1 . A “watch” is the collective noun for nightingales. The term comes from the way nightingales sing from dawn until dusk and into the hours of darkness, keeping watch. It is one of the Britain's best loved but most endangered songbirds, which arrive in spring from West Africa, bringing with them a beautiful song that has inspired poets and musicians from many cultures that the birds have caused over the centuries.
The male nightingales start singing as soon as they return and continue into early June. Rested in the bushes, male nightingales remain unnoticed while their song passes into dark ness to enchant female nightingales and indirectly appeal to human listeners. This combination of performance, beauty, romantic love and night action creates a mythic power that makes nightingales unique among songbirds.
What does a nightingale sound like? Its tune may appeal to human senses but “song” feels like a shorthand description of what the nightingale actually does. The sound comes from the syrinx, an instrument similar to our throat but closer to the bird's heart and which produces an extraordinary range of high and low frequency notes. The nightingale's daytime song is beautiful enough, but as darkness falls and other birds fall quiet, “great jagged sticks of lyrical music are thrown into the summer night sky”, in the words of poet Simon Armitage and broadcaster Tim Dee in their book, A Poetry of Birds.
The song is also very loud. Ornithologist Tim Birkhead recalls being kept awake all night by a nearby nightingale. At 90 decibels, he could feel its song resonating in his chest. Computer recordings of birdsong can detect sounds of less than one tenth of a second. Human ears can't pick them out but female birds certainly respond to these “sexy-syllables”. Although we don't fully understand the nightingale song, it is one of the most celebrated bird songs in the world, and you can hear it in the UK for a brief period in spring-our guide to the best places to hear a nightingale sing this spring.
1. Why are nightingales called “watch”?| A．Because of the artists' love for them. | B．Because of the way of their singing. |
| C．Because of the beauty of their songs. | D．Because of the human desire for their arrival. |
| A．Threaten. | B．Enhance. | C．Guard. | D．Attract. |
| A．Nightingales' songs stand out at night. | B．Nightingales are very quiet at daytime. |
| C．Nightingales' songs are similar to humans’. | D．Nightingales have the same senses as humans. |
| A．Why nightingales are under threat. | B．How to record nightingales' sound. |
| C．When nightingales return to Britain. | D．Where to hear nightingales in Britain. |
2 . In some ways, learning to program a computer is similar to learning a new language. It requires learning new symbols and terms, which must be organized correctly to instruct the computer what to do. Computer code must also be clear enough so that other programmers can read and understand it.
In spite of those similarities, scientists have found that reading computer code doesn't activate the regions of the brain that are involved in language processing. Instead, it activates a distributed network called the multiple demand network, which is also related to complex tasks such as solving math problems or crossword puzzles. Although reading computer code activates the multiple demand network, it appears to rely more on different parts of the network than math or logic problems do. “Understanding computer code seems to be its own thing. It isn't the same as learning a language, and it isn't the same as learning math and logic,” says Anna, the lead author of the study.
Evelina is the senior author of the paper, which appears in eLife. A major focus of her research is the relationship between language and the other cognitive (认知的) functions. In particular, she has been studying the question of whether the other functions rely on the brain's language network, which includes Broca's area and the other brain areas. In previous work, her experiment has shown that music and math don't appear to activate this language network and experiments are under way to see if the other functions can activate it.
Evelina says there are two schools of thought regarding how the brain learns to code. One holds that in order to be good at programming, you must be good at math. The other argues that because of the parallels between coding and language, language skills might be more relevant. To clarify this issue, the researchers set out to study whether brain activity patterns while reading computer code would overlap with language-related brain activity.
1. What can we learn about learning to program a computer from paragraph 1?| A．It restricts language ability. |
| B．It just instructs other programmers what to do. |
| C．It requires the relative organizational capability. |
| D．It is exactly the same as learning a new language. |
| A．It thoroughly depends on logic. |
| B．It is harder than learning a language. |
| C．It is different from some other cognitive tasks. |
| D．It activates the language-processing areas of the brain. |
| A．Its answer remains to be proved. |
| B．It has nothing to do with the brain. |
| C．Its answer has been published in eLife. |
| D．It has something to do with the origin of language. |
| A．Debate on how the brain learns to code. |
| B．Human brain activity and thinking patterns. |
| C．The parallels between human language and computer language. |
| D．The issue over whether language affects computer programming. |
3 . Four-year-old Cleo Smith has been found alive 18 days after she went missing in northwest Australia, and her mother, Ellie Smith, took to Instagram to celebrate the news. “Our family is a whole again,” Smith wrote Wednesday, alongside a smiling picture of her young daughter, who disappeared from her tent on a camping trip almost three weeks earlier.
Police found the little girl at a locked home in the small town of Carnarvon, western Australia, just after midnight Wednesday local time. A police video caught the moment an officer picked up the child and asked her, “What's your name?” The girl replied, “My name is Cleo.”
“When she said 'My name is Cleo', I don't think there was a dry eye in the house,” Deputy Police Commissioner Col Blanch told 6PR radio. “I have seen seasoned detectives openly crying with relief. I am speechless, which is very rare. This is something we all hoped in our hearts, and it has come true.”
The 4-year-old's disappearance caused a massive police search that initially covered several square kilometers around the remote campsite at Quobba Blowholes, around 950 kilometers (590 miles) north of Perth, and later extended nationwide as alerts were issued for sightings of the girl.
Less than a week into the search, the western Australia government offered a reward of 1 million Australian dollars ($750, 000) for information leading to Cleo's discovery. On Wednesday, police said it was unlikely that anyone would claim the million dollar reward, as Cleo's rescue was the result of painstaking work by the police.
1. What did Ellie Smith take to Instagram to celebrate?| A．She won a prize. | B．Her missing child was found. |
| C．She got promoted for her job. | D．She delivered a new baby. |
| A．People present were in tears of joy. |
| B．It was easy to cry facing a lost girl. |
| C．The police there experienced some discomfort. |
| D．The house was too wet to keep one's eyes dry. |
| A．Searching for the missing girl only covered the limited campsite. |
| B．North of Perth was covered with a large area of desert. |
| C．People didn't worry about the missing girl. |
| D．The girl's disappearance concerned the nation. |
| A．The police. | B．The 4-year-old. |
| C．No one. | D．Ellie Smith. |
4 . Thanksgiving brings to mind the golden roast Turkey, sweet pumpkin pie, and the smell of happiness in the air as families sit down to a big meal. There's no better time to watch a classic Thanksgiving movie.
The Gold Rush (1925)
Charlie Chaplin as the Little Tramp eats his shoe for Thanksgiving dinner while trapped in a snowstorm in this attractive silent film classic from 1925. Watch this one if you're in the mood to see a leather shoe prepared and eaten as if it were a delicious turkey. Make you grateful for what you have!
Scent of a Woman (1992)
The movie focuses on the relationship between Frank (Al Pacino), a blind, retired captain in the US army who is difficult to get along with, and Charlie (Chris O'Donnell), a prep school student who takes the job as Frank's assistant for Thanksgiving.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987)
This John Hughes comedy starring Steve Martin and John Candy is already a Thanksgiving classic for many. Neal (Martin) ends up rerouted because of a snowstorm. As he struggles to find a way home for Thanksgiving, he gets stuck with irresistibly positive Del (Candy).
One True Thing (1998)
Meryl Streep was nominated (提名) for an Academy Award for her performance in this movie as a wife and mom who struggles with cancer. Renée Zellweger plays the grown daughter who has to come home to help with the holidays. The two try to hold the family together, especially during a tense Thanksgiving meal when guests get all the attention.
1. Which of the following movies has no dialogues?| A．The Gold Rush. | B．Scent of a Woman. |
| C．Planes, Trains and Automobiles | D．One True Thing. |
| A．Its hero is a little tramp. |
| B．The movie is set in a storm. |
| C．Its actress was nominated for Academy Award. |
| D．One of its leading roles is a blind retired soldier. |
| A．They are all silent film classics. |
| B．They are comedies about Thanksgiving. |
| C．They are associated with Thanksgiving. |
| D．They are concerned with family-dinner party. |
