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. |
| A．the crowds were relatively small | B．there were occasional underestimates |
| C．individuals did not communicate | D．estimates were not fully independent |
| A．The size of the groups. | B．The dominant members. |
| C．The discussion process. | D．The individual estimates. |
| A．Unclear. | B．Dismissive. | C．Doubtful. | D．Approving. |
Stop Asian Hate
During the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, New York City saw a sharp increase in harassment and violence against Asian people and communities, especially Asian elders. Discrimination on the basis of race, national origin, age, and disability, including having or
We all want to live in a world that is free from prejudice and
Since the pandemic, something has been made nasty in the media by comments from Donald Trump calling it “the China virus”, and ESEA people all over the world have found that their lives have been turned upside down. In the wake of the tragic deaths in the US and several studies
Working towards a world where no racism exists is always important to us, and will always be something
I needed to do something in my community (社区) in order to complete the community service hours required to graduate from high school. Some of my friends had signed up to spend time at a soup kitchen, so I did, too. It seemed like a good thing to do.
I thought that we would just be passing out dinners to those in need, but I found out we would be doing everything from preparing to serving the dinner. We began preparing the food, from mixing salad dressing to separating frozen meat. Much still needed to be done before dinner was served, but already outside the building many homeless people were gathering. It wasn’t until a couple of hours later that we opened the doors and began serving dinner.
As the line of people came toward me, I got a little scared. I’d come face to face with the homeless: How should I act? How would they treat me? Would they hate me for having more than they did? While some of the people looked very friendly, some of them looked so dangerous. I didn’t have too much time to worry about it. I was assigned (分配) to serve the salad with the lady next to me. She smiled at me and said if I needed help, she’d be right there, which I found quite comforting.
I had never seen so many people wanting food. They were of all ages and nationalities. Most of them wore clothes that were torn and dirty. Some looked like they had tally given up on life, while others seemed to be making the best of the situation, smiling and joking. Some were better off than others, but they all needed a good meal and a warm place to eat. It saddened me to think of how many people there were who didn’t have a place to call home and the only food they got came from a soup kitchen.
注意：
1. 所续写短文的词数应为150左右；
2. 至少使用5个短文中标有下划线的关键词语；
3. 续写部分分为两段，每段的开头语已为你写好；
4. 续写完成后，请用下划线标出你所使用的关键词语。
Paragraph 1:
As they came in my direction, I put on my brightest and happiest smile.
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Paragraph 2:
I was so happy that I had earned my service hours in this way.
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4 . Mental Health Crisis Among Teens Demands a New Approach
Since the CDC released its survey results last month showing alarmingly high rates of sadness and depressive thoughts among teens, fingers have been pointed from two sides at the causes of this crisis.
According to the CDC’s findings, more than one in five of the 17,000 high school students surveyed reported mental breakdown. Their rates of sadness and hopelessness are the highest in a decade, reflecting an increasing trend exacerbated by society’s isolation(隔离)and stress.
Parents as well as teachers and others who have direct contact with children must accept this preventive approach. It is crucial that they not be afraid to ask direct questions about depressive thoughts.
| A．And they should resist the false idea that raising a question creates a risk that was not there before. |
| B．This means that we must put aside our disagreements and approach this issue as a matter of life and death. |
| C．Some have argued that the climate issue has created an existential threat and accompanying anxiety. |
| D．Hospitalization may also be appropriate when the person in question shows an immediate danger to themselves. |
| E．At the macro(宏观的)level, our country can do so much more to help people struggling with mental health problems and their families. |
| F．It’s time to stop blaming and turn our attention to this generation of struggling teenagers. |
| G．It’s time for those who have the power to amplify(放大)their voices and drive change to focus on helping teenagers and families access the help they need. |
5 . The “reading wars,” one of the most confusing and disabling conflicts in the history of education, went on heatedly in the 1980s and then peace came. Advocates of phonics (learning by being taught the sound of each letter group) seemed to defeat advocates of whole language (learning by using cues like context and being exposed to much good literature).
Recent events suggest the conflict of complicated concepts is far from over. Teachers, parents and experts appear to agree that phonics is crucial, but what is going on in classrooms is not in agreement with what research studies say is required, which has aroused a national debate over the meaning of the word “phonics.”
Lucy M. Calkins, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College and a much-respected expert on how to teach reading, has drawn attention with an eight-page essay. Here is part of her argument: “The important thing is to teach kids that they needn’t freeze when they come to a hard word, nor skip past it. The important thing is to teach them that they have resources to draw upon, and to use those resources to develop endurance.”
To Calkins’s critics, it is cruel and wasteful to encourage 6-year-olds to look for clues if they don’t immediately know the correct sounds. They should work on decoding — knowing the pronunciation of every letter group — until they master it, say the critics, backed by much research.
Calkins’s approach “is a slow, unreliable way to read words and an inefficient way to develop word recognition skill,” Mark S. Seidenberg, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin, said in a blog post. “Dr. Calkins treats word recognition as a reasoning problem — like solving a puzzle. She is committed to the educational principle that children learn best by discovering how systems work rather than being told.”
Many others share his view. “Children should learn to decode — i.e., go from print on the page to words in the mind — not by clever guesswork and inference, but by learning to decode,” Daniel Willingham, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, told me. He said the inferences Calkins applauds are “cognitively (认知地) demanding, and readers don’t have much endurance for it. … It disturbs the flow of what you’re reading, and doing a lot of it gets frustrating.”
Yet a recent survey found that only 22 percent of 670 early-reading teachers are using the approach of phonics and what they mean by phonics is often no more than marking up a worksheet.
Both sides agree that children need to acquire the vocabulary and background information that gives meaning to words. But first, they have to pronounce them correctly to connect the words they have learned to speak.
Calkins said in her essay: “Much of what the phonics people are saying is praiseworthy,” but it would be a mistake to teach phonics “at the expense of reading and writing.”
The two sides appear to agree with her on that.
1. Critics of phonics hold the opinion that ________.| A．children should be taught to use context |
| B．teaching phonics is both boring and useless |
| C．kids acquire vocabulary in hearing letter groups |
| D．pronunciation has nothing to do with meaning of words |
| A．Tell me and I will forget; show me and I will remember. |
| B．Skilled reading is fast and automatic but not deliberative. |
| C．Word recognition skill should be developed in problem reasoning. |
| D．Learning to make reasonable inferences is also a way of decoding. |
| A．phonics approach has been proved to be successful |
| B．children don’t shy away from difficulties in reading |
| C．the two reading approaches might integrate with each other |
| D．reading and writing are much more important than phonics |
| A．An everlasting reading war among critics |
| B．From print on the page to words in the mind |
| C．A battle restarts between phonics, whole language |
| D．Decoding and inferring confuse early-reading teachers |
6 . 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 |
| 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 |
| 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. |
| 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? |
As a young boy, I was carefree. Every vacation I looked forward to two things—seeing my grandpa and hearing his wonderful stories. My grandpa was a very good storyteller. He had worked various odd jobs when he was young and wove his adventures and misadventures into fantastic tales. These wonderful tales colored my childhood.
As I grew up, I had to admit that Grandpa’s stories went on a little long, even a little boring and gradually lost their magic. However, not wanting to upset him, my brother and I would sometimes take turns sitting in the living room, listening to grandpa tell his stories.
When my grandpa was approaching 91, he suffered from serious memory-loss. It was kind of what doctors called dementia (痴呆), probably the earliest stage of Alzheimer’s disease. Following the doctor’s directions, we moved him into a Sunrise Assisted Living Community, where he could get a better care. After that, grandpa hardly came to our house.
One weekend before my grandpa’s birthday, I came to visit him. Seeing grandpa sitting in his armchair, dull-looking, I was consumed with mixed feelings. I wheeled grandpa to the sunshine in the courtyard, talking to him. He couldn’t express himself clearly and spoke in short bursts, but I listened to him patiently and carefully just as I used to be a little boy.
It was then that I noticed a shadow box with some old and yellowish photos in it. I picked one up, in which my brother, several boys in our neighborhood, and I were playing basketball with grandpa cheering us on twenty years before. My mind flashed back to those beautiful memories. Back then, Grandpa was in good physical condition and we were all wearing basketball jerseys, playing and laughing with abandon. I presented the photo to my grandpa, pointing at each member and reminding him of their names. Incredibly, grandpa could speak out the name of every player. I even caught a soft light in grandpa’s eyes and a smile on his lips.
注意：1. 续写词数应为150 左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
A bright idea for grandpa’s birthday came to my mind.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Seeing “the same players” playing there, grandpa seemed to have thought of something.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________8 . 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 5th.
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. |
| A．Last Exit: Space. | B．Gorbachev. Heaven. |
| C．We Met In Virtual Reality. | D．2nd Chance. |
| A．Science & Technology. | B．Fashion & Beauty. |
| C．Culture & Entertainment. | D．Travel & Adventure. |
9 . ‘Small Data’ Are Also Crucial for Machine Learning
Many people relate “artificial intelligence” with “big data.” There’s a reason for that: some of the most prominent AI breakthroughs in the past decade have relied on enormous data sets. Image
Also known as “fine-tuning,” transfer learning is helpful in settings where you have
Small data approaches such as transfer learning are more
Despite the progress in research, transfer learning has received relatively little
As long as the success of small data technique like transfer learning is
| A．standard | B．classification | C．quality | D．acquisition |
| A．written | B．limited | C．spoken | D．abundant |
| A．moral | B．visual | C．literary | D．popular |
| A．complicated | B．interesting | C．promising | D．distinguished |
| A．extra | B．different | C．available | D．few |
| A．personal | B．specific | C．technical | D．potential |
| A．in addition | B．or rather | C．in particular | D．for example |
| A．adjust | B．invent | C．follow | D．check |
| A．definite | B．advantageous | C．complex | D．precise |
| A．remotely | B．severely | C．ultimately | D．rarely |
| A．underexplored | B．underestimated | C．underpopulated | D．underqualified |
| A．guidance | B．respect | C．supervision | D．visibility |
| A．publication | B．adoption | C．tracking | D．polishing |
| A．celebrated | B．evaluated | C．recognized | D．diversified |
| A．challenge | B．concern | C．fear | D．misunderstanding |
10 . Simone Biles was born in 1997. Soon, her parents found that she couldn’t sit still. When she was 6 years old, her day-care group went on a field trip to a gym. Simone loved watching the gymnasts train and performances. She couldn’t just watch them, though—she had to try their moves. She was so good that one of the coaches sent a letter home with her, inviting Simone to take gymnastics classes.
Simone loved the classes, and she was excellent at climbing, swinging, jumping, and tumbling (翻筋斗). Though she had a lot to learn, the coaches could hardly keep up with Simone. When one girl performed a standing back tuck (翻折), Simone was sure she could do one too. Her coach didn’t believe her, so Simone tried the trick and made it on the spot.
At 9, Simone learned why she couldn’t sit still: She had ADHD( 多动症). Her brain moved fast and her body did too — which made it hard for her to concentrate in school but which also made her an amazing gymnast. “The challenges we face help define who we are,” Simone wrote. “My challenge is also my superpower.” Simone’s superpower would help make her one of the most dynamic gymnasts ever seen.
Simone is one of the greatest athletes in history. At age 16, she won two gold medals at the Artistic Gymnastics World Championships(AGWC), including the all-around (the total score from competing in all events). She has now won 25 world medals, 19 of them gold. That’s the most in world gymnastics history.
Simone competed in her first Olympics in 2016. She was the first female U.S. gymnast to win four gold medals in an Olympic Games. Since then, Simone has debuted (首次呈现) some moves never successfully done in world competitions, including a double-double dismount (下马) from the balance beam.The move became known as the Biles. Several signature moves have been named after Simone.
1. Who found Simone Biles’ gymnastics talent?| A．Her parents. | B．A tour guide. |
| C．A gymnastics coach. | D．Her kindergarten teacher. |
| A．A disease. | B．An accident. |
| C．A superpower. | D．A family tradition. |
| A．She has now won 25 world gold medals. |
| B．Some competitions are named after Simone. |
| C．She won two gold medals at AGWC in 2013. |
| D．She competed in her first Olympics at 21. |
| A．She made those moves well-known worldwide. |
| B．She has won the most World Championship medals. |
| C．She created and owned the gymnastics skills by herself. |
| D．She used the actions for the first time internationally. |
