1 . You are just waking up in the spring of 2030. Your Internet of Things bedroom opens solar-powered e-windows and plays gentle music while your smart lighting displays a montage(蒙太奇) of beachfront sunrises from your recent vacation.
Your shower uses very little water or soap. It recycles your grey water and puts the extra heat back into your home's integrated operating system. While you dress, your artificial intelligence (Al) assistant shares your schedule for the day and plays your favourite tunes.
You still start your day with caffeine but it comes from your loT refrigerator which is capable of providing a coffeehouse experience in your home. A hot breakfast tailored to your specific nutritional needs (based on chemical analysis from your trips to the "smart toilet") is waiting for you in the kitchen.
When it's time to leave, an on-demand transport system has three cars waiting for you, your spouse and your kids. On the road, driverless cars and trucks move with mathematical precision, without traffic jams. Accident rates are near zero.
En route, you call your R&.D team, who are wrapping up a day's work in Shanghai. Your life-sized image will be projected,which makes your colleagues see you as if you were sitting with them. It's a bit surreal(超现实的)for them to see you in the morning light given that it's dark on the Bund, Shanghai's waterfront, though the novelty fades after a few uses.
You review the day's cloud-based data from your Shenzhen manufacturing centre, your pilot project in San Diego, and your QA team in Melbourne. The massive datasets are collected in realtime from every piece of equipment and have been beautifully summarized by your company's AI. All these facilities are closely maintained and operated via a skilled predictive analytics platform. Pleased with the team's progress, you end the call and ease into a good book. This is the future and it will be here sooner than you think.
1. What will happen when you dress yourself according to the text?| A．Your schedule is sent to your boss. |
| B．Bedroom opens quickly. |
| C．Your favourite tunes are played. |
| D．Your coffee is ordered and served. |
| A．Made specially. |
| B．Mixed similarly. |
| C．Produced in advance. |
| D．Invented traditionally. |
| A．Because the team makes progress. |
| B．Because your images are wrapped up. |
| C．Because you did it ahead of time. |
| D．Because your life-sized picture is projected. |
| A．Why we need AI assistants. |
| B．What life will be like in 2030. |
| C．How we find meaningful work in the future. |
| D．How AI helps you lead an important life. |
2 . What will the future school look like is difficult to make clear, but most experts agree that the school will be electronic in the future.
“Present-day schools will no longer exist in the next century,” says a report in The Age. “At that time, future schools will become community-style centers, which run seven days a week, 24 hours a day.” At the same time,computers will surely become a central part of the school in the future.
According to The Age, the distant learning will be popular and students will listen to teachers on computers. Going into classrooms on their computers, students will study at any time, which is very easy for them. However, it is necessary for students to go to the actual school in order to develop some social skills.
The Seashore Primary School is an imaginary school in the future created by the Education Department of Australia. At this school, all the teachers and students have laptop computers. Teachers check messages and call students back on a special telephone system and students use telephones to search for information or speak to their experts who teach their lessons. Besides, all the lessons are related to all sorts of subjects and all the students have their own learning plans created by teachers.
As one headmaster says, a laptop computer is students' library. data storage as well as the bridge to a wider world. Technology has changed the emphasis of future learning. Thus, we'll pay more attention to the learning of kids rather than the teaching.
1. What can we infer from the second and third paragraphs?| A．Present-day schools are more practical than future schools. |
| B．Students can't have discussions in future schools. |
| C．Future schools will be open to students all the time. |
| D．The number of teachers in future schools will become larger. |
| A．It has fewer desks and chairs. |
| B．Students study at a set time. |
| C．It has no teachers and books. |
| D．Students will go to actual school when necessary. |
| A．was built by the Education Department of Australia |
| B．is not a real school, but a virtual school at present |
| C．is very popular among teachers and students in Australia |
| D．is a successful example of the future school in the world |
| A．Objective. | B．Supportive. | C．Critical. | D．Contradictory. |
3 . What will future schools look like in 100 years? Imagine future schools in which students are totally engaged in a class. They are concentrating on working together to solve real-world problems. They are self-driven and are coming up with amazing ideas on the spot. They are concerned with each other’s well-being as part of a team. Their concerns reach far beyond the classroom to others all over the globe.
The school of the future will be an amazing melting pot of different peoples coming together to solve real-world problems.
Will they even be called “schools” in the future?
The teacher-student relationship is changing. Teachers are acting more as helpers rather than keepers of all knowledge. Students are driving their own education to the path that they feel best fits them. In the future, employers may not be as concerned with a diploma. They’ll look more at cases and examples of how students contribute to solving real-world problems. They’ll want to know how well they work in a team.
What will problem-solving look like in the future?
Information from the Internet is accessible everywhere and at unimaginable speeds. Kids are connected to news around the world in real time. Imagine someone could put out a request to the global community to help solve an issue in their own community! Classes can adopt an issue and work with other classes around the world in real time to create solutions.
What will information look like in the future?
It’s already everywhere. Users can get flooded by the constant flow of information. The need to understand what is true and what is not is important. The flipped classroom (翻转课堂) has already completely changed lecture-based lessons. It presents interesting content to students before they even come to class. They can access the Internet as many times as they want to review the lessons.
1. What is the key message of the first paragraph?| A．The things students will do in the future school. |
| B．The situation where students will be in the future. |
| C．The attention students will pay to in the classroom. |
| D．The methods students will use to study in the classroom. |
| A．Respect. | B．Patience. | C．Teamwork. | D．Concern. |
| A．Teachers encourage students to develop leadership. |
| B．Students are really relaxed with their heavy study. |
| C．The employers value students’ diplomas most. |
| D．Students have the right to choose the most suitable lessons. |
| A．To help students to improve the problem-solving ability. |
| B．To provide the lessons for students to study before or after class. |
| C．To help students to keep in contact with the outside world. |
| D．To help students to understand the most difficult content. |
4 . For years, planet-hunters have been searching for a planet other than Earth that can support life. They may have found one.
The planet is the sixth found orbiting a star called Gliese 581. Steven Vogt, one of the scientists involved, expects the new planet to have water. On Earth, when we find water, we find life.
A planet that can support life has to be just the right size for its system and just the right distance from its star. Some planets orbit so close to their stars that they’re much too hot for liquid water—or for life as we know it.
But a right-sized planet that's neither too close nor too far might be just right for water. Gliese 581 is probably just right. It is about three times as huge as Earth.
The new planet is 20 light years away, which is as far as 250 million trips to the Moon and back.
Gliese 581 is an exciting discovery—and astronomers are likely to find more soon, thanks to new, powerful telescopes specifically designed to look for planets.
| A．We can’t travel at the speed of light. |
| B．It’s pretty hard to imagine that water wouldn't be there. |
| C．Human beings won’t be visiting this planet any time soon. |
| D．So scientists looking for life on other planets look for water first. |
| E．It orbits its star so closely that it goes all the way around in only 37 days. |
| F．Astronomers will probably find more potential life-supporting planets soon. |
| G．Other planets keep their distance from the stars—where they’re too cold to have water or life. |
5 . Time Travel
If you could travel in time, where would you go? Perhaps you would watch an original performance of a Shakespeare's play in Elizabethan England. What about hanging out with Laozi in the Spring and Autumn Period? Or maybe you'd voyage far ahead of the present day to see what the future holds.
The possibility of time travel is indeed appealing. Stories exploring the subject have been around for hundreds of years. Perhaps the best known example is science fiction The Time Machine, which was written by H. G. Wells and published in 1895 for the first time. It was adapted for at least two feature films of the same name, as well as two television versions, and a large number of comic book adaptations. The term “time machine” , invented by Wells, is now universally used to refer to a vehicle transporting people into the far future.
But could time travel actually be possible? Some scientists say yes, in theory. They propose using cracks in time and space called “wormholes”, which could be used as shortcuts to other periods. Einstein's theory of relativity allows time travel in extreme circumstances. And British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking says you could travel into the future with a really fast spaceship going at nearly the speed of light.
Even if you could travel into the past, there is something called the “grandfather paradox”. It asks what would happen if a time traveler were to go back in time and have his own grandfather killed for some reason, and therefore prevent himself from being born. If the time traveler wasn't born, how would he travel back in time?
And would you really like to visit the future? In H. G. Wells' book, the main character travels into distant time. He arrives at a beach where he is attacked by giant crabs. He then voyages 30 million years into the future where the only living thing is a black object with tentacles（触角）. If that's what's in store, maybe we are better just living in the present day after all.
1. Why is the novel The Time Machine mentioned in Paragraph 2?| A．To praise the contribution of H. G . Wells. |
| B．To state the story's different features. |
| C．To prove the long history of time travel. |
| D．To show people's interest in time travel. |
| A．There is the possibility to invent the time machine. |
| B．They push the invention of the first spaceship. |
| C．They have been proved wrong by some time travelers. |
| D．There are differences in many ways between them. |
| A．The traveler is prevented from meeting his grandfather. |
| B．The grandfather's death makes the traveler's birth impossible. |
| C．The traveler goes back in time to seek for his grandfather. |
| D．The reunion of the traveler and his grandfather brings happiness. |
| A．Skeptical. | B．Unclear. | C．Supportive. | D．Unconcerned. |
6 . In May this year, as part of our 150th anniversary, we asked readers aged between 18 and 25 to enter an essay competition. The task was to tell us, in no more than 1,000 words, what scientific advance they would most like to see in their lifetimes, and why it mattered to them.
The response was phenomenal: we received 661 entries. Some entrants hoped that science would make their lifetimes much longer than they can currently expect. Many looked forward to work that will end climate change. Others wanted to see advances in our understanding of human history, crop growth, space exploration, and medical technologies. The ideas were inspiring.
The winner is a compelling essay by Yasmin Ali, a PhD student at the University of Nottingham, UK. Ali submitted a piece on Beethoven, her brother’s hearing loss and the science which she hoped would one day cure it. It stood out to the judges as a reminder of why many scientists do research: to make the world better tomorrow than it is today.
All essays were judged by a group of Nature editors. The top ten submissions were then ranked by three members of a separate judging group: Magdalena Skipper, editor-in-chief of Nature; Faith Osier, a researcher; and Jess Wade, a physicist. All submissions were kept anonymous throughout the process.
We also selected two runners-up(非冠军的获奖者).Physicist Robert Schittko at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, proposes that nuclear fusion(核聚变) could offer a solution to the climate crisis, in a piece that effortlessly mixes grand ambition with gentle humour. And chemist Matthew Zajac at the University of Chicago in Illinois wrote a powerful personal account of why he wants to see advances in the field of same-sex reproduction.
The results show that today’s young scientists have a wealth of ideas, talent and conviction that research can transform their world. We look forward to seeing what they do next.
1. What’s the essay competition about?| A．The scientific expectation. |
| B．The fantastic scientific ideas. |
| C．The dreams of future life. |
| D．The celebration of anniversary. |
| A．She showed great talent in music. |
| B．She found the cure for the loss of hearing. |
| C．She appealed for people to care about hearing loss problem. |
| D．She reminded people to remember the meaning of science development. |
| A．Robert Schittko won the second place. |
| B．There were two winners in the essay competition. |
| C．Matthew Zajac presented his view of same-sex reproduction. |
| D．The two runners-up were selected for the same field they chose. |
| A．Doubtful. |
| B．Favorable. |
| C．Impossible. |
| D．Ignorant. |
7 . Robots and computers are weakening wages by simplifying jobs and turning skilled work into unskilled labour. Automation is spreading into office jobs and the services sector, meaning middle-class careers and professions whose wages risk being cut down were influenced in a way never seen before. It will squash pay packets severely for years or even decades to come, a new report from Barclays has warned, which said several careers have already been destroyed as routes to prosperity.
Lorry drivers were once highly paid, but as the technology of vehicle is improving, real wages have crashed. The average US trucker earned $38 000 (£26 000) in 1980, but only $46 000 now—but to keep up with price inflation (通胀率), the wage should be several multiples of this. Similarly London’s black cab drivers have to learn the knowledge, training hard to learn the capital’s streets in detail by memory. However, satnavs (卫星导航) and apps such as Uber have led to a large inrush of drivers who have not had to pass this test, driving down earning for cabbies.
Industries soon to be affected include medicine with even complex tasks such as surgery becoming simpler. Surgeons already use robots widely in surgeries, microrobots can perform surgeries at microscopic levels that surgeons cannot manually perform. Human judgement is sill necessary, but might become less so with the development of machine, learning platforms in the medical field. With the development of machine vision, machines could also be better equipped to make medical diagnoses.
It could take many years before new technologies such as artificial intelligence (人工智能) becomes fully embedded (嵌入) in the economy to the extent that they boost productivity and wages once more. So far the effect has broadly been positive. It is estimated that 15.8 million jobs have been created overall by computer technology in the past 40 years, counting those both created and destroyed.
1. What can we learn from Paragraph 1?| A．Robots will replace humans soon. |
| B．Robots have influenced humans’ wages. |
| C．Robots have a negative effect on humans. |
| D．Robots will steal your wages but not your job. |
| A．Tested drivers rushed in. | B．Price inflation is very serious. |
| C．Apps such as Uber appeared. | D．Black cab drivers are too many. |
| A．Negative. | B．Positive. | C．Neutral. | D．Indifferent. |
| A．Fast Spread of Automation. | B．Advantages of Automation. |
| C．Potential Market for Automation. | D．Great Influence of Automation. |
8 . Created in the 1920s by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, the architect who designed Waterloo Bridges, the red public telephone boxes, which can be seen all over the UK, are regarded as one of the most typical symbols of this country.
However, pubic phones have had their day despite their lovely housings. While coin-operated and card-operated telephones are on the edge of extinction, mobile phones are playing a significant role in people's lives. Though they are more portable, flexible and extensively used, mobile phones have their kryptonite: battery life. Instead of trashing the phone booths, a project was then promoted to recycle and reuse them. To be consistent with the environment-friendly preference, people are allowed o rent and repurpose the red phone boxes. In this way, they are making an unusual comeback.
When you take a walk down Tottenham Court Road in London and find your mobile phone in a low-battery condition, there happens to be a green option for you. The abandoned phone booths are being repurposed as free charging stations powered by solar energy.
Inside the booths, which are newly painted green, there are various adaptors that can be connected to different brands and models of mobile phones. Just walk in, plug your phone in, and charge it up whenever it needs to be supplied with power. Most people would stay inside the boxes while they charge. Fully aware of this when launching the project. Solarbox can now reach a large quantity of audience by displaying ads on solid equipment. Its advertisers include well-known companies like Uber. Yet 30% of advertising space is reserved for local community projects.
Apart from transforming phone booths into solar-powered charging stations, other forms of transformation can be found in and outside the UK. For example, there is medical equipment or mini-libraries adapted from phone booths, while in America, thousands of phone booths have been transformed into wi-fi hot spots.
1. What does the underlined word "kryptonite" in paragraph 2 refer to?| A．Feature. | B．Limit. |
| C．Characteristics. | D．Lack. |
| A．It can save all the disappearing phone boxes. |
| B．It enables people to transform their phones for free. |
| C．It is a win-win strategy for both the communities and the companies. |
| D．It was launched mainly because of people's affection for the phone booths. |
| A．Skeptical. | B．Opposed. | C．Favorable. | D．Objective. |
| A．The red abandoned phone booths in the UK are turning green. |
| B．The phone booths in the UK are being rebuilt on a large scale. |
| C．The UK phone booths are giving way to the mobile phones. |
| D．The UK phone booths are transformed for different purposes. |
9 . Where is the future going?
Our work habits have changed a lot over the past thirty years. While our parents may have expected to stay in one job, with one company, for their whole life, we are faced with the possibility of changing jobs and even careers several times. Our understanding of education, work and society is different from that of earlier generations.
People in the future will still need food, of course, but the way we produce food will not be the same.
What about people who work with computers? Well, things will change for them, too. More advanced computer programs and new technologies will remove the need for computer operators who perform simple actions. Modern search engines can do many of the things that yesterday's computer operators did. Word processing and simple information handling can be done automatically.
A rapidly changing job market also creates new challenges for students, teachers and parents.
| A．What life will be like in the future is difficult to predict. |
| B．Not only the way we work and view the job has changed. |
| C．It is hard to imagine where all these advanced technologies will lead us. |
| D．For people with these skills, there will be new jobs as database managers. |
| E．Where is the future going and what can we do to find a place for ourselves in it? |
| F．Small farms that use old methods will be replaced by large farms with high efficiency. |
| G．The difference in values, skills, education and desires between two generations is growing. |
10 . Sixty percent of Americans play video games daily, according to Techjury. In order to escape from the reality of quarantine (隔离), more people have turned to video games and VR (virtual reality) has become more popular than ever.
The world of VR isn't new to the gaming industry. It has been an ongoing concept for years, dating back to the 1800s. NASA popularized VR technology in 1989, bringing light to advancements that had never been seen before, and in 1991, SEGA introduced VR to gamers.
Gaming companies such as Oculus and HTC have redefined gaming by allowing players to involve themselves deeply in the world of VR through personal headsets. VR users are able to socialize through chat rooms, create 3D art and exercise through heart-pumping gameplay. Once a user puts on a headset, they are immediately transported into a virtual world. This allows the player to have a better experience compared to simply staring at a TV with a game controller.
Although VR has many positive aspects, using virtual reality too much can cause health problems among users. When using VR, it is common for people to lose spatial (空间的) awareness. Therefore, users are encouraged to play in an area that is clear of furniture and other objects causing potential danger. Eye strain can also be caused by using VR too much, so it is important to limit your time playing in virtual reality and take breaks in order to minimize the possibility of experiencing negative health effects.
How VR will develop in the future is unknown to us. However, new advancements for it are on the way. Teslasuit, a company specializing in VR equipment, is creating haptic (触觉的) suits for VR gameplay. These suits will allow users to feel aspects of VR while in game and will increase involvement, build 360-degree awareness and engage muscle memory. There are an endless number of possibilities that users can experience and create in VR, and the boundaries of the virtual world are limitless.
1. The second paragraph is mainly concerned with _______.| A．the function of VR |
| B．the origin of VR games |
| C．the history of online games |
| D．the future of the gaming industry |
| A．do physical exercise together in nature |
| B．have a more realistic gaming experience |
| C．enjoy better-quality pictures and sounds |
| D．play games without disturbing others |
| A．contact. | B．Movement. | C．Opening. | D．Damage. |
| A．Negative. | B．Objective. | C．Confident. | D．Suspicious. |
