1 . By day, Robert Titterton is a lawyer. In his spare time though he goes on stage beside pianist Maria Raspopova — not as a musician but as her page turner. “I’m not a trained musician, but I’ve learnt to read music so I can help Maria in her performance.”
Mr Titterton is chairman of the Omega Ensemble but has been the group’s official page turner for the past four years. His job is to sit beside the pianist and turn the pages of the score so the musician doesn’t have to break the flow of sound by doing it themselves. He said he became just as nervous as those playing instruments on stage.
“A lot of skills are needed for the job. You have to make sure you don’t turn two pages at once and make sure you find the repeats in the music when you have to go back to the right spot.” Mr Titterton explained.
Being a page turner requires plenty of practice. Some pieces of music can go for 40 minutes and require up to 50 page turns, including back turns for repeat passages. Silent onstage communication is key, and each pianist has their own style of “nodding” to indicate a page turn which they need to practise with their page turner.
But like all performances, there are moments when things go wrong. “I was turning the page to get ready for the next page, but the draft wind from the turn caused the spare pages to fall off the stand,” Mr Titterton said, “Luckily I was able to catch them and put them back.”
Most page turners are piano students or up-and-coming concert pianists, although Ms Raspopova has once asked her husband to help her out on stage.
“My husband is the worst page turner,” she laughed. “He’s interested in the music, feeling every note, and I have to say: ‘Turn, turn!’ Robert is the best page turner I’ve had in my entire life.”
1. What should Titterton be able to do to be a page turner?| A．Read music. | B．Play the piano. |
| C．Sing songs. | D．Fix the instruments. |
| A．Boring. | B．Well-paid. |
| C．Demanding. | D．Dangerous. |
| A．Counting the pages. | B．Recognizing the “nodding”. |
| C．Catching falling objects. | D．Performing in his own style. |
| A．He has very poor eyesight. | B．He ignores the audience. |
| C．He has no interest in music. | D．He forgets to do his job. |
For Greek photographer George Doupas, Beijing is home now. During the past decade, he has been photographing the city, capturing its beauty
“This
With rich historical heritage, Beijing
Doupas is determined to continue with his career in China, hoping to serve as
“I call Beijing my home now,” he said, “I’ll keep sharing photos of China
A GIFT FOR GRANDPA
Summer vacation was coming. Jack and his brother Berlin were filled with excitement as they thought of visiting their grandparents again.
The big day came at last. After the happy family got ready, they set out for the grandparents’ eagerly. On the way, the brothers were excitedly talking about the fun they had with grandparents.
A little blue house with a tall white chimney finally appeared. Behind the property was the forest carrying their good memories with Grandpa. They arrived at the driveway, at the end of which Grandma was waiting for them joyfully.
Jack and Berlin each gave Grandma a big hug and then swept to the living room, shouting excitedly “Grandpa, we are back!”
Seeing his grandsons, Grandpa was wild with joy and tried to get up with all his strength from the chair but in vain. A helpless expression flashed on his face. Grandma explained that his health was declining rapidly and maybe couldn’t stand up on his own forever. But Grandpa declared stubbornly (倔强地), “I can!” Certainly, he was stuck in his boyish way. Mum and grandparents were happy to meet again after a long time. They sat together and chatted about what happened recently.
The brothers were soon bored with adult conversation, went out and wandered into the forest. Tall trees stretched up to the heavens with large branches crossing each other, while young ones rose straight like soldiers. Grandpa was once a great explorer full of wisdom. He could tell where the birds came from only by their calls and songs. The trees, birds, lizards, lots of bugs...How many merry moments they spent with Grandpa in the kingdom!
But now Grandpa couldn't get up. This made them worried. “We’d think out a way to cheer him up.” Jack said. “Grandpa is a bird lover, and we can catch him a bird.” Berlin suggested. “But he hates birds being caged!” Jack shook his head.
Then a bright idea came to Jack’s mind. “Why not make a cane (拐杖) out of a young tree!”
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。
Berlin thought it was a good idea.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Jack and Berlin handed the cane to Grandpa.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________As a young boy, I was carefree. Every vacation I looked forward to two things—seeing my grandpa and hearing his wonderful stories. My grandpa was a very good storyteller. He had worked various odd jobs when he was young and wove his adventures and misadventures into fantastic tales. These wonderful tales colored my childhood.
As I grew up, I had to admit that Grandpa’s stories went on a little long, even a little boring and gradually lost their magic. However, not wanting to upset him, my brother and I would sometimes take turns sitting in the living room, listening to grandpa tell his stories.
When my grandpa was approaching 91, he suffered from serious memory-loss. It was kind of what doctors called dementia (痴呆), probably the earliest stage of Alzheimer’s disease. Following the doctor’s directions, we moved him into a Sunrise Assisted Living Community, where he could get a better care. After that, grandpa hardly came to our house.
One weekend before my grandpa’s birthday, I came to visit him. Seeing grandpa sitting in his armchair, dull-looking, I was consumed with mixed feelings. I wheeled grandpa to the sunshine in the courtyard, talking to him. He couldn’t express himself clearly and spoke in short bursts, but I listened to him patiently and carefully just as I used to be a little boy.
It was then that I noticed a shadow box with some old and yellowish photos in it. I picked one up, in which my brother, several boys in our neighborhood, and I were playing basketball with grandpa cheering us on twenty years before. My mind flashed back to those beautiful memories. Back then, Grandpa was in good physical condition and we were all wearing basketball jerseys, playing and laughing with abandon. I presented the photo to my grandpa, pointing at each member and reminding him of their names. Incredibly, grandpa could speak out the name of every player. I even caught a soft light in grandpa’s eyes and a smile on his lips.
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。
A bright idea for grandpa’s birthday came to my mind.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Seeing “the same players” playing there, grandpa seemed to have thought of something.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________5 . Cities are difficult to navigate (导航) at the best of times, but for people with disabilities they can be like courses with hurdles and bring inconvenience to disabled people.
A UK national travel survey found that adults with mobility difficulties took 39% fewer trips than those with no disability in 2017. Yet that could change as devices and cities grow smarter. Assistive tech is playing a big role in the transformation. The global value of the industry is expected to increase from $14 billion in 2015 to $30.8 billion in 2024, according to Zion Market Research.
One of the things that could transform lives is a smart walking stick designed by engineers from Young Guru Academy (YGA) in Turkey. The WeWalk stick has a sensor that detects hurdles above chest level and uses vibrations (振动) to warn the user. It can be paired with a smartphone to help navigation, and is connected with a voice assistant and Google Maps.
Ceylan, who has been blind since birth, says that connecting the stick to the Internet of Things and smart city solutions makes it user-friendly. “As a blind person, when I am at the Metro station I don’t know which is my exit ... I don’t know which bus is approaching ... which stores are around me. That kind of information can be provided with the WeWalk,” he says.
“The smart walking stick is really an exciting initiative that will make a huge difference to some people,” says Anna Lawson, the director of the Center for Disability Studies at Leeds University in the United Kingdom. “But they are very expensive ... they’re not going to be available to the vast majority of disabled people,” she added.
Bryan Matthews, a lecturer at the Institute for Transport Studies at the University of Leeds, shares the concerns about cost. He says there should also be a focus on inclusive design, and anything that helps people navigate their environment is positive.
1. What does “that” in the second paragraph refer to?| A．The survey that compared adults’ mobility. |
| B．The smart industry that is booming. |
| C．The fact that the disabled traveled less. |
| D．The role that the assistive tech plays. |
| A．The working principles of the WeWalk stick. |
| B．The introduction of the WeWalk stick inventors. |
| C．The transformation caused by the WeWalk stick. |
| D．The benefits brought about by the WeWalk stick. |
| A．To show the value of smart tech. |
| B．To urge more attention to the blind. |
| C．To increase the potential market share. |
| D．To encourage tech research and development. |
| A．Confusing instructions. | B．Poor navigation. |
| C．Inclusive designs. | D．High prices. |
6 . Map reading, growing fruit and vegetable and basic car service are also more common skills among the baby boomer generation. But according to a new survey, just one in three 18- to 25-year-olds are able to do basic DIY, compared to two-thirds of those aged 58 and over.
Sarah Clarke-Kuehn, Chief Operating Officer-Commercial, said, “The survey findings are so interesting as they highlight a very common incorrect conception related to ‘getting old’.”
When asked at what age they thought developing new skills becomes “difficult”, Gen Z respondents said they were 35 years old, while those aged over 58 believed this number was 63 years old. The belief is that there is a boundary between learning new skills and getting a sense of achievement. But we know that this is just not the case. The benefits in continuing to enjoy life, as well as developing new talents are very significant—both physically and mentally as we grow older.
Neuroscientist and author, Dr Julia Jones, said, “We underestimate our brain’s ability to continue learning. Our brain is the most complex and precise structure in the known universe but we only use a small part of its true potential throughout our lifetimes. To boost continued brain health, we should learn complex and novel skills at all ages. This becomes more important as we age, because these learning experiences help to build new connections between neurons (神经细胞) that maintain intelligence and reduce the risk of future brain decline.”
“Learning languages and musical instruments are believed to be effective at boosting neuroplasticity (神经可塑性) due to their complex nature, but all learning is beneficial and can bring a sense of achievement, purpose and social engagement.”
Dr Jones added. “Find a new hobby and throw yourself into a wonderful learning experience or pick up an old pastime and improve those skills. I’m currently learning to play the guitar and it’s opened up a whole new world of music and fun.”
1. What is mentioned about the young generation in the text?| A．They lose interest in DIY. |
| B．They have no idea in plants. |
| C．Many of them lack some basic skills. |
| D．Many of them own poor reading skills. |
| A．Learning brings a sense of belonging. |
| B．It is never too late to learn in one’s life. |
| C．It is necessary to show off one’s talents. |
| D．The benefits of lifelong learning are temporary. |
| A．The significance of knowing the structure of the brain. |
| B．The difficulties in improving the ability of the brain. |
| C．The reasons for taking full advantage of the brain. |
| D．The process of protecting the brain from risk. |
| A．Favorable. | B．Negative. | C．Doubtful. | D．Unclear. |
7 . What Is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is a large language model chatbot developed by OpenAI based on GPT=3. 5 (Click to learn more). It has a remarkable ability to interact in a conversational dialogue form and provide responses that can appear surprisingly human. Large language models perform the task of predicting the next word in a series of words.
Is ChatGPT Free To Use?
The use of ChatGPT is currently free during the “research preview” time. The chatbot is currently open for users to try out and provide feedback on the responses so that the AI can become better at answering questions and to learn from its mistakes. However, ChatGPT is envisioned as a tool that the public will eventually have to pay to use.
How Can ChatGPT Be Used?
ChatGPT can write code, poems, songs, and even short stories in the style of a specific author. The expertise in following directions elevates ChatGPT from an information source to a tool that can be asked to accomplish a task. This makes it useful for writing an essay on virtually any topic. ChatGPT can function as a tool for generating outlines for articles or even entire novels. It will provide a response for virtually any task that can be answered with written text.
Limitations
●ChatGPT sometimes writes plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answers. Fixing this issue is challenging, as: (1) during RL training, there’s currently no source of truth; (2) training the model to be more cautious causes it to decline questions that it can answer correctly; and (3) supervised training misleads the model because the ideal answer depends on what the model knows, rather than what the human demonstrator knows.
●ChatGPT is sensitive to tweaks (微调) to the input phrasing or attempting the same prompt multiple times. For example, given one phrasing of a question, the model can claim to not know the answer, but given a slight rephrase (重新措辞), it can answer correctly.
●While we’ve made efforts to make the model refuse inappropriate requests, it will sometimes respond to harmful instructions or exhibit biased behavior. We’re using the Moderation API to warn or block certain types of unsafe content, but we expect it to have some false negatives and positives for now. We’re eager to collect user feedback to aid our ongoing work to improve this system.
1. Which of the following tasks can NOT be performed by ChatGPT?| A．Writing a poem. | B．Drawing a painting. |
| C．Writing a song. | D．Creating a short story in O. Henry’s style. |
| A．It only gives true answers. |
| B．It is free of charge at the moment. |
| C．Its limitations are easy to overcome. |
| D．It can respond to harmful questions sometimes. |
| A．A website. | B．A brochure. | C．A leaflet. | D．A novel. |
8 . Why was school created?
If you’re honest with yourself, though, you know what a great place school is.
Schools are not a new invention. You may have seen some old one-room schoolhouses that have been around for several hundred years or more.
In fact, education dates back to the very first humans ever to live on Earth. Why? To survive, every generation has found it necessary to pass on its knowledge, skills, values, and traditions to the next generation. How can they do this? Education! Each subsequent generation (后代) must be taught these things.
Rather than every family being responsible for education, people soon found out that it would be easier and more efficient to have a small group of adults teach a larger group of children.
| A．In this way, the idea of school was born. |
| B．The earliest schools, though, date back thousands of years. |
| C．At that time, schools focused on reading, writing, and maths. |
| D．Ancient schools weren’t like the schools we know today, though. |
| E．We’re sure that’s a question that every student asks from time to time. |
| F．The earliest human beings didn’t need schools to pass along information. |
| G．You have fun, learn all kinds of interesting things, and get to spend time with your friends. |
9 . When we think of Antarctica, the first thing that comes to our mind is a picture of penguins and large areas covered with snow. Large amounts of white snow spreading over thousands of kilometers is a pretty good description of Antarctica.
Research and observations conducted over the past few years have led to the conclusion that the Antarctic Peninsula's snow is turning green.
Scientists fear that such profound growth of algae can set off more global warming, causing even more snow to melt. To better understand that, we must consider that white snow reflects most of the sunlight that falls on it. However, as the surface of the snow darkens, it absorbs more and reflects less of the sunlight.
| A．This is due to algal growth. |
| B．But, that legendary snow is not completely white anymore. |
| C．Sometimes, they can be present below the surface of the snow. |
| D．The algae grow so quickly that they occupy great areas of the snow. |
| E．The Antarctic is the area of the continent with the most vegetation. |
| F．More sunlight implies more heat trapped on the surface of the Earth. |
| G．Scientists are estimating the area covered by these green snow algae. |
10 . How to Memorize a Long Text in the Shortest Time
If you’ve ever tried to memorize a long text, you are likely to just repeat the sentences over and over again.
Divide the text into separate parts.
Record your reading the text if you’re an auditory (听觉型的) learner. An auditory learner can more easily store things to memory by listening to them over and over again. If that’s you, then the most effective way for you to memorize a text is by hearing it. Record your reading the text you want to memorize, so you can listen to it.
Memorize the first letter of each word of the text to create a shortcut (捷径). The ability to memorize something sometimes means the ability to recall the information in your memory. To exercise your ability to recall, make a new page with only the first letter of each sentence in the text.
| A．Then try to recall the text using only those first letters. |
| B．Turn the words into a song to help you remember them. |
| C．The act of speaking and listening may improve your memory. |
| D．However, this isn’t necessarily the quickest way in short time. |
| E．Look for words that you won’t have to work hard to memorize. |
| F．Once you go through the text, you may know its general structure. |
| G．It’s time to put them together so you can memorize the whole text. |
