1 . Kristin Schell turned a delivery mistake into a way to connect with neighbors. Ten years ago, her family
That turquoise table became the place where Kristin and her kids
Neighbors began to stop by to introduce themselves and sit down for a chat. Kristin asked people to
People often
A decade after their Texas beginnings, thousands of Turquoise Tables
| A．admitted | B．related | C．moved | D．applied |
| A．changed | B．bought | C．missed | D．held |
| A．by choice | B．by luck | C．by heart | D．by mistake |
| A．image | B．driver | C．truck | D．voice |
| A．ran out | B．calmed down | C．hung out | D．slid down |
| A．careful | B．worried | C．curious | D．happy |
| A．join | B．call | C．thank | D．save |
| A．word | B．way | C．mind | D．ability |
| A．terrible | B．endless | C．familiar | D．inviting |
| A．expect | B．learn | C．hesitate | D．offer |
| A．Inspired | B．Qualified | C．Forced | D．Trusted |
| A．recorded | B．registered | C．born | D．paid |
| A．exist | B．fall | C．matter | D．agree |
| A．ignore | B．mix | C．hide | D．match |
| A．grade | B．color | C．honor | D．model |
2 . Dance Classes
Ballet
Ballet teaches grace, posture (姿势) and flexibility. Students focus on the use of proper ballet items (物品), expanding their knowledge of classical ballet techniques and improving motor skills for classical ballet practice. The class is a formal ballet class.
Age: 8 — 10
Date: September 7, 2019 — May 16, 2020
Time: 10:30 am — 12:00 am on Saturdays
Creative Movers
Students can explore creative movement, balance, focus, the development of skills, motor planning and balance. The class helps build strength, flexibility and self-confidence, and allows children to realize expression in a positive and encouraging environment. Children use their imagination to celebrate movement and have lots of fun.
Age: 3 — 5
Date: September 7, 2019 — January 18, 2020
Time: 9:00 am — 9:45 am on Saturdays
Jazz
Jazz includes movements from both classical ballet and dance techniques. This class will focus on traditional Jazz dance. Students will be introduced to jazz-style rhythms and movements. In order to ensure proper placement for your child, we invite all students to participate in a sample (示例) class. Students and parents work with program staff to meet students’ personal dance goals.
Age: 5 — 6
Date: September 7, 2019 — May 16, 2020
Time: 2:00 pm — 3:00 pm on Saturdays
Hip Hop
Students will be introduced to several different aspects of hip hop dance including Popping, Locking, Breaking and Tutting in a high-energy environment. Our hip hop instructors are highly knowledgeable and will provide students with a wonderful view of hip hop dance.
Age: 7 — 10
Date: September 7, 2019 — May 16, 2020
Time: 1:00 pm — 2:00 pm on Sundays
1. Which class is suitable for 4-year-old children?| A．Ballet. | B．Creative Movers. | C．Hip Hop. | D．Jazz. |
| A．Make use of all the ballet items. | B．Learn the long history of jazz. |
| C．Dance with famous modern jazz dancers. | D．Get to know jazz-style movements. |
| A．It is open in the afternoon. | B．It is available on Sunday. |
| C．It teaches traditional dances. | D．It has the most skilled teachers. |
3 . For Kurt Gray, a social psychologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, conducting experiments comes with certain problems. Before starting any study, his lab must get ethical(伦理的)approval from an institutional review board, which can take weeks or months. Then his team has to hire online participants—easier than bringing people into the lab, but Gray says the online subjects are often lazy. Then the researchers spend hours cleaning the data. But earlier this year, Gray accidentally saw an alternative way to do things.
He was working with computer scientists at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence to see whether they could develop an AI system that made moral judgments like humans. But first they figured they’d see if a system from the startup Open AI could already do the job. The team asked GPT-3. 5, which produces human-like text, to judge the ethics of 464 scenarios(情境), previously evaluated by human subjects. It turned out that the system’s answers were nearly the same as human responses.
“This is crazy,” Gray says. “If you can just ask GPT to make these judgments, why don’t you just ask GPT instead of asking people?” The results were published this month in Trends in Cognitive Science.
Now, researchers are considering AI’s ability to act as human subjects in fields such as psychology, political science, economics, and market research. No one is yet suggesting that chatbots can completely replace humans in behavioral studies. But they may act as convenient stand-ins(替代者) in pilot studies and for designing experiments, saving time and money. Language models might also help with experiments that would be too impractical, or even dangerous to run with people. “It’s a really interesting time,” says Ayelet Israeli, a marketing professor at Harvard Business School who believes the models’ impact on behavioral research could amount to a “revolution”. “Some of these results are just astonishing.”
1. What is a problem facing Kurt Gray at the start of a study?| A．Online participants demand higher pay. | B．Volunteers dislike the online experiment. |
| C．Preparations take lots of time and effort. | D．Researchers lack skills to function in teams. |
| A．Demanding. | B．Worrying. | C．Amusing. | D．Satisfying. |
| A．They can be applied to cases difficult to study. | B．They may replace human subjects completely. |
| C．They will improve people’s well-being. | D．They might promote economic growth. |
| A．What Has AI Brought About? | B．What Do We Expect of GPT |
| C．Should We Get Rid of Chatbots? | D．Can AI Help Behavioral Research? |
4 . Seafloor cables (光缆) carry over 95% of all digital data traffic worldwide, including financial trading information and social media communications. However, how the Earth’s changing climate could impact this vast undersea network has been relatively understudied until now.
In a new study published in Earth-Science Reviews, an international team of researchers led by the UK’s National Oceanography Centre(NOC) worked to illuminate this problem by assessing how and where future climate change is likely to impact subsea cables.
By analyzing published datasets, the researchers identified regional climate change “hotspots” where threats to subsea cables may become more intense. These include areas in the western Pacific where changes to tropical cyclone (热带气旋) intensity and frequency have already increased cable damage.
“In our paper, we conducted the first comprehensive assessment of a range of climate-related threats to seafloor cables across the globe and their landing stations,” says study co-author Thomas Wahl. “Our analysis clearly stresses the need to carefully plan cable routes and landing station locations factoring in a range of local threats and how those are affected by climate change.”
When we look at Florida, there are at least 21 subsea telecommunications cables that connect to the Florida coastline, North and South America and the Caribbean, meaning that there will be a breakdown in communications worldwide if a cable is damaged, the researchers say.
However, the study identifies the importance of assessing changing conditions, particularly where multiple cable systems share a landing point, as they may be affected by combinations of threats that affect the low-lying Florida coastline, such as sea level rise, and changes in storm activity. “Our reliance on cables that are no wider than a garden hose (软管) is a surprise to many, who regard satellites as the main means of communication,” says lead author Mike Clare, a researcher with NOC. “But satellites simply don’t have the bandwidth to support modern digital systems. The ‘cloud’ is not in the sky—it is under the sea.”
1. What does the underlined word “illuminate” in paragraph 2 probably mean?| A．Find. | B．Miss. | C．Explain. | D．Connect. |
| A．The threat of sea level rise. | B．The finding of the study. |
| C．The cause of climate change. | D．The method of the research. |
| A．Effective. | B．Complex. | C．Stable. | D．Critical. |
| A．Subsea cables are more important for global communications. |
| B．Satellites have the ability to support modern digital systems. |
| C．Natural disasters will happen frequently due to climate change. |
| D．There is no need to assess potential threats to seafloor cables. |
5 . Many visual artists have a signature style, as unique and identifiable as a fingerprint. For Amoako Boafo, who often paints with his fingers, this seems doubly true. His distinctive paint strokes (笔画) combine the complex skin tones of his chosen subjects, many of whom are, like himself, Africans with global life experiences.
Boafo, whose first solo museum exhibition runs at the Seattle Art Museum, was born and raised in Accra, Ghana, and moved to Vienna, Austria, in 2014, where he ran into difficulties, with gallerists unwilling to show his works due to his focus on Black figures. He continued making an effort to create self-portraits (自画像) and people he knew or admired-African people and Black people who have African ancestry, painting a community of sorts during a time of hardship. He also developed his standout approach to figurative painting, which combines areas of bright and noticeable color with his soft and deep fingerpainting.
He began posting his art online and caught the attention of artists like Kehinde Wiley, the celebrated American artist. The word started to spread.
Boafo is now a global art star, with numerous shows at galleries and art fairs, working with fashion house Dior, and several paintings selling for over a million dollars. In 2021, with three of his paintings being launched into space by Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ Kent-based spaceflight company, you might even say Boafo has rocketed to success.
And yet a recent phone conversation with the artist from his studio in Accra, which is once again his home base, revealed a well-mannered person who appreciated his success while pointing out all of the luck and preparation that led to it. Seeing so many of his paintings -created from 2016 to 2022-gathered together in an exhibition has helped him remember that “I did not ‘just happen. ‘I did not expect this success but I was hopeful and ready for it.”
1. What makes Boafo’s paintings different from other artists’ works?| A．His finger strokes. | B．His home country. ss-ess |
| C．His life experiences. | D．His traditional style. |
| A．By turning to celebrated artists for help. | B．By developing a unique painting style. |
| C．By running his art exhibition at home. | D．By working with local art galleries. |
| A．To indicate the price of space travel. | B．To show the value of Boafo’s works. |
| C．To introduce an international brand. | D．To tell us the advances in technology. |
| A．He is talkative. | B．He is patient. | C．He is determined. | D．He is humorous. |
6 . Famous People Who Begin With Difficulties
Oprah Winfrey
Probably having one of the most famous success stories, Oprah was born into a poor family in Mississippi, raised by a single mother living on welfare. She was physically, and mentally abused during her childhood. Despite her initial struggles as a young girl, she turned herself into one of the most successful talk show hosts of our time.
Jim Carrey
Jim Carrey has been the star of some of the most successful movies of all time. But Carrey grew up extremely poor in Canada. When he was a teenager, his family took security jobs in a factory to help pay the bills. And during his first stand-up comedy performance, he was booed off （喝倒彩） the stage. Not shortly after, he made it big on In Living Color and then went on to star in Dumb & Dumber, The Mask, and Ace Ventura in the same year!
James Dyson
If you thought Thomas Edison’s failures were bad, let me introduce you to James Dyson, the famous inventor of the Dyson vacuums （真空吸尘器） you see all over the television. Dyson developed over 5,000 failed prototypes （原型） before finding the bagless vacuum brand. Not only that, he put his entire savings account into his prototypes over fifteen years! Luckily, the bagless vacuum worked.
Stephen King
Before Stephen King became known as a great living writer—having written over 60 novels, many of which have been adapted for film and television—King was rejected over and over again. In his memoir, On Writing, King describes how he used to post his rejection letters on the wall for inspiration. His first novel, Carrie, was rejected 30 times.
1. What do Oprah and Jim have in common?| A．They were abused by parents. | B．They grew up in poor families. |
| C．They were hired as comedians. | D．They found jobs in a factory. |
| A．He repaired the failed prototypes. | B．He developed over 5,000 brands. |
| C．He put all efforts into marketing. | D．He invented the bagless vacuum. |
| A．Oprah Winfrey. | B．Stephen King. | C．James Dyson. | D．Jim Carrey. |
7 . The Young Scholars Program
The University of Maryland’s Young Scholars Program is a perfect summer camp for academically talented teenagers who want to earn college credits, pursue academic interests or discover college life at the University of Maryland. The program is challenging and rewarding. Students have the opportunity to show that they can be successful in a university environment.
The Activities
During three weeks of exploration, teens preview the university experience, study with students who share similar interests and communicate with the best teachers of the University of Maryland in a dynamic and challenging classroom environment. Students can have trips to nearby Washington, DC and enjoy movie nights and activities at the student union. Workshops and seminars featuring speakers in academic fields further enrich the learning experience.
The Courses
The Young Scholars Program offers college courses that are at the cutting edge of theory, thought and technology. Classes generally meet every day from Monday to Friday. The program is a great introduction to the University of Maryland. Participants can benefit from the University of Maryland’s vast resources, including libraries, computers and instructional labs.
The Rewards
Upon program completion, teens will go home with better preparations for the college experience-both academically and socially. In addition, students earn three college credits that post to the University of Maryland transcript (成绩单).
The Application
The application process includes submission (提交) of the application, high school transcript and a letter of recommendation.
Ages: 14 — 18
Mailing address: The University of Maryland College Park
For more information, call 3014057762.
1. Which is NOT true about the program according to Paragraph 1?| A．It is intended for college students. | B．It can offer college credits for teens. |
| C．It’s worth participating. | D．It can let teens experience college life in advance. |
| A．They can learn from the best students of the University of Maryland |
| B．They can join the student union of the University of Maryland. |
| C．They can attend a meeting for academic discussion. |
| D．They can attend classes every day. |
| A．preview the university environment ahead of time. |
| B．take a part time job in the university’s library. |
| C．submit high school transcript. |
| D．call 3014057762 to contact the university first. |
English language is closely related to the Frisian German and Dutch. England is the first country
English belongs
9 . The meaning of silence varies among cultural groups.Silences may be thoughtful, or they may be empty when a person has nothing to say. A silence in a conversation may also show stubbornness, uneasiness, or worry. Silence may be viewed by some cultural groups as extremely uncomfortable; therefore attempts may be made to fill every gap(间隙) with conversation. Persons in other cultural groups value silence and view it as necessary for understanding a person's needs.
Many Native Americans value silence and feel it is a basic part of communicating among people, just as some traditional Chinese and Thai persons do. Therefore, when a person from one of these cultures is speaking and suddenly stops, what may be implied(暗示) is that the person wants the listener to consider what has been said before continuing.In these cultures, silence is a call for reflection.
Other cultures may use silence in other ways, particularly when dealing with conflicts among people or in relationships of people with different amounts of power. For example, Russian, French, and Spanish persons may use silence to show agreement between parties about the topic under discussion. However, Mexicans may use silence when instructions are given by a person in authority rather than be rude to that person by arguing with him or her. In still another use, persons in Asian cultures may view silence as a sign of respect, particularly to an elder or a person in authority.
Nurses and other care-givers need to be aware of the possible meanings of silence when they come across the personal anxiety their patients may be experiencing. Nurses should recognize their own personal and cultural construction of silence so that a patient’s silence is not interrupted too early or allowed to go on unnecessarily. A nurse who understands the healing(治愈) value of silence can use this understanding to assist in the care of patients from their own and from other cultures.
1. What does the author say about silence in conversations?| A．It implies anger. |
| B．It promotes friendship. |
| C．It is culture-specific. |
| D．It is content-based. |
| A．The Chinese. |
| B．The French. |
| C．The Mexicans. |
| D．The Russians. |
| A．Let it continue as the patient pleases. |
| B．Break it while treating patients. |
| C．Evaluate its harm to patients. |
| D．Make use of its healing effects. |
| A．Sound and Silence |
| B．What It Means to Be Silent |
| C．Silence to Native Americans |
| D．Speech Is Silver; Silence Is Gold |
