The fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month is the Mid-Autumn Festival. It is a festival
2 . Viator
Travel with an insider
What’s so great about Viator?
Traveling like an insider starts here.
| Rome City Bike Tour Enjoy the best of Rome on a five-hour bike tour with a good guide. Cycle through Rome and discover its beautiful churches and fancy shopping streets. The tour will provide a wonderful view of Rome’s main attractions, plus some squares that are less common among tourists. Duration: 5 hours Price: $56.93 |
| Copenhagen Food Tour Explore Copenhagen on a food tour and discover the locals’ favourite restaurants with a guide. Food samples change with the season, but the tour includes enough treats to make a full meal, with foods like organic ice cream, home-brewed beer, rye-bread sandwiches and more. Duration: 2 hours 30 minutes Price: $120.28 |
| Paris Louvre Museum Tour Make a booking and jump the queue (队) to make the most of your limited time inside the world’s largest museum. View some most famous artworks there, including Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo. After your guided tour, you can stay on if you want to continue exploring the museum. Duration: 3 hours Price: $67.05 |
| Delphi Day Trip from Athens Visit Delphi on this full-day trip from Athens! Traveling with a guide, you’ll explore the home to the Temple of Apollo, and walk around Delphi Archeological Museum. Learn about Greek history while seeing the monuments, and visit the pretty town of Arachova on the way back. Duration: 10 hours Price: $108.85 |
| A．small temples | B．fine restaurants |
| C．famous artworks | D．beautiful churches |
| A．Rome | B．Copenhagen | C．Paris | D．Delphi |
| A．provide an artwork | B．book a ticket |
| C．know local guides | D．join a tour group |
| A．Guided tours. | B．Fancy shops. |
| C．Famous buildings. | D．New restaurants. |
The opening ceremony of the 19th Asian Games
As we know, sports activity can make people more energetic and
5 . I was in my early twenties. I had
One day just as the students were leaving, a girl handed me a folded
That experience showed me the
| A．studied | B．graduated | C．worked | D．expected |
| A．If | B．So | C．Although | D．Unless |
| A．chatted | B．supplied | C．dragged | D．inspired |
| A．equipment | B．book | C．note | D．picture |
| A．amazed | B．reminded | C．defeated | D．removed |
| A．moved | B．stressed | C．excited | D．satisfied |
| A．Definitely | B．Frequently | C．Actually | D．Unfortunately |
| A．existed | B．recovered | C．suffered | D．disappeared |
| A．extent | B．power | C．energy | D．principle |
| A．confidence | B．benefit | C．kindness | D．desire |
Do you have trouble finishing your work within a given time? Do you find yourself having to scramble (艰难完成) through your work because time is running out? It is important to manage your time properly.
First, you should write down your tasks on paper. This is to make sure that you do not miss any of them. Having them written down somewhere ensures that you will get the task completed even if you forget about it. Of course, you need to make sure that the task list is always within your sight. Make sure you have a clear view of your tasks. You can write them down in a diary.
After you have written down your tasks, it is time to plan your action. Which tasks need not be completed as urgently How much time are you going to give each task? I suggest that you complete the urgent tasks first, but at the same time, be sure to include some time to take breaks in between. The breaks ensure that you have a moment to run away from stress until you return to continue from where you left off.
Above all, however, don’t procrastinate because it is your number one enemy. Procrastination can also mean that you will not be focused when you do your work. Time is valuable, so do not waste it by procrastinating. Focus on completing the task and get it over once and for all.
1. Where can you write your tasks down?2. Why should we take breaks between tasks?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
Our biggest enemy when we manage our time properly is that we will not be focused.
4. Do you think it is important to manage your time properly? Why or why not? (About 40 words)
7 . “The first prize for the bicycle race is $1,000,” said Mr. Hakansson.
“The judges won’t let you race,” said Mrs. Hakansson. “You’re 66 years old.”
“I am going to race,” said Mr. Hakansson. “And I am going to win!”
Mrs. Hakansson only smiled. She knew he couldn’t be in the race. He was 66 years old. But she also knew that he would try.
Mr. Hakansson went to see the judges. “I want to be in that race,” he said.
“Go home to your rocking chair!” said one of the judges. “You are too old. This race lasts for days. The men go from one end of Sweden to the other. That’s more than 1,000 miles. You would never make it.”
“We’ll see,” said Mr. Hakansson.
Over 1,000 men wanted to be in the race. The judges picked only 50. They were all strong young men. They went by train to the town where the race would begin. There they spent days getting ready.
Mr. Hakansson was not one of the 50. So he couldn’t ride on the train.
“Then I’ll ride my bicycle,” he said. And he did. He rode 1,000 miles just to get where the race was to start!
At last, the race began. The 50 strong young men climbed on their bicycles. One of the judges fired a gun. And the young men were off!
Close behind them came Mr. Hakansson. His long white beard waved in the wind. “You can keep me out of the race,” he said. “But you can’t keep me off the road!”
And then Mr. Hakansson moved in front of the 50 strong young men!
After a while he came to a small town. The street was lined with people. They cheered as Mr. Hakansson rode by.
“Look, Daddy,” said a small boy. “There goes Supergrandpa!” Everyone laughed.
A writer for a paper heard the boy. He took a picture of Mr. Hakansson and wrote a story about him. From then on everybody in Sweden was cheering for “Supergrandpa”.
Day after day the race went on. Each night the 50 strong men rested. But not Supergrandpa! He rode for three days and three nights without any sleep at all. Then he rested only three hours!
Supergrandpa didn’t even eat very much. He didn’t want to leave the road. But sometimes people brought him cake, coffee and berries. Then he would eat while sitting on his bicycle.
For more than six days Supergrandpa rode on. In all that time, he had only 10 hours of sleep.
At last he crossed the finish line — a day ahead of the strong men. All the town were there to meet him. Everybody cheered and cheered. A band from the fire station played. Dogs barked. Children danced around Supergrandpa.
1. Mr. Hakansson got to the town where the race began by ________.| A．running there | B．taking the train |
| C．driving his car | D．riding his bicycle |
| A．the day after he started the race | B．a few minutes before another racer |
| C．a day before the other cyclists | D．after ten hours of sleep |
| A．An Admirable Supergrandpa | B．An Exciting Riding Race |
| C．An Unbelievable Experience | D．An Unforgettable Old Man |
The musician Moby once said, “Music has no form whatsoever — all it is air moving just a little bit differently. It’s the only art form that you can’t touch.” It is true that we cannot touch music, but that does not mean that music is an invisible art form. There is, in fact, a way to “see” music.
How can we see music? Neuroscientists, people study the human brain, use MRI machines (magnetic resonance imaging machines) to look inside the brain. These tools let them see what actually happens in the brain when people are doing things. For example, the tools let them see the neurons (神经细胞), or brain cells that are in use when people are listening to music. Computer screens linked to MRIs show neurons lighting up when they are in use. And when people listen to music, neurons light up in many parts of the brain.
Neuroscientists have discovered that it isn’t necessary to hear music for the neurons to light up. Even when you just think about a song, these neurons light up. In addition, the same neural activity in the same part of the brain happens when people experience other pleasurable activities. For example, some of the same neurons light up when we eat something delicious or hug a loved one. This is because these neurons are in the areas of the brain that reward us by making us feel good. Negative feelings such as fear or anxiety make neurons in a different area light up. However, when an anxious or frightened person listens to pleasurable music, these neurons stop lighting up.
Now that neuroscientists can “see” the, effects of music on the brain, they want to know what the benefits of music are. It turns out there are many benefits. Neuroscientists have discovered that music can help memory and may keep our brain young. Recent studies show that an elderly musician often has a better visual memory than an elderly non-musician. For example, elderly musicians are better at memorizing a written list of words than their non-musician peers.
Why does music have so many benefits? The answer may be because it uses so many different parts of the brain. According to neuroscientists, using many parts of the brain at one time gives your brain a good “workout.” In fact, one of the best brain “works” is to read music and play a musical instrument at the same time. Reading music while playing an instrument is a challenging task. It uses more parts of the brain simultaneously than most other activities and requires excellent coordination (协调性). It involves both physical movement and mental activity, much like playing a sport such as soccer.
So, although Moby is completely correct that we cannot touch music, it is possible to “see” the effect of music on our brains. There is still a lot to learn about the effects of music on our brains. However, there is no doubt that scientists have shown that music is an extremely powerful art form with many positive effects.
1. How do MRIs help people “see” music?2. Why did the author mention the elderly musician in paragraph 4?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
Pleasurable activities and negative feelings activate neurons in the same part of the brain, but in a different way.
4. Now that you know the many benefits of music, how do you think, music may be able to help you solve your problems in your life? (in about 40 words)
9 . Whales are an important part of the ocean. They maintain the ocean ecosystem by providing important nutrients for phytoplankton (浮游植物), microscopic organism (微生物) in the ocean, to grow as food for fish and other animals. Phytoplankton also carry out photosynthesis (光合作用) to keep carbon dioxide level low in the atmosphere to keep the Earth cool. So, without whales, the oceans wouldn’t be healthy.
Currently, North Atlantic right whales are critically endangered. Scientists from University of South Carolina and Cornell University imagined that it is the warmer ocean waters that force whales to go to new places that don’t have rules, such as speed limits for ships, shorter fishing seasons, etc., to protect whales.
To see if climate changes can explain the loss of whales, scientists analyzed the water temperature near the Gulf of Maine, the feeding place of the whales. The temperature is affected by the position of Gulf Stream which brings warm water from the south.
They also looked at population data for the whales and their food, which is primarily small shrimps and crabs called copepods. They estimated how the whale population changed based on the number of whale sightings, whale birth and their bodies. Finally, they analyzed how the change in the water temperature related to the change in the whale population.
The result showed that since 2010, the Gulf Stream has been farther north than ever before, bringing warmer waters to the region. The population data shows a significant decrease in copepods population beginning in 2010. This means there has been less food available for the whales.
The best explanation is that global warming is causing the northward shift of the Gulf Stream, which is consistent with climate change, and making the waters near the Gulf of Maine warmer. However, copepods prefer cold water. Warmer water wakes them too early, they miss the nutritious spring phytoplankton bloom they need to grow. Besides, when the Gulf Stream is farther north, less copepods are brought into the Gulf of Maine.
With food levels too low, fewer whales are born, and fewer survive. To find enough food, some whales swim north to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Therefore, there were more whale sightings there. It also explains why there were more whale deaths in the area in 2017 and 2019. By looking at the carcasses, scientists know that ships hit the whales, or they got trapped in fishing gear. So, climate change both makes the whales’ food shorter and causes them to move to new places, making it harder to protect them.
Global warming doesn’t only change the weather; it changes the ocean. To protect ocean species and keep our oceans healthy, governments need to adjust how they manage the ocean.
1. Scientists in the study collected the following types of data EXCEPT the ______.| A．temperatures of waters | B．population of whales |
| C．population of copepods | D．population of phytoplankton |
| A．Whales move to get enough copepods to eat. |
| B．Copepods need phytoplankton to grow. |
| C．Phytoplankton cause global warming. |
| D．Global warming causes the shift of Gulf Stream. |
| A．dead body | B．wounded body |
| C．trapped body | D．lost body |
| A．Governments should control ocean traffics that kill the whales. |
| B．Governments should take means to slow down global warming. |
| C．Governments should ban fishing in the area where the whales live. |
| D．Governments should keep the warm water away from the Gulf of Maine. |
10 . Even if you aren’t into artificial intelligence, it’s time to pay attention to ChatGPT, because this one is a big deal.
The tool, developed by Open AI, lets you type natural-language prompts (提示). ChatGPT then offers conversational responses. The robot remembers the information of your dialogue, using previous questions and answers to inform its next responses. It draws its answers from huge volumes of information on the internet.
ChatGPT seems pretty knowledgeable in areas where there’s good training data for it to learn from. It’s not omniscient (无所不知的) or smart enough to replace all humans yet, but it can be creative, and its answers can sound very authoritative (权威的). A few days after its launch, more than a million people were trying out ChatGPT.
But be careful, OpenAI warns. ChatGPT has all kinds of potential disadvantages, some easy to spot and some more subtle (不明显的).“It’s a mistake to be depending on it for anything important right now,” OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman said. “We have lots of work to do on robustness (稳定性) and truthfulness.”
As OpenAI emphasizes, ChatGPT’s answers can look authoritative but be wrong. “If you ask it a very well-structured question, with the intention that it gives you the right answer, you’ll probably get the right answer,” said Mike Krause, data science director at a different AI company, Beyond Limits. “It’ll be explained clearly and sound like it came from some professor at Harvard. But if you trick it, you’ll get nonsense.”
There have already been many students who use ChatGPT to help them cheat with their homework and essays, but as with many other technology developments, it’s not a simple black-and-white situation. Decades ago, students could copy encyclopedia (百科全书) entries and use calculators, and more recently, they’ve been able to use search engines. ChatGPT offers new abilities for everything from helping with research to doing your homework for you outright.
Many ChatGPT answers already sound like student essays, though often with an unnatural tone. High school teacher Daniel Herman concluded ChatGPT already writes better than most students today. He’s uncertain between admiring ChatGPT’s potential usefulness and fearing its harm to human learning. Dustin York, an associate professor of communication at Maryville University, hopes educators will learn to use ChatGPT as a tool and realize it can help students think critically.
1. Why does the author think ChatGPT is a big deal?| A．Because it’s artificial intelligence that offers conversational responses. |
| B．Because it’s knowledgeable in areas with good training data to learn from. |
| C．Because it has all kinds of potential disadvantages, easy to spot or more subtle. |
| D．Because it helped students with their homework essays and wrote even better. |
| A．ChatGPT was not able to form indirect answers naturally. |
| B．ChatGPT was not able to answer indirect questions correctly. |
| C．ChatGPT was not able to reply to indirect questions quickly. |
| D．ChatGPT was not able to explain indirect answers properly. |
| A．To show that ChatGPT is a tool that can be as helpful. |
| B．To show that ChatGPT is an invention that will be accepted. |
| C．To show that students should be allowed to use ChatGPT to write essays. |
| D．To show that students should be banned to use ChatGPT to write essays. |
| A．potential and knowledgeable | B．robust and truthful |
| C．imperfect yet promising | D．authoritative yet misleading |
