1 . In one of my classes today we discussed the question of how our lives would be without a mobile phone. I actually felt quite sad to hear how some kids cannot
It is true that everything works at a fast pace these days. For example, you can contact someone who lives on the other side of the world within
Another point was that phones are very handy for
All in all, this question is very interesting to
| A．affect | B．survive | C．succeed | D．perform |
| A．Personally | B．Specially | C．Entirely | D．Gradually |
| A．suffered | B．helped | C．controlled | D．advised |
| A．came up | B．came across | C．came down | D．came on |
| A．seconds | B．hours | C．days | D．months |
| A．customers | B．teachers | C．students | D．people |
| A．distant | B．close | C．necessary | D．kind |
| A．direction | B．wish | C．fact | D．suggestion |
| A．in person | B．in advance | C．with surprise | D．with joy |
| A．style | B．communication | C．expression | D．argument |
| A．looking after | B．looking back | C．looking up | D．looking out |
| A．grateful | B．peaceful | C．painful | D．helpful |
| A．textbook | B．dictionary | C．Internet | D．newspaper |
| A．forecast | B．consider | C．judge | D．select |
| A．benefits | B．skills | C．doubts | D．evidences |
2 . There has been a recent wave in Hollywood where studios take popular animated (动画的) films and “improve” upon them by changing them into live-action remakes. The thought that live-action movies are better because they follow the laws of the natural world degrades the style of animation.
The beauty of animation is that its use of caricatures (漫画) and exaggerations (夸张) reflects an amazing amount of creative depth in characters stories that reality cannot. Looking at the bigger picture, it becomes clear that the true purpose of Disney’s ever growing list of live-action remakes is not to comment on the value of animation, although it indirectly does, but a quick way to take advantage of nostalgic (怀旧的) fans.
For evidence, look no further than Disney’s 2019 The Lion King live-action remake, a retelling of the 1994 animated classic. It broke several box office records, raking in a whopping $543.6 million globally in box office sales alone. However, in comparison to the original, the audience satisfaction with the remake decreased greatly on Rotten Tomatoes. This is similar to the the remakes of Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Dumbo, Aladdin, and the countless other live-action remakes Disney has produced within the last 5 years. This means that Disney no longer needs to come up with new and original content because they can make a big profit just by taking beloved stories and remaking them.
In fact, Disney looks at itself as a business, and therefore considers making a profit as one of their main aims.
The problem with this mentality (心态) is that, while Disney makes a huge profit, audiences, artists, and art suffer. They may no longer create new stories or art styles, but rather serve as money-making machines that require directors to produce the same stories with a fresh coat of paint every 10 years or so. If this cycle continues, artists will be held back from creating new lovable characters and stories full of creativity. The feeling of nostalgia when we see old Disney films could possibly never happen-to newer generations if this cycle does not stop.
1. What does the author think of live-action remakes?| A．They slow down Hollywood development. |
| B．They’ve failed to become a popular art form. |
| C．They are poor at showing the beauty of nature. |
| D．They destroy the artistic expression of animation. |
| A．It bases its stories on reality. | B．It uses many special effects. |
| C．It explores characters fully. | D．It brings back fans’ memories. |
| A．To tell us Disney has given up its originality. |
| B．To show Disney has focused more on making money. |
| C．To prove too many remakes have been produced. |
| D．To show audiences have high expectations of remakes. |
| A．It reduces Disney’s incomes. | B．It demands more from directors. |
| C．It hurts new-generation audiences. | D．It causes artists to be less creative. |
3 . These days many students like to make friends on line. Most of them think it's interesting to know an unknown person through the Internet. So, many students like to use computers to talk with those friends. And they spend too much time on it. Some of them can not do well in their school work. Their parents often don’t think the children are as good as before. So many teachers and parents are worried about their children.
In fact, only very few of them can get real good friends in this way. Most of them were cheated by those unseen friends. And some of the students did wrong things on line. It’s terrible for students to use too much time to make friends and talk on line. So we should be careful of making friends on line and should not spend too much time on it. We’d better pay more attention to study. We will be happy when we do well in school and at home.
1. Many students like to make friends on line because .| A．they are interested in it | B．they can learn better in this way |
| C．they always get real friends in this way | D．they are friendly to each other |
| A．anxious | B．confident | C．careful | D．excited |
| A．All | B．Many | C．Some | D．Few |
| A．聊天 | B．欺骗 | C．恩惠 | D．鞭打 |
| A．We should never make friends on line. |
| B．It’s necessary for us to talk with our online friends every day. |
| C．It’s really happy that we students do well in school and at home. |
| D．Making online friends is more important than study. |
4 . Wouldn’t it be wonderful to travel to a foreign country without having to worry about the headache of communicating in a different language?
In a recent Wall Street Journal article, technology policy expert Alec Ross argued that, within ten years or so, we would be able to communicate with one another through small earpieces with built-in microphones. That’s because technological progress is extremely fast. It’s only a matter of time. Such is the belief among certain parents that the technology is imminent and they’re wondering if their kids should learn a second language.
It’s true that an increase in the quantity and accuracy of the data loaded into computers will make them cleverer at translating “Noes Bueno dormer mucho” into “It’s not good to sleep too much”. Replacing a word with its equivalent (对等词) in the target language is actually the easy part of a translator’s job. But even this seems to be a difficult job for computers.
It’s so hard for computers because translation doesn’t — or shouldn’t — involve simply translating words, sentences or paragraphs. Rather, it’s about translating meaning. And in order to infer meaning from a specific expression, people need to understand a lot of information all at once. Think about all the related clues that help us understand what someone is trying to say: volume, gesture, situations, and even your culture. All are likely to convey as much meaning as the words you use.
Therefore, we should doubt a machine that can’t understand our world like we do. If people from different cultures can upset each other without realizing it, how can we expect a machine to do better? Unless engineers actually find a way to breathe a soul into a computer, undoubtedly when it comes to conveying and interpreting meaning using a natural language, a machine will never fully take our place.
1. What does the underlined word “imminent” in Paragraph 2 probably mean?| A．Ready. | B．Confusing. | C．Unpractical. | D．Coming. |
| A．The real meaning of words can vary. |
| B．Their data is not rich enough. |
| C．Their accuracy needs big improvement. |
| D．A man’s soul hasn’t been breathed in them. |
| A．Proper translation can be difficult for computers. |
| B．Slight differences doesn’t matter in translation. |
| C．Machines will translate our world properly. |
| D．Cultures need more attention than words used. |
| A．An Expert’s Prediction. | B．Travel without Headache. |
| C．The Pleasure of Translation. | D．Will the Language Barrier (障碍) Actually Fall? |
5 . Once I was chatting with some friends about the fact that we all have accents (口音), most of them replied proudly, “Well, I speak perfect English or Chinese.” But this kind of reply is nowhere near the point.
More often than not, what we mean when we say someone “has an accent” is that their accent is different from the local one, or that their pronunciations are different from our own. But this understanding of accents is limiting and could cause prejudice (偏见). Funnily enough, in the language study, every person speaks with an accent. It is the regular differences in how we produce sounds that decide our accents. Even if you don’t hear it yourself, you speak with some sort of accent. In this sense, it’s pointless to point out that someone “has an accent”. We all do!
Every person speaks a dialect (方言), too. In the field-of language study, a dialect is a version of a language that is characterized by its variations of structure, phrases and words. For instance, “You got eat or not?” (meaning “Have you eaten?”) is an acceptable and understood question in Singapore Oral English. The fact that this expression would cause a standard American English speaker to stop for a while doesn’t mean that Singapore Oral English is “wrong” or “ungrammatical”. The sentence is well-formed and clearly communicative, according to native Singapore English speakers’ system of grammar. Why should it be wrong just because it’s different?
We need to move beyond a narrow understanding of accents and dialects-for the good of everyone. Language differences like these provide insights into people’s cultural experiences and backgrounds. In a global age, the way one speaks is a special part of who they are. Most people would be happy to talk about the cultures behind their speech. We’d learn more about the world we live in and make friends along the way.
1. What does the author think of his friends’ reply?| A．It suggests their impoliteness. | B．It shows their language levels. |
| C．It reflects their self-confidence. | D．It misses the real meaning of accents. |
| A．To prove dialects are acceptable | B．To correct a grammatical mistake. |
| C．To show different types of English. | D．To encourage more changes to languages. |
| A．We should be pround of our cultures. |
| B．We should make friends more in the future |
| C．We should speak with our local dialect smote. |
| D．We should treasure the value of accents and dialects. |
| A．cultural researcher | B．public speaker |
| C．Chinese learner | D．magazine editor |
6 . If someone asked whether you like the arts, you’d probably say you do—at least in theory. According to a survey, more than two-thirds of U.S. adults say the arts “lift me up beyond everyday experiences.” However, only 30 percent attended a concert of any type in 2017; 23 percent went to an art museum. Fewer than half actively created art of any kind.
The mismatch can boil down to the fact that we are weighed down by our day-to-day responsibilities, leaving our schedule packed. Maybe you like to play a little background music while you work or do the chores, but even before the pandemic, most of us rarely, if ever, saw a live performance, let alone visited a gallery or watched a play.
Too often, we let the dull reality of life get in the way of the arts. But this is a mistake. The arts are the opposite of an escape from reality; they might just be the most realistic glimpse we ever get into the nature and meaning of life. If you make time for consuming and producing art—the same way you make time for work and exercise and family commitments—I assure you that you’ll find your life getting fuller and happier. Think of a time when you heard a piece of music and wanted to cry. Or maybe your dizziness as you emerged from a narrow side street in an unfamiliar city and found yourself in a beautiful town square as if in a fantasy. They probably stimulated a sudden awakening, much like the shock from a lungful of pure oxygen after breathing in smoggy air.
If you are among the people who feel that art is pure pleasure to experience and participate in, you might see it as a luxury item, while a preferable attitude is to treat art less like a distracting pleasure, and more like exercise or sleep, a necessity. Then draw up a schedule of your art exposure journey, and gradually weave art into your everyday life.
1. What prevents people from enjoying the arts?| A．Shortage of time. | B．Avoidance of duty. |
| C．Lack of interest. | D．Art space inaccessibility. |
| A．It explores mysteries of life. | B．It sparks emotional responses. |
| C．It enhances physical well-being. | D．It offers a getaway from daily life. |
| A．Ways to integrate art into routine. | B．Barriers to combine art and life. |
| C．Forms of distracting pleasures. | D．Benefits of engaging with art. |
| A．Art Journey: Refreshing Soul |
| B．Art Pursuit: Transforming Dull into Full |
| C．Embracing Art: From Luxury to Necessity |
| D．Connecting with Art: From Reality to Fantasy |
7 . Between the last application season and the current one, Swarthmore College, a school nationally renowned for its academic rigor, changed the requirements for students for admission into its next freshman class. It made filling out the proper forms easier.
Swarthmore is hardly alone in the desire to eliminate obstacles for a bounty of applicants. Over the last decade, many elite colleges have adjusted their applications in ways that remove disincentives and maximize the odds that the number of students contesting to get in remains robust — or, even better, grows larger.
In one sense, that’s an egalitarian (平等主义的) approach worth compliment and a sensible attempt to be sure that no qualified candidate is missed. But there’s often a less pure motive in play. In our increasingly status-oriented society, a school’s reputation is improved by a low acceptance rate, which can even influence how U. S. News & World Report ranks it. And unless a school is shrinking the size of its students body, the only way to bring its acceptance rate down is to get its number of applicants up. So, many colleges methodically generate interest only to frustrate it. They woo applicants for the purpose of turning them down.
And there can be other justifications for what looks like a loosening of application demands. Smith College and several other similarly prominent colleges no longer require the SAT or ACT, and Kathleen McCarney, the president of Smith College, said that that’s not a bid for more applicants. It’s a recognition that top scores on those tests correlate with high family income and may say more about an applicant’s economic advantages — including, say, private SAT tutoring — than about their academic potential.
Jim Bock, Swarthmore’s dean of admissions, said that by lightening the essay load for its current applicants, the college was less concerned about increasing its overall number of applicants than about making sure candidates of great merit didn’t miss out on Swarthmore and vice versa. He mentioned the hypothetical example of a high school student from a low-income family who works 10 or more hours a day and doesn’t have sufficient time to do different essays for different schools.
But will Swarthmore’s applicants this year give quite as much thought regarding whether it is suitable and the right home for them? I’m betting not.
When it’s very easy for a student to apply to yet one more college and each school is simply another desirable box of cereal on the top shelf that he or she is determined to reach, there’s inadequate thought to a tailored match, which is what the admission process should strive for. It’s what the measure of success should be.
1. What changes has Swarthmore College made in the application process?| A．It simplified its application procedure. | B．It lowered its requirements for admission. |
| C．It expanded the size of its next freshman class. | D．It eliminated obstacles for minority applicants. |
| A．respect | B．pursue | C．impose | D．cheat |
| A．should pay an essential role in the admissions process |
| B．conceal the uneven distribution of educational resources |
| C．reflect test-takers’ academic potential to a large extent |
| D．are closely related to test-takers’ family income levels |
| A．improving the school’s reputation nationwide |
| B．increasing the overall number of applicants for the school |
| C．recruiting as many genuine students as possible |
| D．making suitable matches between applicants and the school |
8 . The United States is a nation of car owners. Ninety-five percent of houses own a car, and 85 percent of people get to work in one. This lifestyle results in traffic jams on our roads and does big damage to the environment. As autonomous vehicles（自动驾驶车辆）begin to hit the streets over the next ten years or so, it is believed that all this will change.
This future is not ensured, however. To realize the full possible benefits of driverless cars, we will have to act soon to encourage a culture in which transportation is shared. Consider what would happen if most people own their own driverless car, the same trouble we will suffer if they insist on riding alone.
It is well-known that autonomous vehicles will most likely reduce the number and seriousness of crashes, and reduce traffic jams and increase capacity. Nobody knows whether these positive effects would overcome the negative effects of private ownership, but we wouldn’t bet on it.
Many people think that driverless vehicles will surely be shared, but there is little evidence. Vehicle providers have no reason to encourage shared usage of vehicles. It is suggested that driverless cars will be only a little more expensive than traditional cars, which means they’ll be within reach of many consumers, so users have little reason to ask for services that provide shared rides.
If most people are going to buy-in to a shared-ride culture, they need to get a clear benefit. Saving a few dollars off the fare isn’t likely to encourage the movement. A better benefit would be knowing that you’re going to reach your destination more quickly.
The way to make quick passage possible is to redesign our roads to give priority（优先）to collective transportation modes like building priority lanes（车道）for ride-sharing autonomous vehicle. Autonomous vehicles carrying many people should get higher priority than those carrying one or none at all.
Decision-makers at the local and state levels must encourage the most efficient use of our limited roadway. The autonomous future is rapidly coming; it is critical that we act now, while the impacts of autonomous vehicles are still largely within our control.
1. What can we know about autonomous vehicles?| A．They cause traffic jams on roads and big damage to the environment. |
| B．Many people have ridden autonomous vehicles to make traffic jams change. |
| C．They are most likely effective at reducing traffic jams and increasing capacity. |
| D．People will not want an autonomous vehicle because of its expensive price. |
| A．To reduce the number and seriousness of crashes. |
| B．To redesign roads to prioritize car-shared modes. |
| C．To save a few dollars off the fare you used to need. |
| D．To let you reach your destination much more quickly. |
| A．Supportive. | B．Doubtful. | C．Objective. | D．Uncaring. |
| A．Will Driverless Cars Make Our Traffic Problems Better? |
| B．Autonomous Vehicles Will Make a Big Change to Traffic. |
| C．Decision-makers Should Take Some Measures Quickly. |
| D．What is The Situation of Cars Now in The United States? |
9 . Sport is not only physically challenging, but can also be mentally challenging. Criticism (批评) from coaches, parents and other teammates, as well as pressure to win can create too much anxiety or stress for young athletes. Stress can be physical, emotional, or psychological and research has indicated that it can lead to burnout. Burnout has been described as dropping out of or quitting an activity that was at one time enjoyable.
The early years of growth are important years for learning about oneself and the sport setting is one where valuable experiences can take place. Young athletes can for example, learn how to cooperate with others, make friends, and gain other social skills that will be used throughout their lives. Coaches and parents should be aware, at all times, that their feedback to youngsters can greatly affect their children. Youngsters may take their parents and coaches’ criticisms to heart and find faults in themselves.
Coaches and parents should also pay attention that youth sport participation does not become work for children. The outcome of the game should not be more important than the process of learning the sport an other life lessons. In today’s youth sport setting, young athletes may be worrying more about who will win instead of enjoying themselves and the sport. Following a game, many parents and coaches focus on the outcome and find faults with youngsters’ performances. Positive support should be provided regardless of the outcome. Research indicates that positive support encourages and has a greater effect on learning than criticism. Again, criticism can create high levels of stress, which can lead to burnout.
1. What is the main idea of the first paragraph?| A．Sport can be mentally challenging. |
| B．Stress should be made less. |
| C．Mental stress should be reduced. |
| D．Sport should be made less competitive. |
| A．It enables them to criticize themselves. |
| B．It can provide them with valuable experiences. |
| C．It can help them learn more about society. |
| D．It teaches them how to set realistic goals for themselves. |
| A．Train children to deal with stress. | B．Help children to win every game. |
| C．Make sure children enjoy sport. | D．Understand the meaning of sport. |
| A．To stress the importance of encouraging children in sport. |
| B．To persuade young children not to worry about criticism. |
| C．To teach young athletes how to avoid burnout. |
| D．To discuss the skill of combining criticism with encouragement. |
10 . No business would welcome being compared to gambling (赌博). Yet that is what is happening to the makers of video games. For years parents have complained that their children are “addicted” to their video games and smartphones. Today, even more doctors are using the word. On January 1 this year, the name “gaming disorder” — where games are played uncontrollably — gained recognition from the World Health Organization (WHO), which means game addiction is officially regarded as a psychological disease.
Are games really addictive? Psychologists have different opinions. Those who don’t think so say that this is just another moral panic. Similar warnings have been given about television, pop music, comic books, novels and even crossword puzzles, but it turns out that they are not as harmful as expected.
However, supporters argue that game developers have reasons and ways to design their products to make them extremely attractive. For one thing, the business model has changed: in the old days, games were bought once and for all. But these days, games are free and money is earned from selling in-game goods, which connects playtime directly to profits. For another, game-makers combine psychological theory and data, which helps them maximize (最大化) the playtime. Smartphones and modern video game machines use their permanent Internet connections to send gameplay data back to developers. In this way products are constantly adjusted to encourage players’ spending. The biggest spenders are titled “whales”, a word from gambling.
The gaming industry should realize that, in the real world, it has a problem, and the problem is growing. Being put together with gambling in the public mind will not do the industry any good. Now that gaming addiction comes with an official WHO recognition, parents will respond to it in a more anxious manner, no matter whether their kids play games uncontrollably, or not.
1. What do we know from Paragraph 1?| A．Children prefer gambling to playing video games. |
| B．Gaming addiction is officially recognized as a disease. |
| C．More doctors are against the use of the word “addicted”. |
| D．Parents complain about their children’s addiction to gambling. |
| A．To show how popular they are. |
| B．To prove they are not addictive. |
| C．To show the anxiety they have caused. |
| D．To prove games might not be as harmful. |
| A．They sold their games at a high price. |
| B．They honored big spenders with a title. |
| C．They adjusted products based on received data. |
| D．They design new video games of different kind. |
| A．To point out a problem. | B．To describe an activity. |
| C．To put forward a solution. | D．To give information. |
| A．Games: A New Kind of Gambling | B．Addiction: A Psychological Disorder |
| C．Games: The Cause of Mental Disorder | D．Addiction: A Warning to the Gaming Industry |
