1 . Whenever anyone asks me what tech I’d like to see invented, I always say the universal translator, which lets you understand and speak any language.
Meta AI recently announced the start of the universal speech translator (UST) project, which aims to create AI systems that enable real-time speech-to-speech translation across all languages, even those that are spoken but not commonly written. Meta says that today’s AI translation models are focused on widely-used written languages, and that more than 40% of primarily spoken languages are not covered by such translation technologies.
According to Meta, the model is the first AI-powered speech translation system for the unwritten language Hokkien (闽南语), a Chinese language spoken in southeastern China. The system allows Hokkien speakers to hold conversations with English speakers, a significant step toward bringing people together wherever they are located.
To build UST, Meta AI focused on overcoming three important translation system challenges. It addressed data scarcity by getting more training data in more languages and finding new ways to use the data it had found. It solved the modeling problems that arise as models grow to serve many more languages. And it sought new ways to improve on its results.
Meta AI claims that the techniques it pioneered with Hokkien can be extended to many other unwritten languages—and eventually work in real time. For this purpose, Meta has released the Speech Matrix, a large collection of speech-to-speech translations, which enables other research teams to create translation models for other languages.
Artificial (人工的) speech translation could play a significant role in our world. For interactions, it will enable people from around the world to communicate with each other more smoothly, making the social net more interconnected. For content, using artificial speech translation allows you to easily localize content.
Yashar Behzadi, CEO and founder of Synthesis AI, believes that technology needs to enable more natural experiences if the digital world is to succeed. He says that one of the current challenges for UST models is the computationally expensive training that’s needed because of the wide range and very slight differences in meaning or sound of languages. Also, to train strong AI models requires vast amounts of typical data. A significant bottleneck to building these AI models in the near future will be to ensure training data collect the privacy in agreement with rules and law.
1. What is the feature of the UST project?| A．It changes spoken languages to written forms. |
| B．It attracts wider attention to written languages in translation. |
| C．It adds 40% of spoken languages into translation technology. |
| D．It enables real-time speech-to-speech translation across all languages. |
| A．Lack. | B．Mistake. | C．Recovery. | D．Management. |
| A．It is expensive to collect typical data. |
| B．It increases the use of a certain language. |
| C．Its techniques are finally developed for Hokkien. |
| D．It helps inspire interactions and content localization. |
| A．AI Translation: Make Translation Faster |
| B．AI Translation: Meet You in All Languages |
| C．Unwritten Language: Bring People Together |
| D．Unwritten Language: Translation Challenge |
Is it the future worrying me? Did I hurt someone by mistake? Am I expecting too much from life? We are often stuck in these unnecessary thoughts, causing anxiety and making us weak.
The escape from my sadness and depressed thought has been cooking for the past few months. I read through quick recipes, find the ones that I can connect to, and search up for materials in the kitchen. Every time I cut a vegetable, it is like I am cutting off my problems. All of this not only brings me great joy, but it leads me to discover something I am good at, which I might have never tried otherwise.
Cooking can work as a treatment, which has received some scientific explanations. Mental health experts have talked about the benefits cooking and baking provides for people struggling with poor mental health. Through cooking, these people can get back control of their lives. They can bring back the feeling of joy and excitement that has been long gone from their daily lives. Julia Ohana, an active expert in culinary therapy, talked about the significance cooking holds in terms of time control, communication, and problem-solving ability. She believes all these skills combined help people become less depressed and more satisfied.
The excitement when you work on a recipe is unexplainable. You look forward to what you are going to create from your own hands. You have the power to make something great, only depending on the direction you take and your cooking skills.
1. What might be the result if we are caught in unnecessary worries?2. According to the experts, what benefits will cooking bring to people with poor mental health?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
The author chooses to cook when he feels sad because he wants to comfort himself with a good meal and the cooking process also brings him happiness.
4. Please briefly present some other ways to get rid of unnecessary worries. (In about 40 words)
3 . “Sana, why don’t you read this paragraph for us?” asked Miss Mehwish. Hesitantly, Sana stood up to read the paragraph. She was hesitant as she stammered (口吃), “Em…Emma was stand…ing …” The class burst into
After the class, Sana went to the library to practice reading and overcome her inability. To go to the bookshelf, she walked
She heard them talk
Aliza, one of her classmates who was observing her for quite some time, walked close to Sana and offered her
Soon Sana started to read fluently and she gained
Sana thanked Aliza for helping her and realised that there are always two types of classmates: the ones who make fun of you and the ones who help you
| A．anger | B．tears | C．cheers | D．laughter |
| A．surprised | B．worried | C．embarrassed | D．pleased |
| A．accept | B．clean | C．read | D．use |
| A．past | B．around | C．with | D．over |
| A．bravely | B．slowly | C．calmly | D．quietly |
| A．help | B．time | C．money | D．hope |
| A．strength | B．confidence | C．support | D．honor |
| A．regret | B．shock | C．shame | D．relief |
| A．improved | B．required | C．identified | D．hidden |
| A．forget | B．find | C．value | D．overcome |
4 . For many parents, it is not easy to ask for information from children about what they did at school all day.
Don’t ask “How was your day?”.
This question often leads to one-word answers or a shrug. For many children, the question is too general and they don’t want to think about how to answer it with specifics.
Share your own experiences.
Ask when your child feels disappointed, frustrated or sad, too. Asking children to share negative as well as positive emotions can help to surface problems in a more routine, less stressful way.
Avoid distractions.
Choose a time to talk when you’ll be able to listen to your child.
| A．Don’t rush to know everything. |
| B．Sometimes, kids are happy to chat. |
| C．Don’t expect only positive experiences. |
| D．Here’s how to get them to tell you about their day. |
| E．Put your phone down and avoid doing other chores. |
| F．One way is to ask children to retell what they learned in school. |
| G．Children may follow your lead if you share your own highlights and lowlights. |
5 . Stress Management: How to Reduce, Prevent, and Cope with Stress
If you’re living with high levels of stress, you’re putting your health and happiness at risk. Stress does harm to your health. It may seem like there’s nothing you can do about stress.
Get moving
When you’re stressed, the last thing you probably feel like doing is getting up and exercising.
Connect to others
There is nothing more calming than spending quality time with another human being who makes you feel safe and understood. So make it a point to connect regularly — and in person — with family and friends. Keep in mind that the people you talk to don’t have to be able to fix your stress.
When you’re worn out by your morning traffic, or stuck in a stressful meeting at work, you need a way to manage your stress levels right now. The fastest way to reduce stress is by taking a deep breath and using your senses — what you see, hear, taste, and touch — or through a comfortable movement. By viewing a favorite photo, smelling a specific smell, listening to a favorite piece of music, tasting sweets, or hugging a pet, for example, you can quickly relax and focus yourself.
Effective stress management helps you break the hold stress has on your life, so you can be happier, healthier, and more productive. But stress management is not one-size-fits-all.
| A．Take control of your own life. |
| B．Learn to relieve stress in the moment. |
| C．They simply need to be good listeners. |
| D．But physical activity is a huge stress reliever. |
| E．But you have a lot more control than you might think. |
| F．That’s why it’s important to experiment and find out what works best for you. |
| G．While it’s not easy to avoid all stress, Learning about it can help you avoid unnecessary stress. |
6 . Harbin Ice and Snow World
When talking about China Ice Festival, people are typically referring to the Harbin Ice and Snow World, which shows ice sculptures of huge proportions and opens usually from 11 am to 10 pm each day.
Best time to enter: Harbin gets dark at around 4 pm in winter. The best time to enter the ice world is around 3 pm to appreciate the shining ice sculptures in the daytime, soon followed by the dazzling colors and light effects at night. It is recommended to spend no more than 4 hours inside the ice world, since it is well below freezing, especially after sunset. Activities to take:
1. Put on your Elsa dress, walk into dreamlike but real ice buildings, and appreciate ice castles and people sculptures.
2. Experience the speed and excitement of icy super slides. You have the choice of eight ice slides of different sizes. The longest is 300 meters.
3. Entertain yourself with various amusements like ice climbing, skating, skiing, ice mazes, snow fights, and ice biking.
4. Attend the Harbin Show —— a splendid ice-and-snow-themed show combining ice dances, ice magic, clown comedy, catwalk models, ice acrobatics, etc. The Harbin Show is performed by artists from all over the world, three times a day after 5 pm, each show lasting around 40 minutes. No matter whether you are a solo traveler looking for a travel partner, a couple looking for something romantic and fairy tale, or traveling with young children or with friends for fun and adventure, we can create a trip that is right for you. Read our personalized One-Day Ice and Snow Fairyland Tour for inspiration or scan the QR code to tell us your needs.
1. According to the author, the best time to visit the ice world is
| A．at around 11 am | B．at around 8 pm |
| C．at around 3 pm | D．at around 10 pm |
| A．Enjoying the ice driving. | B．Experiencing icy slides. |
| C．Creating ice buildings. | D．Learning ice dance. |
| A．Travel. | B．Business. | C．Science. | D．Sport. |
7 . Recently, environmentalists have encouraged us to buy local food. This reduces “food miles”, that is, the distance food travels to get from the producer to the seller. They reason that the higher the food miles, the more carbon emissions (碳排放). Buying local food, therefore, has a lower carbon footprint and is more environmentally friendly.
However, the real story is not as simple as that. If our aim is to reduce carbon emissions, we must look at the whole farming process, not just transportation. According to a 2008 study, only 11% of carbon emissions in the food production process result from transportation, and only 4% came from the final delivery of the product from the producer to the seller.
In fact, imported food often has a lower carbon footprint than locally grown food. Take apples, for example. In autumn, when apples are harvested, the best option for British people is to buy British apples. However, the apples we buy in winter or spring have been kept refrigerated for months, and this uses up a lot of energy. In spring, therefore, it is more energy-saving to import them from New Zealand, where they are in season. Heating also uses a lot of energy, which is why growing tomatoes in heated greenhouses in the UK is less environmentally friendly than importing them from Spain, where the tomatoes grow well in the local climate.
We must also take into account the type of transport. Transporting food by air creates about 50 times more emissions than shipping it. However, only a small number of goods are flown to foreign countries, and these are usually high value, perishable (易腐烂的) goods which we cannot produce locally, such as seafood and out-of-season berries. Even then, these foods may not have a higher carbon footprint than locally grown food. For example, beans flown in from Kenya are grown in sunny fields using human labour and natural fertilisers (肥料), unlikein Britain, where we use oil-based fertilisers and machinery. Therefore, the total carbon footprint is still lower.
It’s also worth remembering that a product’s journey does not end at the supermarket. The distance customers travel to buy their food, and the kind of transport they use will also add to its carbon footprint. So driving a long way to shop for food will wipe out any environmental benefits of buying locally grown produce.
Recently, some supermarkets have been trying to raise awareness of food miles by labelling (标记) foods with stickers that show it has been imported by air. But the message this gives is too simple. Lots of different factors contribute to a food’s carbon footprint besides the distance it has travelled.
1. What can we learn about “food miles”?| A．It influences how people deliver and transport food. |
| B．It will increase if people are encouraged to buy local food. |
| C．It is the key factor contributing to a food’s carbon emissions. |
| D．It shows how far the food goes from farmland to supermarkets. |
| A．transporting food by air is the most energy-saving type of shipping |
| B．storing local food creates more carbon emissions than importing food |
| C．human labour and natural fertilisers can increase the carbon footprint |
| D．growing out-of-season food takes less energy than importing food in season |
| A．Supportive. | B．Negative. | C．Confused. | D．Doubtful. |
| A．Food miles: Is buying local food always better? |
| B．Carbon emissions: How to grow food in a greener way? |
| C．Transportation: Is delivering food creates carbon footprint? |
| D．Carbon footprint: What does importing food bring to environment? |
8 . What is a mistake? A mistake is something wrong. It can be an action, a concept (概念), or a thing that was not done correctly. It can leave you feeling negative and unsuccessful. However, research shows that making mistakes is beneficial to you. Whether mistakes are beneficial or harmful depends on how much you know about them.
There are many reasons why humans make mistakes. A lack (缺乏) of experience in a certain field or situation may result in the mistakes.
What do I do when I make a mistake?
| A．The first thing to do is to reflect. |
| B．Today’s mistake helps you get it right tomorrow. |
| C．Overconfidence can also cause us to make many mistakes. |
| D．The first thing when you make a mistake is to control your emotions. |
| E．Most people are afraid of making mistakes because they think it is not good. |
| F．So it is important to understand why you make mistakes and what to do with them. |
| G．Reflecting on your improvement can help you view mistakes positively in the future. |
9 . Scientists and ordinary people alike have long wondered why mosquitoes are more attracted to some people than others. Growing evidence suggests that a person’s unique odor (气味) plays a large part in it, with several odorants known as mosquito attractants. Now, the smell of carboxylic acids (羧酸) can be added to that list, researchers at Rockefeller University reported.
“Everybody asks why some people are more attractive to mosquitoes than others.” Leslie Vosshall, a study coauthor and neurobiologist says.
So Vosshall and her colleagues gathered 64 volunteers and asked each of them to wear nylon stockings around their arms for six hours to collect their unique skin odor. They then placed two stockings into separate containers side by side, and released mosquitoes to see which stocking they moved toward. After pitting the different stockings with each other, the team came out with a winner that was about 100 times more attractive than the last place stocking.
The scientists repeated these experiments over three years with the same volunteers, finding that the volunteer’s attractiveness rating remained stable over time despite changes in diet or skin product usage.
Then the scientists performed a chemical analysis on the stockings. Sure enough, they found that the stockings that were highly attractive to mosquitoes had high levels of carboxylic acids. “If you have high levels of this stuff on your skin, you’re going to be the one at the picnic getting all the bites,” says Vosshall.
The scientists tried genetically changing the insects to reduce their sensitivity to the acids. However, this did not affect the mosquitoes’ preferences.
“I think this shows the fact that mosquitoes are choosing who to bite based on several odors from our skin.”
“It also shows outstanding performance in the olfactory (嗅觉的) system of the mosquito: when one receiver is disturbed, the relevant odor can still be found by a different receiver,” Vosshall says.
Unfortunately, it’s difficult to change the production of carboxylic acids or other odorants without negatively affecting skin health, Vosshall says. And it is unlikely that any single product could change a person’s skin odor to enable them to avoid mosquitoes entirely. “Mosquitoes have many other plans to be able to find us and bite us.” she says.
1. What does the underlined word “pitting” in Paragraph 3 probably mean?| A．Mixing. | B．Exchanging. | C．Comparing. | D．Covering. |
| A．People’s attractiveness changes if they use different skin products. |
| B．Mosquitoes have limited receivers to odors that are easily disturbed. |
| C．People with high levels of carboxylic acids are more attractive to mosquitoes. |
| D．Mosquitoes’ preferences can be changed if their sensitivity to the acids is reduced. |
| A．Carboxylic acids are harmful to skin health. |
| B．Mosquitoes prefer people who don’t use skin product. |
| C．People have many plans to stay away from mosquitoes. |
| D．Products changing skin odor can hardly prevent mosquitoes. |
| A．Why are some people more attractive to mosquitoes than others? |
| B．What can people do to protect themselves from mosquitoes? |
| C．When are mosquitoes most sensitive to the acids? |
| D．How do mosquitoes impact people’s skin health? |
The Secret to Improving Your Memory
If you want to improve your memory, you need to know how your brain works. You might be surprised to hear that your lifestyle habits might be making it difficult for you to correctly record each piece of information, experience, or learning.
It would appear that the secret to improving your memory is really simple. It’s to take breaks. As a matter of fact, the brain has more limited energy resources than you probably think. Therefore, it tires quickly and its levels of attention begin to drop after about 30 to 45 minutes.
The hippocampus is the area of your brain that’s responsible for consolidating (巩固) your short-term memories in the long term. Furthermore, for this consolidation to be possible, there must be an connection with different regions of the cerebral cortex (大脑皮层). Currently, we know that, for best connectivity, we must rest. Therefore, factors such as tiredness, negative feelings, or stress make it difficult to connect one area to the other.
Michaela Dewar, a researcher at the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom, conducted a study with other experts to understand how to improve memory consolidation processes. What they found was that something as simple as taking breaks of between nine and 15 minutes improves memory, both in healthy people and in those with neurological damage.
However, there’s one small detail that’s important. The rest must be real rest. In other words, you should go to a quiet space and not have any distractions (分心的事) around you. This includes not having your cell phone nearby. The secret to improving your memory requires you to rest for between ten and 15 minutes leaving your mind completely empty. In fact, knowing how to rest is decisive for your cognitive function, balancing your emotions, and renewing your energy.
Your lifestyle plays an extremely important role in the way your memory functions. Rest isn’t wasting time. In fact, allowing yourself small breaks is investing in your health and well-being.
1. What is the secret to improve your memory?2. What factors may influence the connection between different regions of cerebral cortex?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
Taking rests is important for your memory and spending about 15 minutes in playing with your phone will help improve it.
4. In addition to what is mentioned in the passage, what else can you do to improve your memory? (In about 40 words)
