1 . Sophia Gholz is an award-winning children's book author, music lover. and magic seeker. Sophia enjoys writing fiction with humor and heart. When writing nonfiction, she pulls on her love of science and her family background in ecology.
Her book, The Boy Who Grew a Forest, shares the true story of Jadav Payeng, a man in India who single- bandedly planted an entire forest over the course of his lifetime. When he was younger, Jadav Payeng was shocked by the destruction of his island home. So he took matters into his own bands and began planting one seed at a time. Jadav's forest is now over 1300 acres and provides a home to many animals, some endangered. Jadav is still planting today and his hard work has now been celebrated around the world.
To write this story, Sophia got to know more about Jadav Payeng and his forest through a documentary film called Forest Man. Influenced by her father, a forest ecologist and a scientist, she grew up learning about the importance of trees and the natural world. When she heard about a man on a m1ssion to reforest an entire island on his own, she was drawn to this story.
As for research, most of her research was done online. She read every news article that she could find about Jadav and listened to every interview. Then she reached out to several people who had met or interviewed Jadav as well, including the producer of his short documentary film.
She hopes that The Boy Who Grew a Forest lights a spark in everyone who reads it to go out and care for our beautiful planet. She'd love young readers to be inspired to plant or to learn more about animal habitats, biodiversity and science in general.
1. What is the second paragraph mainly about?| A．A story on how to plant trees. | B．Endangered animals in the forest. |
| C．Destruction of Jadav's island home. | D．A book introducing a tree- planting hero. |
| A．He has quit planting recently. | B．He is known to many people. . |
| C．He was an actor of Forest Man. | D．He planted trees with his family. |
| A．Humorous and skilled. | B．Creative and outgoing. |
| C．Determined and diligent. | D．Controversia1 and helpful. |
| A．To encourage research on wildlife. | B．To describe a boy's farming experience. |
| C．To stress the importance of planting trees. | D．To advocate the action to protect the earth. |
2 . It might seem strange to be making predictions about 2021, but one thing is clear: technology has been affected just as much as every other part of our lives. Another clear thing is that today’s most important technology trends will play a big part in helping us deal with and adapt to the many challenges facing us. From the shift to working from home to new rules about how we meet and interact in public spaces, technology trends will be the driving force in managing the change.
One of the major technology trends that are likely to play out this year is 5G and enhanced connectivity. Each successive advance in mobile connectivity from 3G onwards has unlocked new use cases for the Internet. 3G made web browsing and data-driven services useful on mobile devices, 4G led to the growth of streaming video and music platforms as bandwidths (宽带) increased, and 5G, similarly, will open more doors in terms of what is possible.
5G means that services relying on advanced technologies such as augmented (增强的) reality and virtual reality, as well as cloud-based gaming platforms like Google’s Stadia, become a practical thing, anywhere at any time. They also threaten to make cable and fiber-based (光纤) networks redundant, with their need for us to be tied to a particular location.
In short, 5G and other advanced, high-speed networks make other new technologies available anywhere, any time. A great example is Norwegian fishery operator Salmar that uses a 5G network to automate the care and feeding of its fish. Image recognition algorithms (算法) are used to detect which fish are over or under-feeding, and automatically distribute food and medicine needed to keep them healthy. Initiatives like this will become increasingly important during 2021, where businesses look to increase automation across their workforces.
1. Which of the following is highly influenced by 5G technology?| A．Data-driven services. | B．Streaming video. |
| C．Music platforms. | D．Google’s Stadia. |
| A．Useful. | B．Unnecessary. | C．Expensive. | D．Special. |
| A．To show the development of Norwegian fishery. |
| B．To explain how to keep fish healthy. |
| C．To present the application of 5G technology. |
| D．To propose new initiatives for businesses. |
| A．Different predictions of technology trends. |
| B．Successive advances in mobile technology. |
| C．One of the technological highlights of the year. |
| D．The driving force in managing changes. |
3 . Humans have little difficulty recognizing one another. And we know that no two faces are exactly alike. Even identical twins have slightly different faces. Each human face is truly unique, and now we've invented machines that are able to recognize faces for numerous purposes.
Governments, employers and security and police services are increasingly using facial recognition technology. This allows them to quickly confirm an individual's identity. Systems are becoming so advanced that a wanted criminal can instantly be picked out of a crowd of thousands of people. All that's required is an image in a database to compare with the image of any number of people in a crowd. Ordinary people, too, are using facial recognition to unlock their phones, their computers and other devices.
Personal facial recognition protection has several benefits. It is instantaneous, and it relieves us of the need to memorize passwords. However, a device will require a password in the rare event that it doesn't, for whatever reason, recognize the user's face.
There are numerous concerns about the use of facial recognition. Primarily, the concern is that it threatens privacy. The installation of more and more cameras in public and private places is now part of everyday life. This means people can be observed and recognized wherever they go. Cameras may make public spaces safer, but keeping law-abiding(守法的) citizens under constant watch is disturbing to many.
In the age of the coronavirus and the widespread wearing of masks, facial recognition systems are having some difficulty. A mask covers many of the facial data points used by recognition software to confirm a person's identity. In response, facial recognition systems are being trained to use less facial data. That could affect how dependable it is as a method of identity detection.
1. What's the author's purpose of writing Paragraph 2?| A．To further explain the importance of facial recognition. |
| B．To describe the powerful functions of facial recognition. |
| C．To list in detail various advantages of facial recognition. |
| D．To state the unique advanced features of facial recognition. |
| A．The cameras may be occasionally out of order. |
| B．Too many cameras disturb people's daily life. |
| C．People's personal life might be exposed to others. |
| D．The cameras make law-abiding citizens feel stressful. |
| A．Getting more accurate with less information. |
| B．Becoming faster with more facial data. |
| C．Protecting personal information if necessary. |
| D．Responding more quickly to unexpected events. |
| A．The wide popularity of facial recognition. |
| B．The rapid development of facial recognition. |
| C．The benefits of facial recognition. |
| D．The introduction to facial recognition. |
4 . Not long ago, Linda Khan was sitting by a hospital bed in Houston, feeling ill at ease. Beside her lay her father who needed a heart surgery. The two of them had engaged in nothing but depressing small talk. Then, her eye fell on a pile of books. She picked up one, and started to read it out loud. "Right away it changed the mood and atmosphere," she says. Reading gave the daughter a way to connect with her father. Listening allowed the father travel on the sound of his daughter's voice into a place where he felt himself again. “From then on," Khan says, “I always read to him."
In a 2010 survey in the United Kingdom, elderly adults who joined weekly read-aloud groups reported better concentration, less anxiety, and an improved ability to socialize. The survey authors owed these improvements in large part to the “rich, varied diet of serious literature" that group members consumed, with fiction encouraging feelings of relaxation and calm, poetry fostering focused concentration, and narratives giving rise to cognitive (认知的) thoughts, feelings, and memories. In truth, almost any kind of reading to another person can be beneficial.
Readers get rewards too. For Neil Bush, the late-life hospitalizations of his famous parents, George H. W. and Barbara Bush, became opportunities to repay a debt of gratitude. “When I was a kid, they would read to me," he said. With his parents in and out of care, “We've been reading books about Dad's foreign policy and, more recently, Mom's autobiography." Bush went on, his voice thick with emotion, “And to read their amazing life to them has been a remarkable blessing to me, personally, as their son."
To many people, reading to parents may seem so far outside the normal range of regular activities, and it may even feel odd and improper. However, there are still a lot many who brave the momentary strangeness of reading to elderly adults and both reader and listeners are, to borrow a phrase from Wordsworth, surprised by the joy of it.
1. What did reading offer to Linda and her father?| A．A way to establish a bond. | B．A way to travel together in reality. |
| C．A way to treat the disease. | D．A way to engage in learning. |
| A．Improvements in mental health. | B．Benefits of reading to others. |
| C．Changes in cognitive process. | D．Development of social skills. |
| A．Reading benefits more than the listener |
| B．Parents should red more to their kids. |
| C．Children should show their gratitude. |
| D．Reading to parents is children's duty |
| A．Improper and odd. | B．Abnormal but worthy. |
| C．Rewarding and joyful. | D．Interesting but unnecessary. |
5 . Ian McKenna was in third grade when he learned that many kids at his Austin school weren't getting enough to eat at home. He wanted to help, but local volunteer organizations turned him away, saying he was too young. So he decided to find his own solution. For years, he had been gardening with his mother, and they often distributed their extra vegetables to the neighbors. “Why not give the produce to a soup kitchen? Then I thought, I'm good at gardening," says McKenna, now 16. “Why not plant a garden at school, so that kids in need could take food home?"
McKenna persuaded his school to set aside space for a garden; then he asked the community for donations of seeds and equipment. Other students donated their time. Within months, McKenna's garden was producing lettuces, tomatoes, cucumbers and squash for students and their families. Now, seven years later, McKenna's Giving Garden project has expanded to five area schools in addition to his own backyard garden, and he has provided organic produce, enough for 25,000 meals, for Austin families.
For most of his gardening activities, McKenna wears the same T-shirt in different colors, with his personal motto on it: BE A GOOD HUMAN. To him, that means helping in any way you can, no matter what your age. "Even a smile might change someone's life," he says. “It lets them know that they are important. It can make their day."
When COVID-19 hit the U.S., McKenna redoubled his efforts, cooking up to 100 meals to distribute to the hungry on the weekends. When social distancing meant that volunteers couldn't work on community garden plots, he started offering online classes and a gardening hotline so families could grow at home. While gardening is his core focus, McKenna says he is always looking for new ways to help the hungry.
1. What caused Ian's decision to help the kids in his own way?| A．Being rejected by volunteer groups. | B．Being good at gardening. |
| C．A soup kitchen's support. | D．His mother's suggestions. |
| A．It helps students only. | B．It was started with joint efforts. |
| C．It is funded by schools. | D．It earns great profits every year. |
| A．Where there is a will, there is a way. | B．A small gesture makes a difference. |
| C．One good turn deserves another. | D．Love can break all the barriers. |
| A．Ian McKenna, Growing a Food Bank |
| B．Ian Mckenna, an Experienced Gardener |
| C．Giving Garden Project, an Impossible Mission |
| D．Giving Garden Project, a Universal Solution |
6 . Tears well up in people's eyes for a lot of reasons. A teardrop running down the cheek is the ultimate symbol of sadness, but people may also cry because they just cut an onion, or maybe they're trying to blink out an eyelash.
For the most part, tears help maintain healthy eyes. When you blink, basal (基底的) tears clean and smooth the eyes, which helps you to see clearly, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology. Moreover, reflex (反射性的) tears, or those that happen unconsciously, help clear the eyes of irritants (刺激物), including dust and the gas that's produced when a knife slices a raw onion, said Andre Silva, a doctoral student of psychology at the University of Minho in Portugal.
Emotions can also bring about tears in humans. These emotional tears can serve as a means of nonverbal communication. Silva said, “Babies cry to signal to their mothers that something's up. It's a pure attention call. Some people think that babies are capable of controlling adults by crying, but that idea is false and misleading, as a baby is not conscious of being tricky: In a way, we can consider these tears as being somewhere between basal tears and emotional tears.”
As people grow older, they begin to use their tears to express emotions, such as happiness or sadness. These tears may promote compassion and empathy in others. But beware of people who may use their tears to control others. “Some sensitive people may be easily controlled through the crying of others, and may easily shed tears that can also be used by others to control them,” he said.
So, emotional tears have both advantages and disadvantages. “They are a powerful communication device and a powerful manipulative (操纵别人的) device,” Silva said. Crying also makes it hard for some people to mask their feelings when they're in the middle of an extreme emotional state.
1. What's the function of reflex tears?| A．Reflecting our feelings. |
| B．Being used to affect others. |
| C．Serving as a means of interaction. |
| D．Clearing away harmful matters in the eyes. |
| A．Tears are usually used to pity others. |
| B．Babies burst into tears without tricks. |
| C．People mask their feelings when crying. |
| D．Blinking out an eyelash makes it easy to cry. |
| A．We ought to identify tears. |
| B．We should control babies, crying. |
| C．We need to smooth our eyes by emotional tears. |
| D．We can hardly fan others' sympathy by tears. |
| A．Why do people cry? |
| B．Why can tears control others? |
| C．How do people express emotions? |
| D．How can people make use of tears? |
7 . Motion sickness is an uncomfortable feeling. The sickness it causes can strike people on an airplane, playing video games, or, commonly, when riding in a car. In a future where people may find themselves running around streets in self-driving vehicles, the problems could get worse.
We typically sense our physical position and movement in the world by relying on our eyes, the feeling we get in our body, and our inner ear. Motion sickness may develop when there's disagreement between what your eyes see and what your inner ear senses. If you're looking at your phone in a moving vehicle, your eyes see a stationary screen but your inner ear feels that you're moving. The result of that dissonance can cause sickness. The common-sense solution is to just stop looking at your phone, but some of the appeal of self-driving cars is that you could use the time to be productive or entertained by what's on a screen.
Researchers of a car-making company and a video game company have been studying ways to address these issues. And their solution uses an interesting medium: sound. The research had two goals: to explore if sound could help relieve motion sickness, and to help people trust self-driving cars more. They experimented with two different categories of sound: tips that tell passengers what's about to happen, and noises that alert passengers when the device has noticed something, like a pedestrian.
The most convincing experiment took place on a closed airport runway in Sweden, near Gothenburg, in August of last year. On that track, brave participants had to ride in the backseat of a car driven by a human and read from a tablet while the car navigated the course. With just 20 people, the study was small, but according to researchers, the presence of sound tips made people report that they felt less ill. Participants said the sounds helped prepare them physically, or adjust their bodies for what was about to happen.
1. When does motion sickness usually happen?| A．Sleeping during travels. | B．Closing eyes on vehicles. |
| C．Driving vehicles speedily. | D．Riding in moving vehicles. |
| A．Confusion. | B．Potentiality. | C．Randomness. | D．Disagreement. |
| A．Uncertain. | B．Optimistic. | C．Concerned. | D．Dissatisfaction. |
| A．A study of motion sickness. | B．Self-driving vehicles. |
| C．A convincing experiment. | D．The cause and handling of motion sickness. |
8 . It would be easy to believe that Mother’s Day was created by a greeting card company. After all, the day is celebrated with special sales and brunches, lots of presents and massive advertising campaigns. But the day was actually conceived more than a century ago by Anna Jarvis of West Virginia as a way of honoring the sacrifices mothers made for their children.
Jarvis’s mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, helped start “Mothers’ Day Work Clubs,” teaching women how to care for their children. During the Civil War, she organized “Mothers’ Friendship Day,” where mothers of Union and Confederate soldiers met to try to promote harmony. The younger Jarvis Was inspired by all the things her mother had accomplished with her social work.
When Jarvis was young, she overheard her mother praying, “I hope and pray that someone, sometime, will find a memorial mother’s day honoring her for the matchless service she offers to humanity in every field of life.” When her mom died in 1905, Jarvis looked through all the sympathy cards she received. She underlined all the kind words that praised her mother, reading them over and over. The outpouring of kindness for her mother inspired her to create a day to honor all mothers.
The white carnation was her mother’s favorite flower, so it became the symbol for the day. She said it symbolized the truth, purity and charity of a mother’s love. Her idea of celebrating Mother’s Day was wearing a carnation while visiting your mother or maybe going to church together. Children were also encouraged to write letters to their mothers, sharing the depths of their appreciation.
The first official Mother’s Day events were held on May 10. 1908, at the church where her mother taught Sunday School in Grafton, West Virginia, and at the Wanamaker’s department store auditorium（礼堂）in Philadelphia. Jarvis didn’t attend the event in Grafton, but she sent 500 white carnations.
1. What is the probable meaning of the underlined word “conceived” in paragraph 1?| A．Thought up | B．Figured out. |
| C．Found out. | D．Believed in. |
| A．She created Mother’s Day. | B．She was active in social work. |
| C．She joined in the American Civil War. | D．She taught Jarvis how to care for children. |
| A．Pray for their mother’s happiness. | B．Send some flowers to their mothers. |
| C．Write a letter to thank their mothers. | D．Accompany their mothers to the celebration. |
| A．A Memorable Mother | B．Carnation and Mother’s Day |
| C．The Greatness of a Mother | D．The Founding of Mother’s Day |
9 . JeffBezos has a rule at Amazon, or perhaps more appropriate a philosophy. If a team cannot be fed by two pizzas then that team is too large. The reasoning is quite straightforward and basic. More people means more communication, more bureaucracy, more chaos, and more of pretty much everything that slows things down, hence why large organizations are oftentimes considered as being so inefficient.
In 2013 Gallup released a report called “The State of The American Workplace", in which they found that smaller companies had more engaged employees. In fact,42% of employees working at companies of 10 or fewer were engaged at work versus only 30% of employees at large companies.
Most people are not familiar with the Ringelmann Effect which is the tendency for individual members to become less productive as the size of a group increases. This concept was named after Maximilien Ringelmann, a French professor of agricultural engineering who passed away in 1931.In one of his experiments he asked volunteers to perform a very simple task, to pull on a rope. He found that when only one person is pulling on the rope they give 100% of their effort; however, as more people are added the individual effort goes down.
This experiment was recreated in the 1970's by Alan Ingham who came up with the concept of “social loafing” which helps us understand why the individual effort decreases as the team size increases. So why does this happen? Because it becomes harder to extract the individual contributions and performance of each person.
Organizations should really think about what their team structures look like and create and follow similar “two pizza rules”. It's no coincidence that smaller organizations are oftentimes more nimble while large organizations look like they are stuck in the mud.
1. What is the author's purpose of mentioning “two pizza rules” in paragraph 1?| A．To make a comment. |
| B．To introduce the topic. |
| C．To provide an example. |
| D．To analyze a phenomenon. |
| A．It repeated the Ringelmann Effect experiment. |
| B．It was based on a simple task of pulling a rope. |
| C．It aimed to explore the reason behind the phenomenon. |
| D．It revealed the link between team size and individual effort. |
| A．Balanced. |
| B．Complicated. |
| C．Simple. |
| D．Flexible. |
| A．What Makes a Team More Productive? |
| B．Why Are Smaller Teams Better Than Larger Ones? |
| C．How Can Two Pizzas Be Shared by One Team? |
| D．Which Is More Important: Individual Effort r Team Size? |
10 . Ever wondered if dogs can learn new words? Yes, say researchers as they have found that talented dogs may have the ability to grasp new words after hearing them only four times.
While previous evidence seems to show that most dogs do not learn words, unless eventually very well trained, a few individuals have shown some extraordinary abilities, according to a study published in the journal Scientific Reports.
“We wanted to know under which conditions the gifted dogs may learn novel words,” said researcher xuekw Claudia Fugazza from the Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary. For the study, the team involved two gifted dogs, Whisky and Vicky Nina. The team exposed the dogs to the new words in two different conditions.
In the exclusion-based task, presented with seven known toys and one new toy, the dogs were able to select the new toy when presented with a new name. Researchers say this proves that dogs can choose by exclusion when faced with a new word, they selected the only toy which did not have a known name.
However, this was not the way they would learn the name of the toy. In fact, when they were presented with one more equally new name to test their ability to recognize the toy by its name, the dogs got totally confused and failed.
The other condition, the social one, where the dogs played with their owners who pronounced the name of the toy while playing with the dog, proved to be the successful way to learn the name of the toy, even after hearing it only 4 times. “The rapid learning that we observed seems to equal children’s ability to learn many new words at a fast rate around the age of 18 months,” Fugazza says. “But we do not know whether the learning mechanisms(机制) behind this learning are the same for humans and dogs. ”
To test whether most dogs would learn words this way, 20 other dogs were tested in the same condition, but none of them showed any evidence of learning the toy names, confirming that the ability to learn words rapidly in the absence of formal training is very rare and is only present in a few gifted dogs.
1. What was the purpose of the study published in Scientific Reports?| A．To better train dogs’ ability to learn new words. |
| B．To further confirm previous evidence about dogs. |
| C．To prove extraordinary memory abilities of gifted dogs. |
| D．To explore favorable conditions for gifted dogs’ new-word learning. |
| A．Slow to understand. | B．Quick to learn. | C．At a loss. | D．In a panic. |
| A．Learning through playing applied to most dogs. |
| B．The social condition helped dogs learn new words. |
| C．Dogs’ new-word learning turned out to be less effective. |
| D．Dogs shared similar learning mechanisms with children. |
| A．Gifted Dogs Can Learn New Words Rapidly. |
| B．Dogs Identify Newly-named Toys by Exclusion. |
| C．Dogs Can Acquire Vocabulary through Tons of Training. |
| D．Gifted Dogs Have Similar Learning Abilities to Humans. |
