1 . Each of Apple’s products such as the iPhone and the iPad sounds cool and has become a fashion. Apple has cleverly taken advantage of the power of the letter “i”, and many other brands are following suit. The BBC iPlayer, which allows Web users to watch TV programs on the Internet, used the title in 2008. A lovely bear — popular in the US and the UK — that plays music and video is called iTeddy. A simplified version of The Independent was launched in 2010 under the name i.
In general, single-letter prefixes(前缀) have been popular since the 1990s, when terms such as e-mail and e-commerce first came into use.
Most “i” products are aimed at young people and considering the major readers of The Independent’s sister paper I, it’s no surprise that they’ve selected this fashionable name.
But it’s hard to see what’s so special about the letter “i”. Why not use “a” , “b”, or “c” instead? According to Tony Thorne, former Director of the Language Centre at King’s College London, “i” works because its meaning has become unclear. “When Apple uses ‘I’, no one knows whether it means the Internet, information, individual or interactive,” Thorne told BBC Magazines. “Even when Apple created the iPad, it seems it didn’t have one clear definition,” he said.
“However, thanks to Apple, the term is now connected with portability (轻便),” added Thorne.
Clearly the letter “i” also agrees with the idea that the Western world is centered on the individual. Each person believes they have their own needs, and they love personalized products for this reason.
Along with “Google” and “blog”, readers of BBC Magazines voted “i” as one of the top 20 words that have come to define the last decade.
But as history shows, people grow tired of fashion. From the 1900s to the 1990s, products with “2000” in their names became fashionable as the year was connected with all things advanced and modern.
However, as we entered the new century, the trend unavoidably disappeared.
1. Why do people use iPlayer?| A．To listen to music. |
| B．To make a call. |
| C．To watch TV programs online. |
| D．To read newspapers. |
| A．Engineers. |
| B．Young readers. |
| C．Fashionable women. |
| D．Old readers. |
| A．easy to carry |
| B．environmentally friendly |
| C．advanced |
| D．personalized |
| A．“i” products are often of high quality. |
| B．Actually nobody likes products with “2000”. |
| C．Fashion is closely connected with time. |
| D．The popularity of “i” products may not last long. |
2 . As I enter my 40s, I’ve noticed many of my parents’ generation think social networking is something they are simply unable to understand. They fear that, should they try, they will somehow get it wrong; they will say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing or behave in a way that causes embarrassment. But there are some secrets of social media for them to consider.
Here’s the first secret: everyone feels this way. I recently met a young actor who was complaining that her work demands that she join Microblog, but she always feels like she doesn’t have anything smart to say. It’s the same resistance (抵制). I hear from the older generation, who, however, have somehow believed that age is the barrier (障碍), rather than the differences of personal taste.
Here’s the second secret: everybody uses it for more or less the same reasons. Older generations often sign up to stay in touch with children and relatives. We talk about this kind of communication like it’s some old-fashioned activity, but it is exactly why younger people use social media. The truth is that most people use social media to gently keep an eye on one another, to see how those they care about are doing without needing to ring them up on the phone every night.
And this is the last secret: everyone gets to use them in their own way. Newcomers—younger and older—who worry about “getting it right” are thinking that there’s a right way to get them. But actually there isn’t. Personally, I talk a lot on Microblog. And some people post nothing and they use social media every day as readers. Social media companies would rather see people decorating their networks with pictures and posts, but there’s no rule against being a fly on the wall. It’s also a fine way to get involved.
Were quick to forget that the web wasn’t invented by 13-year-olds; it was created by today’s seniors. I’d never try forcing those with no interest in social networks to use Microblog. But don’t let the talk of age divides put you off. There’s nothing to stop the older generation from joining in the network their own generation created.
1. What’s the author’s purpose of writing this passage?| A．To share with us his personal experience using social media. |
| B．To explain why the old generation don’t use social media. |
| C．To free the old generation from fearing using social media. |
| D．To tell us a few secrets of social media that he discovered. |
| A．people who prefer reading online books |
| B．people who cause trouble to others |
| C．people who post many fancy pictures |
| D．people who simply observe others’ posts |
| A．They believe they may be trapped in embarrassing situations. |
| B．They have no particular interest in social networking. |
| C．They prefer staying in touch with relatives in real life. |
| D．They have no idea which contents to post online. |
A． | B． |
C． | D． |
3 . In the movie Jurassic Park (1993) a billionaire creates a theme park filled with dinosaurs, brought back from extinction through cloning by a team of scientists.
Although the film is of course fictional, the methods used in it to bring animals back from the dead may soon become reality.
Scientists from Harvard University in the US are currently working on resurrecting the woolly mammoth, a mammal that became extinct around 4,000 years ago.
However, it wouldn't be an exact copy of the hairy beast. "Our aim is to produce a hybrid elephant-mammoth embryo,” Professor George Church, head of the team of scientists, told The Guardian.
“Actually, it would be more like an elephant with a number of mammoth traits. We're not there yet, but it could happen in a couple of years."
The team is hoping to make a “mammophant”- a mix between an elephant and a mammoth. It would be like a regular elephant but have features from the mammoth that would make it more adaptable to cold weather.
Small ears, a thick layer of body fat and, of course, long hair are what helped the mammoth live in freezing temperatures.
So why go through all the effort and expense to bring back an animal that died out thousands of years ago? The answer lies in climate change.
It's hoped that the creatures will stop frost in the world's tundra from melting and releasing huge amounts of harmful greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Mammoths used to keep the tundra from thawing by punching through snow and allowing cold air to come in," said Church. In the summer, they knocked down trees and helped the grass grow."Church and his team are attempting to mix mammoth DNA, recovered from frozen samples of the animal found in Siberia, with that of the Asian elephant, which is its closest relative.
There are critics who believe that the media has got carried away with the story though, after several websites ran headlines such as Woolly mammoths will be roaming Earth again within two years.
“So far, scientists have managed to incorporate traits of the mammoth into elephant DNA. In a few years, they hope to make an embryo, but that's a long way from creating a viable embryo, "Popular Science magazine wrote.
Some have even gone so far as to call the story “fake news". Paleoanthropologist(古人类学家)John Hawks wrote on blog platform Medium: Is this just another case of the media sensationalizing(大肆渲染) what is otherwise a good science story?"
Although we may not be seeing woolly mammoths at the zoo any time in the near future, it's still exciting to know that there is still the possibility of a real Jurassic Park someday, however tiny that possibility may be.
1. The underlined word “resurrecting” in Paragraph 3 probably means__________.| A．making something adaptable to current condition |
| B．studying a sample of something |
| C．bringing something back to life |
| D．producing a hybrid embryo of something |
| A．It would be a combination of elephant, mammoth and dinosaur. |
| B．It would be an exact copy of the woolly mammoth with long hair. |
| C．It would look like a normal elephant but also share some mammoth traits. |
| D．It would be like a bigger sized elephant with small ears and short hair. |
| A．To improve biodiversity. |
| B．To help fight global warming. |
| C．To remove frost in the tundra. |
| D．To help grass grow in the tundra. |
| A．The media holds a cautious attitude toward the mammophant program. |
| B．A hybrid elephant- mammoth embryo is likely to be produced within two years |
| C．The method used to produce mammophants was borrowed from the movie Jurassic Park, |
| D．Scientists still have a long way to fulfill the goals of the mammophant program. |
1.可以在固定的时间做饭，且做饭时间可以根据个人需要进行调整；
2.可以陪老人聊天、下棋、做运动等；
3.及时处理突发事件。
注意：1.词数100左右；
2.可适当增加细节，以使行文连贯；
3.开头已为你写好，不计入总词数。
参考词汇：家用的household个人的individual陪伴accompany
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for attending our company’s international news conference. As you know, ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
注意：1.词数100左右；
2.开头已给出，不计入总词数；
3.可以适当发挥想象。
Good morning, everyone! It is my turn to make a speech here today.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
1.机器人的名字，外观；2.介绍其功能和特点；3.阐述你的设计理由。
注意:1词数100左右；2.可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
参考词汇:机器人android
Dear Peter,
I am writing to tell you that …
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Yours,
Li Hua
7 . Whether in the home or the workplace, social robots are going to become more common in the next few years. Social robots are about to bring technology to the everyday world in a more humanized way, said Cynthia Breazeal, chief scientist at the robot company Jibo.
While household robots today do the normal housework, social robots will be much more like partners than tools. For example, these robots will be able to tell when someone is happy or sad. This allows them to respond more properly to the user.
The Jibo robot, arranged to ship later this year, is designed to be a personalized assistant. You can talk to the robot, ask it questions, and make requests for it to perform different tasks. The robot doesn’t just give general answers to questions; it responds based on what it learns about each person in the household. It can do things such as reminding an elderly family member to take medicine or taking family photos.
Social robots are not just finding their way into the home. They have potential(潜在的) applications in everything from education to health care and are already finding their way into some of these areas.
Fellow Robots is one company bringing social robots to the market. The company’s “Oshbot” robot is built to assist customers in a store, which can help the customers find items and help guide them to the product’s location in the store. It can also speak different languages and make recommendations for different items based on what the customer is shopping for.
The more interaction the robot has with humans, the more it learns. But Oshbot, like other social robots, is not aimed to replace workers, but to work together with other employees. “We have technologies to train social robots to do things not for us, but with us,” said Breazeal.
1. How are social robots different from household robots?| A．They can control their feelings. |
| B．They are more like humans. |
| C．They do the normal housework . |
| D．They respond to users more slowly. |
| A．Communicate with you and put on performances. |
| B．Answer your questions and make requests. |
| C．Take your family pictures and deliver milk. |
| D．Obey your orders and remind you to take pills. |
| A．be our workmates |
| B．train employees |
| C．improve technologies |
| D．take the place of workers |
| A．suggestions | B．commands | C．expressions | D．bargains |
1.家庭：
2．工作：
3.业余生活。
注意：1.词数100左右：
2.可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯：
3.开头语已为你写好。
I often imagine what my life will be like in the future._______________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
The Chang’e 4 spacecraft landed on the so-called dark side of the moon at 10:26 am on Thursday, brought the country
Hou Xiyun is a professor at Nanjing University’s school of astronomy and space science,
He added，”The landing is
China plans to explore Mars, Jupiter and asteroids in the future.”
There’s no doubt that our nation will go farther and farther.
It’s hoped
10 . If you could travel back in time five centuries, you’d encounter a freshly painted “Mona Lisa” in Renaissance Europe and cooler temperatures across the Northern Hemisphere. This was a world in the midst of the Little Ice Age and a period of vast European exploration now known as the Age of Discovery.
But what if we could look 500 years into the future and glimpse the Earth of the 26th century? Would the world seem as different to us as the 21st century would have seemed to residents of the 16 century? For starters, what will the weather be like?
Depending on whom you ask, the 26th century will either be a little chilly or extremely hot. Some solar output models suggest that by the 2500s, Earth’s climate will have cooled back down to near Little Ice Age conditions. Other studies predict that ongoing climate change and fossil fuel use will leave much of the planet too hot for human life by 2300. Some experts date the beginning of human climate change back to the Industrial Revolution in the1800s, others to slash-and-burn agricultural practices in prehistoric times. Either way, tool-wielding humans alter their environment — and our 26th century tools might be quite impressive indeed.
Theoretical physicist and futurist Michio Kaku predicts that in a mere 100 years, humanity will make the leap from a type zero civilization to a type I civilization on the Kardashev Scale. In other words, we’ll become a species that can use the entire sum of a planet’s energy, mastering clean energy technologies such as fusion and solar power. Furthermore, they’ll be able to handle planetary energy in order to control global climate.
Technology has improved significantly since the 1500s, and this pace will likely continue in the centuries to come. Physicist Stephen Hawking proposes that by the year 2600, this growth would see 10 new theoretical physics papers published every 10 seconds. If Moore’s Law holds true and both computer speed and complexity double every 18 months, then some of these studies may be the work of highly intelligent machines.
What other technologies will shape the world of the 26th century? Futurist and author Adrian Berry believes the average human life span will reach 140 years and that the digital storage of human personalities will enable a computerized state of living forever. Humans will farm the oceans, travel in starships and reside in both lunar and Martian colonies while robots explore the outer cosmos.
1. Why does the author mention the Little Ice Age in the first paragraph?| A．To show the severity of the current global warming. |
| B．To stress the close connection with the current climate. |
| C．To provide contrast to the prediction of future climate. |
| D．To illustrate the importance of protecting the environment. |
| A．changes in solar activity | B．ongoing climate change |
| C．previous general assumptions | D．current consumption of fossil fuel |
| A．Humans will suffer from severe global warming. |
| B．Cyber technology helps human personalities survive. |
| C．Humans needn’t work with the application of robots. |
| D．Highly intelligent machines will replace humans. |
