1 . On March 7, 1907, the English statistician Francis Galton published a paper which illustrated what has come to be known as the “wisdom of crowds” effect. The experiment of estimation he conducted showed that in some cases, the average of a large number of independent estimates could be quite accurate.

This effect capitalizes on the fact that when people make errors, those errors aren’t always the same. Some people will tend to overestimate, and some to underestimate. When enough of these errors are averaged together, they cancel each other out, resulting in a more accurate estimate. If people are similar and tend to make the same errors, then their errors won’t cancel each other out. In more technical terms, the wisdom of crowds requires that people’s estimates be independent. If for whatever reasons, people’s errors become correlated or dependent, the accuracy of the estimate will go down.

But a new study led by Joaquin Navajas offered an interesting twist (转折) on this classic phenomenon. The key finding of the study was that when crowds were further divided into smaller groups that were allowed to have a discussion, the averages from these groups were more accurate than those from an equal number of independent individuals. For instance, the average obtained from the estimates of four discussion groups of five was significantly more accurate than the average obtained from 20 independent individuals.

In a follow-up study with 100 university students, the researchers tried to get a better sense of what the group members actually did in their discussion. Did they tend to go with those most confident about their estimates? Did they follow those least willing to change their minds? This happened some of the time, but it wasn’t the dominant response. Most frequently, the groups reported that they “shared arguments and reasoned together”. Somehow, these arguments and reasoning resulted in a global reduction in error. Although the studies led by Navajas have limitations and many questions remain, the potential implications for group discussion and decision-making are enormous.

1. What is paragraph 2 of the text mainly about?

A．The methods of estimation.	B．The underlying logic of the effect.
C．The causes of people’s errors.	D．The design of Galton’s experiment.

2. Navajas’ study found that the average accuracy could increase even if ________.

A．the crowds were relatively small	B．there were occasional underestimates
C．individuals did not communicate	D．estimates were not fully independent

3. What did the follow-up study focus on?

A．The size of the groups.	B．The dominant members.
C．The discussion process.	D．The individual estimates.

4. What is the author’s attitude toward Navajas’ studies?

A．Unclear.

B．Dismissive.

C．Doubtful.

D．Approving.

2 . 阅读下面材料，根据其内容和所给段落开头语续写两段，使之构成一篇完整的短文。

I was invited to a cookout on an old friend’s farm in western Washington. I parked my car outside the farm and walked past a milking house which had apparently not been used in many years. A noise at a window caught my attention, so I entered it. It was a hummingbird (蜂鸟), desperately trying to escape. She was covered in spider-webs (蛛网) and was barely able to move her wings. She ceased her struggle the instant I picked her up.

With the bird in my cupped hand, I looked around to see how she had gotten in. The broken window glass was the likely answer. I stuffed a piece of cloth into the hole and took her outside, closing the door securely behind me.

When I opened my hand, the bird did not fly away; she sat looking at me with her bright eyes. I removed the sticky spider-webs that covered her head and wings. Still, she made no attempt to fly. Perhaps she had been struggling against the window too long and was too tired? Or too thirsty?

As I carried her up the blackberry-lined path toward my car where I kept a water bottle, she began to move. I stopped, and she soon took wing but did not immediately fly away.

Hovering (悬停), she approached within six inches of my face. For a very long moment, this tiny creature looked into my eyes, turning her head from side to side. Then she flew quickly out of sight.

During the cookout, I told my hosts about the hummingbird incident. They promised to fix the window. As I was departing, my friends walked me to my car. I was standing by the car when a hummingbird flew to the center of our group and began hovering. She turned from person to person until she came to me. She again looked directly into my eyes, then let out a squeaking call and was gone. For a moment, all were speechless. Then someone said, “She must have come to say goodbye.”

注意：
1. 续写词数应为 150 左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题纸的相应位置作答。

A few weeks later, I went to the farm again.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I was just about to leave when the hummingbird appeared.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

5 . How to Feel Connected

It's easy to feel disconnected from what is going on around you in today's fast-paced world.     1     You can get in touch and feel connected, however, by following the tips below:

Consider why you feel disconnected. Knowing what is making you feel disconnected can help you choose the best ways to address it.     2     Ask yourself these questions: Are you keeping yourself occupied with work too much? Do you rely on electronic communication instead of face to face communication? Do you lack friendships that are satisfying?

Interact with people in person. Technology is a great way to stay in touch, but sometimes you need to spend time with other people in person.     3     You can also take steps to feel more connected by making small-talk with strangers who are sharing parts of your day.

    4    

Your loved ones could feel shy, so you may never know how to improve your relationship unless you ask the right questions. Asking them to open the doors can give you some insight on what you can do. Learning this information can help to strengthen your bond.

Show your commitment to them. Simply showing up and being there for your loved ones says a lot about how much you value your relationships. Putting in the time shows them that you are committed and want to stay connected.     5    

Show appreciation. A simple “thank you” goes a very long way. Unfortunately, it is something that people who are close often take for granted. Telling someone you appreciate their time, love, and efforts can strengthen your bond and help you to become more connected.

A．Ask others what they need from you.

B．Sometimes you can feel isolated and distant from the ones you love.

C．Be brave to express your love.

D．Reach out to people to schedule a time to get together.

E．Attending family events, or simply visiting someone once a week can help to strengthen your relationship and keep it strong.

F．Targeting your efforts toward those issues allows you to close that distance more effectively.

G．You can have a gift delivered to friends on special occasions.

6 . “It will be marvelous. It will be spiritual.” This is the ________ tagline that Virgin Galactic used in 2004 to attract potential customers to its planned space tourism services. It promised that, within five years, it would take a total of over 3,000 passengers on life-changing trips in its spaceships. On July 11, 2021, after a last 90-minute delay, Virgin Galactic finally began its fulfillment of that original ________. For four minutes, its six temporarily weightless passengers, including the firm’s British co-founder, Sir Richard Branson, saw the planet against the blackness of outer space.

Back on the ground, Sir Richard called the experience “magical”. He may have ________ the fact that he was able to reach space earlier than Jeff Bezos, a fellow billionaire but much wealthier. On July 20, Bezos would go slightly higher, for slightly less time, in a vehicle that had been built by his own spacefaring company, Blue Origin.

The two tycoons (大亨) are among a growing number of ________ who believe that space tourism’s time has come. Suborbital (亚轨道的) tourism is part of a broader space economy that has rapidly grown over the past decade ________ technological advances. However, it is highly ________ that this will be true.

For now, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic will offer ________ suborbital flights to paying customers. Blue Origin is focusing much more on the development of a large new rocket that will be used for the launching of satellites, on selling advanced rocket engines to other companies, and on bidding (投标) on NASA contracts such as the recently announced plan to send humans back to the moon. ________, Bezos doesn’t see Blue Origin as a provider of services to adventure-seekers.

Even this 4-minute suborbital travels have a(n) ________, apparently. A major survey found that nearly two in five people with a net worth of over five million dollars would consider paying $250,000, Virgin Galactic’s current price, for a ticket. The business could be ________, once regular flights begin to offset (抵消) the rockets’ development costs. But how fast and by how much is ________. Without tourist-friendly destinations to visit (the capacity of the International Space Station is strictly limited), orbital tourism, with its far higher ticket prices, will not be a huge earner.

Another challenge — and the industry’s biggest remaining uncertainty — relates to ________. History has shown that a disaster, ________ in the early stages of an industry, can set progress back by years. NASA ________ its plan to send the untrained to orbit in 1986 after a school teacher was killed along with the rest of the crew in the Challenger tragedy. It was another 15 years before the next untrained person would ________ the journey on a Russian craft.

1.

A．modest

B．demanding

C．motivational

D．unclear

2.

A．obligation

B．commitment

C．requirement

D．survey

3.

A．felt ashamed of

B．kept an eye on

C．felt content with

D．got upset with

4.

A．optimists

B．opponents

C．experts

D．objectors

5.

A．thanks to

B．but for

C．apart from

D．in spite of

6.

A．impossible

B．undoubted

C．probable

D．favorable

7.

A．long-lasting

B．inexpensive

C．automatic

D．brief

8.

A．On the contrary

B．What’s more

C．In the long run

D．Above all

9.

A．shortcoming

B．limitation

C．advantage

D．appeal

10.

A．profitable

B．uneconomic

C．eco-friendly

D．globalized

11.

A．predictable

B．essential

C．irrelevant

D．uncertain

12.

A．development

B．security

C．stability

D．novelty

13.

A．particularly

B．critically

C．precisely

D．unforeseeably

14.

A．initiated

B．drafted

C．modified

D．suspended

15.

A．brave

B．abandon

C．steer

D．pause

7 . The environmental practices of big businesses are shaped by a fundamental fact that offends our sense of justice. A business may maximize the amount of money it makes by damaging the environment and hurting people. When government regulation is effective, and the public is environmentally aware, environmentally clean big businesses may out-compete dirty ones, but the reverse is likely to be true if government regulation is ineffective and the public doesn’t care.

It is easy to blame a business for helping itself by hurting other people. But blaming alone is unlikely to produce change. It ignores the fact that businesses are not charities but profit-making companies, and they are under obligation to maximize profits for shareholders by legal means.

Our blaming of businesses also ignores the ultimate responsibility of the public for creating the conditions that let a business profit through destructive environmental policies. In the long run, it is the public, either directly or through its politicians, that has the power to make such destructive policies unprofitable and illegal, and to make sustainable environmental policies profitable.

The public can do that by accusing businesses of harming them. The public may also make their opinion felt by choosing to buy sustainably harvested products; by preferring their governments to award valuable contracts to businesses with a good environmental track record; and by pressing their governments to pass and enforce laws and regulations requiring good environmental practices.

In turn, big businesses can exert powerful pressure on any suppliers that might ignore public or government pressure. For instance, after the US public became concerned about the spread of a disease, transmitted to humans through infected meat, the US government introduced rules demanding that the meat industry abandon practices associated with the risk of the disease spreading. But the meat packers refused to follow these, claiming that they would be too expensive to obey. However, when a fast-food company made the same demands after customer purchases of its hamburgers dropped, the meat industry followed immediately. The public’s task is therefore to identify which links in the supply chain are sensitive to public pressure.

Some readers may be disappointed or outraged that I place the ultimate responsibility for business practices harming the public on the public itself. I also believe that the public must accept the necessity for higher prices for products to cover the added costs of sound environmental practices. My views may seem to ignore the belief that businesses should act in accordance with moral principles even if this leads to a reduction in their profits. But I think we have to recognize that, throughout human history, government regulation has arisen precisely because it was found that not only did moral principles need to be made explicit, they also needed to be enforced.

My conclusion is not a moralistic one about who is right or wrong, admirable or selfish. I believe that changes in public attitudes are essential for changes in businesses’ environmental practices.

1. The main idea of Paragraph 3 is that environmental damage__________.

A．is the result of ignorance of the public

B．requires political action if it is to be stopped

C．can be prevented by the action of ordinary people

D．can only be stopped by educating business leaders

2. In Paragraph 4, the writer describes ways in which the public can__________.

A．reduce their own individual impact on the environment

B．learn more about the impact of business on the environment

C．raise awareness of the effects of specific environmental disasters

D．influence the environmental policies of businesses and governments

3. What pressure was given by big business in the case of the disease mentioned in Paragraph 5?

A．Meat packers stopped supplying hamburgers to fast-food chains.

B．Meat packers persuaded the government to reduce their expenses.

C．A fast-food company forced their meat suppliers to follow the law.

D．A fast-food company encouraged the government to introduce regulations.

4. What would be the best heading for this passage?

A．Will the world survive the threat caused by big businesses?

B．How can big businesses be encouraged to be less driven by profit?

C．What environmental dangers are caused by the greed of businesses?

D．Are big businesses to blame for the damage they cause to the environment?

8 . What is volunteer travel?

Volunteer travel involves taking a trip where all or part of the purpose of the trip is to participate in an arranged service opportunity helping others. Typically, the volunteer activity takes place in a foreign country, but some opportunities can involve national or regional projects.     1    

Charitable interests often go far beyond national boundaries. People in developed countries become interested in the struggles of people in less developed countries.     2     Volunteer travel is a way to combine a visit to a new location with meaningful work that has a direct impact on communities in other parts of the world.

    3     Historically, church groups made up a large part of this market. Once a year a religious organization or church would organize a trip to another country.     4     For example, it would be to help build a school in an impoverished(贫困的)area, or dig wells so a village would have clean water, or engage in hundreds of other projects that would impact those less fortunate. As international travel became easier and the Internet made communication between countries much easier, the interest in volunteer travel increased.

    5     Volunteering in other countries has become as accessible as browsing a website and signing up. Instead of traveling with a group that is organized at the volunteers home base, the volunteer may join a group that gathers at the worksite from all over the world. This sort of volunteer travel is sometimes referred to as voluntourism or vacanteerism.

A．The primary purpose of the trip was very specific.

B．This type of travel has been an option for many years.

C．Educational institutions also made volunteer travel an option.

D．Sometimes, donating money is not enough to satisfy the need to help.

E．The Internet has helped make community service in general more popular.

F．These trips are usually arranged by church organizations, human interest groups or non-profits.

G．A new trend is that for-profit tour operators arrange group travel around volunteer opportunities.

9 .

What may well be the oldest metal coins in the world have been identified at an ancient abandoned city known as Guanzhuang in China. Like many Bronze Age (青铜时代) coins from the region, they were cast in the shape of spades with finely carved handles. These ancient coins existed during an in-between period between barter (以物易物) and money, when coins were a novel concept, but everybody knew that agricultural tools were valuable.

Reading about this incredible discovery, I kept thinking about the way modern people represent computer networks by describing machines as having “addresses”, like a house. We also talk about one computer using a “port” to send information to another computer, as if the data were a floating boat with destination. It’s as if we are in the Bronze Age of information technology, grasping desperately for real-world reference to transform our civilization.

Now consider what happened to spade coins. Over centuries, metalworkers made these coins into more abstract shapes. Some became almost human figures. Others’ handles were reduced to small half-circles. As spade coins grew more abstract, people carved them with number values and the locations where they were made. They became more like modern coins, flat and covered in writing. Looking at one of these later pieces, you would have no idea that they were once intended to look like a spade.

This makes me wonder if we will develop an entirely new set of symbols that allow us to interact with our digital information more smoothly.

Taking spade coins as our guide, we can guess that far-future computer networks will no longer contain any recognizable references to houses. But they still might bring some of the ideas we associate with home to our mind. In fact, computer networks — if they still exist at all — are likely to be almost the indispensable part of our houses and cities, their sensors inset with walls and roads. Our network addresses might actually be the same as our street addresses. If climate change leads to floods, our mobile devices might look more like boats than phones, assisting us to land.

My point is that the metaphors of the information age aren’t random. Mobile devices do offer us comfort after a long day at work. In some sense, our desire to settle on the shores of data lakes could change the way we understand home, as well as how we build computers. So as we cast our minds forward, we have to think about what new abstractions will go along with our information technology. Perhaps the one thing we count on is that humans will still appreciate the comforts of home.

1. Many Bronze Age coins were made into the shape of a spade because ___________.

A．a lot of emphasis was put on agriculture

B．this stylish design made the coins valuable

C．these coins also served as agricultural tools

D．the handles made the coins easily exchanged

2. Why does the author relate computers to spade coins?

A．To show they both used to be new concepts when first invented.

B．To explain abstract digital worlds are different from concrete coins.

C．To suggest computers will experience dramatic changes as coins did.

D．To highlight their same importance in our civilizational transformation.

3. What does the underlined word “indispensable” in Paragraph 5 probably mean?

A．Flexible.

B．Essential.

C．Wasteful.

D．Alternative.

4. Which of the following would be the best title for the passage?

A．What Coins and Computers Bring Us

B．How Agriculture Loses to Digital Industry

C．How Bronze Age Develops to Information Age

D．What Ancient Money Tells Us About the Future

10 . We’ve dug deep to find 4 of the most exciting documentary films coming to a screen near you in 2022.

Last Exit: Space

Last Exit: Space, narrated by Werner Herzog, explores the human potential for settling in space and sending people where they’ve never been before. Since planet Earth is possibly going to hell (地狱) in a handbasket, the film promises to ask the question: where else might we call home? Directed by his son Rudolph Herzog, Last Exit: Space will be available from March 10 on Discovery.

Gorbachev. Heaven

As leader of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev was once one of the most powerful people on the planet who governed a landmass so big that it covered 11 time zones. Gorbachev’s legacy is a complex one — he oversaw the end of the Cold War but many Russians blame him for the Soviet Union’s collapse. The BBC says this potentially fascinating look at one of the most significant figures from inside his own home will be airing in the very near future.

We Met In Virtual Reality

This film from director Joe Hunting beats fresh ground in that it is filmed entirely in virtual reality. Less about the technology itself, it is more an exploration of human connections and how these can develop in the 3D virtual world. Early reviews have been positive following its showing at Sundance. Expect a streaming release in late May this year.

2nd Chance

Hold your popcorn tightly when watching this. If the trailer (预告片) is anything to go by, there are going to be lots of near-death moments. 2nd Chance from Oscar-nominated director Ramin Bahrani tells the story of Richard Davis, the wild and odd inventor of the modern bullet-proof vest. “All will be revealed as soon as a release date is confirmed.” Ramin Bahrani promised on April 5^th.

1. What is probably the major concern in Last Exit: Space?

A．Space travel is difficult for people.

B．Human beings may go to hell after death.

C．Human beings can’t find their way back from space.

D．The earth will become unfit for human habitation.

2. Which documentary film suits people who are interested in studying history?

A．Last Exit: Space.	B．Gorbachev. Heaven.
C．We Met In Virtual Reality.	D．2nd Chance.

3. In which section of a magazine can you find this text?

A．Science & Technology.	B．Fashion & Beauty.
C．Culture & Entertainment.	D．Travel & Adventure.