1 . In the late 1970s, archaeologists (考古学家) uncovered the remains of a woman and a young dog, her hand resting on the puppy’s chest in a 12,000-year-old village.
The find is some of the earliest evidence of the bond between humans and dogs. But even after years of study researchers are divided on how this bond began. Did it arise over thousands of years, as early dogs became tamer (驯服的) and more accustomed to human behaviors? Or was this fire already burning in the ancestors of dogs: the gray wolf?
Christina Hansen Wheat, a behavioral ecologist at Stockholm University, and workmates hand-raised 10 gray wolves from the time they were 10 days old. When the animals were 23 weeks old, a caregiver led them one at a time into a mostly empty room. Over the course of several minutes, the caregiver exited and entered the room, sometimes leaving the wolf alone, sometimes leaving it with a complete stranger. The team repeated the experiment with 12 23-week-old Alaskan huskies (哈士奇), which they’d raised similarly since puppyhood.
For the most part, the scientists saw few differences between the wolves and the dogs. When their caregiver entered the room, both species scored 4.6 on a five-point scale of “greeting behavior”—a desire to be around the human. When the stranger entered, dog greeting behavior dropped to 4.2 and wolf to 3.5, on average, suggesting both animals made a distinction between the person they knew and the one they didn’t. It’s this distinction that the team counts as a sign of attachment.
In addition, dogs barely paced—a sign of stress—during the test, while wolves paced at least part of the time. However, the wolves stopped pacing almost entirely when a stranger left the room and their caretaker returned. Hansen Wheat says that’s never been seen before in wolves. It could be a sign, she says, that the animals view the humans who raised them as a “social buffer”.
For her, that’s the most interesting part of the study. “If this is true, this sort of attachment is not what separates dogs from wolves,” she says. In other words, it didn’t have to be bred into them by humans, but could have been the seed we selected for, and then strengthened over thousands of years.
1. What’s the purpose of Hansen Wheat’s experiment?| A．To find out what makes gray wolves and dogs different. |
| B．To explain the reasons why humans raised dogs from ancient times. |
| C．To argue gray wolves after being tamed are easier to keep than dogs. |
| D．To prove whether gray wolves can make doglike attachment to people. |
| A．Researchers began to raise gray wolves from their birth. |
| B．Researchers used equal numbers of gray wolves and dogs. |
| C．Gray wolves felt more stressful than dogs when a stranger came. |
| D．“Greeting behavior” of the two animals was significantly different. |
| A．A reminder of feeding. | B．A sign of social attachment. |
| C．A source of comfort and support. | D．A warning of stopping pace. |
| A．Dogs are more attached to humans than gray wolves. |
| B．It is the attachment to humans that sets gray wolves apart from dogs. |
| C．The attachment between dogs and humans is the result of being tamed. |
| D．The attachment to humans plays a role in the choice of dogs or gray wolves. |
2 . Koko the gorilla knew over 1,000 signs based on American Sign Language, and used them to do everything from asking for food to joking around. Her trainer and long-term companion, Penny Patterson, thought Koko went further still, signing in novel ways and showing complex emotions. According to Ms Patterson, when a cat that Koko loved was killed in an accident, Koko signed: “Cat, cry, have-sorry, Koko-love.” When Koko died last month, some of her obituaries (讣告) mourned the gorilla who had “mastered American sign language.”
Then came the backlash, from linguists and experts in sign languages. Sign languages have complex grammars, equivalent to spoken tongues in expressiveness. Koko’s ability, it was pointed out, fell well short of a fluent human signer. Moreover, Ms Patterson was her interpreter, a role that invited the question of how much she was inferring what Koko “must have meant,” and explaining away random signs. It was hard to be sure: Ms Patterson preferred speaking to journalists over sharing her video and raw data about Koko with fellow researchers.
There is no doubt that animals communicate. Animals from one region can share sounds that differ from groups in another, leading researchers to talk of animal “dialects.” Then there are the remarkable achievements of Koko and her primate predecessors, including a chimp delightfully named Nim Chimpsky. Yet there is an important distinction between communication and language. Take the misleading term “body language.” It is sometimes claimed that words convey just 7% of meaning, and that body language and tone of voice do the rest. This wildly overstretches an old study which found that most emotional messaging — as opposed to the propositional kind — comes from tone and body language, especially when a neutral word such as “maybe” was used. But try conveying a fact like “It will rain on Tuesday” with your eyebrows, and the difference becomes clear. Language allows for clear statements, questions and commands.
Nim Chimpsky’s near-namesake, Noam Chomsky, has argued that people have a kind of “universal grammar”, and that all humankind’s languages are mere variations on a theme. Mr Chomsky has changed his mind repeatedly on what constitutes the core of human language, but one obvious candidate is syntax — rules, not just words, which allow the construction of a huge variety of meaningful utterances (所说的话). This capacity may even be infinite. Any statement in English, for example, can be made longer by adding “He said that …” at the beginning. This property is called recursion: a simple statement (“It’s cold”) is embedded in a more complicated one (“He said that it’s cold”). Human syntax also allows for hypotheticals (“If she hadn’t arrived …”), talking precisely about events distant from the present, and so much more.
That gorillas lack syntax should not blind humans to their magnificence. But the fact that Koko could communicate should not mislead observers into thinking she possessed language.
1. Which statement about KOKO the gorilla is true?| A．Koko’s ability was similar to a fluent human signer. |
| B．Koko could ask for food using sign language. |
| C．Koko was able to show complex feelings using sign language. |
| D．Koko was killed in an accident. |
| A．approval | B．bias | C．opposition | D．evidence |
| A．Koko was not as expressive as a human signer |
| B．Koko seldom needed an interpreter |
| C．Koko was able to communicate with journalists |
| D．Koko failed to speak several animal “dialects” |
| A．Humans can express past events using language while apes cannot. |
| B．Tone and body language play a dominant role in human communication. |
| C．Words enable humans to convey clear meanings. |
| D．Gorillas are still magnificent in terms of their ability to communicate. |
| A．Nim Chimpsky and Noam Chomsky — Who Has the Upper Hand? |
| B．Syntax — What Separates Humans and Apes. |
| C．Koko the Gorilla — A Magnificent Communicator. |
| D．Great Apes — Language and Communication Are Not the Same Thing. |
In 2000, when I was around seven years old, all my family were coming back from a T-ball game, which was our usual weekend adventure, but unlike every other weekend, a surprise was waiting for us in our driveway—two adult geese and a small goose. Obviously startled by our return, the adults flew away in panic, with their baby, too young to fly, left in place, tiny and delicate.
Hours passed one after another, and night eventually fell. However, with it also came a deep chill and a fear of watchful animals. It was apparent that the gosling needed protection, warmth, and food to make it to the morning, so we had to help it, and we brought him onto our back yard.
We all pretty much slept with one eye open till morning came. And then another morning. And still another. Each morning, we would try to drive the goose away to his parents, who kept coming back to our yard. He wouldn’t go to them, though, and neither would they come close enough to claim him. We kept this up for five days, but no luck. Realizing the young goose had clearly decided we were his family by then, we had to give him a name, calling the little guy Peeper, because he would often follow us around the yard making a peeping(唧唧叫) noise, nonstop. Besides, we decided that Peeper was a boy. I don’t know why; it just felt right.
A year passed and we settled into a routine. Peeper slept on our back yard each night and, in typical goose fashion, used it as a latrine(公共厕所). My dad would spray off all the goose droppings daily. Part of this ceremony included Dad throwing Peeper up into the air so he could flap its wings and flew a loop(圈) around the house, and then came back again once the porch was clean.
Days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months.
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Before we knew it, the little thing had grown into a big bird with two powerful wings.
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Paragraph 2:
It came as a total surprise to me when, in 2020, an adult goose made his way back to my family home.
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4 . China launched a large robotic spacecraft early Tuesday morning at the Wenchang Space Launch Center in South China’s Hainan province, tasking it with landing on the moon and bringing back lunar samples, 44 years after the last time such extraterrestrial substances were brought back to Earth.
A Long March 5 heavy-lift carrier rocket lifted its 20-story-tall body and soared skyward trailing a spectacular silver flame at 4:30 am from its launch pad, leaving many spectators in awe and excitement. The rocket was tasked with placing the 8.2-metric ton Chang’e 5, which consists of four parts --- orbiter, lander, ascender and re-entry capsule --- in an Earth-moon transfer trajectory. Chang’e 5 will fly in it within the next several days and make some correction operations before conducting a key braking maneuver to avoid accidentally flying past the moon. After its arrival in lunar orbit, the probe(探测器) will fly around the celestial body for a certain period of time and will then separate into two parts, with the orbiter and re-entry capsule remaining in orbit while the lander-ascender combination going down to the lunar surface. The landing combination will make an engine-assisted touchdown on the moon and later conduct such assignments as obtaining underground rocks from 2 meters beneath the surface and gathering surface dirt. If everything proceeds smoothly, about 2 kilograms of stones and soil will be collected and packed in a vacuum metal container inside the ascender. After the two-day surface operations are done, the ascender’s rocket will elevate it to lunar orbit to dock with the re-entry capsule. The combination of orbiter and re-entry capsule will then depart the lunar orbit and return to Earth’s orbit, where the pair will break up and the re-entry capsule will return to a preset landing site in North China in mid-December. Back on the lunar surface, the lander will continue carrying out survey and measurement.
The entire mission is scheduled to last about 23 days, according to the China National Space Administration.
1. What does the underlined word “trajectory” in paragraph 2 probably mean?| A．space | B．capsule | C．path | D．operation |
| A．To transfer samples back to earth. |
| B．To be ready if the lander broke down. |
| C．To obtain underground rocks and surface dirt. |
| D．To help the lander-ascender combination go down to the lunar surface. |
| A．The collection of rocks and dirt will last about 23 days. |
| B．Chang’e 5 will fly at a fixed speed to avoid flying past the moon. |
| C．The vacuum metal container will be delivered to the re-entry capsule after the collection. |
| D．The lander will come back to earth with the ascender to carry out survey and measurement. |
| A．Space Race between Superpowers |
| B．China’s Ambition to Explore Outer Space |
| C．Chang’e 5 Sets out to Collect Moon Samples |
| D．A Successful Mission to Bring back Lunar Samples |
It was one of the hottest days of the dry season. We had not seen rain in almost a month. The crops were dying. Cows had stopped giving milk. The streams were long gone back into the earth. If we didn't see some rain soon we would lose everything. It was on this day that I learned the true lesson of sharing and witnessed the best miracle I have ever seen in my life.
I was in the kitchen making lunch for the family when I saw my six-year old son, Billy, walking toward the woods. I could only see his back. He wasn't walking with his usual steps. He was obviously walking with great effort... trying to be as still as possible. Minutes after he disappeared into the woods, he came running out again, toward the house. I went back to make sandwiches, thinking that whatever he had been doing was completed. Moments later, however, he was once again walking in that slow purposeful long step toward the woods. This activity went on for over an hour: walking cautiously to the woods, then running back to the house. Finally, my curiosity got the best of me. I crept out of the house and followed him on his journey.
He was cupping both hands in front of him as he walked; being very careful not to spill (溅出) the water he held in them. I stepped close as he went into the woods. Branches and thorns slapped his little face but he did not try to avoid them. He might have a much greater purpose, I thought. As I came closer, I saw the most amazing sight. Several large deer stood in front of him. Billy walked right up to them, at the sight of which I almost screamed for him to get away. A huge buck (雄鹿) was dangerously close. But the buck neither threatened him nor even moved as Billy knelt down. And I saw a baby deer lying on the ground, obviously suffering from heavy loss of water and heat exhaustion, lifting its head with great effort to lap (舔) up the water cupped in my boy's hands.
注意：
1．所续写短文的词数应为150左右；
2．请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答．
Paragraph 1:
When the water was gone, Billy jumped up to run back to the house. I followed him back to the tap.
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Paragraph 2:
This time I joined him, with a small pot of water from the kitchen.
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Is renting clothes greener than buying them?
Clothing rental is a hot new industry and retailers are demanding to get on board in hopes of attracting green shoppers. But is renting fashion actually more environmentally-friendly than buying it, and if so, how much more? Journalist and author Elizabeth Cline investigated this question and concluded that it’s not as sustainable as it seems.
Take shipping, for example, which has to go two ways if an item is rented — receiving and returning. Cline writes that consumer transportation has the second largest carbon footprint of our collective fashion habit after manufacturing. She writes, “An item ordered online and then returned can send out 20 kilograms of carbon each way, and increases up to 50 kilograms for rush shipping. By comparison, the carbon impact of a pair of jeans purchased from a physical store and washed and worn at home is 33.4 kilograms, according to a 2015 study by Levi’s.”
Then there’s the burden of washing, which has to happen for every item when it’s returned, regardless of whether or not it was worn. For most rental services, this usually means dry cleaning, a high impact and polluting process. All the rental services that Cline looked into have replaced perchloroethylene (氯乙烯), a carcinogenic (致癌的) air pollutant that is still used by 70 percent of US dry cleaners, with hydrocarbon alternatives, although these aren’t great either.
Lastly, Cline fears that rental services will increase our appetite for fast fashion, simply because it’s so easily accessible. There’s something called “share washing” that makes people engage in more wasteful behaviors precisely because a product or service is shared and thus is regarded as more eco-friendly. Uber is one example of this, advertised as “a way to share rides and limit car ownership.” and yet “it has been proven to discourage walking, bicycling, and public transportation use.”
Renting clothes is still preferable to buying them cheap and throwing them in the dustbin after a few wears, but we shouldn’t let the availability of these services make us too satisfied. There’s an even better step—and that’s wearing what is already in the closet.
| A. virtual B. survival C. specifically D. restoring E. transboundary F. excursions G. nesting H. properly I. routes J. facing K. connection |
World Migratory Bird Day is an annual awareness-raising campaign highlighting the need for the conservation of migratory birds and their habitats. It has a global outreach and is an effective tool to help raise global awareness of the threats
Every year people around the world take action and organize public events such as bird festivals, education programmes, exhibitions and bird-watching
The theme of this year’s World Migratory Bird Day is “Birds Connect Our World”, which highlights the importance of conserving and
Migratory birds need a network of undamaged habitats along their entire migration
In addition, networks of critical sites key to migration need to be safeguarded and managed
A wave of online interactions and
8 . Every minute, every single day, the equivalent of a truckload of plastic enters our oceans. In the name of profit and convenience, corporations are literally choking (塞满) our planet with a substance that does not just “
Just over a decade ago, I launched the Story of Stuff to help shine a light on the ways we
The cycle is endless, and it happens countless times every single day. But here’s the
For years, we’ve been
Recycling alone will never stop the flow of plastics into our oceans; we have to get to the
Bag, cup and straw bans like those in Morocco, Iceland, Vancouver and some US cities are a great start, but also not enough. And while clean-up efforts are
Not long ago, we existed in a world without throwaway plastic, and we can thrive that way again. The world’s largest corporations—with all their profits and innovation labs—are well
| A．pass by | B．go away | C．give in | D．turn around |
| A．produce | B．pursue | C．consume | D．clear |
| A．desires | B．purchases | C．profits | D．varieties |
| A．needless | B．attractive | C．complete | D．permanent |
| A．significance | B．relief | C．instance | D．challenge |
| A．originates from | B．ends up | C．relates to | D．goes beyond |
| A．thrilled | B．frustrated | C．convinced | D．concerned |
| A．skillfully | B．randomly | C．simply | D．precisely |
| A．difference | B．proposal | C．discovery | D．choice |
| A．complexity | B．analysis | C．presence | D．source |
| A．mopping | B．screaming | C．complaining | D．regretting |
| A．Otherwise | B．Besides | C．However | D．Therefore |
| A．enthusiasm | B．responsibility | C．preference | D．demand |
| A．inadequate | B．helpful | C．voluntary | D．fruitless |
| A．educated | B．acknowledged | C．established | D．positioned |
Lon was chasing his runaway horse when a goose went under his feet. And he fell into a thornbush (荆棘丛). “Why do I have such bad luck?”
Things never seemed to go Lon’s way. If there was a bee about, he was stung.
And if his horse ran away, it would run straight through a thornbush. Still, even bad luck might turn good if he could catch that goose for dinner.
He scanned the bushes, and found a nest with an egg. Just an egg, but even one egg might make a small meal.
He picked it up, but dropped it in surprise. The egg was unusually heavy, and it gleamed (发光) in the sunlight. It was made of gold!
Lon sighed. He’d nearly stepped on a goose that lays golden eggs. If he had captured the goose, he would have had golden egg after golden egg.
Then a thought exploded in his mind.
Perhaps he could take the egg and get it to hatch, and the new goose would lay golden eggs just as its mother did.
Lon smiled. His luck seemed to be changing.
Once home, Lon placed the egg into a bed of cotton next to the hearth. He turned it every hour for several days.
One morning, he heard a faint chk-chk-chk. A small golden beak poked its way through the shell.
It was an ugly little thing, but Lon didn’t care. All that mattered was the golden eggs it would soon lay.
The gosling demanded food. Lon happily kept its beak filled. He named the bird Goly and became fond of it, even though it was soon better fed than he was. Lon talked to his goose and taught it to play checkers (国际跳棋).
Time passed as Lon waited for the first golden egg. Goldy had grown quite fat, but there were no eggs. Lon finally took the goose to a farmer to see what the problem was.
The farmer took a closer look and laughed. “You’ll never get eggs from this goose. It’s a boy goose!
I might as well roast you for dinner,” Lon said. “At least then I’ll get a meal for all my work!”
注意:
1. 所续写短文的词数应为 150 左右；
2. 续写部分分为两段，每段的开头语已为你写好。
Alarmed，Goldy popped out of Lon’s arm and escaped into the forest.
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One morning, Lon awoke to Goldy’s familiar honking outside.
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10 . Hardware in general, and smartphones in particular, have become a huge environmental and health problem in the Global South’s landfill sites(垃圾填埋场).
Electronic waste (e-waste) currently takes up 5 percent of all global waste, and it is set to increase rapidly as more of us own more than one smartphone, laptop and power bank. They end up in places like Agbogbloshie on the outskirts of Ghana’s capital, Accra. It is the biggest e-waste dump in the world, where 10,000 informal workers walk through tons of abandoned goods as part of an informal recycling process. They risk their health searching for the precious metals that are found in abandoned smartphones.
But Agbogbloshie legally should not exist. The Basel Convention, a 1989 treaty, aims to prevent developed nations from unauthorized dumping of e-waste in less developed countries. The e-waste industry, however, circumvents regulation by exporting e-waste labelled as “secondhand goods” to poor countries like Ghana, knowing full well that it is heading for a landfill site.
A recent report found Agbogbloshie contained some of the most dangerous chemicals. This is not surprising: smart phones contain chemicals like mercury(水银), lead and even arsenic(砷). Reportedly, one egg from a free-range chicken in Agbogbloshie contained a certain chemical which can cause cancer and damage the immune system at a level that’s about 220 times greater than a limit set by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). Most worryingly, these poisonous chemicals are free to pollute the broader soil and water system. This should concern us all, since some of Ghana’s top exports are cocoa and nuts.
Some governments have started to take responsibility for their consumers’ waste. For example, Germany has started a project that includes a sustainable recycling system at Agbogbloshie, along with a health clinic for workers. However, governments cannot solve the problem alone, as there is an almost limitless consumer demand for hardware, especially when governments’ green policies are focused on issues like climate change.
Only the manufacturers can fix this. A more economically sustainable and politically possible solution is through encouraging hardware manufacturers to make the repair, reuse and recycling of hardware profitable, or at least cost-neutral.
1. What can we infer from Paragraph 2?| A．Electronic waste requires more landfill sites. |
| B．Electronic waste is too complex to get fully recycled. |
| C．Electronic products need to be improved immediately. |
| D．Electronic pollution is a burning question in Agbogbloshie. |
| A．Relaxes. | B．Abolishes. | C．Avoids. | D．Tightens. |
| A．The violation of EFSA’s standards. | B．The threat of polluted food worldwide. |
| C．The lack of diversity in Ghana’s exports. | D．The damage to chicken’s immune system. |
| A．Letting governments take on the main responsibility. |
| B．Reducing customers’ demands for electronic products. |
| C．Governments adjusting their green policies about e-waste. |
| D．Manufacturers’ developing a sustainable hardware economy. |
