Last year, I returned to Fuling, a river town near the Yangtze River. I visited the White Crane Ridge Underwater Museum. It’s a very strange museum    1     is under 40 meters of water, I knew its director even before the museum and the Three Gorges Dam     2    .

I taught English at the local college in the town of Fuling     3     1996 to 1998. Fuling was then quiet. Foreigners were very rare(稀小). When I ate my lunch in the town centre, often a crowd came to watch me. There weren’t any traffic     4     I couldn’t find a car.

During my visit, I     5     some of my old students. They told me about their old classmates, many of whom had left Fuling. I also visited Huang Zongming and his brother.    6     I lived here, they were fishermen. When the first stage of the dam was     7    ,they left their home. I was sure that their lives were     8     changed. But now l discover that everything is almost the same for    9    .They are still fishermen and go     10     every day. The fishing on the river is still good.The dam has not changed some things in Fuling.

What could the school of 2050 look like? Undoubtedly, the biggest development we     1     (see) in recent years is the advancement of technology. On entering the classroom, biological recognition scanning will allow students to check in,     2     (simplify) the busy registration process. Teachers will be able to automatically sort out the attendance data, fill in perfect record, and manage     3     (track) the patterns for being late.

For the school of the future, there will be no need to wrestle with heavy     4     (curtain)or dust- covered blinds; we’ ll have smart glass. Windows can automatically adjust     5     (them) color to make up for external brightness, protecting both our eyes and screens.

As summer temperatures continue to rise, the general trend for 2050 is warmer, drier summers as well as warmer, wetter winters and air-conditioned classrooms,    6     will be-come the norm(常态). But they will be    7     (clean), more flexibly and sustainable(可持续的), with built-in air purifiers to remove toxins and dust from the air.

    8     2050,3D printers will have become a standard appliance, both in the home and at school. As    9     learning aid, they will have become essential, allowing teachers more flexi-bly to explain difficult concepts.

Students will be able to     10     (physical) operate objects for better information process-ing, visual perception, and cognitive(认知的) learning.

What will our cities be like in 2050? How much will artificial intelligence advance? Some scientists    1     (make) different predictions recently.

Joel E.Cohen from the The Rockfeller University says    2    is likely that by 2050 the majority of the people in the world will live in urban areas, and will have a    3    (significant) higher average age than people today. Cities will be    4    only realistic solution to housing a population that is expected to expand    5    9.7 billion by 2050.

And the technology will keep    6    (advance) rapidly. According to Bill Michell, the late director of MIT Media Lab’s Smart Cities research group, cities of the future won’t look like “some sort of science-fiction fantasy” or “Star Trek” ,but virtual reality will change    7    we live. Self-driving cars will make the roads    8    (secure), driving more efficient, and provide faster transport.

Charles Ebinger at the Brookings Institution thinks that by 2050 we will also have a so-called “smart grid” where all of our    9     (appliance) are linked directly to energy distribution(分布) systems,    10    (allow) for real-time pricing based on supply and demand. Such a technology would greatly benefit most people and reduced the consumption(消耗) of fossil fuel energy.