1 . New York Walking Tour
♦Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island Walking Tour
Start this exciting guided 4-hour tour by getting early Reserve Line Access boarding on the ferry to Liberty Island. Once there, go inside the base of the statue and head to the observation decks for an awesome view of New York City and its surroundings. Then come back on the ferry to Ellis Island to learn about the history of immigration to America that took place here between 1892 and 1954.
♦Central Park Walking Tour
Walk through Central Park’s most picturesque highlights on a 2-hour tour with a professional photographer. Remember your New York City adventure with unforgettable images of you with family or friends as you circle the towers at Belvedere Castle, walk through paths with flowers in the Conservatory Garden, or feed the swans by the Loeb Boathouse.
♦New York City Architecture Walking Tour
Learn about the history of the buildings that define the New York City skyline on a 3-hour walking architecture tour. Walk down the famous 42nd Street corridor with a longtime New York resident and architectural expert, stopping along the way to learn about Midtown Manhattan’s most iconic structures like the Chrysler Building, Ford Foundation, Grand Central Station and the New York Public Library.
♦Greenwich Village Walking Tour
Greenwich Village is one of New York City’s most beautiful and famous neighborhoods. Take a guided 3-hour walking tour of this legendary Lower Manhattan space. Hear about the famous artists who once lived here, from Edgar Allan Poe to Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix and countless others. Walk the winding streets and visit popular Washington Square Park, reliving more than 200 years of history.
1. Why do tourists visit Ellis Island?| A．To know about American immigration history. | B．To explore the surroundings of the island. |
| C．To get a whole view of New York City. | D．To observe Statue of Liberty closely. |
| A．Central Park Walking Tour. | B．Greenwich Village Walking Tour. |
| C．New York City Architecture Walking Tour. | D．Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island Walking Tour. |
| A．Take unforgettable pictures. | B．Come across Bob Dylan. |
| C．Visit New York Public Library. | D．Learn about well-known artists. |
2 . This was the first real task I received in my new school. It seemed simple: go on the Internet and find information about a man named George Washington. As I searched the name, I found that there were two famous people having the same name who looked completely different! One invented hundreds of uses for peanuts(花生), while the other led some sort of army across America. I stared at the screen, wondering which one my teacher meant. I called my grandfather for a golden piece of advice; let the coin decide. I flipped(掷) a coin and Ah! Tails (背面)! My report would be about the great man who invented peanut butter, George Washington Carver.
Weeks later, I stood in front of the classroom and proudly read my homework. But things started to get strange. I looked around the room, only to find my classmates with big smiles on their faces and tears in their eyes and my stone-faced teacher. I was completely lost. “What could be causing everyone to act this way?”
Oh well, I dropped the paper and sat down at my desk, burning to find out what I had done wrong. As a classmate began his report, it all became clear, “My report is on George Washington, the man who started the American War of Independence.” The whole world became quiet! How could I know that my teacher meant that George Washington?
Of course, my subject result was awful. Sad but fearless, I decided to turn this around. I talked to the headmaster Miss Lancelot, but she said firmly: No re-dos; no new score. I felt that it was not fair, and I believed I deserved a second chance. So I threw myself heartily into my work for the rest of the school year. Ten months later, I sat in the headmaster’s office again, but this time a completely different conversation. I smiled and flashed back to the terrible moment at the beginning of the year as the headmaster told me I was good enough to skip(跳过) the 6th grade and started the 7th grade next term.
1. The task I received was to find information about ________.| A．uses for peanuts |
| B．American War of Independence |
| C．George Washington |
| D．my headmaster Miss Lancelot |
| A．I was too proud of my homework |
| B．I mistook what the homework was about |
| C．the whole world suddenly became quiet |
| D．the teacher’s face turned to a stone |
| A．the headmaster didn’t like the writer at all |
| B．the writer’s classmates felt sad at his mistake |
| C．the writer knew little about American history |
| D．the writer’s grandpa was a very wise man |
| A．Seeing is believing. |
| B．Where there is a will, there is a way. |
| C．One is never too old to learn. |
| D．A friend in need is a friend indeed. |
3 . No human has set foot on the Moon since 1972. Now, after more than four decades of inactivity, interest in putting humans back on the Moon is finally heating up again. But who will get there first?
CHINA
On 14 December 2013, China successfully landed its Jade Rabbit rover(探测车)on the Moon. It is now working on its next exploration mission. Named Chang’e 4, the mission is scheduled to touch down in the Aitken Basin near the end of 2018. If successful, it will be the first landing on the Moon’s far side.
RUSSIA
Russia plans a manned Moon landing in 2030. It is currently working on a project whose idea is that the landers will explore the south pole of the Moon, exploring for resources such as minerals and water ice to be used to provide for a human outpost(前哨站).
INDIA
Following the success of its Chandrayaan-1 in 2008, India announced a follow-on mission. Chandrayaan-2 was meant to cooperate with Russia. But when the Russians failed to deliver the promised lander in 2013, India decided to go it alone. Chandrayaan-2 is about to be sent up in 2018.
U. S. A.
In December 2018, NASA plans to send up the Exploration Mission 1, an uncrewed test of their Orion astronaut capsule in which the craft will circle around the Moon before returning to Earth. All being well, a crewed capsule will follow in 2023. Should the mission prove a success, the astronauts will be the first humans to see the far side of the Moon with their own eyes since Apollo 17 in 1972.
1. What will China do in its next space mission?| A．Improve its Jade Rabbit rover. |
| B．Work with other countries. |
| C．Land Chang’e 4 on the Moon. |
| D．Explore the south pole of the Moon. |
| A．It couldn’t find a partner. |
| B．It didn’t get the lander as planned. |
| C．The Russians refused to work with India. |
| D．It planned to launch Chandrayaan-2 in advance. |
| A．Russia. | B．China. | C．India. | D．U. S. A. |
4 . Confused by food nutrition labels? You’re not alone. Now, researchers have suggested an alternative: labelling the amount and type of exercise needed to burn off the calories.
Current food and drink labels display nutritional information such as the amount of calories and fat. However, researchers led by Prof. Amanda Daley at Loughborough University say that these labels are having a limited effect on changing buying habits. Instead, they propose a labelling system called ‘physical activity calorie equivalent or expenditure’ (PACE) (体育活动热量当量), which shows how many minutes or miles of physical activity are needed to burn off the calories. For example, a small bar of milk chocolate contains 230 calories, which would take about 42 minutes of walking, or 22 minutes of running, to burn off.
They pooled the data from 14 previous studies which compared the impact of PACE labelling with that of other types of food labelling, or with no food labelling at all. They calculated that PACE labelling could cut a person’s daily calorie intake by up to 200 calories. “Public health agencies may want to consider the possibility of including policies to promote PACE food labelling as a strategy that contributes to the prevention and treatment of obesity (肥胖) and related diseases,” said the researchers.
The UK’s Royal Society for Public Health has already called for PACE labelling to replace the current system. However, not everyone is convinced. A spokesperson for the eating disorder charity Beat said: “We believe that anti-obesity campaigns that focus on weight instead of health are ineffective and that recommending more exercise is an ineffective and over-simplistic approach to a complex problem. Most urgently, public health campaigns must consider people’s mental as well as their physical health, moving from obesity-shaming to evidence-based campaigns that build confidence and support healthy eating.”
1. What additional information can you get from PACE labels compared with the current ones?
| A．Exercise advice | B．Fat content |
| C．Nutrition facts | D．Calorie content |
| A．collected | B．distributed | C．deleted | D．proved |
| A．Obesity is a physical problem and can be solved by increasing exercise. |
| B．Obesity is related to eating habits and can be tackled by cutting calories. |
| C．Obesity is no simple problem but can be settled by focusing on weight. |
| D．Obesity is complicated and should be tackled physically and mentally. |
| A．PACE: A new labelling option |
| B．Nutrition: A basic step towards health |
| C．Labelling: A smart advisor for shopping |
| D．Excise: An effective treatment for obesity |
5 . While some customs like setting off fireworks and counting down the last few seconds seem universal, many countries have their own unique New Year’s Eve traditions.
Denmark: Break plates
A Danish tradition is to throw plates and dishes against friend’s and neighbor’s front doors. It’s a bit of a popularity contest as the bigger the pile of broken china is the next morning, the more friends and good luck you’ll have in the coming year.
Germany: Pouring lead
In Germany, people melt small pieces of lead in a spoon over a candle, then pour the liquid into cold water. The shapes from the lead pouring are supposed to reveal what the year ahead will bring. If the lead forms a ball, luck will roll one’s way, while the shape of a crown means wealth; a cross means death and a star will bring happiness.
Spain: Twelve grapes of luck
In Spain, one New Year’s tradition is to eat 12 grapes, one for each month of the coming year, to secure prosperity (繁荣). You need to eat one grape with each bell strike at midnight. The tradition dates from 1909 when farmers in Alicante came up with this idea to sell more grapes after an exceptional harvest.
Philippines: Round food, round clothes, round everything
In the Philippines, the start of the new year is all about the money. The locals believe that surrounding themselves with round things (to represent coins) will bring money or fortune. As a result, clothes with dots are worn and round food is eaten.
1. What is believed to bring good luck for the coming new year in Denmark?| A．A red candle. | B．Round food. | C．Broken china. | D．A lead cross. |
| A．A way to make coins. | B．An act to keep power. |
| C．A desire to be popular. | D．An idea to gain profit. |
| A．Fashion. | B．Travel. | C．Culture. | D．Entertainment. |
6 . A recent study showed that the experiences children have in their first few years are important. These experiences affect the development of the brain. When children receive more attention, they often have higher IQs. Babies receive information when they see, hear and feel things, which makes connections between different parts of the brain. There are a hundred trillion connections in the brain o£ a three-year-old child.
Researcher Judit Gervain tested how good newborns are at telling different sound patterns. The researchers produced images o£ the brains of babies as they heard different sound patterns. For example5one order was mu—ba—ba. This is the pattern "A -B— B”. Another order was mu—ba—ge. This is the pattern "A-B—C”. The images showed that the part of the brain responsible for speech was more active during the "A—B-B” pattern. This shows that babies can tell the difference between different patterns. They also were sensitive（敏感）to where it occurred in the order.
Gervain is excited by these findings because the order of sounds is the base of words and grammar, "Position is key to language," she says. "If something is at the beginning or at the end, it makes a big difference： 'John caught the bear' is very different from 'The bear caught John.
Researchers led by scientist Patricia Kuhl have found that language delivered by televisions, audio books, the Internet, or smartphones——no matter how educational—— doesn't appear to be enough for children's brain development. They carried out a study of nine-month-old American babies. They expected the first group who'd watched videos in Chinese to show the same kind of learning as the second group who were brought face-to- face with the same sounds. Instead they found a huge difference. The babies in the second group were able to distinguish （辨别）between similar Chinese sounds as well as native listeners. But the other babies-regardless of whether they had watched the video or listened to the audio-learned nothing.
1. Why are early experiences so important to children according to the study?| A．They can show connections in their brains. |
| B．They can increase new information of IQs. |
| C．They can offer children more attention, |
| D．They can help to develop their brains. |
| A．By recognizing babies5 different appearances. |
| B．By producing images of new words for babies, |
| C．By testing how babies' brains learn to speak language. |
| D．By checking babies' brains to identify different sound patterns. |
| A．Grammar is important in learning languages, |
| B．Different orders of sounds have different meanings. |
| C．The order of words comes from its grammar meaning. |
| D．Different languages have different grammar rules. |
| A．Learning Chinese is of great benefit to babies' brains. |
| B．Babies are better than adults in learning a foreign language. |
| C．Face-to-face communication can improve babies' brains. |
| D．Babies learn a lot from television, audio books or the Internet. |
7 . Every Bachelor of Arts major faces the dilemma about the language they have to take to meet the foreign language requirement. JMU offers a variety of languages, from French to Ancient Greek and Italian. Any of them would be great, but Spanish is the most beneficial language to learn.
Spanish is the second most spoken language in the world, with around 460 million native speakers. It’s the official language of over 20 countries, and in the United States, there are 41 million speakers. These statistics give you the perfect reason to learn Spanish as an international language.
One of the best reasons to learn Spanish is that it makes one more employable. There’s a place for Spanish in every career field. Doctors will have patients that speak Spanish, financial traders will buy stocks from Latin American companies and journalists will provide content written in Spanish.
Spanish is known as the starting block for learning other Romance languages. Many of the words and phrases used in Italian, French and Latin are similar to each other. For example, the Italian word for "thank you" is "grazie". and the Spanish word for "thank you" is“gracias". The Portuguese word for "hello" is "ola "，and the Spanish word for "hello" is “hola”.
There are so many amazing resources available for learning Spanish. A popular method that most people use is the app Duolingo because it’s convenient and great. A similar method is listening to a podcast (播客)，like Coffee Break Spanish that tailors podcasts for different Spanish levels. Both of these options don't break the bank either because they' re free.
JMU also offers opportunities to practice Spanish speaking. The Spanish Club meets every week to discuss culture, practice speaking Spanish and plan events. The Foreign Language Department organizes language tables where students can practice conversational Spanish with other students. Sigma Delta Pi is a Spanish honor society for students who study Spanish.
1. What 's the difficulty for the Bachelor of Arts students?| A．Meeting all the requirements of their school. |
| B．Choosing the foreign language they should take. |
| C．Knowing about the benefits of learning Spanish. |
| D．Finding the best ways to learn a foreign language. |
| A．good Spanish speakers can get better jobs |
| B．every career has strict rules for its workers |
| C．Spanish has wide applications in different fields |
| D．employable people are often multi-language speakers |
| A．Romance languages are some ancient languages |
| B．a word has many different meanings in Spanish |
| C．there is quite much polite speech in Spanish |
| D．Italian speakers can learn Spanish easily |
| A．Popular customs in Spain. |
| B．Some online Spanish resources. |
| C．Some ways of learning Spanish. |
| D．The advantages of learning Spanish. |
8 . Every week in China, millions of people will sit in front of their TVs watching teenagers compete for the title Character Hero, which is a Chinese-style spelling bee. In this challenge, young competitors must write Chinese characters by hand. To prepare for the competition, the competitors usually spend months studying dictionaries.
Perhaps the show’s popularity should not be a surprise. Along with gunpowder and paper, many Chinese people consider the creation of Chinese calligraphy(书法) to be one of their primary contributions to civilization. Unfortunately, all over the country, Chinese people are forgetting how to write their own language without computerized help. Software on smart phones and computers allows users to type in the basic sound of the word using the Latin alphabet. The correct character is chosen from a list. The result? It’s possible to recognize characters without remembering how to write them.
But there’s still hope for the paint brush. China’s Education Ministry wants children to spend more time learning how to write.
In one Beijing primary school we visited, students practice calligraphy every day inside a specially decorated classroom with traditional Chinese paintings hanging on the walls. Soft music plays as a group of six-year-olds dip brush pens into black ink. They look up at the blackboard often to study their teacher’s examples before carefully attempting to reproduce those characters on thin rice paper. “If adults can survive without using handwriting, why bother to teach it now?” we ask the calligraphy teacher, Shen Bin. “The ability to write characters is part of Chinese tradition and culture,” she reasons. “Students must learn now so they don’t forget when they grow up.” says the teacher.
1. What can we learn about the Character Hero?| A．It’s open to people of all ages and all walks. |
| B．It’s the most-viewed TV programs in China. |
| C．It aims to spread Chinese culture to the world. |
| D．It draws great public attention across the country. |
| A．Chinese people don’t refer to dictionaries very often. |
| B．Chinese people no longer use brush pens or practice calligraphy. |
| C．Chinese people are using the Latin alphabet instead of the characters. |
| D．Chinese people needn’t write by hand as often with the help of technology. |
| A．necessary for adults to survive in China |
| B．a requirement made by the Education Ministry |
| C．helpful to keep Chinese tradition and culture alive |
| D．an ability to be developed only when you are students |
| A．A news report. | B．A science report. |
| C．An advertisement. | D．Children’s literature. |
9 . Next-generation fitness equipment and robots help you cook dinner. Those are a few of the countless new products expected to be shown next week at CES, the annual tech conference that typically sets the tone for the biggest trends of the year. Home automation, health and 5G will once again be hot topics, but many companies will also introduce pandemic-specific features to reflect our increased time at home.
Each year, reporters, exhibitors and investors typically explore Las Vegas showrooms filled with giant TVs, smart cars and robots, but CES will be online only for the first time in its 54-year history due to Covid-19.
The Consumer Technology Association, the nonprofit behind the four-day event starting Monday, said 1,800 exhibitors from around the world will fill its "digital venue" this year—a number that's down significantly from 4,000 in-person exhibitors last year. The move will allow tech companies from countries which have never attended before to take part in the online exhibition, but could also make it harder for smaller companies to get noticed without a physical showroom.
Registered attendees will be able to stream and re-watch keynotes from companies such as Verizon (VZ) and General Motors (GM), tune in to breakout sessions — about how, for example, technology is playing a role in vaccine deployment—and search through a registry of exhibitors to watch new product presentations.
It'll lack some of the signature ingredients of the trade show, such as hands-on time with the latest small machines and networking. But the technology that makes our lives more connected and convenient will still gain popularity.
1. What are the new products mainly connected with?| A．People’s daily life. | B．Everyday busy work. |
| C．The popularity of 5G. | D．Countless housework. |
| A．It takes place every two years. | B．It attracts fewer exhibitors this year. |
| C．It is held mainly on the Internet. | D．It prohibits small companies to attend. |
| A．Supportive. | B．Disappointed. | C．Doubtful. | D．Casual. |
| A．A brochure. | B．A textbook. | C．A newspaper. | D．A guidebook. |
10 . On October 3, 1945, a ten-year-old boy stood on stage at a contest. One of his teachers had encouraged him to enter the contest after hearing him sing one morning. He placed fifth.
A few months later, he received a guitar for his 11th birthday. What he really wanted was a bicycle. Two of his uncles gave him basic guitar lessons. But he didn’t like singing in public. He was too shy.
Yet something inside kept pulling him back to music. In 1948, his family moved to Memphis, Tennessee. The boy would spend every moment of his free time on Beale Street, the heart of the Memphis Blues Scene. He’d often bring his guitar to school. Yet his eighth grade teacher gave him a C in music. She told him that he had “no gift for singing”.
In 1953, the young man walked into the offices of Sun Records. But the record went nowhere. He tried out for a local singing group, but failed in the audition. He told his father, “They told me I couldn’t sing.”
Then Sam Philips, the owner of Sun Records heard this young man’s record. Sam invited him back to the studio and asked him to sing as many songs as he knew. Yet even then, it was not going well. The young man was about to go home when he suddenly picked up his guitar and started singing a 1946 Blues song, That’s All Right. Philips immediately began taping; he knew this was the sound he’d been looking for. Sun Records released the album. No one had ever heard anything like it before.
Within three years Elvis Presley（猫王）was an international superstar.
1. What did the boy hope for as the 11th birthday gift?| A．A guitar. | B．A birthday party. |
| C．A bike. | D．A music lesson. |
| A．He eventually gave up singing. | B．His teacher encouraged him. |
| C．His family sent him to a music school. | D．He was still addicted to music. |
| A．A short performance. | B．A previous plan. |
| C．A singing contest. | D．A new record. |
| A．Actions speak louder than words. |
| B．Two heads are better than one. |
| C．A friend in need is a friend indeed. |
| D．Where there is a will, there is a way. |
