1 . The National Gallery
Description:
The National Gallery is the British national art museum built on the north side of Trafalgar Square in London. It houses a diverse collection of more than 2,300 examples of European art ranging from 13th-century religious paintings to more modern ones by Renoir and Van Gogh. The older collections of the gallery are reached through the main entrance while the more modern works in the East Wing are most easily reached from Trafalgar Square by a ground floor entrance.
Layout:
The modern Sainsbury Wing on the western side of the building houses 13th- to 15th-century paintings, and artists include Duccio, Uccello, Van Eyck, Lippi, Mantegna, Botticelli and Memling.
The main West Wing houses 16th-century paintings, and artists include Leonardo da Vinci , Cranach, Michelangelo, Raphael, Bruegel, Bronzino, Titian and Veronese.
The North Wing houses 17th-century paintings, and artists include Caravaggio, Rubens, Poussin, Van de Dyck, Velázquez, Claude and Vermeer.
The East Wing houses 18th- to early 20th-century paintings, and artists include Canaletto, Goya, Turner, Constable, Renoir and Van Gogh.
Opening Hours:
The Gallery is open every day from 10 am to 6 pm (Fridays 10 am to 9 pm ) and is free, but charges apply to some special exhibitions.
Getting There:
Nearest underground stations: Charing Cross (2-minute walk), Leicester Square (3-minute walk), Embankment (7-minute walk), and Piccadilly Circus (8-minute walk).
1. In which wing can you see religious paintings?| A．In the West Wing | B．In the North Wing |
| C．In the East Wing | D．In the Sainsbury Wing |
| A．The National Gallery is the biggest British national art museum. |
| B．The Gallery is open every day from 10 am to 6 pm. |
| C．The Gallery is completely free. |
| D．There are four exhibition areas in the National Gallery. |
| A．A museum guide. | B．An artist magazine. |
| C．A news report. | D．A tourist map. |
2 . Video calls are a common occurrence but have you imagined being able to touch the person on the other end of the line? Scientists are making this a reality.
Researchers at the University of New South Wales, Australia, have invented a soft skin stretch device(SSD), haptic(触觉的) device that can recreate the sense of touch. Haptic technology can copy the experience of touch by stimulating(刺激) the skin through force, vibration(震动) or motion.
Vibration is the most common haptic technology today and has been built into many electronic devices, such as one attached to the back of trackpad (触控板) in laptops. However haptic feedback with vibration becomes less sensitive when the trackpad is used continuously. The existing technology also has great difficulty recreating the sense of touch with objects in virtual environments or located remotely.
The new technology overcomes issues with existing haptic devices. The research team introduced a novel method to recreate the sense of touch through soft, artificial “muscles”.
It works like this:imagine you call a friend in Australia. You wear a haptic glove with the SSDs and your friend also wears a glove with 3D force sensors. If your friend picks up an object, it will physically press against your friend's fingers. And the glove with 3D force sensors will measure these interactions. The force signals can be sent to your glove so your device will generate the same 3D forces, making you experience the same sense of touch as your friend.
The haptic devices could be used in various fields, allowing users to feel objects inside a virtual world or at a distance. This could be especially beneficial during such times like the COVID-19 pandemic when people rely on video calls to stay connected with loved ones. Or it could be used in medical practices. Doctors could feel a patient's organ tissues without touching them.
1. According to the text, SSD can .| A．improve skin health | B．recall earlier experiences |
| C．recreate the sense of touch | D．be used as the trackpad in laptops |
| A．how SSD works | B．what advantages SSD has |
| C．how vibration can be used | D．what problems the current technology has |
| A．Tasting a dish on the video call. |
| B．Enjoying classical music at home. |
| C．Admiring beautiful scenery online |
| D．Performing a distant medical operation. |
| A．Science. | B．Entertainment. |
| C．Education. | D．Health |
3 . 90-Second Newbery Film Festival
The 90-Second Newbery Film Festival is a yearly video contest in which young filmmakers create short movies that tell the entire stories of Newbery award-winning books in about a minute and a half.
Who can make movies for this film festival? It's a big range：elementary school kids, junior high school students, high school students, even college students.
We show the best movies we receive at special-event screenings in many cities.
Here are the rules:
Your video should be about 90 seconds.
Your video has to be about the story in a Newbery award-winning book.
We're looking for full-on movies with mostly child actors, who manage to tell the entire story of the book in 90 seconds.
Upload your videos to any video website and send us the link.
Sending the link to us gives us the right to post it on our blog and to other websites where we sometimes post content.
The general deadline for the tenth annual 90-Second Newbery Film Festival is January 15, 2021.
Don't know where to start? Check out our Video Resources page here for a step-by-step primer on how to make a 90-Second Newbery video, plus lots of other tips, tricks, and tutorials（教程）.
1. Who can take part in the contest?
| A．Anyone. | B．Only adults | C．Students. | D．Professionals. |
| A．The film is starred by child actors. | B．The film is sent on December 31, 2020. |
| C．The film is about the history of Newbery Award. | D．The copy of the film is sent to a small video website. |
| A．On a website. | B．On the school board | C．In a magazine. | D．In a newspaper. |
4 . Many people believe that goldfish have a three-second memory. In fact, goldfish have very good memories for fish. They can be trained to react in many ways to certain colors of light and different kinds of music. Researchers have successfully taught goldfish to play fetch, push levers, and even play football.
Around a certain person the goldfish are very familiar with, they will often be much more active and even sometimes stop considering the person any kind of danger, even if that person sticks their hand in the water and tries to touch them. Around strangers, on the other hand, the goldfish will often hide. Blind goldfish also show this same type of behavior, except they react to the voice of their owner, similarly to how the non-blind goldfish react to the sight of their owner.
In one experiment, researchers even got the goldfish to learn that if they pushed a certain lever at a certain time of day, they would get food. If the lever was pushed any other time of day, nothing would happen. In very short order, these goldfish learned to only push the lever during the time of day it would produce food; the rest of the time, they took no notice of it.
In another experiment, researchers trained young goldfish to connect a certain sound with feeding time. They then released them into the sea. About half a year later, when the fish were fully grown, the researchers played the sound over a loudspeaker and the fish swam from wherever they were in the sea, back to where they were released. This has been suggested as a method to cut down the cost of raising fish. Teach them to come when they are young and then release them into the sea and lakes to grow to adulthood naturally. It' s better for the environment and less cruel to the fish (relatively speaking).
1. What does Paragraph 2 mainly tell us?| A．Blind goldfish can easily realize dangers. |
| B．Goldfish are able to recognize their owner. |
| C．Goldfish don’t like to be touched by strangers. |
| D．Blind goldfish have better hearing than non-blind ones. |
| A．Goldfish have a good sense of time. | B．Goldfish are good at pushing levers. |
| C．Goldfish can play games with people. | D．Goldfish like to be fed at a certain time. |
| A．Goldfish are fully grown within three months. |
| B．Goldfish prefer living in the sea to living in the lake. |
| C．Goldfish react quickly to the sound over loudspeakers. |
| D．Goldfish can remember things they were taught a long time ago. |
| A．Education. | B．Environment. | C．Sport. | D．Science. |
5 . 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. |
6 . I have always found the Chinese to be a very polite people. In particular, Chinese frequently compliment (称赞) foreign friends on their language skills, knowledge of Chinese culture, professional accomplishments, and personal health. Curiously, however, Chinese are as loath to accept a compliment as they are eager to give one. As many of my Chinese friends have explained, this is a sign of the Chinese virtue of modesty.
I have noticed a difference, though, in the degree to which modesty is emphasized in the United States and China. In the US, we tend to place more emphasis on “seeking the truth from fact”, thus, Americans tend to accept a compliment with gratitude.
Chinese, on the other hand, tend to reject the compliment, even when they know they deserve the credit or recognition which has been awarded them. I can imagine a Chinese basketball fan meeting Michael Jordan of the Chicago Bulls. He might say, “Mr. Jordan, I am so happy to meet you. I just want to tell you, you are the best basketball player in the world; you’re the greatest!” to which Jordan would probably respond, “Thank you very much. I really appreciate it! I just to try to do my best every time I step on the court.” If an American met Deng Yaping, China’s premier pingpong player, he might say much the same thing: “Ms. Deng, you’re the best!” but as a Chinese, Deng would probably say, “No, I really don’t play all that well. You’re too much kind.”
Plainly, Americans and Chinese have different ways of responding to praise. Ironically, many Americans might consider Ms. Deng’s response the less modest, because it is less truthful—and therefore less sincere. Americans generally place sincerity above manners; genuine gratitude for the praise serves as a substitute for protestations of modesty. After all, in the words of one of my closest Chinese friends, modesty taken to the extreme is pride.
1. What does the underlined word “loath” in paragraph 1 refer to?| A．Polite. | B．Uncertain. | C．Curious. | D．Unwilling. |
| A．To note they do as much as they can each time they play against others. |
| B．To remind readers they are the best players in basketball and table tennis. |
| C．To explain they deserve the credit or recognition for their great contributions. |
| D．To show they as Chinese and Americans are different in accepting praise. |
| A．They think sincerity matters the most. | B．They think her reply is against the fact. |
| C．They think she is too modest to believe. | D．They think manners is more important. |
| A．Education. | B．Sports. | C．Culture. | D．People. |
7 . Kid-friendly attractions & hands-on museums
National Geographic Museum
Animal lovers young and old will look forward to a visit to the National Geographic Museum, which is near Farragut West. There are changing exhibits that always feature work by great photographers, as well as exhibits that show the efforts of international scientists to protect the natural worlds resources (资源) and animals. Children under 5 are free.
National Air and Space Museum
The National Air and Space Museum on the National Mall offers daily programs involving science experimentation. Kids are welcome to make and fly their own paper airplane, look through a real telescope (望远镜) with astronomy experts, watch a show at the Planetarium, climb in an aircraft, or watch an IMAX film.
National Building Museum
Kids can learn how engineers construct architectural wonders by using soft blocks in the Great Hall of the National Building Museum. Little ones will love the Building Zone, where they can drive a bulldozer (推土机) and build a house.
Renwick Gallery
Take the kids to the Renwick Gallery, which hosts the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s amazing collection of decorative art, and start a completely new conversation between kids and art.
1. What is special about the museum near Farragut West?| A．It enables kids to build a house on their own. |
| B．It houses a vast collection of paintings. |
| C．It teaches kids about the environment. |
| D．It is free for both parents and kids |
| A．Architects. | B．Animal enthusiasts. |
| C．Art lovers. | D．Astronomy fans. |
| A．A news report. | B．A travel brochure. |
| C．A geography textbook. | D．A culture magazine. |
8 . How was 2019 for you? Was it pleasant and full of joy? Or was it unpleasant and full of sadness? Either way, some good things happened this year that can warm your heart. Let's take a look.
A Thailand supermarket came up with a great way to cut down the plastic packaging. It wraps the things in banana leaves instead of plastic. | South Korea is having the daytime disco parties for people over 65.The goal is to help fight loneliness and dementia in the elderly people. |
There are only two northern white rhinos left in the world. They live in Africa. This year, scientists successfully fertilized seven of their eggs. This might help to save the dying ones! | Students at a primary school in Maine, the US, are learning the sign language. They are doing this in order to help a deaf 6-year-old girl feel welcomed at their school. They hope that she'll be happy every day. |
| A．dangerous animals around the world | B．different cultures in different countries |
| C．exciting things that can warm our hearts | D．something special that happened in 2018. |
| A．to cut down the plastic packaging | B．to help a deaf 6-year-old girl |
| C．to save the dying ones. | D．to help the elderly people. |
| A．A Chinese supermarket uses the leaves to wrap the things. |
| B．South Korea set up a disco club to help dementia people. |
| C．Scientists in Africa try to help save the white rhinos in danger. |
| D．Primary school students are learning the sign language to help a boy. |
| A．Language Corner | B．Magic World |
| C．Food Square | D．School Time |
9 . The Palace Museum is limiting the daily number of visitors to 80,000 and recommending both individual visitors and tourist groups to book tickets in, advance online (booking address: https://gugong ktmtech.cn). foreign visitors are required to provide passport numbers during the online booking
ADMISSION
April 1st-October 31st 60 yuan
November 1st-March 31st. 140 yuan
●Free admission(入场费) for children under.2 meters in height.
●Free admission for disabled visitors.
●20 yuan for elementary, middle school, and undergraduate students with student I.D. (not including graduate and adult or continuing education students).
●50% discount for people over 60 years with valid certificate or proof of age (passport, etc.)'
●Women's Day (March 8): Half-price admission for female visitors.
●Children's Day (June 1): Free admission for children 14 years old and younger. 50% discount on admission for one accompanying parent. legal guardian, or adult,
For detailed information and instruction, please click here.
1. How many people can visit the Palace Museum daily at most?| A．Eight hundred | B．Eighty thousand. | C．Eight million | D．Eighty million. |
| A．A middle-aged woman visiting it on 13,Mar. | B．A middle-aged parent visiting it alone on lst, June. |
| C．A 65-year-old man visiting it on 7th,May. | D．A middle school student visiting it on 6th,Jan. |
| A．A website. | B．A magazine | C．A book. | D．A newspaper. |
10 . Inside the white, bacteria-free walls of a new building on the southern outskirts of Beijing, two employees wearing masks and rubber gloves are busy injecting a clear, colorless liquid into rows of small bottles.
The 215,000 square feet production plant was built in recent months specifically for producing a Covid-19 vaccine (疫苗) developed by Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinovac Biotech.
CoronaVac, the vaccine candidate from Sinovac, is part of China’s push to be at the forefront of rolling out immunizations (免疫接种) against the deadly novel coronavirus.
The Nasdaq-listed biotech company began developing its vaccine in late January, less than a week after Wuhan—the original epicenter of China’s coronavirus outbreak—went into a strict lockdown.
By June, China had largely contained the coronavirus, dealing with only a small number of outbreaks. Those newly reported Covid-19 cases in China didn’t meet the necessary conditions for a Phase 3 trial, so Sinovac reached an agreement with Brazil—which ranks second in the world for infections, with more than 3.6 million reported cases.
In cooperating with the Butantan Institute in Sao Paulo, a Phase 3 study was launched in late July involving 9,000 volunteers, all health professionals who have worked with Covid-19 patients but haven’t been infected with the virus.
The tests are ongoing, but Dimas Covas, president of the Butantan Institute, said Wednesday primary data shows CoronaVac developed immunity in 97% of the people vaccinated after two doses—a level he said was “fundamental to break the chain of transmission of the coronavirus.”
1. From which of the following is the text probably taken?| A．A biology textbook. | B．A news report. |
| C．A book review. | D．A travel brochure. |
| A．Launching. | B．Distributing. |
| C．Guarding. | D．Burning. |
| A．China’s successful lockdown in Wuhan. |
| B．A sufficient number of infected patients. |
| C．All health professionals and volunteers. |
| D．The Nasdaq-listed biotech company. |
| A．Forefront: China’s push to develop a coronavirus vaccine. |
| B．Lockdown: China’s successful move to contain the outbreaks. |
| C．Infection: Brazil’s ranking second to surprise the world. |
| D．Immunity: Brazil’s effort to break the chain of transmission. |
