1 . Life will probably be very different in 2050. First of all, it seems that TV channels will have vanished by 2050. Instead, people will choose a programme from a “menu” and a computer will send the programme directly to the television. By 2050, music, films, programmes, newspapers and books will come to us in the similar way.
In many places, agriculture is developing quickly and people are growing fruit and vegetables for export. This uses a lot of water. Therefore, there could be serious shortages of water. Some scientist predict that water could be the cause of wars if we don’t act now.
In the future, cars will run on new, clean fuels (燃料) and they will go very fast. Cars will have computers to control the speed and there won’t be any accidents. Today, many cars have computers that tell drivers exactly where they are. By 2050, the computer will control the car and drive it to your destination. Also, by 2050, space planes will fly people from Los Angeles to Tokyo in just two hours.
Some big companies now prefer to use robots that do not ask for pay rises or go on strike, and work 24 hours a day. They are also easy to control. And they never argue with people. They can be easily used in a variety of places — factories, schools, offices, hospitals, shops and homes.
Scientists will have discovered how to control genes (基因). Scientists have already produced clones (克隆) of animals. By 2050, scientists will be able to produce clones of people and decide how they look and how they behave. Scientists will be able to do these things, but should they?
1. Which of the following best explains “vanished” underlined in paragraph 1?| A．Settled. | B．Spread. | C．Disappeared. | D．Decreased. |
| A．Robots can work in different places. |
| B．Robots have much to be improved. |
| C．Robots work for humans for free. |
| D．Robots have many advantages. |
| A．He probably disagrees with the idea of human cloning. |
| B．He is looking forward to using of cloning technology. |
| C．The scientists have already discovered how to control genes. |
| D．The scientists will face many difficulties of controlling genes. |
| A．High-tech Cars | B．Life in the Future |
| C．Is Cloning Really Good? | D．Are You Ready for the Future? |
2 . “May 17, 2157
Dear diary,
Today, Tommy found a real book!...”
“What’s it about?” Margie asked.
“School. ” replied Tommy, turning the yellow pages.
“Why would anyone write about school? I hope they can take my geography teacher away.”
“It’s not our school. This is the old sort that they had centuries ago.”
“Anyway, they had a teacher.” Margie said, reading the book over his shoulder.
“Sure, they had a teacher, but it wasn’t a regular teacher. It was a man.”
“A man? How could a man be a teacher?”
“Well, he just told the boys and girls things and gave them assignments and asked them questions.”
“A man isn’t smart enough.”
“Sure, he is. My father knows as much as my teacher.”
Margie wasn’t prepared to argue about that. She said, “I wouldn’t want a strange man in my house to teach me.”
Tommy laughed. “The teachers didn’t live in the house. They had a special building and all the kids went there.”
“And all the kids learned the same thing?”
“Sure, if they were the same age.”
“But my mother says a teacher has to be adjusted to fit the mind of each boy and girl it teaches and that each kid has to be taught differently.”
“If you don’t like it, you don’t have to read the book.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t like it,” Margie said quickly.
They weren’t even half-finished when Margie’s mother called, “Margie! School!”
“Not yet, Mamma.”
“Now!” said Mrs. Jones.
Margie said to Tommy, “Can I read the book some more with you after school?”
“Maybe,” Tommy said.
Margie went into the schoolroom, right next to her bedroom, and the mechanical teacher was on waiting for her.
The screen was lit up, and it said, “Please insert yesterday’s assignments in the proper slot.”
Margie was still thinking about the old schools they had when her grandfather’s grandfather was a little boy. All the kids from the whole neighborhood came, laughing and shouting in the schoolyard, sitting together in the schoolroom, going home together at the end of the day. They learned the same things, so they could help one another on the assignments and discussed them.
And the teachers were people…
1. Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?| A．It’s common to read paper books in 2157. | B．Margie doesn’t like her school. |
| C．Online learning is what Margie wants. | D．Tommy feels his father is smarter than his teacher. |
| A．There are only female teachers at school. | B．Teachers give no assignments to students. |
| C．A special building is constructed for teachers. | D．Students are taught differently at school. |
| A．window | B．Envelope | C．Screen | D．Schoolroom |
| A．Longing | B．Objection | C．Doubt | D．Tolerance |
3 . 2050 seems a long way away, but it is not impossible to predict the future though. With the speed we are moving now so many amazing things are going to happen in the future. So where is technology going in the future?
◇The Internet will be free for everyone.
The Internet is really a key driver these days. But it is not free for everyone yet. There have already been attempts like Facebook’s Free Basics.
◇Personal airplanes will be used widely for short journeys.
With the increasing population, it is not very hard to predict that common methods of transportation will not be enough.
◇Most cancers will be treated successfully.
◇
There will be great achievements in space research. In the year 2050, humans will be able to live on Mars. We will receive more intelligent signals from space. Chances are we will be able to find the next Earth — like planet.
| A．Though it hasn’t happened yet |
| B．Let’s start our predictions |
| C．The world’s population will cross 9. 6 billion |
| D．What do you think of my predictions of 2050 |
| E．Humans will live on other planets |
| F．There will be much heavier traffic on the road |
| G．The number of deaths caused by cancers will be greatly reduced |
4 . Twenty-five years ago on July 1,1997, I woke up very late in my apartment in Singapore. l jumped out of bed in
Her mom had flown to Hong Kong several days earlier on assignment for a newspaper to
l had
The year, 1997, was
I later spent a few years working in Hong Kong, but my enduring memory of the days surrounding its return to China was the time I spent as a
| A．panic | B．confusion | C．sorrow | D．excitement |
| A．searched | B．worked | C．made | D．won |
| A．Hopefully | B．Thankfully | C．Definitely | D．Eventually |
| A．patting | B．hitting | C．washing | D．rubbing |
| A．charge | B．interrupt | C．cover | D．change |
| A．looked up | B．set out | C．broken away | D．taken off |
| A．dress up | B．bring up | C．pick up | D．cheer up |
| A．historic | B．economic | C．academic | D．comic |
| A．how | B．when | C．why | D．where |
| A．decline | B．witness | C．criticize | D．approve |
| A．tense | B．comfortable | C．shameful | D．unavoidable |
| A．embarrassment | B．delight | C．surprise | D．worries |
| A．discovery | B．repeat | C．fortune | D．experiment |
| A．ruined | B．protected | C．lowered | D．held |
| A．babysitter | B．worker | C．adult | D．mother |
5 . Today, the original Beetle has largely disappeared from the world’s roads since Volkswagen stopped producing it in Germany in 1978. But the instantly recognizable car was once everywhere. From the 1970s to the 1990s, more than 21 million Beetles were produced worldwide. Many adults in their 40s or above have a story about the Beetle, or at least a memory.
Part of its universal appeal is its unique look. There’s something about the car that just makes people smile: its happy shape, its cheerful colors, and perhaps its small size. However, the smiles that beetles evoke, in people are not simply due to their design. It has a character almost. It has a sort of soul in a way. It’s beyond a machine. For the better part of a century this car has been a part in people’s lives. Seeing these cars on the road is like a time capsule. It opens people to memories and stories that might otherwise go untold. By allowing us to travel back in time, they remind us of what’s important. In today’s world, this car represents something very basic and earthy and genuine. Exactly the kind of travel we need right now.
“My parents had three, a white one, then a red one, and then an orange one. It was the car I grew up with,” said actor Ewan McGregor. “They would put us in the back of the Beetle in Scotland and drive to France for camping holidays in summer. My first car was a 1978 Beetle and now I own two, parked at my home in Los Angeles.”
McGregor thinks the car’s future is electric. He has recently turned his 1978 model into a fully electric car. “Moving forward, maybe we’ll just have to think; smaller cars, low emissions (排放), and something that makes us feel happy,” he says.
1. When was the production of Beetles stopped in Germany?| A．In the 1990s. | B．In the 1980s. | C．In the late 1970s. | D．In the early 1960s. |
| A．To keep an unpleasant feeling in one’s mind. |
| B．To find out information about one’s character. |
| C．To bring a feeling or a memory into one’s mind. |
| D．To ask somebody to do something in a rude way. |
| A．He wants to be reminded of his childhood. |
| B．They are used to decorate his new home. |
| C．He has too many children for just one car. |
| D．His parents have left one of their cars to him. |
| A．Advertisement. | B．Lifestyle. | C．Environment. | D．Economy. |
6 . Futurologists predict that life will probably be very apparently distinct in 2050 in all the fields of activity, from entertainment to technology.
First of all, it seems that TV channels will have disappeared by 2050. Instead, people will choose a programme from a ”menu“ and a computer will send the programme directly to the television. Today, we can use the World Wide Web to read newspaper stories and see pictures on a computer thousands of kilometers away. By 2050, music, films, programmes, newspapers and books will come to us by computer. We will also be able to see, smell and touch the things that we see on television.
In transport, cars will run on new, clean ”gas“ and they will go very fast. Cars will have computers to control the speed of the car and there won’t be any accidents. Today, many cars have computers that tell drivers exactly where they are. By 2050, the computer will control the car and drive it to where you want to go. Space planes will fly all over the world and people will fly from Los Angeles to Tokyo in just two hours.
In technology, robots will have replaced people in factories. Many factories already use robots. Big companies prefer robots-they do not ask for pay rises or go on strike, and they work 24 hours a day. By 2050, we will see robots everywhere—in factories, schools, offices, hospitals, shops and homes.
Last but not least, medicine technology will have conquered many diseases. By 2050, we will be able to help blind and deaf people see again and hear again. Scientists will be able to produce clones of people and decide how they look, how they behave and how much intelligence they have.
1. What will happen to television by 2050 according to the passage?| A．It will completely disappear. |
| B．It will be mostly controlled by computers. |
| C．One can try the food one sees on television. |
| D．One can learn to switch on TV set from a ”menu“. |
| A．Cars will go at a very high speed on their own. |
| B．Computers will tell people where they are going. |
| C．There will be less pollution and no car accidents. |
| D．Space planes will fly all over the world in a short time. |
| A．People will live more healthily and longer by 2050. |
| B．There will be no people working in factories by 2050. |
| C．There will be cloned people coming to power by 2050. |
| D．People can read newspapers through a computer by 2050. |
| A．Doubtful. | B．Objective. |
| C．Critical. | D．Positive. |
7 . You’ve probably heard that brick-and-mortar retail(实体零售) is in trouble. Even industry giants are closing hundreds of stores. Given retail’s gradual change from physical stores to mobile and e-commerce(电子商务), you may be wondering, “What will retail look like in the future?” Nobody knows. But here are a few things you can expect to see based on current technology.
Super-fast delivery is coming. Today, the normal practice is two-day delivery. But if you’ve been paying attention, you know that’s changing. In fact, up to 25% of consumers said that they would abandon their orders if one-day delivery wasn’t available. Of course, that’s just the beginning. Two-hour delivery is coming in the foreseeable future, and Amazon has already been trying 30-minute delivery.
Your kitchen will resupply itself. You won’t have to worry about running out of essentials like coffee, pet food or snacks because your containers will sense stocks(库存) and replace those items without you having to lift a finger. No more waking up to find your coffee store is empty or last-minute rush to the grocery store because you forget to buy pet food.
Know exactly what’s in stock and where to get it. Have you ever gone to a store hoping to buy something, only to learn that it was out of stock? A new feature from Google Home allows people to ask the Google Assistant to find in-stock products at the closest store. For example: “Google, where can I find the Nintendo Switch console?” The assistant will tell you how many stores have it right away and how close they are. Of course, it isn’t currently available for all stores in all locations, but you can already see the future when it has become standard.
Convenience, experience, and options-retail will take on a new look.
1. How does the author develop the passage?| A．By analyzing and commenting. |
| B．By clarifying and describing. |
| C．By asking and answering. |
| D．By comparing and concluding. |
| A．It is possible to deliver goods within two hours in the future. |
| B．Consumers can’t get their orders in one day now. |
| C．The delivery will be in two days in the future. |
| D．Super-fast delivery has widely been used now. |
| A．Retail will disappear gradually. |
| B．Industrial giants will rule the whole retail trade. |
| C．People will ask the Google Assistant to purchase goods. |
| D．Shopping will be more convenient and effective. |
| A．How Will New Technology Change the World? |
| B．What Will Retail Be Like in the Future? |
| C．How Will We Run the Retail Trade in the Future? |
| D．What Benefits Will High-tech Bring in the Future? |
8 . Is there anybody out there? For centuries humans have wondered although the ways in which we have gone about this have varied. As we have gained a greater understanding of the universe, our searches have taken on more concrete(具体的) forms. Questions about aliens(外星人) have become a subject for science rather than science fiction.
Now new cooperation between the Very Large Array (VLA) observatory in New Mexico and the SETI Institute in California means that our curiosity about whether aliens exist can be closer than ever before to being satisfied. Data from the VLA’S 28 radio telescopes, used to scan a vast area of sky, will be fed through a special supercomputer that will search for distant signals.
How likely it is that a signal will be found, and what this might mean, are hard questions to answer. SETI’s existing projects have not discovered any signals from other planets so far. But recent discoveries in space and Earth sciences have provided some encouragement for those who are enthusiastic about the possibility, however remote, of detecting other civilizations.
Once it was thought that our solar system could be unique. Since the discovery of the first exoplanet (a planet beyond the solar system) in the 1990s, thousands more have been located. Around one in five stars is now thought to have a planet in their orbit(运行轨道) in a so-called “habitable(适合居住的) zone”—that is, at a distance from the star where the temperature means that life is theoretically possible.
Are Earth’s 7.5 billion humans, along with billions of other animals and plants they share their home with, on their own in the universe? If there is another life form somewhere, could it be as intelligent as humans? Or could it threaten them? I think all of these need further exploration. As explorations of Mars continue, and a new set of observations from the James Webb Space Telescope are set to begin, our interest in the possibility of alien life appears as much as before.
1. Why does the VLA work with SETI?| A．To develop new radio telescopes | B．To find evidence of aliens’ existence |
| C．To build a special supercomputer | D．To search for distant signals |
| A．Life does indeed exist on exoplanets |
| B．New technologies are employed to find aliens |
| C．Some exoplanets may have habitable zones |
| D．Signals have been discovered from other planets |
| A．Uncertain | B．Positive | C．Unacceptable | D．Worried |
| A．Space: the unknown place | B．Finding aliens: possible or not? |
| C．Receiving signals: aliens appear again? | D．Exoplanets: home of aliens |
9 . Have you ever seen a rushing car without a driver?
So how do they work? The cars have sensors all around which can detect other cars and obstacles in the road. Sensors on the wheels also help when parking, so the car knows how far it is from the kerb (马路牙子) or other parked cars. Road signs are read by cameras, and satellite navigation systems are used so the car knows how to get to your destination.
Sound like your idea of heaven? Sitting back, looking out of the windows and even watching a film or reading a book while “driving” would be possible with this new technology.
Although being driven around by a machine would perhaps mean that no one needs a driving license, saving money for everyone, many people would be put out of a job by the dawn of driverless cars.
| A．All you have to do is type in the address! |
| B．There would also be many legal decisions to be made. |
| C．However, there are many drawbacks of driverless cars. |
| D．Driverless cars have many advantages as well as disadvantages. |
| E．It sounds crazy, but driverless cars will soon be filling roads near you. |
| F．In addition, computers are generally more efficient drivers than humans. |
| G．Bus, taxi, train and tram drivers as well as driving instructors would be made unnecessary. |
要点：1.家庭；2.工作；3.业余生活。
注意：1.写作词数为80左右；
2.请按如下格式在答题卡相应位置作答。
Me in 10 Years
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