1 . Learning a second language is difficult at any age and it only gets harder the longer you wait to open that dusty French book. Now, in a new study, scientists have pointed the exact age at which your chances of reaching fluency（流利）in a second language seem to rise： 10.
The study, published in the journal Cognition, found that it's "nearly impossible” for language learners to reach native-level fluency if they start learning a second language after 10. But that doesn't seem to be because language skills go downhill “It turns out you're still learning fast. It's just that you run out of time, because your ability to learn starts dropping at around 17 or 18 years old,“ says study co-author Joshua Hartshorne, an assistant professor of psychology at Boston College.
Kids may be better than adults at learning new languages for many reasons. Children's brains are more plastic than those of adults, meaning they're better able to adapt and respond to new information. "All learning involves the brain changing,“ Hartshorne says, “and children's brains seem to be a lot more skilled at changing. "
These findings may seem discouraging, but it was heartening for scientists to learn that the critical （关键的）period for fluent language acquisition might be longer than they previously thought. Some scientists believed that the brief window closes shortly after birth, while others stretched it only to early adolescence. Compared to those estimates, 17 or 18 when language learning ability starts to drop off——seems old.
“People progress better when they learn by immersion （沉 浸）rather than simply in a classroom. And moving to a place where your desired language is spoken is the best way to learn as an adult. If that's not an option, you can create an immersive environment by finding ways to have conversations with native speakers in their own communities," Hartshorne says. By doing so, it's possible to become conversationally fluent——even without the advantage of a child's brain.
1. What is the most important finding of the new study?| A．The best age to learn a second language. |
| B．The possibility of speaking fluent language. |
| C．The change of language skills over the time. |
| D．The great approaches to learning a language. |
| A．Their focus is language learning only. |
| B．They are more interested in languages. |
| C．They are more adaptable to new things. |
| D．Their brain always ignores big changes. |
| A．Joining friends in their learning. | B．Turning to immersive learning. |
| C．Studying in a quiet classroom. | D．Training the brain to a kid's brain. |
| A．Science. | B．Travel |
| C．Health. | D．Education. |
2 . Have you ever wondered if you see the same colours as other people? Most people know what blue is when they see it. They call it "blue” because they were taught the word and connected it with what they saw. But how do you know what you see as blue isn't someone else's red?
The ability to perceive （感知）different colours is up to receptors （接受器）in our eyes. Light waves hit these receptors and they react depending on which colour the light is, sending signals to the brain. The brain then reads these signals to determine which colour light the eyes are receiving.
Some people's receptors are more developed than others. The inability of the receptor to feel the light waves correctly means that some people cannot tell the differences between similar colours. Those with more developed receptors can see more colours. We sometimes hear people having an argument about whether something is dark blue or black. It might be because one person has stronger receptors to feel the light than another.
In the past, most scientists would argue that everyone saw colours in the same way. However, research was conducted on monkeys, in which their receptors were changed. This enabled them to see more colours than usual. Normally monkeys can only see blue and green, but the change allowed them to see red. Their brains automatically got used to new colours. This suggests that our brains may find new colors of the things we see. Colours could be a very personal experience , unique to everyone.
So, the next time you talk about your favourite colour, just remember if yours is blue and your friend says red, you two might actually be thinking about the same colour. What if everyone in the world has the same favourite colour, but just calls it different names?
1. What is Paragraph 2 mainly about?| A．How we perceive colours. |
| B．The inability to see colours. |
| C．What the brain does with signals. |
| D．The connection between receptors and light waves. |
| A．Some people cannot feel colours with their developed receptors. |
| B．The more light people feel, the weaker receptors they have. |
| C．People with poor receptors usually have colour weakness. |
| D．People who have strong receptors can see dark blue. |
| A．To test the monkeys with colours. |
| B．To develop the receptors of humans. |
| C．To enable monkeys to find more colors. |
| D．To prove everyone sees colours in a different way. |
| A．A film review. | B．A science magazine. |
| C．An art journal. | D．A business newspaper. |
3 . LONE TREE, colorado-patanjali Rao, a 15-year-old Colorado high school student and young scientist, who has used artificial intelligence （AI） and created apps to deal with social problems, has been named Time magazine's first-ever "Kid of the Year".
Time says Rao stood out for creating a world-wide community of young inventors and inspiring them to go after their goals. Rao insists that starting out small doesn't matter, as long as you have a passion （热爱）for it.
Rao's sense of invention started early. At age 12, she developed a portable device to discover lead in water. She has also created an app called Kindly that uses artificial intelligence to help prevent cyberbullying （网络欺凌）. It allows teens to type in a word or phrase to find out if the words they are using are bullying and lets them decide what they are sending.
She said that "Work is going to be in our generation's hands pretty soon. So if no one else is going to do it, I'm going to do it.”
Rao has partnered with schools, museums, and science, technology, engineering and math organizations, and other societies to work for thousands of other students.
In a world where science is increasingly questioned or challenged, Rao insists that devotion to science is an act of kindness and the best way that a younger generation can better the world. “We have science in everything we're involved in, and I think the biggest thing to put out there is that science is cool, innovating is cool, and anybody can be an innovator," Rao says.
"Anybody can do science.”
1. What do we know about Rao?| A．She has created apps to deal with mental problems. |
| B．She has set a good example for the younger generation. |
| C．She has been named Time magazine's "Youth of the Year”. |
| D．She thinks that only the younger generation can better the world. |
| A．Time waits for no man. |
| B．Ups and downs make one strong. |
| C．Passion and devotion help to promote excellence. |
| D．Good habits formed at youth make all the difference. |
| A．A newspaper | B．A diary. |
| C．A travel brochure. | D．A history book. |
4 . OAKLAND, Calif.—Facebook said on Thursday that it would allow many employees to work from home permanently.
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, told workers during a staff meeting which was livestreamed (现场直播) on his Facebook page that within a decade as many as half of the company’s more than 48,000 employees would work from home.
“It’s clear that Covid has changed a lot about our lives, and that certainly includes the way that most of us work,” Mr. Zuckerberg said. “Coming out of this period, I expect that remote work is going to be a growing trend as well.”
Facebook’s decision, the first among tech’s biggest companies, is an obvious change for a business culture built around getting workers into giant offices and keeping them there. Using free shuttle buses, free cafeterias and personal services like dry cleaning, tech companies have done as much as possible over the years to give employees little reason to go home, let alone avoid the office. If other giant companies follow suit, tech employment could start to shift away from expensive hubs (中心枢纽) like Silicon Valley, Seattle and New York.
Tech executives have long believed that person-to-person communication was a big part of the creativity that went into producing popular products. Mr. Zuckerberg long worried that employees who worked remotely would lose productivity.
In March, the coronavirus lockdown forced companies to send employees home. Many tech companies, including Facebook, emptied their offices before local shelter-in-place orders. Now, more than two months later, executives are discovering that their remote workers performed better than expected.
Mr. Zuckerberg said the shift could offer more benefits than inconveniences for the company. Allowing remote work will allow Facebook to broaden its recruitment, retain valuable employees, reduce the climate impact caused by commutes and expand the diversity of its work force, he said.
1. According to Zuckerberg, which of the following statement is NOT TRUE?| A．Half of Facebook’s employees have been working from home. |
| B．Covid is a main factor giving rise to remote work. |
| C．Employees’ work performance at home is beyond his expectation. |
| D．The benefits of remote work outweigh the inconveniences caused by the shift. |
| A．Facebook’s decision has influenced other companies. |
| B．Tech companies offer various services to attract valuable employees. |
| C．Remote work will lower tech companies’ cost. |
| D．It has long been believed that person-to-person communication contribute to creativity. |
| A．a newspaper | B．a guide book |
| C．an entertainment magazine | D．a biography |
5 . Two vaccines（疫苗）developed by a Maryland company are showing promise in the fight against malaria（疟疾）. One vaccine was 100 percent effective in preventing the deadly disease malaria.
Malaria is a disease caused by parasites（寄生虫）and carried by mosquitoes. Parasites are organisms that live on or in an organism of another species and feed off it or get protection from it. Mosquitoes spread the disease to people by biting on their skin. The World Health Organization says there are 214 million cases of malaria each year. And the deadly disease kills over 400,000 people a year worldwide. People who have malaria often have a fever, chills, and flu-like illness. Serious complications happen, including death, when the disease is left untreated.
The new vaccines work by preparing the immune system to fight the disease. Researchers do this by introducing live, but weakened, young parasites called sporozoites. They are injected into the body by infected mosquitoes. Both vaccines target Plasmodium Falciparum（恶性疟原虫），which is the most common and deadly form of the disease.
One successful trail was carried out in Germany. Different amounts of the vaccine were injected into 27 healthy people who volunteered for the study. Another group of 15 was given a placebo, which is a substance given to a patient like a drug, but t has no physical effect on the person. Eight to 10 weeks after the last vaccine amount, both groups were then exposed to the parasites that carried the malaria.
Stephen Hoffman is chief executive and scientific officer of Sanaria. He says the researchers were surprised by the results from nine of the people who received the highest vaccine amount. “We got 100% protection against malaria at ten weeks after the last amount of the vaccine. That is really beginning to look like something quite extraordinary and that's never been done before.”
1. What can we know about malaria?| A．It is a disease that can't be treated. |
| B．It kills people when left untreated. |
| C．It is a deadly disaster with a high death rate. |
| D．It is a flu-like disease caused by mosquitoes. |
| A．By killing parasites in the mosquitoes. |
| B．By getting rid of most of the mosquitoes. |
| C．By injecting parasites into mosquitoes' body. |
| D．By restarting the immune system of people's body. |
| A．Remarkable. | B．Unpredictable. | C．Unsatisfactory. | D．Unreasonable. |
| A．Science &technology. | B．Education. |
| C．Lifestyle. | D．Politics. |
6 . Born in Chengdu, Southwest China's Sichuan province, 30-year-old Dong Yaxue, a Chinese researcher working for NASA is currently a member of NASA's MAVEN(Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) team.
On Nov 5, Dong was invited to speak at a NASA news conference, in which the organization said the atmosphere on Mars can be stripped by solar winds. She is the first Chinese female scientist to participate in a NASA news conference.
Dong graduated from Chengdu's Shishi High School in 2003 and was later admitted by University of Science and Technology of China. She got her master's and doctor's degree in astrophysics from Rice University in the United States.
Last year, Dong joined the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado and began working for MAVEN after handing in her resume and taking part in a phone interview. Now her main job is to analyze satellite data and compare the results to theoretical predictions.
“The findings released during the new conference are very important and may change the content of school textbooks.” Dong told Chengdu Business Daily.
“It has also provided new information and guidance for future Mars exploration.”
Interested in technical work, Dong said she was never bored at work and will continue focusing on data analysis next year.
“This is the first time that my job got so much attention.” She also added that she found great pleasure in both exploring Mars and eating hot pot.
He Jianming, Dong's high school teacher, said that physics is difficult for many girls but not for Dong Yaxue. As a middle school student, she won first prize in the national physics contest.
He said Dong was not the top student in her school. “she never got first in the class, usually ranking tenth to twentieth. But her scores of all subjects were even.”
1. Which of the following statements is NOT right according to the passage?| A．Dong is the first Chinese scientist who appeared in a NASA news conference. |
| B．Dong devotes herself to analyzing data and comparing the theoretical predictions. |
| C．The findings released are landmarks, which may change what we are learning. |
| D．Dong's outstanding performance does great credit to his mother school. |
| A．Entertainment. | B．Military. | C．Politics. | D．Sci-Tech. |
| A．excellent | B．embarrassing | C．balanced | D．unstable |
7 . 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. |
8 . A 3-year-old boy called Casey who was lost in the woods for two days is now safe at home with his family. But he told his rescuers that he was not alone in the rainy, freezing cold woods. He said he was with a friend — a bear.
The child went missing on January 22 while playing with friends at his grandfather’s house in the southern state of North Carolina. When the other children returned to the house and Casey did not, the family searched the area for almost an hour before calling the police.
Police formed a search and rescue team to look for the young boy in the nearby woods. But two days went by and still no Casey.
Then on January 24, someone called the police saying they heard a child crying in the woods. Police followed up on the information and found Casey at about 9:30 that night. They pulled him out of some briar (多刺野灌木). He was in good health.
Casey told the rescuers that he had hung out with a black bear for two days, a bear he called his “friend”.
Officer Hughes spoke with reporters from several agencies. He said Casey did not say how he was able to survive the woods for three days in the cold, rainy weather. However, he said, “Casey did say he had a friend in the woods that was a bear. And at no point do I think he was taken away illegally.”
Doctors at Carolina East Medical Center treated Casey for minor injuries. He was then released to his family on January 25.
His mother Brittany Hathaway talked with reporters from a local news agency and thanked everyone who joined in the search and rescue efforts.
“We just want to tell everybody that we’re very grateful that you took the time out to come search for Casey and prayed for him, and he’s good,” said his mother. “He is good, he is up and talking. He’s already asked to watch Netflix.”
1. What happened to Casey?| A．He was ignored by his friends. | B．He went missing in the woods. |
| C．He was attacked by a bear. | D．He was wanted by the police. |
| A．How Casey managed to survive. | B．When he was successfully rescued. |
| C．Why he was seriously injured. | D．How many hours he was trapped. |
| A．His mother cared about him. | B．His mother was very grateful. |
| C．Casey deserved a good rest. | D．Casey was in good condition. |
| A．survey | B．news report | C．advertisement | D．travel brochure |
9 . Do you want to have an interesting summer picnics with your family? Here we offer four of the top picnic areas across the US.
Cumberland Islands, Georgia
Just hours south of Savannah, this national seashore is an ideal picnic place. It' s not a destroyed place in the Deep South with over 50 miles of hiking trails (路线).Covered in Spanish moss (苔藓)，the paths are lined with trees and since it' s still a rural area, the stars gather for a spectacular show at night and create the perfect evening starlit picnic opportunity.
Grant Park, Chicago
Go for a taste of a 20-day lakefront for delicious food in Chicago, because food festival happens in October each year. Take a spot near the fountain to enjoy your picnic, appreciate the city scenery and lake views and relax with family and friends. If you are there on July 1st, make sure to plan the day to include the fireworks display at the Navy Pier.
Cranberry Islands, Maine
Here, you'll enjoy natural picnics with island views. The islands are a delightful group of islands about 20 minutes offshore from Acadia National Park. You can visit the islands by private boat. Bring a picnic basket along for the ride as it 's a romantic picnic area to go for a family outing to visit the islands.
Big Sur, California
The Point Lobos State Reserve is a small gem (胜地).Besides the coastal wildlife there are rare plant communities, and unique geological formations. It's good to have a picnic there. You are recommended to bring a telescope, because much of the wildlife can be seen only at a distance.
1. What can we know about Cumberland Islands?| A．You can go there by boat. |
| B．You can't have a picnic in the evening. |
| C．It is developed into a beautiful scenery. |
| D．It attracts lots of people for its splendid stars. |
| A．Big Sur. | B．Grant Park. |
| C．Cranberry Islands. | D．Cumberland Islands. |
| A．A personal diary. | B．A travel magazine. |
| C．A science report. | D．A geography textbook. |
10 . Influenced by many negative reports, some people usually regard teenagers as lacking a sense of responsibility, concern for others, and awareness of life. To break the stereotype（刻板印象）, I'm going to talk about the story of Jordan Rice.
I suspect you've got no idea about who Jordan Rice is. Actually, Jordan Rice was a 13-year-old boy who lived with his mom, dad, and little brother Blake in Toowoomba, Australia. He went to buy school uniform this Monday with his mom and brother. It was around 2 pm, when they were in the car on the way back from the shops. Not an unusual day.
Unexpectedly, a huge flood poured into the area. The water rose high enough to shut off the engine. Unfortunately, they were trapped in floodwaters. Mom got into a panic, and Jordan was frightened because he couldn't swim. No one came to help them out until an old man grabbed a rope, tied it to his body, and jumped into the water. Hopes were growing for the survival of Jordan—the old man was swimming toward him. Instead of seizing the chance, Jordan pushed Blake forward, saying, "Save my brother first."
There was no time for arguing. The old man tied the rope around Blake and carried him ashore. Then he swam back to save the other two. But the strain of the flood and the weight of two people were too much for the rope. It broke and so did Jordan and his mothers' hope. They were carried away by the brown water. Though they managed to hold on to a tree for a little while, they finally loosened their grip and accepted their fate. Being the only survivor of the trip, Blake was reunited with his father to become a family of two.
Jordan Rice was a 13-year-old boy from Toowoomba, Australia. During the destructive floods of Queensland, Jordan Rice sacrificed his life for his little brother. He is a hero and deserves to be remembered.
1. What does the author think of some people's opinion about teenagers?| A．It's a reasonable belief. | B．It's a fair evaluation. |
| C．It's an out-of-date view. | D．It's a prejudiced idea. |
| A．He couldn't reach others. |
| B．His rope was not long enough. |
| C．There was no time for making other choices. |
| D．He believed that Jordan Rice could swim out. |
| A．Your Voice. | B．Star Stories. | C．News Express. | D．Magic World. |
| A．Save my brother | B．Meet the challenge |
| C．Be brave, boy | D．Accept your fate, teenager |
