mr. Creech, I have great news to share.” I told him I had learned to read. But that wasn’t all. I had become a published author and an active speaker. “The next time you get another Anthony Hamilton in your classroom, please encourage him to read as well,” I added.
The experts say what once worried me has a name: dyslexia (诵读困难). But I can tell you it was a lack of desire for education.
1. Why did the author want to hide?| A．Because he couldn’t read at all. | B．Because he felt sorry for himself. |
| C．Because he hated being laughed at. | D．Because he didn’t have a ticket. |
| A．Emotional and dedicated. | B．Demanding and enthusiastic. |
| C．Considerate and dutiful. | D．Friendly and ambitious. |
| A．Because his reading age was not long enough. |
| B．Because he didn’t have inner driving force(力量) to learn to read. |
| C．Because he was afraid of reading before the class. |
| D．Because his parents didn’t teach him how to read. |
| A．Mr. Creech taught two Anthony Hamiltons. |
| B．Dyslexia made the author unable to read. |
| C．The author had become an active speaker. |
| D．The author was grateful to Mr. Creech. |
8 . Do you know what “zero” means? Have you ever even stopped to think much about this concept (概念)? It’s an easy one to take for granted. Of course, everyone can understand the concept of nothing, or having nothing.
But did you know that some animals can understand zero as well? Experiments with monkeys and birds have proven that they can master this concept. But now, the understanding of zero has been found in a most unlikely candidate (候选人): bees.
According to a recently published study in the journal Science, Australian and French researchers worked together to conduct experiments to prove that bees are the first insects to “understand that zero belongs at the lower end of a sequence (序列) of numbers”, according to a report by Science Daily.
Scarlett Howard, a researcher at RMIT University in Melbourne, trained bees to choose from several cards with different numbers of shapes printed on them. Correctly choosing the card with the fewest shapes earned them a reward of sugar water. For example, the bees learned to choose three elements when presented with three VS four; or two elements when presented with two VS three. And then these bees were presented a challenge — a card that was entirely blank and that they had never seen before. But 64 percent of the time, they chose to fly toward the blank card instead of the card that had shapes on it. This suggests that the insects understand that zero stands for something less than two or three, according to Science magazine.
Associate Professor Adrian Dyer, also from RMIT University, said the number zero was the basis of modern mathematical and technological progress.
He told Science Daily that the findings have opened a door to new understandings of how different brains understand zero. “If bees can understand zero with a brain of less than a million neurons (神经元) [compared with the 86,000 million neurons of a human brain], it suggests there are simple and efficient (有效的) ways to teach artificial (人工的) intelligence new tricks .”
1. Why did the writer ask two questions in Para.1?| A．To expect an exact answer. | B．To introduce the topic. |
| C．To show the concept of “zero”. | D．To inspire scientists to study. |
| A．Most insects can recognize different shapes. |
| B．Bees can understand the meaning of zero. |
| C．Bees are better at numbers than monkeys and birds. |
| D．Most insects can be trained to understand numbers. |
| A．By giving examples. | B．By designing cards. |
| C．By showing numbers. | D．By doing experiments. |
9 . Letters to the Editor
Nurses’ strike
Sir, I have worked in the public sector for more than 30 years and know that the idea that nurses will be “driven out” of the health service by the 1 per cent pay offer is poppycock(胡说) (news, Mar 8). What attracts and keeps people working in these areas is public service and, as the Queen said in her message, a “selfless devotion to duty”.
Tim Kerin
London E7
Doorstep heroes
Sir, I can understand why so many people now like to have their milk delivered (“Pint-sized heroes are back on doorstep”, Mar 8) but don’t know why it has to be at such antisocial hours. I have often been woken up by the loud noise of Milk & More delivering to one of my neighbours in the early hours, and one day last week it was even at 1:50 a.m. , which made me sleepless the following hours.
Helen Hinde
Ruislip, Middx
Wine of the weak
Sir, Jane MacQuitty excelled (突出) herself in her wine column this week (“Red wine for lightweights: the best 12% and under bottles”, Weekend, Mar 6). The eight bottles on offer were flavoured as follows: forest-fruited, meaty, mocha, beetrooty, tobacco leaf, lemony and samphire. The star flavours (调味) in a Reisling from Chile were fat and lime pickle (酸菜味). Of the eight bottles of wine only one was described as “grapey”.
Tony Stafford
Harston, Cambs
Note: Letters to the Editor should be sent to letters@thetimes.co.uk or by post 1London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF.
1. Why did the three people write these letters?| A．To make themselves famous. | B．To make some complaints. |
| C．To promote The Times. | D．To improve their writing skills. |
| A．the health service | B．the nurses’ devotion to their work |
| C．the practical idea | D．the medical workers’ strike |
| A．Shocking. | B．Pleasant. | C．Unbearable. | D．Popular. |
10 . Throughout history, many species of animals have been threatened with dying out. When Europeans first arrived in North America, more than 60 million buffalo (水牛) lived on the continent. Yet hunting the buffalo was so popular during the 19th century that by 1900 the animal’s population had fallen to about 400 before the government stepped in to protect the species. In some countries today, the elephant faces a similar challenge, as illegal hunters kill the animals for the ivory (象牙) in their tusks.
Yet not all animals with commercial value face this threat (威胁). The cow, for example, is a valuable source of food, but no one worries that the cow will soon die out. Why does the commercial value of ivory threaten the elephant, while the commercial value of beef protects the cow?
The reason is that elephants are a common resource, while cows are private goods which only belong to their owners. Elephants wander freely without any owners. The hunter has a strong motivation to kill as many elephants as he can find. Because the number of illegal hunters is big, each has only a little desire to protect the elephant population. By contrast, cattle live on farms that are privately owned. Each farmer makes great effort to keep the cattle population on his farm because he gets the benefit of these efforts.
Governments have tried to solve the elephant’s problem in two ways. Some countries, such as Kenya and Uganda, have made it illegal to kill elephants and sell their ivory. Yet these laws have been hard to put into effect, and elephant numbers have continued to reduce. By contrast, other countries, such as Malawi and Namibia, have made elephants private goods and allowed people to kill elephants, but only those who own these elephants.
With private ownership and the profit (利润) now on its side, the African elephant might someday be as safe from dying out as the cow. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle pointed out the problem with common resources: “What is common to many is taken least care of, for all men attach greater importance to what is their own than for what they have together with others.”
1. Why does the author mention buffalo in paragraph 1?| A．To introduce a similar threat to elephants. |
| B．To provide an example of species dying out. |
| C．To offer an explanation for government policies. |
| D．To present the statistics of the buffalo in America. |
| A．They are under different law protection. |
| B．They attract different groups of hunters. |
| C．They contain different commercial value. |
| D．They belong to different ownership types. |
| A．Bans on killing elephants for ivory. |
| B．Effective laws for elephant protection. |
| C．Methods of making elephants private goods. |
| D．Government policies on the elephant’s problem. |
| A．Because elephants don’t fight back. |
| B．Because elephants don’t have exact owners. |
| C．Because local government haven’t protected them. |
| D．Because elephants are more valuable than other animals. |
| A．People pay little attention to others’ resources. |
| B．People want to profit from common resources. |
| C．People care more about their own resources. |
| D．People tend to take what they own for granted. |
