1 . As more and more people speak the global language of English, Chinese, Spanish, and Arabic, other languages are rapidly disappearing. In fact, half of the 6,000-7,000 languages spoken around the world today will be likely to die out by the next century, according the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
In an effort to prevent language loss, scholars from a number of organizations — UNESCO and National Geographic among them — have for many years been documenting dying languages and the cultures they reflect.
Mark Turin, a scientist at the Macmillan Center, Yale University, who specializes in the languages and oral traditions of the Himalayas, is following in that tradition. His recently published book, A Grammar of Thangmi and Their Culture, grows out of his experience living, working, and raising a family in a village in Nepal.
Documenting the Thangmi language and culture is just a starting point for Turin, who seeks to include other languages and oral traditions across the Himalayan reaches of India, Nepal, Bhutan, and China. But he is not content to simply record these voices before they disappear without record.
At the University of Cambridge Turin discovered a wealth of important materials —including photographs, films, tape recordings, and field notes — which had remained unstudied and were badly in need of care and protection. Now, through the two organizations that he has founded — the Digital Himalaya Project and the World Oral Literature Project — Turin has started a campaign to make such documents, found in libraries and stores around the world, available not just to schools but to the younger generations of communities from whom the materials were originally collected. Thanks to digital technology and the widely available Internet, Turin notes, the endangered languages can be saved and reconnected with speech communities.
1. Many scholars are making efforts to ________.| A．promote global languages | B．rescue disappearing languages |
| C．search for languages communities | D．set up language research organizations |
| A．having detailed records of the languages | B．writing books on language users |
| C．telling stories about language speakers | D．living with the native speakers |
| A．The cultural studies in India. | B．The documents available at Yale. |
| C．His language research in Bhutan. | D．His personal experience in Nepal. |
| A．Write, sell and donate. | B．Record, repair and reward. |
| C．Collect, protect and reconnect. | D．Design, experiment and report. |
2 . Several years ago, when someone used camera covers to protect against possible monitoring, it was not popular to talk about it. Today, people use various types of tapes to cover the web cameras and microphones.
There are many types of spyware that can dive into our devices and secretly spy on them, recording everything they do. Such programs may infect not only computers but also smartphones. Your data may be used by hackers who will try to request money for not exposing your private information or by companies like NSO Group who created the Pegasus spyware to “provide authorized governments with technology that helps struggle against terror and crime”.
In my opinion, the described protection technique is highly overestimated. Users tape cameras and microphones due to the lack of understanding of how their devices work and how malware(恶意软件)works. Hackers and even secret services do not have enough resources to monitor all victims using cameras or microphones. If they need to yet any information, they get it by sending a targeted malware to your device, which will not be stopped by the tapes. Such a virus will find what to steal -from personal photos and videos to passwords from social networks, browser history, bank accounts and much more.
It is unwise to believe that attackers will not be able to find a way to spy on you, even if the device, discharged to zero, can still deliver data about your location, using the smartphones of the surrounding people as signal repeaters. Let us face it. we live in an era when it is extremely difficult to hide something and a piece of tape is clearly not the most useful tool in the struggle for your privacy.
Again, to be able to spy on you, attackers need to plant malware in your device. To prevent malware from entering your device, do not click suspected links and email attachments. Use strong passwords for email, social media and online banking accounts.
1. What does the underlined word “them” in paragraph 2 refer to?| A．Cameras. |
| B．Types. |
| C．Programs. |
| D．Devices. |
| A．group of hackers. |
| B．A company developing spyware. |
| C．A group of terrorists and criminals. |
| D．A company fighting against crime. |
| A．People know little about their devices. |
| B．Hackers have no access to others. |
| C．It hardly prevents malware from getting privacy. |
| D．It can't cover the cameras completely. |
| A．Protecting privacy on devices. |
| B．Rising trend of using tapes. |
| C．Monitoring devices via cameras. |
| D．Avoiding clicking distrustful links. |
3 . The Assassin's Creed series has been about building immersive （沉浸式的）and accurate historical worlds. As their newest game releases f Assassins Creed Origins, they have also released their Discovery Tours. These tours give players a chance to walk the streets of ancient Egypt, explore Alexandria and the pyramids, and learn about wildlife and geography. For students, experiencing the ancient world in this interactive way can be more interesting and effective than just reading a textbook or watching a documentary about what they are studying.
Assassins Creed is not the only game series that can be educational either. What is important about the role of historical games is the level of choice. When watching a film, students are passive receivers of content. However, when playing a game students have an active role to play in history. A focus on choice and consequence is an important element of teaching and understanding history, so historical games can be a valuable teaching tool even if they aren't completely historically accurate. They have the power to immerse students in faraway worlds and allow them to think critically about cause and consequence, think about why historical events unfolded the way they did, and even think about possible alternative outcomes. All of these are critical for historical thinking processes. No longer do students need to rely only on reading textbooks or on instructors for knowledge.
When carrying this out in your class, remember that not all students enjoy playing video games, but they can still be a valuable learning tool. The instructor also needs to be an active facilitator and taking note of teachable moments. A video game is not going to teach a class ； it requires an awesome instructor to make everything come together. With the power of video games, ancient worlds no longer need to be limited to the pages of a textbook.
1. What does the underlined phrase “this interactive way“ in paragraph 1 refer to?| A．Walking an ancient street. | B．Playing a new game. |
| C．Reading a textbook. | D．Watching a documentary. |
| A．Why it is different from the film. | B．Why it gains popularity. |
| C．How it benefits teaching. | D．How it came into being. |
| A．The teachers. | B．The players. |
| C．The designers. | D．The audiences. |
| A．A vivid description of ancient architecture. |
| B．An account of a new history learning method. |
| C．A detailed explanation of a social problem. |
| D．An online advertisement of a stylish trend. |
4 . As a CEO of a startup, you get used to hearing"no".You also face an endless continuation of what feels like shocking crises, like nearly running out of cash, losing a key customer,discovering a widespread product failure, or having to shut down operations because of a global pandemic. But it turns out that these disasters can actually be good for you. In fact,I'm not sure whether you can innovate without them. Here's what all our crises have taught me.
It's good to be uncomfortable. We once had a key customer request-a battery capability that we'd never developed before. The customer made it clear that if we couldn't develop this capability, they'd be less confident in our product. We wrestled with the risks, not least of which was the potential embarrassment if we couldn't meet the customer's needs. We knew we'd face many technical problems if we tried to go into operation. Yet we decided to try to satisfy the customer, even if it wasn't obvious at first how we could get it done. A few weeks later we delivered something beyond what the customer had asked for, and we've since grown this capability into a powerful sales tool and potential revenue stream-not to mention it strengthened our relationship with the customer.
Short-term failure is good. A few years ago, our company began to expand our manufacturing output in response to a customer's need. In the process we discovered something unusual we hadn't seen during smaller-scale production. Our team dived into failure analysis, and we finally put the problem down to a single material within the battery. We'd used this material for years, but now we needed a replacement. Once we made that change,the battery quality and reliability greatly improved.
It's okay to show weakness. One of my hardest days as CEO was the day when I found out I was pregnant.We were in the middle of raising a funding round, and I had been traveling nonstop for a year. Until that day, I had assumed that my role as CEO was to display strength and confidence. With the mounting pressure I was harder on myself than I needed to be, and now I had the added stress of being pregnant.I decided to acknowledge to my team that I was breaking down. They united together and found ways to operate more smoothly and communicate more effectively, supporting me to focus my time on most pressing goals. This gave me not only the space to plan for the company’s future,but also to prepare for my own new normal: leading while becoming a first-time mother.
1. What does the underlined word "them" in Paragraph 1 refer to?| A．Frequent rejections. |
| B．Financial crises. |
| C．Global pandemics. |
| D．Endless disasters. |
| A．Customers' requests should be carefully evaluated. |
| B．Meeting challenges can bring about extra benefits. |
| C．The company should keep launching new products. |
| D．Innovation is the only way to win fierce competition. |
| A．By drawing a comparison. |
| B．By giving an example. |
| C．By challenging assumptions. |
| D．By doing an experiment. |
| A．Learn to let go |
| B．Make it as a CEO |
| C．Think deep sometimes |
| D．Make friends with crises |
5 . Having a microchip implanted in a man's brain may be common in sci-fi movie plots, but it may soon become an actual possibility.
Elon Musk -a US tech tycoon, founder of Space X- has been working on this technology. On Aug 28, Musk gave a display of the chip, which was implanted into the head of a pig named Gertrude.
The chip, developed by Musk's company Neuralink, is the size of a coin. But don't let its size fool you. The tiny chip has over 3,000 electrodes （电极）attached to flexible threads, which can monitor about 1,000 neurons （神经元）.It collects neural signals from an area of the brain, and then transmits those signals wirelessly to nearby computers, according to MSN. That enabled researchers to monitor Gertrude's brain activity while she was walking around in the display.
Though the technology is still in its early stage, it is encouraging for humans. This technology would solve a lot of brain injuries and is essentia] for Al symbiosis, which will allow the human brain to combine with an artificial intelligence.
When the device can be applied to humans, its main goal will be to help those who have mobility difficulties. Musk hopes this technology can also be used to help those with hearing and eyesight issues.
Although such a device could repair those problems, putting it into practice is by no means a piece of cake. Currently, the device can transmit signals from about 500 neurons in the pig's brain. Compared to 80 billion neurons in a human brain, this number is tiny. And to cover the whole human brain also means the electrodes have to be much smaller.
Also, implanting the chip into the brain poses a potential danger. There is a risk of the immune system attacking this foreign body.
Right now, the hope of controlling the brain via controlling a few neurons seems overly optimistic. "There are many technological challenges ... to overcome before Neuralink can put its devices to the purposes," Yuan Lanfeng, an associate professor at the University of Science and Technology of China, told China Daily.
1. What do we know about Elon Musk's microchip?| A．It was inspired by sci-fi movie plots. |
| B．It is able to collect wireless signals. |
| C．It is tiny in size but powerful in function. |
| D．It has been implanted into a human's brain. |
| A．The operation of the chip in Gertrude’s brain. |
| B．The attachment of electrodes to flexible threads. |
| C．The development of neurons inside Gertrude's brain. |
| D．The transmission of signals from a nearby computer |
| A．To monitor animals’ brain activity. |
| B．To help people with mobility issues. |
| C．To develop a cure for immune system problems. |
| D．To contribute to the research on Al technologies. |
| A．Worried. | B．Excited. | C．Optimistic. | D．Challenged. |
6 . The ruins of a Maya city have been discovered in Guatemala with the help of the remote sensing technique LiDAR. This lost city envelops sites like Tikal, Holmul, and Witzna, but shows that these famous areas are a small part of this lost urban network.
Hidden under the jungles of the Maya Biosphere Reserve site, more than 60,000 human-made features — homes, canals, highways, and more — have been identified in aerial (从飞机上的)images collected by some international researchers headed by the PAGUNAM Foundation, a Maya cultural and natural heritage organization. Those have experts rethinking the outlines and complexity of the Maya Empire.
These ancient peoples obviously created these imaginative cultures based on their known relics (遗迹), but the new research has suggested that the size of this lost society is far beyond what experts imagined. The findings will be explored in a one-hour documentary called “Lost Treasures of the Maya Snake Kings”, to be broadcast on the National Geographic Channel.
This breakthrough was possible thanks to LiDAR sensors, which can survey lands in 3D by bouncing pulses off the ground from unmanned air vehicles and others. LiDAR is exceptionally useful for detecting archeological(考古的)sites, as it gets through jungles and other features that hold up exploration on the ground. The technique has made many discoveries become a reality in recent years. For instance, major finds at Angkor, Cambodia and Caracol, Belize can explain what it did. The final goal is to survey Guatemala’s lowlands with it.
“There are entire cities we didn't know about now showing up in the survey data,” Francisco Estrada-Belli, one of the lead archeologists on the project, said in Nat Geo's coming documentary. “There are 20,000 square kilometres more to be explored and there are going to be hundreds of cities about the mysterious people who built this urban network there that we don’t know about, and we will push back the frontiers with the technology,” he added.
1. What does the underlined word "Those" in paragraph 2 refer to?| A．Jungles. | B．Human-made features. |
| C．Researchers. | D．Aerial images. |
| A．The working principle of LiDAR sensors. |
| B．The process of researching Maya civilization. |
| C．Great importance of Guatemalans lowlands. |
| D．LiDAR’s contribution to discovering the relics. |
| A．Small and hidden. | B．Famous and high-tech. |
| C．Vast and complex. | D．Fully-explored and imaginative. |
| A．Continue to explore the unknown. | B．Upgrade the LiDAR technology. |
| C．Study the documentary carefully. | D．Build a massive urban network, |
7 . A good way to look at failure straight in the face is by writing a failure resume(简历)or CV. Like social media，there，we usually only see our friends’“highlight part”. When we look at others’resumes，we get scared and think how ours doesn’t measure up. But even the most accomplished people have plenty of failure behind them—we just don’t see it.
Stefan felt this deeply as a scientist，so she wrote a different CV which of course boasted (夸耀)about her good grades，PhD，and published papers. But the way she deals with her failure CV is a model of what we could a11 do.
“My CV does not reflect my great academic efforts—it does not mention the exams I failed，my unsuccessful PhD or scholarship applications，or the papers never accepted for publication. During the interviews，I talk about the one project that worked，not about the many that failed，”writes Stefan in a column for Nature.com.
Stefan suggests keeping a draft on which you log，casually but regularly，every unsuccessful application，refused grant proposal and rejected paper.
And that’s the point：not to consider what we got wrong，but to use that information to both look at failure and realize it’s really okay，and also to use our failures for another purpose：as learning tools.
The point is to be real—with ourselves and about how the world works. Being real means taking an honest，critical，but also kind look at what we didn’t get right，and then doing our best to change what we can. Instead of focusing on how that failure makes you feel，take the time to step back and analyze the practical，operational reasons that you failed.
So，prctice being okay with failure，and turning your failures into lessons learned. And yes，sometimes we have to learn those lessons more than once，letting go of what you can’t change. And keep moving forward to success.
1. What does the underlined word“it”in the first paragraph refer to?| A．Plenty of failure. | B．A failure resume. |
| C．Highlight part. | D．Social media. |
| A．A11 her failures in her career. |
| B．Benefits she got from her failures. |
| C．The content of her own resume. |
| D．The difference between her resume and others’. |
| A．Regard failures as part of our life. |
| B．Keep a record of our failures. |
| C．Value our achievements. |
| D．Long for failures. |
| A．No pains，no gains. |
| B．A11 roads lead to Rome. |
| C．Where there is a will，there is a way. |
| D．Failure is the mother of success. |
8 . Life in the Internet age is lonely—or is it? That’s what experts in human interaction are debating after a new Stanford University survey has been published.
According to the study, the more time people spend online, the less they can spare for real-life relationships with family and friends. The researchers asked 113 people about the Web’s influence on daily activities. 36％ of those people are online for more than five hours a week.” As Internet use becomes more widespread, it will have an increasingly isolating (孤立的) effect on society,” says Robert Kraut, one of the researchers.
Scholars and Web lovers criticized the study for stretching its data to make the “isolating” point. While 13％ of regular Web users admitted the loss of time with loved ones, 60％ reported watching less TV. The survey also shows that E-mail is the most popular online activity. If some of webheads (网虫)spend what was once passive TV time keeping company with friends via E-mails, “that’s a move toward greater connectedness,” says Paul Resnick, a professor at the University of Michigan.
This isn’t the first claim that the Web should be criticized. A 1998 report monitored 73 Pittsburgh-area families’ Net use for a year. People who used the Internet more “talked less to family members and reported being lonelier and more depressed.” says Robert Kraut.
“It’s true that there have been big declines in social connectedness over the past decades, but those declines began before the Internet was invented,” says Thomas Putnam.
As Amitay Etzioni says, the Internet gives us a different kind of social life—not better or worse than before, but just different.
1. Who claimed that the Web had negative influence?| A．Paul Resnick. | B．Robert Kraut. |
| C．Thomas Putnam. | D．Amitay Etzioni. |
| A．the opinion expressed in Bowling Alone |
| B．the survey made by the University of Michigan |
| C．the conclusion in a report written in 1998 |
| D．the study conducted by Stanford University |
| A．watching TV used to take time away from staying online |
| B．the Web was blamed more than once for causing an isolating effect |
| C．36％ of web users spend more than five hours a week online |
| D．the Web has the same influence as telephones and televisions |
| A．how we can make a better use of the Internet |
| B．how declines in social connectedness appear |
| C．whether the Internet causes an isolating effect |
| D．what a different life the Internet brings to us |
9 . Plastics remain one of the most - used materials for making many things. Things made of plastics can be very strong and last a long time. Plastics are also much lighter than metal and can easily be formed into different shapes. Plastics can take hundreds of years to break down on their own. And very few kinds are highly recyclable.
A team of researchers working at the US Department of Energy says it has created a kind of plastic that could lead to products that are 100 percent recyclable. It recently reported the discovery in a study in the journal Nature Chemistry.
The researchers say the new material is a plastic polymer (聚合体)called polydiketoenamine, or PDK. The team reports the material can be broken down in parts at the molecular (分子的)level. It can then be built up again to form plastics of different shapes, textures and colors. The researchers say this process can be repeated over and over again—without the plastic material losing any performance or quality.
"Most plastics were never made to be recycled, ” lead researcher Peter Christensen said in a statement. " But we have discovered a new way to assemble plastics that takes recycling into consideration from a molecular perspective. ”
Many plastics have different chemicals added to them to make them more useful and powerful. The problem is that these chemicals attach to the monomers (单体),which remain in plastics even after the material gets processed at a recycling plant. The research team reported that, with the newly discovered PDK material, the monomers could be recovered and separated from any chemical additives.
Next, the researchers plan to develop PDK plastics "with a wide range of thermal and mechanical properties. These plastics could be used for many kinds of cloth, as well as things such as 3D printed materials and foams. In addition, the team is trying to include plant - based materials in the process.
1. What is the first paragraph mainly about?| A．Plastics are never highly recyclable. |
| B．Plastics are widely used in our lives. |
| C．Plastics have both advantages and disadvantages. |
| D．Plastics take hundreds of years to be broken down. |
| A．The new material. | B．The research team. |
| C．The molecular level. | D．The producing process. |
| A．To make them easy to break down. |
| B．To make them easy to get processed. |
| C．To make it possible for them to be recycled. |
| D．To make them stronger and more widely used. |
| A．PDK plastics will be soon put to good use. |
| B．PDK plastics may have a promising prospect. |
| C．The researchers are busy developing PDK plastics. |
| D．Plant - based materials have been used in the new plastics. |
10 . At the age of twelve years, the human body is at its most vigorous. It has yet to reach its full size and strength, and its owner his or her full intelligence; but at this age the likelihood of death is least. Earlier, we were infants and young children, and consequently more vulnerable; later, we shall undergo a progressive loss of our vigor and resistance which, though imperceptible at first, will finally become so steep that we can live no longer, however well we look after ourselves, and however well society, and our doctors, look after us.
This decline in vigor with the passing of time is called ageing. It is one of the most unpleasant discoveries which we all make that we must decline in this way, that if we escape wars, accidents and disease we shall eventually "die of old age", and that this happens at a rate which differs little from person to person, so that there are heavy odds in favor of our dying between the ages of sixty-five and eighty. Some of us will die sooner, a few will live longer—on into a ninth or tenth decade. But the chances are against it, and there is a virtual limit on how long we can hope to remain alive, however lucky and robust we are.
Normal people tend to forget this process unless and until they are reminded of it. We are so familiar with the fact that man ages, that people have for years assumed that the process of losing vigor with time, of becoming more likely to die the older we get, was something self-evident, like the cooling of a hot kettle or the wearing-out of a pair of shoes. They have also assumed that all animals, and probably other organisms such as trees, or even the universe itself, must in the nature of things "wear out".
Most animals we commonly observe do in fact age as we do, if given the chance to live long enough; and mechanical systems like a wound watch, or the sun, do in fact an out of energy in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics (热力学) (whether the whole universe does so is a moot point at present). But these are not analogous to what happens when man ages. A run-down watch is still a watch and can be rewound. An old watch, by contrast, becomes so worn and unreliable that it eventually is not worth mending. But a watch could never repair itself—it does not consist of living parts, only of metal, which wears away by friction. We could,at one time, repair ourselves—well enough, at least, to overcome all but the most instantly fatal illnesses and accidents. Between twelve and eighty years we gradually lose this power; an illness which at twelve would knock us over, at eighty can knock us out, and into our grave. If we could stay as vigorous as we are at twelve, it would take about 700 years for half of us to die, and another 700 for the survivors to be reduced by half again.
1. Which of the following statements is INCORRECT?| A．Our first twelve years represent the peak of human development. |
| B．People usually are unhappy when reminded of ageing. |
| C．Normally only a few of us can live to the eighties and nineties. |
| D．People are usually less likely to die at twelve years old. |
| A．remaining alive until 65. |
| B．remaining alive after 80. |
| C．dying before 65 or after 80. |
| D．dying between 65 and 80. |
| A．Normally people are quite familiar with the ageing process. |
| B．All animals and other organisms undergo the ageing process. |
| C．The law of thermodynamics functions in the ageing process. |
| D．Human's ageing process is different from that of mechanisms. |
