1 . For many, Labor Day weekend signals the end of summer and an opportunity to host a socially-distanced barbecue (an outdoor meal). But this national holiday—celebrated every year in the United States and Canada on the first Monday in September—has revolutionary (革命性的) origins.
By the late 19th century, the Industrial Revolution had made working life miserable for people around the world. In many places, workers toiled for at least 12 hours a day six days a week in mines, factories, railroads, and mills. This holiday actually originated in the US on May 1, 1866, in what came to be known as the Haymarket Riot, workers flooded Chicago streets to demand an eight-hour workday.
It would take another conflict in the American Midwest to make Labor Day a national holiday. On May 11, 1894, workers at the Pullman Palace Car Company, a railroad car manufacturer near Chicago, went on strike to protest their low wages and 16-hour workdays. In August 1893, James Kyle introduced federal legislation (立法) to make Labor Day a public holiday, but for ten months the legislation was put on hold. To quiet the strikers and their supporters, the Senate quickly passed the bill on June 22. The bill passed the House four days later and President Grover Cleveland signed it into law on June 28, 1894.
The holiday is more information May Day labor celebrations. Many observers relax at home or head to outdoor recreational activities, such as boating, barbecues, and camping. It may also be marked with fireworks shows and other events. Labor Day has also become associated with retail sales, as many shop owners try to take advantage of the customers’ day off. It is one of the largest sales events of the year. meaning retail employees actually have to work more on this day. Parades are the most common model of celebration, which often feature processions of labor groups.
1. What do we know about the workers in the late 19th century?| A．They were paid well. | B．They had long workdays. |
| C．They often had a barbecue. | D．Their contributions were recognized. |
| A．Put off. | B．Introduced. | C．Got through. | D．Protected. |
| A．On May 1, 1886. | B．On August 22, 1893. | C．On May 11, 1894. | D．On June 28, 1894. |
| A．The origins of Labor Day. | B．The labor groups achievements. |
| C．The ways to celebrate Labor Day. | D．The official activities on Labor Day. |
2 . My grandfather was a rigid perfectionist. Everything had to be orderly, precise and punctual. I was frightened of him until the day he died. Growing up, my mother desperately wanted to please him. She probably thought he might leave if she didn’t.
In fact, I now think the fear of being left alone, abandoned, was a current throughout much of her life. A few years into my father suffering from Alzheimer, my mother’s voice on the phone sounded so upset that I had to tell her, “Just be with yourself for a little while.”
“No, I can’t do that. I don’t want to do that,” she said abruptly, closing the door on the subject. A while after my father died, she told me that she kept the television on all the time because it made her feel less lonely. “It makes the house seem more lived in,” she said. I had given in to my annoyance and either turned the volume down or turned it off. But after she told me that it filled in some of the loneliness, I never reached for the remote again.
We have had a long journey together, she and I. Over a half-century of memories, now that the journey has ended, I have a choice which ones to study which ones to turn over in my hands and dust off.
I choose to look at the ones that ache with a sweet truth not told often enough: there was love between us. It was just hard to find sometimes. I choose to remember her face on that winter day in Manhattan, when I came to her with a broken heart. I choose to remember walking on the shore with her in summers when we rented a beach house; somehow the sea always transformed us. And how she looked on my wedding day when she handed me a bracelet that had belonged to my grandmother. “Something old,” she said.
1. From the author’s point of view, what did her mother feel in her much time of life?| A．A sense of relief. | B．A sense of excitement. |
| C．A sense of being deserted. | D．A sense of being pleased. |
| A．By giving examples. | B．By stating arguments. |
| C．By interviewing her father. | D．By visiting her grandfather. |
| A．express regret for her grandfather |
| B．show her sympathy toward her mother |
| C．reveal her deep feelings for her mother |
| D．emphasize her concern about the generation gap |
A few weeks ago, I accidentally dropped a plate and it broke into a billion pieces! I’d had it for about 40 years. This morning, we had a parcel
4 . Are you looking for some informative magazines? The following ones can surely meet your needs.
Mental Foss is a magazine full of bite-sized（small bits） trivia（琐事）and mostly short articles with really interesting facts that you'll want to share with others. The writing is fun and friendly, so it’s easy to understand the answers to the more difficult questions, like: What does outer space smell like? Why isn't cat food mouse-flavored? While the print edition of the magazine stopped publishing in 2016, you can still read Mental Floss online.
Reader's Digest is not actually about books reading. Instead, it is about people. Inside you'll find anecdotes—short, personal articles about things that have happened to people. There are stories in simple writing about everything from funny celebrity moments and inspiring personal store to funny jokes and articles.
Cricket and Cicada are easy-to-read literary magazines aimed at teenagers. Each issue is full of wonderful short stories and poems, and beautiful illustrations. Even though these are technically children's magazines, they are perfect for learning English because they have high quality writing.
Time is one of the most well-known magazines in the world. Inside you'll find news, beautiful photographs and everything you need to get a" deeper understanding of the world in which we live. "Since Time is very high quality and provides deep insight on many serious topics, it can also be difficult for English learners to read. If you have trouble understanding Time, try Time For Kids, which has similarly great content but is written in a simpler way.
1. What can readers obtain from Mental Floss?| A．They can be inspired by the comments on the magazine. |
| B．They can understand some tough facts in a funny way. |
| C．They can enjoy a variety of eye-catching pictures. |
| D．They can have a deep understanding about the current events. |
| A．The language is easy and friendly to readers. |
| B．The articles are mostly adapted from books. |
| C．The stories are all based on private experiences. |
| D．The topics are serious and difficult to comprehend. |
| A．It's of great help for English beginners. |
| B．It has two editions for readers to choose from. |
| C．People can have an access to it online. |
| D．It is perfect for teenagers who love anecdotes. |
5 . Japanese automaker Toyota says it will team up with the country’s space agency to develop a vehicle called the Lunar Cruiser to explore the moon. The name comes from a popular Toyota vehicle called the Land Cruiser. The company said it plans to launch the vehicle in the late 2020s. After that, Toyota said the vehicle could assist people living on the moon by 2040 and could possibly be sent to Mars as well.
Takao Sato heads the company’s Lunar Cruiser project. He told The Associated Press the vehicle is based on the idea that people eat, work, sleep and communicate with others safely in cars. He hopes theLunar Cruiser can serve the same purpose in space. “We see space as an area for our once-in-a-century transformation, ” Sato said, “By going to space, we may be able to develop telecommunications and other technology that will prove valuable to human life. ”
Another company, Gitai Japan Inc., is partnering with Toyota to develop a robotic arm for the Lunar Cruiser. It will be designed to perform jobs such as carrying out inspections and maintaining the vehicle. The company said the arm will be built to work with different tools. These tools could be used to study the moon’s surface more closely.
Interest in space has been growing in Japan in recent years. Japanese space exploration company iSpace announced last April that it would transport an explorer belonging to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to the moon in 2022. Japan’s iSpace will provide the lander to carry the UAE’s rover(探测器).
The company plans to launch the lander on a Falcon 9 rocket built by American company SpaceX. Japanese citizens followed the trip to space last year of billionaire Yusaku Maezawa. He spent 12 days aboard the International Space Station. Maezawa also plans in the future to orbit around the moon on a SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft.
Toyota engineer Shinichiro Noda said he thinks the lunar project can extend the company’s tradition of serving customers to a place beyond Earth. He said Toyota currently has vehicles almost everywhere. “But this is about taking our cars to somewhere we have never been, ” Noda said.
1. What’s the ultimate purpose of the Lunar Cruiser project?| A．To better human life. | B．To make safe vehicles. |
| C．To prove the previous idea. | D．To transform communication. |
| A．Japan’s enthusiasm in space. | B．Japan’s achievements in space. |
| C．Japan’s potential in space travel. | D．Japan ’s ambition to explore space. |
| A．Negative. | B．Doubtful. |
| C．Cautious. | D．Positive. |
| A．Japanese Curiosity in Moon Travel Generated |
| B．Great Contribution Made in Exploring Mars |
| C．Rover Built by Toyota to Be Landed on Mars |
| D．Toyota to Help Develop Vehicle to Explore Moon |
6 . Arden University
Arden University has physical study centres in London, Manchester, Birmingham, and Berlin, Germany, and also offers high quality online bachelor and master degree programmes to British and international students all over the world. They have supported over 50,000 students while remaining true to their core values, ensuring higher education is available for all. Covering a range of professional subjects in 12 academic fields, Arden University makes UK education accessible and affordable through their creative study platform. Click here to view this school.
University of London International Programmes
We have over 60,000 students in every corner of the globe studying on more than 100 different programmes. Our global footprint and flexible study method has enabled students to study wherever they live. As a family of 19 world-class colleges and admired institutes, the University of London has an international reputation for academic distinction in teaching and research. Our students achieve exactly the same standard of internationally recognized qualification as those who attend the University itself. Click here to view this school.
University of York
The University of York is one of the top ten universities in the UK for teaching and research, and is ranked in the top 100 universities in the world. This well-established university consists of over 30 academic departments and research centres and a student body of 13,000, and was named Times Higher Education University of the Year 2010. Most of the distance learning courses are designed to meet professional development needs, and reflect the benefits of online learning in this context. Click here to view this school.
Lloyd’s Maritime Academy
Course options include popular and well-established diplomas in Marine (海洋) Surveying, Ship Management, and Maritime Law. Various accreditation levels are available from short, online based certificate courses to fully-accredited diploma and postgraduate diploma study options. We also offer our best course — the MBA in Shipping&. Logistics. The continued strength of these distance learning programmes have over 6,000 students enrolled on our courses. Click here to view this school.
1. Which holds the largest number of students?| A．Arden University. | B．University of York. |
| C．Lloyd's Maritime Academy. | D．University of London International Programmes. |
| A．How to be a training teacher. | B．How to be a good programmer. |
| C．How to be a professional in shipping industry. | D．How to be an excellent shipbuilder. |
| A．They all offer online courses. | B．They are only accessible to the British. |
| C．They are all top ten schools in the world. | D．They were all built in the early 20th century. |
7 . It might seem like something from a science fiction movie, but scientists today are working on ways to combine certain kinds of bacteria with tiny robots. Scientists want to use these creations to improve the way we give medical treatment. They claim that drug therapy (疗法), disease diagnosis, and even surgery could be greatly aided by the use of nanobiotechnology. Nano-means “tiny”, and bio-means “life”. This tiny technology will use living organisms in combination with electronics.
Electronics makers already use tiny robots to build complex but very tiny circuits. Medical scientists want to use these robots to repair patients’ damaged organs or to direct medicines to affect specific cells. For example, tiny robots could be engineered to deliver chemotherapy (化疗) directly to cancer instead of to the entire body.
Existing electronics are the right size, but they lack practical use. Robots that can be built small enough to enter a person’s cells would be too tiny to move on their own. Therefore, scientists want to use tiny organisms such as bacteria to act as vehicles for the robots. The bacteria will be “driven” through the bloodstream by magnetic pulses (磁脉冲). Once the bacteria are in the correct locations, the robots will be able to do their jobs. In theory, these robots will cause less damage to the body than traditional methods of delivering medicines or performing surgeries.
Nanobiotechnology has yet to be put into practice, but many people already have concerns about its use. Some people worry about the ethic (道德标准) involved with controlling live organisms—and the possible side effects for their human hosts.
1. What does the second paragraph mainly talk about?| A．The application of tiny robots. | B．The influence of tiny robots. |
| C．The operation of tiny robots. | D．The origin of tiny robots. |
| A．Cheaper medicine. | B．Less harm to the body. |
| C．Longer life expectancy. | D．Faster performance of surgeries. |
| A．can locate he bacteria. | B．are driven by medicine. |
| C．can act as vehicles. | D．are carried by bacteria. |
| A．A computer textbok | B．A life magazine |
| C．A science magazine | D．A biology textbook |
8 . When someone is homeless or trying to recover from a natural disaster, they are in need of a lot of the basic life necessities that many of us take for granted (认为……是理所当然的). While people are often encouraged to donate canned goods, not everyone is thinking about things like shoes.
Of course, you can’t go looking for a new job or a home, if you have no shoes to walk in. One woman in Hays, Kansas took this into consideration, and found a way to help hundreds of people.
Payless stores were going out of business, and shoes were selling for as little as $1 per pair, so a woman named Addy Tritt bought out all the remaining shoes at the Hays Payless store—more than 200 pairs—and donated them to flood victims (灾民) in Nebrsska.
Those shoes were then included in a flood relief shipment taken to farmers in Nebraska by Fort Hays State University. Tritt, who recently graduated from FHSU’s human resources program, wanted to “pay it forward”.
“I have been so lucky,” she said. “There have been so many great people in my life who have inspired me. I see so many terrible things in the news. So many people have helped me when I was down. They influenced me so much that I want to help if I can.”
Tritt has a history of charitable (慈善发) acts. She has donated more than 60 bags of school supplies to Hays students, and organized a baby clothes drive and two supply drives for the animal shelter.
“I really feel I have been directed and guided to help people,” she said. “If you can do something for someone else, you need to find a way even if it is a pair of shoes.”
1. How did Tritt help flood victims?| A．By sending some food to them. |
| B．By helping them find new jobs. |
| C．By selling shoes to raise money for them. |
| D．By buying shoes for them. |
| A．Pay ahead of time. | B．Save some money. |
| C．Pass the love. | D．Put forward the plan. |
| A．The low price of shoes. | B．Other people’s influence. |
| C．Ideas from her school. | D．The sad situation of victims. |
| A．Caring. | B．Independent. |
| C．Clever. | D．Brave. |
9 . Record-breaking. Abnormal. Dangerous. That’s how the National Weather Service described the heat wave hitting much of North America.
The heat wave has already broken all-time high temperature records in places unaccustomed to such extreme heat. For example, Oregon’s capital city, Salem, recorded the highest temperature in its history on Sunday: 130F, breaking the old mark by 4 degrees. The temperature hit 104F in Seattle. It was an all-time record for the city better known for rain than heat and was the first time the area reached such a high temperature since records began being kept in 1894.
Weather forecasters said the heat wave was caused by an extended “heat dome”which allowed hot air from the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic to stream northward over much of North America.
This current heat wave was yet more evidence of the impact of human-caused climate change. “When it comes to record-breaking heat events, the study has been run for event after event in region after region in year after year. And the answer is almost always the same,” said Kristie Ebi, a professor at the University of Washington “The days-long heat wave is a taste of the future as climate change reshapes global weather patterns.”
“Another aspect that we see connected to climate change but that we don’t hear about as much is the fact that there is also a lot more water in the atmosphere now. As we warm the oceans and warm the air, there is more evaporation（蒸发）and that wetter air makes us feel hotter,” added weather forecaster, Jennifer Francis. “A combination of high temperature and moisture（湿度）in the air means dangerous conditions for the young, elderly or others who are not healthy. Please drink plenty of water; stay out of the sun and in air-conditioned rooms.”
1. What was the previous temperature record in Salem?| A．104F. | B．126F. | C．130F. | D．134F. |
| A．The climate change. | B．The northward air streams. |
| C．The extended "heat dome". | D．The moisture in the atmosphere. |
| A．The Dangerous Heat Wave Will Last Long |
| B．A Heat Wave Roasts Much of North America |
| C．Measures Must Be Taken to Protect the Young and Elderly |
| D．The "Heat Dome" Is Expected to Cover the Pacific Northwest |
| A．In a first aid guidebook. | B．In a weather forecast. |
| C．In a news report. | D．In a professor's lecture. |
10 . Algorithms (计算程序) are able to do a huge number of tasks, and the number of tasks that they are able to do is expanding practically every day. According to a new study, despite increasing concern over the effect of algorithms in daily life, more and more people nowadays are willing to trust a computer program, especially if a task becomes too challenging. From choosing the next song on your playlist to choosing the right size of pants, people are relying more on the advice of algorithms to help make everyday decisions.
During the study, researchers asked volunteers to count the number of people of a crowd in a photograph and supplied suggestions that were offered by a group of other people and suggestions offered by an algorithm. As the number of people in the photograph expanded, counting became more difficult and people were more likely to follow the suggestions offered by an algorithm rather than count themselves or follow the “wisdom of the crowd”.
One of the common problems with AI is when it is used for awarding credit. While that is a subjective decision, there are lots of numbers there, like income and credit scores. Therefore, people feel like this is a good job for an algorithm. But we know that dependence leads to unfair and incomplete practices in many cases because of social factors that aren’t considered.
Facial recognition and hiring algorithms have come under inspection in recent years because their use has shown cultural prejudice in the way they were built, which can cause inaccuracies when matching faces to identities or screening for qualified job candidates. The prejudice may not be present in a simple task like counting, but their presence in other trusted algorithms is a reason why it is important to understand how people rely on algorithms when making decisions.
“The eventual goal is to look at groups of humans and computers making decisions and find how we can get them to trust each other and how that changes their behaviors,” one of the researchers said. “Because there is very little research in that setting, we’re starting with the fundamentals.”
1. What can we learn about the present people from paragraph 1?| A．They become more dependent on algorithms. |
| B．They show little concern about algorithms in life. |
| C．They are addicted to numbers of challenging tasks online. |
| D．They never rely on computers to make everyday decisions. |
| A．They cannot be used to award credit. |
| B．They can lead to one-sided decisions. |
| C．They can give away candidates’ identities. |
| D．They cannot be applied to difficult calculations. |
| A．It leads to cultural differences. |
| B．It may produce some false results. |
| C．It takes lots of money and manpower. |
| D．It rules out most qualified job candidates. |
| A．It is really necessary to stay away from AI. |
| B．It is very easy to make choices with the help of AI. |
| C．People need to adapt to the development of computers. |
| D．People tend to trust computer programs more than themselves. |
