1 .

A．Regretful.	B．Confident
C．Indifferent.	D．Sympathetic.

2 . The US Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) recently asked scientists, lawyers, social scientists and other experts to consider some of these ethical dimension. To give two examples: on privacy, as we let more listening devices into our homes, how do we prevent the data they collect falling into the wrong hands through hacking (黑客) or simply being sold between companies without us receiving any money? Another example: mixed reality, including virtual reality, will become pervasive in the next few years. As we move from headsets to what the IEEE committee describes as “more delicate sensory enhancements” we will use technology to live in an illusory world in many aspects of our lives. How do we balance the rights of the individual, control over our virtual identity, and the need to live and interact on a face-to-face basis while being empowered to live rich lives in mixed reality?

There is, of course, always a tension between innovation and regulation. But it can often seem that giant steps are taken in technology with minimal public discussion. Take the self-driving car: although it may be safer than human drivers and is likely to save more than a million lives a year worldwide, it will also take jobs from drivers, traffic police, sign-makers, car-repair companies, carmakers and more. Is this a bargain we want to make? In taking that decision, have we given thought to a car that knows everywhere we go, decides routes, perhaps, based on paid advertisement from shops along the way—and listens and sees everything we do on board? What will happen to that data and can it be kept safe?

Additionally, while some worry about the uncommon “trolley problem” of whom the car should choose to hit in a strange accident—an old lady or a mother and baby—perhaps the more frequent issue will be how we find out what the algorithm (运算程序) was thinking at the time of an accident, because AIs (Artificial Intelligence) are self-learning and devise their own strategies.     

Similar concerns are emerging over the internet of things. Robot vacuum-cleaners already plot cleaning cycles using computer-aided vision that, for some models, is relayed to their manufacturers. As more things at home become connected, they will be hackable and the data they collect saleable.

It’s time for some messy, democratic discussions about the future of AI.

1. Two examples in paragraph 1 are used to________.

A．shed some light on hacking in our modern life

B．lead the reader to think of ethical issues brought by hi-tech

C．lead in the following example concerning the self-driving car

D．list the existing problems that caught the attention of experts

2. The word “pervasive” in paragraph 1 probably means “________”.

A．intelligent

B．powerful

C．widespread

D．skillful

3. We can infer from the passage that________.

A．innovation should be accompanied by guidelines to relieve tension

B．more giant innovative steps will lead to fewer public discussion

C．disadvantages of the self-driving car will outweigh its advantages

D．artificial intelligence fails to have a promising and bright future

4. In the passage, the author intends to ________.

A．expose some underlying problems in high-technology

B．call on professionals to enforce law and order

C．illustrate AI’s abilities in self-devising and self-learning strategies

D．display our inter-connected computer-aided life in future

3 . You know it’s fun to take in the wine country sights. But have you thought about trying the heights?

Whether you’re zooming down a zip line or floating through the air in a hot-air balloon, there are quite a few ways to experience the high life in wine country.

Here are three options ranging from thrill to chill.

1. Up, up in the air: Multicolored hot-air balloons dotting a blue sky are a signature of wine country and you can be part of the picture-postcard scene. Several companies offer balloon flights, including Napa Valley Aloft, which launches from the V Marketplace in Yountville and has two alternate launching places if it’s foggy. Be aware this is a bird’s-eye view for early birds. Flights launch just after dawn when winds are calmest and temperatures lowest. Prices start at $220 for a ride in a gondola that holds up to 14 people followed by an optional $20 Champagne breakfast. Booking in advance recommended, especially in the high seasons of summer and fall.

2. Zip-n-sip: In Paso Robles, the grape-growing area along California’s Central Coast that was featured in the popular 2004 buddy movie, ”Sideways,“ Margarita Adventures has zip lines that will have you whizzing over forests, canyons and vineyards. The tour concludes with optional tastings at neighboring Ancient Peaks Winery. Tickets are $109 on weekdays, $119 on weekends and holidays, $89 for youth under 18 at all times. Details at http://www.margarita-adventures.com.

3. Glide in a gondola: For a brief but lovely time aloft, ride the aerial tram at Sterling Vineyards in Calistoga. You get a smooth ride up a tree-studded hill and are greeted at the top with a glass of wine as you begin a self-guided tour of galleries and overlooks. Finish with a wine and food pairing on the South Terrace which has sweeping views of the Napa Valley. Open Monday-Friday 10:30 a.m.—5 p.m., weekends 10 a.m.—5 p.m. Admission starts at $29, with additional fees for food pairings, and tickets can be booked through http://www.SterlingVineyards.com.

1. In which column of a magazine can you find the article?

A．Geography and People.	B．City Beats.
C．Food and Entertainment.	D．Travel.

2. What can you learn from the first option?

A．V Marketplace in Yountville is the only spot for the launch of balloon flights.

B．Viewing birds is also an important part of the flight.

C．Balloon flights will not start until the sun sets.

D．Weather plays a critical role in balloon flights.

3. Which of the following is True?

A．Booking in advance is highly recommended for all of the three options.

B．Tickets can be bought through their respective websites.

C．Tourists can have choices to taste wine in any of the options.

D．There is a special offer for children in all of the three options.

4 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. precisely       B. statistical       C. gender       D. enrolled       E. restriction       F. spotted G. frank       H. execute       I. identified       J. confidence       K. dramatically

Female Grandmaster—Hou Yifan

Even by the standard of chess geniuses, Hou Yifan stood out. It wasn’t so much the way she played the game     1     with an aggressive but flexible style. It was that she was a girl. Thirteen years after she became a Grandmaster, at the age of fourteen, people still mentioned two big hairpins that used to pin back her bobbed hair. “I never felt     2     or limitations,” she told me recently from her home in Shenzhen, China, where she is a professor at Shenzhen university’s Faculty of Physical Education.

“My parents never told me that as a girl you should do this or that,” she said. “Teachers never shaped my views in that way.” These days her hair falls to her shoulders and black cat’s-eye glasses frame her face. She speaks English quickly and     3    . She is the only woman among the hundred best chess players in the world.

Chess is not like basketball or soccer. Men and women face one another on equal terms, and no one can tell the     4     of a player from the moves on a scorecard. Still, of the seventeen hundred and thirty-two Grandmasters in the world, just thirty-eight are women. Much of this gap stems from how many women compete versus the number of men who do: around sixteen percent of tournament players are     5     as female and most of them are children. As a purely     6     matter, you would expect few, if any, women at the extreme of the rankings. Still, this appears to be an incomplete explanation of the inequality at the top of the game, about which Hou is     7    . “You cannot deny it, you cannot pretend it doesn’t happen,” she told me, of the absence of women from chess highest echelon(梯队). For years, she has been the only one who stood a chance.

Hou was born in 1994 in Xinghua, a small city near China’s coast. As a child she     8     a chess set in a shop window and liked the shapes of the pieces. When she was five, she started playing the game with other kids at the home of a chess teacher and showed enough talent that her parents     9     her a year early in the local school which had a chess program. She and her classmates would consult a large chess dictionary and write out the first few moves of famous openings on a sheet of paper. Then they would set up their boards, dutifully     10     their copied instructions and launch their wild attacks.

She moved to Shandong with her mother and attended chess classes. Two years later, she joined the national team and won the girls under ten championship in 2003. In the next year, she finished boys under ten tournament tied for first.

5 . Directions: Read the following two passages. Fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper from of the given word. For the other blanks, fill in each blank with one proper word. Make sure that your answers are grammatically correct.

The Industrial Monopoly and Its Decline

Upon the completion of the Industrial Revolution by 1850 England became the workshop of the world. The population went on increasing rapidly, if not as rapidly as before, reaching 41 million by 1900. Big towns grow bigger. Production and export of both textiles and heavy industries reached new high levels.

After the abolition of the corn law, other forms of protection     1    (drop) one after another. For instance, the Navigation Acts and protective tariffs on hundreds of articles. By 1860 great Britain was well on the road to free trade. Certainly, this was aggressive in character. While Britain opened her own ports to Free Trade, she demanded open ports in other countries     2     economic pressure and naval strength, thus     3    (extend) foreign markets and increasing demands for British goods.

It was in the boom that collapsed in 1873 when there was great anxious concern about both markets and materials     4     Mid-Victorian prosperity reached its peak. The fact that there was a retardation in the national rate of growth to below two percent per year was even harder to bear with the growth rates of competitors such as America and Germany rising.

Arable and meat producing farmers felt the full weight of foreign competition between 1870 and 1900. In industry,     5     there were new forms of power and a trend toward bigger plants, and     6    (impersonal) organization, there was a similar situation. Britain was never as strong or as innovatory in the age of steel     7     in the early age of iron. By 1896 British steel output was less than     8     of either the United States or Germany and the textile industry was declining absolutely. With its former easy advantage in world markets     9    (lose), both opinion and government policy lost faith in the merits of free trade. During years of economic challenge at home, capital exports greatly increased, until they reached a figure of almost £200000000 every year before 1914, and investment income poured in to improve adverse balance(贸易逆差)on trade accounts. During the last 20 years of peace before 1914 when Britain’s role as rentier was at its height, international prices rose again, continuing to rise     10     after the end of World War I.

6 . When your home becomes a tourist attraction

Have you ever looked at a beautiful little news house in London and thought “It must be so amazing to live there?”    1     But for the people who actually do live in those homes, social media photography has changed what it means to live in a picturesque place.

Alice Johnston is a longtime resident of Notting Hill, the London neighborhood famous for pastel-painted row houses and for being the setting of the movie of the same name. Johnston, a journalist, has complicated feelings about her Instagram-beloved neighborhood. She lives on Portobello Road, one of the capital’s most famous streets.     2    

Once, she and a friend were walking his French bulldog when a tourist asked if they could “borrow” the pup for a quick photo. The friend and the dog agreed, the Instagrammer posed with the Frenchie in front of a bright blue door and then handed over five pounds as a thank you. In that story, everybody had a good time.     3    “I was once woken up at 6 a.m. on Easter Sunday by French teenagers taking pictures outside,” Johnston says.

    4     Johnston tries to be sympathetic to travelers coming to her hometown, recalling how she loved taking pictures of historic neighborhoods like the Marais in Paris and Alfama in Lisbon. In fact, she recently found photos of herself as a teenager hanging out at the Notting Hill Carnival, years before she moved to the capital herself. “I love to travel, so I have to be pretty understanding when people travel to where I live, and I feel lucky that it’s cool enough that people want to come where I live.”

A．And she has witnessed all kinds of crazy behavior committed in the pursuit of the perfect snapshot.

B．But there can be a darker side to living inside what some people think is a movie set.

C．“For us it’s a tremendous pleasure to be able to share the house and see so many people happy and excited about it.”

D．If so, you’re not the only one.

E．When private homes become tourist attractions, conflicts can occur.

F．When it comes to living in a much-photographed place, some people try to take the good with the bad.

7 . 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. benefit   B. displayed   C. documentation   D. elegantly   E. improbable   F. intrusive G. label       H. lessen     I. massive            J. positively   K. promotional

Norway’s new law on edited photos

A new law in Norway makes it illegal for advertisers and social media influencers to share     1     photos online without disclosing whether the images were altered.It modifies the 2009 Marketing and Control Act and sets to go into effect when the King of Norway decides it should.

The law concerns advertisers and people who receive “payment or other     2    ” in exchange for their posts. It will impact “brands, companies, and influencers’ sponsored posts,” and concerns posts on all social media sites.

The new law requires disclosures for edits made after the image was taken and before, such as Snapchat and Instagram filters that modify one’s appearance. Examples of edits that people who are being paid for pictures are required to     3    include “enlarged lips, narrowed waists, and exaggerated muscles,” among other things.

Body pressure, or “kroppspress” in Norway, is a major topic of conversation in the country, the Ministry of Children and Family Affairs said in its report. “Young people are exposed to a(n)    4     pressure to look good through advertising and social media, and the models     5     are often digitally retouched, which exposes young people to an ideal of beauty that is impossible to achieve.”

By prohibiting advertisers and influencers from posting such photos without proper     6     with a government-authorized stamp, the Ministry said it hopes to    7     the negative impacts of body pressure on young people. “It is especially important to prevent the desire to make more     8     and long-lasting changes in one’s own look,” the Ministry said.

Some of Norway’s top influencers have already thought     9     about the new law, “Young people today are growing up to a completely     10     beauty ideal,” Husebye, who was awarded “Influencer of the Year”,said “I feel that the new law can only help them to understand that this is not how you look, but it has been edited.”

8 . It’s a reader’s rite of passage to walk into a movie theater to see a favorite book come to life and walk out bitterly disappointed. Sometimes, there’s no softening the truth: what you read on the page is so much better than what you watched on the screen. The following are four beloved books that are undoubtedly better than their film adaptations.

Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine

Passionate fans of this young adult classic will agree that a true film adaptation of Ella Enchanted does not yet exist. Levine’s 1997 retelling of Cinderella, which earned a prestigious Newbery Honor, was adapted for the screen in 2004, with Anne Hathaway in the starring role. But the movie took significant liberties with Levine’s original plot, adding characters and excluding beloved scenes. The moods of the film and the book feel disparate. As David Rooney wrote in Variety, “The filmmakers also pushed the tone into a far more jokey comic realm, which dilutes the romantic-magical chemistry of the book, downplaying its central idea of a ‘Cinderella’ overhaul.”

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

This 1850 work of historical fiction about the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1640s has inspired a number of adaptations to film, page and stage, but the most bizarre of these may be the 1995 film starring Demi Moore, Gary Oldman and Robert Duvall. It was labeled “trashy and nonsensical” by Caryn James in the NewYork Times, and is frequently disparaged for changing much of the source material, including the ending. Receiving a shockingly low score of 13% on Rotten Tomatoes, this movie took home the award for the Worst Remake or Sequel at the 1995 Golden Raspberry Awards.

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

The Golden Compass, published in 1995, is the first novel in the beloved young-adult fantasy series, His Dark Materials, a magical story set in a parallel universe. This first part of the trilogy follows a young girl named Lyra as she embarks on a rescue mission to the Arctic. The widely panned 2007 film took five years to complete, slowed down by disagreements over the script and the direction. The studio bought the rights to the trilogy in 2002 and commissioned Tom Stoppard to write the screenplay. Chris Weitz was hired to direct. But Stoppard’s script was rejected and Weitz was fired. In his place, the studio hired Anand Tucker to direct, though Tucker resigned in 2006. Then Weitz returned to write the screenplay and direct the project. The result was a disappointing (and extremely expensive) movie that cut or changed many elements of the novel.

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

This bestselling novel from 2002 tells the story of a teenage girl who is raped and murdered and watches her family grieve from heaven. The 2009 film adaptation boasts terrific performances by Saoirse Ronan and Stanley Tucci as the girl and her attacker, but has little else to offer. The fine balance of sentiment and violence that Sebold strikes in the novel is lost in the movie. The film “strikes clashing tones, veering from lightheartedness to heavy-handedness,” Claudia Puig wrote in USA Today, adding that the device of main character narrating from heaven “works on the page but comes off artificial and emotionless on-screen.”

1. All the reviews mention the actors or actresses starring the film adaptations except ______.

A．Ella Enchanted	B．The Scarlet Letter
C．The Golden Compass	D．The Lovely Bones

2. Which of the following is NOT among the causes of unsatisfactory film adaptations?

A．Disappointing changes to the original story.

B．Being not so ground-breaking as the book.

C．Taking too much time and money for filming.

D．Being not so vividly expressive as the book.

3. We can conclude from the passage that ______.

A．it is always the truth that books are better than film adaptations

B．an all-star cast results in the excellence of film adaptations

C．changes to original plots can’t influence film adaptations positively

D．words can be more powerful than images in expressiveness

9 . A hundred years ago it was assumed and scientifically “proved” by economists that the laws of society made it necessary to have a vast army of poor and jobless people in order to keep the economy going. Today, hardly anybody would dare to _______this principle. It is generally accepted that nobody should be_______ from the wealth Western industrialized countries, where a system of insurance has been introduced which guarantees everyone a minimum of subsistence (生活维持费) _______ unemployment, sickness and old age. I would go one step further and argue that, even if these _________ are not present, everyone has the right to receive the means to subsist (维持生活). In other words, he can claim this subsistence minimum ________ having to have any “reason”. I would suggest, ________, that it should be limited to a definite period of time, let’s say two years, so as to avoid the _________ of an abnormal attitude which refused any kind of social obligation.

This may sound like a fantastic proposal, but so, I think, our insurance system would have sounded to people a hundred years ago. The main objection to such a scheme would be that if each person were _______ to receive minimum support, people would not work. This _______ rests on the fallacy of the inherent laziness in human nature. ________, aside from abnormally lazy people, there would be very few who would not want to earn more than the minimum, and who would prefer to do nothing rather than work.

However, the suspicions against a system of _________ subsistence minimum are not groundless, from the standpoint of those who want to use their ________ of capital(资金) for the purpose of forcing others to accept the work conditions they offer. If nobody were forced to accept work in order not to starve, work would have to be sufficiently________ to attract one to accept it. Freedom of contract is possible only if both parties are free to accept and________ it; in the present capitalist system this is not the case.

But such a system would not only be the beginning of real freedom of contract between employers and employees, its principal________ would be the improvement of freedom in inter-personal relationships in every sphere of daily life.

1.

A．challenge

B．voice

C．question

D．disapprove

2.

A．excluded

B．separated

C．spared

D．rescued

3.

A．in terms of

B．in case of

C．in light of

D．in spite of

4.

A．fees

B．citizens

C．solutions

D．conditions

5.

A．without

B．with

C．by

D．as

6.

A．therefore

B．however

C．moreover

D．hence

7.

A．shaping

B．displaying

C．discouraging

D．encouraging

8.

A．entitled

B．accustomed

C．adapted

D．forbidden

9.

A．conclusion

B．deception

C．assumption

D．truth

10.

A．Actually

B．Importantly

C．Surprisingly

D．Unfortunately

11.

A．limited

B．limitless

C．guaranteed

D．confirmed

12.

A．transfer

B．flow

C．lack

D．ownership

13.

A．boring

B．interesting

C．tiring

D．chilling

14.

A．reverse

B．restore

C．revise

D．reject

15.

A．advantage

B．weakness

C．problem

D．setback

10 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. stillness       B. refuge   C. thundering   D. withered   E. oppressive F. unattended G. gripped       H. creaked   I. approaching J. somewhere   K. hastily

On the morning of the first of September, Scarlett awoke with suffocating sense of dread upon her, a dread she had taken to her pillow the night before. She thought, dulled with sleep: ‘What was it that I was worrying about when I went to bed last night? Oh, yes the fighting. There was a battle,     1    ,yesterday! Oh, who won?’ She sat up    2    , rubbing her eyes, and her worried heart took up yesterday’s load again.

The air was    3     even in the early morning hour, hot with the scorching promise of a noon of glaring blue sky and pitiless bronze sun. The road outside lay silent. No wagons    4     by. No troops raised the red dust with their tramping feet, no pleasant sounds of breakfasts being prepared, for all the near neighbors except Mrs. Meade and Mrs. Merriwether had sought    5    in Macon. And she could hear nothing from their houses either. Farther down the street the business section was quiet and many of the stores and offices were locked and boarded up, while their occupants were somewhere about the countryside with rifles in their hands.

The     6    that greeted her seemed even more sinister this morning than on any of the mornings of the queer quiet week preceding it. She rose quickly, without her usual preliminary burrows and stretches, and went to the window, hoping to see some neighbor’s face, some heartening sight. But the road was empty. She noted how the leaves on the trees were still dark green but dry and heavily coated with red dust, and how     7    and sad the untended flowers in the front yard looked.

As she stood, looking out of the window, there came to her ears a far-off sound, faint and sullen as the first distant thunder of a(n)    8    storm.

‘Rain,’ she thought in the first moment, and her country-bred mind added, ‘We certainly need it.’ But, in a split instant: ‘Rain? No! Not rain! Cannon!’

Her heart racing she leaned from the window, her ear cocked to the far-off roaring, trying to discover from which direction it came. But the dim     9    was so distant that, for a moment, she could not tell. ‘Make it from Marietta,’ she prayed. ‘Or Decatur. But not from the south! Not from the south!’ She    10    the windowstill tighter and strained her ears and the far-away booming seemed louder. And it was coming from the south.