1 . Directions:After reading the passages below.fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent andgrammatically correct.For the blanks with given words,fill in each blank with the proper form of the word given:for the other blanks,use one word for each blank the best fits the context.

One of the most important New Year's resolutions     1     every parent should make for 2021 is to ensure everyone in the family spends less time with screens. Since last year, a number of new studies     2     (confirm) that the effects of technology on kids are even worse than many parents feared.

Children between the ages of 8 and 11 who spend more than two hours a day looking at screens were associated with lower cognitive function than those who engaged in less screen time, according to researchers who published a study in The Lancet in September. While researchers noted there is no causal link, they wrote,“Emerging evidence suggests that mobile device and social media uses have an unfavorable relationship with attention, memory, impulse control, and academic performance”--- perhaps     3     technology encourages multi-tasking and can cut into kids' sleep time.

The Times also reported many elite schools are moving towards eliminating or reducing screens, while many public schools are touting technology in classrooms.     4     fears of a technological divide were once centered on the high cost of technology and high-speed internet access, the concern is now that less affluent children     5     be spending more time with technology. Already, research by Common Sense Media has found that higher-income teenagers spend less time with screens for entertainment compared to lower-income teens. Of course, a total ban isn't necessarily a smart strategy, either. Some screen time can be important for helping kids learn to use technology they     6     (need) in their careers. They might also use it in beneficial ways     7     (access) educational games and programs, and stay connected to family and friends, for example.

And     8     parents blame their kids' bad behavior on their technology use, it's also important to take a look in the mirror. Moms and dads need to reduce their own screen time, too. A study published in June in Pediatric Research found that there's     9     vicious cycle: The parents' use of phones and its interference in parent-child interactions is associated with kids acting out(模仿).This might then prompt parents to continue using their phones as a way to cope with stress.

New Year's celebrations are the perfect time to get the whole family to look up from their screens       10     offering some fun alternatives like board games, scavenger hunts, baking treats or getting together with family and friends. Kids will soon discover that there are plenty of things that aren't on Facebook to "like."

2 . Directions: Read the following passage. Summarize the main idea and the main point(s) of the passage in NO MORE THAN 60 WORDS. Use your own words as far as possible.

The lost art of listening

Do you think you’re a good listener? Chances are that you do. But studies show that most people seriously overestimate their ability to listen. The truth is we are generally not good at listening, and our listening comprehension declines as we age.

This was proven by Dr. Ralph Nichols, who conducted a simple experiment to test students’ listening skills. He had some Minnesota teachers stop what they were doing mid-class, and then asked students to describe what their teachers had been talking about. While older kids with more developed brains, are usually assumed to be better listeners, the results, however, showed otherwise: While 90 percent of first-and second-graders gave correct responses, this percentage dropped rapidly as the students got older.

One reason for our poor listening concerns the speed at which we think. The adult brain can process up to around 400 words per minute, more than three times faster than the speed an average person speaks. This means we can easily think about something else while someone is talking to us, allowing our mind to wander or get sidetracked. The younger students in Dr. Nichols’s experiment were better listeners partly because their brains were less developed — they lacked the extra brain power to be distracted.

Another factor that contributes to our poor listening is our ever-decreasing attention span. According to a Mircrosoft study, the age of smartphones has had a negative impact here. In 2000 — around the time the mobile revolution began — the average human attention span was 12 seconds; by 2013, it had fallen to 8 seconds. Even a goldfish — with an average attention span of 9 seconds — can hold a thought for longer!

More and more people now realize that listening is a skill that can be developed through practice. Learning to observe a speaker’s body language and emotions, for example, can improve our active listening. Even the simple act of note-taking or making eye contact can help us stay focused while listening.

3 . Economists have long tried to calculate the value of unpaid housework. In terms of inputs and outputs, the_______of a stay-at-home parent can easily be overlooked, hidden in the _______ of freshly ironed shirts and the contents of a full belly. The courts, too, have tried their hand at putting a price on housework.

Last month China was shocked when a court ordered a man to pay his wife $7,700 for housework during their live-year marriage. The wife, known as Ms Wang, told a judge in Beijing that she "looked after the child and managed the household _______ while her husband did not care about or participate in any other household affairs besides going to work". On average, Chinese women spend four hours a day on housework, compared with about an hour and a half for men.

The court ruling was widely _______. But on Weibo many users were disappointed with the amount _______ to Ms Wang. One user commented: "Women should never be stay-at-home wives. When you divorce, you are left with nothing whatsoever." The government has adopted policies aimed at advancing co-parenting and protecting women's rights. Most provinces, for example, have in recent years introduced _______ leave for new fathers. But many people argue that it is too short—an average of just two weeks—to _______ new mothers, who receive a minimum of 98 days, from child care.

In the West, where the starting principle is an equal split of the couple's assets on divorce, claims for extra compensation are _______ by the courts. Housework is seen as equivalent to financial contributions, so neither spouse _______ financially by doing more cooking and ironing than their partner.

In Britain, the concept of compensation fell out of use for over a decade before resurfacing in 2020, bringing the question of pay for housework into the ________. Last year a woman was compensated and received £400,000 ($520,000) for giving up her legal career to focus on the family. When her marriage broke down and the couple's assets were divided, she asked for an additional sum to ________ the sacrifice she had made by cutting her career short. The judges agreed, but only because she was already a high earner and could prove she had been on track to become one of her firm's leading money makers. She was compensated not for the housework, but her forgone legal career. So Ms Wang's claim for extra compensation would probably have failed anywhere in Europe. But she may never have felt the need to make it ________.

Many women have no option but to leave the workforce when they start a family—the cost of child care might ________ the benefits of a second salary, particularly if working hours and earnings are reduced to ________ family responsibilities. Legal and financial recognition of unpaid domestic work would change this calculation. But it would be simpler (and fairer) to share domestic burdens more evenly. More important than writing new rules about compensation for housework is strengthening existing ones that ________ shared parental leave. With both spouses more involved in parenting, family responsibilities can be shared. Why wait until the divorce to quibble over who did the housework?

1.

A．accusations

B．ambitions

C．contributions

D．exclamations

2.

A．fabrics

B．folds

C．packages

D．pockets

3.

A．appliances

B．chores

C．conflicts

D．expenses

4.

A．approved

B．celebrated

C．circulated

D．questioned

5.

A．awarded

B．channeled

C．furnished

D．transferred

6.

A．additional

B．compulsory

C．free

D．paid

7.

A．free

B．help

C．relieve

D．suspend

8.

A．considered

B．encouraged

C．favored

D．rejected

9.

A．gives out

B．loses out

C．misses out

D．wears out

10.

A．forum

B．horizon

C．lens

D．spotlight

11.

A．admit

B．recall

C．reflect

D．signal

12.

A．at first glance

B．for the first time

C．first of all

D．in the first place

13.

A．counter

B．eliminate

C．outweigh

D．replace

14.

A．accommodate

B．escape

C．fortify

D．shift

15.

A．check

B．distinguish

C．promote

D．publicize

4 . Forks trace their origins back to the ancient Greeks. Forks at that time were fairly large with two tines that aided in the carving of meat in the kitchen. The tines prevented meat from twisting or moving during carving and allowed food to slide off more easily than it would with a knife.

By the 7th century A.D., royal courts of the Middle East began to use forks at the table for dining. From the 10th through the 13th centuries, forks were fairly common among the wealthy in Byzantium. In the 11th century, a Byzantine wife brought forks to Italy; however, they were not widely adopted there until the 16th century. Then in 1533, forks were brought from Italy to France. The French were also slow to accept forks, for using them was thought to be awkward.

In 1608, forks were brought to England by Thomas Coryate, who saw them during his travels in Italy. The English first ridiculed forks as being unnecessary. “Why should a person need a fork when God had given him hands?” they asked. Slowly, however, forks came to be adopted by the wealthy as a symbol of their social status. They were prized possessions made of expensive materials intended to impress guests. By the mid-1600s, eating with forks was considered fashionable among the wealthy British.

Early table forks were modeled after kitchen forks, but small pieces of food often fell through the two tines or slipped off easily. In late 17th century France, larger forks with four curved tines were developed. The additional tines made diners less likely to drop food, and the curved tines served as a scoop so people did not have to constantly switch to a spoon while eating. By the early 19th century, four-tined forks had also been developed in Germany and England and slowly began to spread to America.

1. What is the passage mainly about?

A．The different designs of forks.

B．The spread of fork-aided cooking.

C．The history of using forks for dining.

D．The development of fork-related table manners.

2. By which route did the use of forks spread?

A．Middle EastGreeceEnglandItalyFrance

B．GreeceMiddle EastItalyFranceEngland

C．GreeceMiddle EastFranceItalyGermany

D．Middle EastFranceEnglandItalyGermany

3. How did forks become popular in England?

A．Wealthy British were impressed by the design of forks.

B．Wealthy British thought it awkward to use their hands to eat.

C．Wealthy British gave special forks to the nobles as luxurious gifts.

D．Wealthy British considered dining with forks a sign of social status.

4. Why were forks made into a curved shape?

A．They could be used to scoop food as well.

B．They looked more fashionable in this way.

C．They were designed in this way for export to the US.

D．They ensured the meat would not twist while being cut.

5 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. range       B. novel        C. interest       D. unlikely     E. benefit       F. experiencing G. available     H. necessarily     I. initiative       J. generated       K. partnership

Google gives $1M grant to Press Association to develop robot journalists

New consumers of the future could be reading stories pieced together by advanced data-analyzing robots rather than human journalists, if Google has its way.

On Thursday, the Press Association, the U.K.’s national news agency, announced that it received €706,000 from the tech giant for its Reporters and Data an Robots (RADAR)     1    .

A collaboration between the Press Association and data-driven news start-up Urbs Media, RADAR aims to set up an artificial intelligene-fueled, news service that will generate tens of thousands of news stories a month using publicly     2     data.

Everyone from big-name news organizations to hyper-local outlets and bloggers could     3     from the program. Press Association editor-in-chief Peter Clifton claimed, “this is a hugely exciting development, and we believe our     4     with Urbs Media can be a genuine game-changer for media outlets across the U. K. and Ireland.”

According to the Press Association, RADAR won’t     5     mark the end of the flesh-and-blood journalists, but will rather enable the AI to produce a volume of stories that would be impossible to match manually.

The envisioned work-flow would begin with human journalists identifying open data sets and “creating detailed story templates across a(n)     6     of topics including crime, health and employment.” The robotic reporter would then take over and scan the data, use language generation software to craft together story text and automatically locate relevant photos and video. Press Association clients would then be able to use a special distribution platform to identify news stories of     7     to their audience.

Content automation isn’t a totally     8     concept in the news industry however. AP estimated that it can free up 20 per cent of journalists’ time, allowing them to focus on more complex, qualitative tasks.

Shockingly, not all journalists are sold on the AI infiltration. A study found that journalists from leading news organizations had several reservations when shown an automatically     9     sports story. “I would never, ever, ever have written a story like that,” one BBC journalist said, while a CNN reporter thought the story was repetitive and lacked variation.

Nevertheless, it looks like AI in journalism is here to stay. At a time when many media outlets are     10     commercial pressure, RADAR will provide the news ecosystem with a cost-effective way to provide insightful local stories.

6 . Directions: Read the following passage. Summarize the main idea and the main points of the passage in no more than 60 words. Use your own words as far as possible.

Animated movies use drawings instead of real people. Artists must draw thousands of pictures and each picture must be a little different. For example, if the movie-maker wants to show a girl running, the artist must draw her feet in different places in each picture. When the pictures are shown very quickly, one after the other, it looks like the girl is running. Walt Disney was not the first or only person to use animation in movies, but he is the most renowned. His first Mickey Mouse cartoon, produced in 1927, was called Plane Crazy. This was a short, silent movie about the adventures of a little mouse.

Many people in the movie business thought that animation was only appropriate for short cartoons. Disney did not agree with them. He believed that he could tell any kind of story using animation. His first long movie was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Disney spent all his money making this movie. Fortunately, it was a great success. He made Pinocchio next and then Dumbo (about a baby elephant), and he didn’t look back after this.

When we think of Disney, however, we don’t only think of movies, we also think of Disneyland. There are Disneylands in Japan, the United States of America and France. They are large parks where people can meet Disney’s characters and visit scenes from his movies.

Although Walt Disney made many of the famous movies many years ago, they are as popular now as they were when he made them. Today we can buy them on video and see them in movie theatres from time to time. When Walt Disney began making his animated cartoons all those years ago, people drew all the pictures by hand. Nowadays computers do much of his work.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

7 . Is It Smarter Than a Seven-month-old?

By the age of seven months, most children have learned that objects still exist even when they are out of sight. Put a toy under a blanket and a child that old will know it is still there, and that he can reach underneath the blanket to get it back.     1    

It is also something that self-driving cars do not have. And that is a problem. Autonomous vehicles are getting better, but they still don't understand the world in the way that a human being does. For a self-driving car, a bicycle that is momentarily hidden by a passing van is a bicycle that has ceased to exist.

This failing is basic to the now-widespread computing discipline that has claimed to be the slightly misleading name of artificial intelligence（AI）. Current Al works by building up complex statistical models of the world, but it lacks a deeper understanding of reality.     2    

Modern AI is based on the idea of machine learning. If an engineer wants a computer to recognize a stop sign, he does not try to write thousands of lines of code that describe every pattern of pixels（像素）which could possibly indicate such a sign.     3     Over many repetitions, the program gradually works out what features all of these pictures have in common.

    4     Cars thus learn how to obey lane markings, avoid other vehicles, hit the brakes at a red light and so on. But they do not understand many things a human driver takes for granted—that other cars on the road have engines and four wheels, or that they obey traffic regulations（usually）and the laws of physics（always）. And they do not understand object permanence.

A．Instead, he writes a program that can learn for itself, and then shows that program thousands of pictures of stop signs.

B．The high-tech vision system has the potential to be more successful than humans in detecting dangerous situations

C．How to give AI at least some appearance of that understanding—the reasoning ability of a seven-month-old child, perhaps—is now a matter of active research

D．Programmers have developed procedures that behave like the neurons（神经元） in a brain. They can "learn" from the actions taken in previous situations and infer what to do in a new, similar situation.

E．This understanding of "object permanence", is a normal developmental milestone, as well as a basic principle of reality.

F．Similar techniques are used to train self-driving cars to operate in traffic.

8 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in each blank with a proper word given in the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one more word than you need.

A. diverse            B. dominance            C. cracks            D. core            E. schedule            F. application G. landmark        H. promote          I. alternative            J. echoes            K. connectivity

China's BeiDou System Prepared for Serving Whole World

China launched the last satellite of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) on June 23, marking the completion of the country's homegrown orbital navigation network in a(n)     1    step towards the peaceful exploration of space.

The BeiDou network, a major infrastructure domestically constructed and operated, can better meet the demands of China's national security, economic as well as social development. It can also provide more stable and reliable services, as well as a(n)     2     to the U.S.-owned Global Positioning System(GPS) for global users.

Given the national security concerns due to GPS's     3    ,China has not been the only nation in the world to have striven to develop its own satellite navigation system.Thus one of the BDS's primary principles has been local innovation. The key components as well as     4     technologies and software of the BDS have all been independently developed and manufactured by China itself. Such an independent drive in the field of scientific and technological research and development     5     the very spirit that had been pursued by many Chinese scientists who had once dedicated themselves to the "Two Bombs, One Satellite" project when China had been under nuclear threat by some of the world's major powers.

After 26 years of difficult work, the BDS has now earned a global reputation for its high-accuracy service and various service capabilities. According to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, the services provided by BeiDou are already helping to     6    social and economic development around the world.

Indeed, the BDS-based solutions have already been successfully adopted in     7    field as land registration, precise agriculture, digital construction and the monitoring and management of vehicles and ships. Also, the BDS-enabled products have already been exported to more than 100 countries, providing users with a variety of choices and an enhance     8     experience.

Thousands of years ago, the Chinese invented the compass, which had made long-range voyages on rough and vast seas possible, helping to give directions in the Age of Discovery.

Today, the BDS network is prepared to promote an even stronger global     9    in this age of globalization, helping countries worldwide to     10     their own courses towards a better future.

9 . Imagine sitting inside a windowless train that's shooting through a tube at twice the speed of an airplane. Your train has no wheels, produces no _________ , makes its own electricity, and isn't affected by bad weather. This is the hyperloop, a new vision for the world's _________ , safest, and greenest form of transportation. Many have _________ this new technology, but others say the hyperloop vision is just a bunch of hot air.

Hyperloop developers plan to use the properties of magnets to float, stabilize, and drive the capsules or pods for hundreds of miles through _________ tubes. Without air or ground to slow down the vehicles, what was once a five-hour journey would become a half-hour excursion, engineers promise.

Supporters of the technology promote additional _________ of transporting passengers and cargo by hyperloop. For example, they firmly state that unlike other city-to-city transport that's _________ , such as planes or trains, hyperloop vehicles would leave as needed, like Ubers and taxis. While the _________ would hold only 28 to 50 passengers each, developers plan for them to depart stations in groups every minute or so which they say could amount to shuttling 50,000 people an hour. That's more than twice the passenger _________ of the world's fastest trains.

Developers also say that hyperloop tubes would be _________ so they wouldn't interfere with other traffic or threaten wildlife. And tubes would be covered with solar panels to power the hyperloop's systems. ____________ , advocates regard the hyperloop as the transportation choice for the future.

But not everyone is on board. Engineers have calculated that the high-speed vehicles will need to make much wider turns than currently envisioned, and otherwise they won't be ____________ for passengers. This would add several miles to the proposed tube tracks, Engineers also say planners haven't included enough time for vehicles to safely brake and take off at stations. Some engineers believe it will take much longer than claimed to pump the ____________ out of the tubes before each vehicle's departure. Critics thus say hyperloops can't go as fast or serve as many passengers per hour as advertised, making them ____________ existing high-speed transportation options.

Hyperloop companies say they're ____________ these concerns. They claim that they can safely maintain high speeds by having the vehicles bank around the turns as a plane does. And their hyperloops will rely on the split-second reaction times of a computer to ____________ vehicles quickly, frequently, and safely.

1.

A．pollution

B．sound

C．energy

D．wind

2.

A．cleanest

B．lightest

C．latest

D．fastest

3.

A．adapted

B．exploited

C．embraced

D．developed

4.

A．totally hollow

B．nearly airless

C．steadily narrow

D．highly flexible

5.

A．advantages

B．costs

C．qualities

D．situations

6.

A．in constant demands

B．on strict timetables

C．in changeable states

D．on essential services

7.

A．cabins

B．lorries

C．tubes

D．vehicles

8.

A．fare

B．capacity

C．speed

D．comfort

9.

A．underground

B．parallel

C．elevated

D．shared

10.

A．However

B．Therefore

C．Beside

D．Otherwise

11.

A．available

B．economic

C．easy

D．safe

12.

A．force

B．air

C．heat

D．water

13.

A．most popular of

B．superior to

C．no better than

D．least profitable of

14.

A．addressing

B．causing

C．voicing

D．releasing

15.

A．ride

B．pilot

C．park

D．alert

10 . Hugely ambitious in scope, The Lord of the Rings occupies an uncomfortable position in 20th century literature. This book of J.R.R.Tolkien’s poses a challenge to modern literature and its defenders. (Tolkien on his _______: “Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, ridiculous, or annoying; and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently _________.”) Yet The Lord of the Rings has enjoyed massive and enduring popularity. It would seem that Tolkien’s work supplied something that was _________ among the formal innovations of 20th century fiction, something for which readers were hungry. But what was it, and why was it important?

It seems that the key point lies in Tolkien’s wholehearted rejection of modernity and modernism. This is what so powerfully _________ some readers, and just as powerfully drives away others. In his book J.R.R.Tolkien: Author of the Century, T.A. Shippey expands on this idea by arguing that Tolkien saw his story of Middle-earth not as fiction or invention, but as the _________ of something genuine that had become buried beneath the fairy tale and nursery rhythm.

“However fanciful Tolkien’s creation of Middle earth was,” Shippey writes, “he did not think that he was entirely _________. He was ‘reconstructing’, he was harmonizing conflicts in his source-texts, sometimes he was supplying entirely new concepts, but he was also reaching back to an imaginative world which he believed had once really _________, at least in a collective imagination.”

The book is also deeply grounded in Tolkien’s linguistic expertise （语言专长） —he _________ whole languages for his characters. Sometimes he became so absorbed in the creation of languages, in fact, that he _________ the story itself for months or years at a time, believing he could not continue until some inconsistency（不一致）in his invented world had been resolved. But Tolkien’s great intellect and knowledge is not the source of his ____________; without his storytelling gift, The Lord of the Rings would be little more than a curiosity. And this gift seems to originate straight from his ____________ to break from classical and traditional forms.

Tolkien himself often spoke of his work as something ‘found’ or ‘discovered’, something whose existence was ____________ of him. It’s wise to be careful with this sort of interpretation, but it seems ____________ that he believed his work to be something given, something revealed, which contained a kind of truth beyond measure. ____________, his details have the weight of reality, and because of this his great sweep of story feels real as well; you might say that his ____________ castles are built with a certain amount of genuine stone.

1.

A．books

B．critics

C．readers

D．ambitions

2.

A．dislike

B．challenge

C．review

D．prefer

3.

A．common

B．possible

C．missing

D．funny

4.

A．annoys

B．influences

C．attracts

D．concerns

5.

A．recovery

B．designing

C．analysis

D．questioning

6.

A．taking it down

B．making it up

C．turning it down

D．looking it up

7.

A．remained

B．struck

C．moved

D．existed

8.

A．spoke

B．invented

C．neglected

D．recalled

9.

A．put aside

B．set up

C．look into

D．get along

10.

A．style

B．tension

C．success

D．tradition

11.

A．decision

B．request

C．struggle

D．refusal

12.

A．representative

B．independent

C．conscious

D．thoughtful

13.

A．clear

B．weird

C．unfair

D．pitiful

14.

A．As a result

B．On the contrary

C．Even so

D．What’s worse

15.

A．ancient

B．broken

C．imaginary

D．foreign