One sunny afternoon, Alice and I were walking home from school, lost in our girlish conversation. Alice, with her curious eyes sparkling, casually asked about my friendship with Judy. In a moment of thoughtlessness, I responded, “I only hung out with Judy because she asked me and I wasn’t keen on being friends with her. She was rather dull.” The unkind words just escaped my lips before I could catch them, like marbles rolling off a table.
Little did I know, Judy had been just around the corner somehow. When I glanced up, Judy appeared right in front of me, having accidentally overheard everything. All the color faded from her face. Her eyes widening with shock, without a word, she rushed off. Alice and I were left standing there, exchanging a look of shame and discomfort. I knew I should run after Judy and apologize, but with my mind blank, I was frozen. Alice’s face turned red, too. We walked home in silence, each step heavier than the last.
The following days were filled with awkwardness. I felt terrible for what I’d said and was dying to mend our friendship. An honest apology was desperately needed. But what should I say? Unintentional as I was, I indeed hurt Judy’s feelings. Every time I saw Judy in the halls or during classes, I’d quickly look away.
Fate threw me a curve ball in our speech class. On Tuesday, Mr. Thomas announced that we would be giving improvised(即兴的) speeches. He had written our topics on slips of paper and put them into a secret jar. Each of us was asked to blindly choose one without knowing what it would be about. I couldn’t say I was not nervous. As I reached into the jar of topics, my fingers closed around the slip that read, “Share your most embarrassing moment.” My heart pounded like a drum roll in my chest. It was as if the universe had come my way to give me a chance.
注意：1. 续写词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Knowing what I had to say, I calmed myself down and walked to the platform.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________That day marked a turning point.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________2 . Late last year, in the days before the Dosakian election, a video featuring a well-known journalist and a key candidate circulated on social networks. However, it was absolutely fake (虚假的). The International Press Institute has called this episode in Dosakia the first time that AI deepfakes — fake images, or videos generated by artificial intelligence — have influenced a national election greatly.
Security experts consider misinformation the biggest global risk recently — more dangerous than war, and extreme weather events. A constant stream of people is wrestling with this issue. Now even economists are joining in.
Economist Iyan Smith, and others conduct a real-world experiment to see whether simple, low-cost nudges, or interventions, can be effective. Instead of focusing on the supply side of misinformation like social media platforms, they pay attention to the demand side: increasing our capacity to identify the fake information.
The economists split participants randomly into four different groups. One group was shown a video demonstrating a convincing journey of two people from two different social groups who, before interacting, express negative stereotypes (刻板印象) about the other’s group, overcoming their differences and ultimately regretting unthinkingly using stereotypes to dehumanize one another. Another group completed a personality test that shows them their cognitive traits (认知特点) causing prejudice, hoping to increase their self-awareness, and decrease their demand for misinformation. A third group did both while a control group did neither.
The economists find the simple intervention of showing the video makes the participants over 30 percent less likely to “consider fake news reliable”. But the personality test has little effect. As for participants doing both, they were about 31 percent less likely to view true headlines as reliable. In other words, they became so skeptical that even the truth became suspect.
Smith and his colleagues are far from the first scholars to fight misinformation by helping people to think more critically. University of Weymouth psychologist Lisa Kindle also advocates similar ways to help reject misinformation in the wild.
1. What does the author intend to do in the first two paragraphs?| A．Highlight the risk of AI deepfakes. | B．Discuss the global threat landscape. |
| C．Describe Dosakia’s election outcome. | D．Introduce the concept of misinformation. |
| A．The cognitive trait. | B．The short video. |
| C．The personality test. | D．The negative stereotype. |
| A．Videos reduce misinformation. | B．Deepfakes may discredit truth. |
| C．Misinformation causes dehumanization. | D．Personality tests sharpen thinking skills. |
| A．Battling Fake News | B．Deepfakes in Elections |
| C．The Spread of Misinformation | D．Expanding Thinking Capacity |
3 . When did we start walking for leisure?
“Going for a walk” is a popular pastime among older and younger generations alike because of its well-known benefits for our physical and mental health. But you may be surprised to hear that wandering through pretty streets or hiking in mountainous have not always been considered leisure activities, according to Daniel Gale, a researcher of pedestrianism (步行运动).
This idea of taking a stroll to clear your head has survived through to the 21st Century. But have pedestrian manners remained the same? A 1780 article for the London Magazine advised pedestrians to avoid things such as hanging around in conversation and obstructing people behind you.
In this modern age, when many of us are tied to our desks and to our screens, try the simple act of stepping out onto the city pavements, or getting lost in nature.
| A．What if speed-walking isn’t your thing? |
| B．This may make all the difference to our wellbeing. |
| C．Nowadays, we could add distracted phone-users. |
| D．He brought the recreation of walking into fashion. |
| E．Going on an urban walk is much more pleasant now. |
| F．It was a time to absorb what was going on around him. |
| G．In Britain, walking for fun wasn’t really a thing until the 1780s. |
1. 实践内容；
2. 体验和感受。
注意：1. 词数80左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
参考词汇：
戏曲欣赏 opera appreciation 插秧 transplanting rice seedlings
扎筏 raft making 篝火 camping fire
Dear Jason,
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Yours,
Li Hua
“Persist.” — Viet Thanh Nguyen
“Success is no accident.” — Chris Bohjalian
“Keep writing and it’ll get easier.” — Lisa Jewell
“Be patient with yourself.” — Min Jin Lee
These are words of advice taken from our interviews with award-winning and bestselling authors. Notice, though, not a single mention of their status, prizes, or advances—in other words, their success. And while status, literary awards, and money can be indicators of a successful writer, one must actually sit down and write for any of those things to happen. That’s what all of these pieces of advice have in common: putting words on the page.
In this issue, you’ll find articles to help you succeed, no matter your goals. If it’s to figure out whether that mess of a novel you’ve got sitting in a drawer can be rescued or if you need to move on, Andromeda Romano’s article will offer questions to ask yourself. Michael La Ronn’s essay will give you an example of how an unexpected opportunity might be just the push you need. Or, if you’ve had trouble finding an agent, Ryan Van Cleave’s collection of tips and advice from 22 literary agents on every aspect of the business might change your luck. Matty Dalrymple shares ways to reach more readers and build a community with them.
Wish you success and happy new year!
1. The advice mentioned at the beginning highlights the importance of ______.| A．a big dream | B．constant practice | C．earning money | D．achieving success |
| A．Matty Dalrympl. | B．Michael La Ronn. |
| C．Ryan Van Cleave. | D．Andromeda Romano. |
| A．Writers. | B．Businessmen. | C．Booksellers. | D．Literary agents. |
6 . Fifteen-year-old Sansa has been writing for eight years and has been working on a book for the past four. Feeling stuck and unable to write, she started searching for writing groups in Los Angeles, looking for guidance. When she found WriteGirl, she was inspired.
Keren Taylor started WriteGirl in 2001 as a way to help teen girls who did not have access to creative writing programs. “Teen girls are incredibly vulnerable (脆弱的) and invisible,” Taylor said. “They really need to be lifted up and inspired.”
At WriteGirl, 400 women writers volunteer to mentor (指导) 700 teenagers a year. Every girl who has gone through the mentorship program has gone to college and several have pursued careers as professional writers. Through the program, girls dive into poetry, fiction, songwriting, play and so on, learning techniques from professional women writers. This leads to well-rounded training and sets WriteGirl apart from other organizations.
A typical exercise at WriteGirl is mic and rant, a 30-second session before writing for each girl. As a vehicle for teens to get their ideas out, it empowers girls to explore anything meaningful to them. “Not the flowery language, or rather, complicated expressions that sound skillful, but more of the natural, this is what I’m thinking and what I’m feeling.” Taylor said.
Sansa’s mentor Danyella Wilder is attracted by the long-term nature of mentoring at WriteGirl. Wilder wishes she had a program like this herself when she was 15. “To just have an organization where people are spending their time just to tell you, ‘Hey, good job,’ or ‘That was amazing.’ You’re at the age where you need to hear that.”
1. Why did Sansa join WriteGirl?| A．To gain a sense of belonging. | B．To overcome her writing block. |
| C．To release negative emotions. | D．To become a professional writer. |
| A．It aims to produce professional writers. |
| B．It turns teen girls into mentors. |
| C．It exposes girls to varied writing styles. |
| D．It ensures girls’entry to college. |
| A．A daily writing task. | B．A recitation of poetry. |
| C．A session for idea generation. | D．A skillful expression activity. |
| A．Mentoring is a time-consuming process. |
| B．Positive feedback is crucial for teen girls. |
| C．Criticism at a young age can be harmful. |
| D．Mentorship should be based on friendship. |
7 . It is William Shakespeare, the great coiner, who is given credit for the word. Coriolanus, one of his characters, compares going into exile (流放) to a “lonely dragon” retiring to his cave. He was talking about a physical state: someone who was lonely was simply alone. Then, thanks to the Romantic poets, the word took on emotional meanings. Loneliness became a condition of the soul. For William Wordsworth, who famously “wandered lonely as a cloud”, the natural world offered an escape from negative feelings of loneliness — a host of flowers could provide “cheerful company”. Today, loneliness is often seen as a serious public-health problem, creating the feeling of disconnection.
In his book Solitude, Netta Weinstein, a psychology professor wonders the rewards of time spent alone. He begins with an account of stories of solitude created by figures such as Michel Montaigne, a writer, and Edward Hopper, a painter. Netta then draw on laboratory work, interviews and surveys to clarify how being alone really affects the human mind.
It is common to treat loneliness and solitude as synonyms (同义词), but they are not. The author suggests that what is negatively described as one state can be positively expressed as the other. Loneliness, often perceived as negative, can potentially be transformed into a positive experience of solitude. To this end he emphasizes how being alone can help restore people and offers practical advice. In a noisy world, he argues, people should make time to be alone, away from attention-grabbing motives.
The book’s interviewees mostly regard a lack of company as a contributor to autonomy. But this depends on whether solitude is desirable or not. Enforced solitude, such as that experienced by prisoners, typically leads to nothing but suffering. Elective solitude, by contrast, affords space for self-reflection. It can open the door to “peak experiences” such as wonder, harmony, and happiness. In a highly-connected digital age, however, many readers do not fancy their chances of ever taking a long enough break to have such experiences.
1. How does paragraph 1 introduce the concept of loneliness?| A．By tracing its development. | B．By analyzing causes. |
| C．By making a point to be argued. | D．By sharing a romantic story. |
| A．The various terms of solitude. |
| B．The societal impact of solitude. |
| C．The long-standing history of solitude. |
| D．The psychological benefits of solitude. |
| A．stressful | B．essential | C．changeable | D．never beneficial |
| A．Enforced solitude is a matter of choice. |
| B．Enforced solitude contributes to autonomy. |
| C．Elective solitude is rare in the digital world. |
| D．Elective solitude interrupts peak experiences. |
8 . For Mother’s Day I asked for one thing: a house cleaning service. Bathrooms and floors specifically, windows if the extra expense was reasonable. The gift, for me, was not so much in the cleaning itself but the fact that for once I would not be in charge of the household office work. I would not have to make the calls, get multiple quotes (报价), research and compare each service, arrange payment and schedule the appointment. The real gift I wanted was to be relieved of the emotional labor of a single task that had been nagging (唠叨) at the back of my mind. The clean house would simply be a bonus.
My husband waited for me to change my mind to an “easier” gift than housecleaning, something he could one-click order on Amazon. Disappointed by my unwavering desire, the day before Mother’s Day he called a single service, decided they were too expensive, and promised to clean the bathrooms himself. He still gave me the choice, of course. He told me the high dollar amount of completing the cleaning services I requested (since I control the budget) and asked repeatedly if I still wanted him to book it.
What I wanted was for him to ask friends on Facebook for a recommendation, call four or five more services, do the emotional labor I would have done if the job had fallen to me. I had wanted to hire out deep cleaning for a while, especially since my freelance (自由职业的) work had picked up considerably. The reason I hadn’t done it yet was part guilt over not doing my housework, and an even larger part of not wanting to deal with the work of hiring a service. I knew exactly how exhausting it was going to be. That’s why I asked my husband to do it as a gift.
But, I was gifted a necklace for Mother’s Day while my husband stole away to deep sweep the bathrooms, leaving me to tend to our children as the rest of the house fell into total mess…
1. Why did the author request a housecleaning service for Mother’s Day?| A．To reduce her husband’s financial burden. |
| B．To force her husband to do some housework. |
| C．To treat herself to a break from household chores. |
| D．To experience a pricy service for a special occasion. |
| A．Unyielding. | B．Undemanding. | C．Unbearable. | D．Unreasonable. |
| A．He arranged for the service as a gift. |
| B．He searched relevant information online. |
| C．He determined to clean the bathroom himself. |
| D．He purchased a necklace instead as an apology. |
| A．She felt completely satisfied with it. |
| B．She felt being ignored with her real needs. |
| C．She was relieved to see her problem solved. |
| D．She was disappointed but tried to understand him. |
9 . Of the many memorable things about Stephen Hawking, perhaps the most memorable of all was his conversation. The disease that confined him to a wheelchair also stopped him talking, so instead a computer produced what became a world-famous voice.
It was, though, a laborious process. Hawking had to move a muscle in his cheek to control a computer that helped him build up sentences, word by word, struggling to produce about ten words a minute. A better way to communicate would be to read the brain of a paralyzed (瘫痪的) person directly and then translate those readings into speech. And a study published in Nature this week, by Edward Chang, a neurosurgeon at the University of California, San Francisco, describes just such a technique. Speaking requires the precise control of almost 100 muscles in the lips, jaw, tongue and throat to produce the characteristic breaths and sounds that make up sentences. By measuring the brain signals that control these throat muscles, Dr Chang has been able to use a computer to produce speech accurately.
The volunteers for Dr Chang’s study were five people with epilepsy (癫痫) who had electrodes (电极) put into their brains as part of their treatment. He and his colleagues used these electrodes to record the volunteers’ brain activity while those volunteers spoke several hundred sentences out loud. Specifically, the researchers tracked activity in parts of the brain responsible for controlling the muscles of the throat.
To transform those signals into speech they did two things. First, they trained a computer program to recognize what the signals meant. They did this by feeding the program with output from the electrodes and with representations of the shapes the throat adopts when speaking the test sentences — data known from decades of study of voices. Then, when the program had learned the relevant associations, they used it to translate electrode signals into throat movements, and thus into sound.
Restoring speech is a more complex task than moving bodies — but sufficiently similar in principle to give hope to those now in a position similar to that once endured by the late Dr Hawking.
1. What is the problem of the traditional method for the speechless to produce sentences?| A．It is incredible. | B．It is time-consuming. |
| C．It is impractical. | D．It is unrecognizable. |
| A．By learning representation of the test sentences. |
| B．By translating electrode signals into sound directly. |
| C．By feeding the program with output from the electrodes. |
| D．By integrating brain signals, throat movement, and sound. |
| A．Approving. | B．Doubtful. | C．Unclear. | D．Dismissive. |
| A．How to produce artificial speech. | B．How to interpret brain signals. |
| C．How to give voice to the speechless. | D．How to ease human conversation. |
10 . Welcome
This course explores the concepts and algorithms (算法) at the foundation of modern artificial intelligence, diving into the ideas that give rise to technologies like game-playing engines, handwriting recognition, and machine translation. Through hands-on projects, students gain exposure to the theory behind graph search algorithms, classification, and other topics in artificial intelligence and machine learning as they incorporate them into their own Python programs. By course’s end, students emerge with experience in libraries for machine learning as well as knowledge of artificial intelligence principles that enable them to design intelligent systems of their own.
Requirement
CS50x or at least one year of experience with Python.
How to Take this Course
Even if you are not a student at Harvard, you are welcome to “take” this course for free via this OpenCourseWare by working your way through the course’s seven weeks of material. If you’d like to submit the course’s seven projects for feedback, be sure to create an edX account, if you haven’t already. Ask questions along the way via any of the course’s communities!
If interested in a verified (认证的) certificate from edX enroll at cs50.edx.org/ai instead.
If interested in a professional certificate from edX, enroll at cs50.edx.org programs/ai instead.
If interested in transfer credit and accreditation from Harvard Extension School, register at web.dce.harvard.edu/extension/csci/e/80 instead.
If interested in transfer credit and accreditation from Harvard Summer School, register at web.dce.harvard.edu/summer/csci/s/80 instead.
You are free to:
Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material
1. What does the course focus on?| A．Diving into the ideas that give rise to handwriting recognition. |
| B．Teaching the concepts and algorithms of artificial intelligence. |
| C．Offering learning or teaching materials on artificial intelligence. |
| D．Providing students with experience in library for machine learning, |
| A．A student interested in an authorized certificate from edX. |
| B．A student interested in a professional certificate from edX. |
| C．A student interested in transfer credit from Harvard Extension School. |
| D．A student interested in transfer credit from Harvard Summer School. |
| A．Students can integrate the materials into their own program. |
| B．Teachers can use the course’s materials without restriction. |
| C．Any student without related experience can take this course. |
| D．Students must create a new edX account for taking the course. |
