| A．Having devoted | B．Devoted | C．To be devoted | D．Being devoted |
| A．has been labelling | B．have been labelling, |
| C．has been labelled | D．have been labelled |
3 . Humor is so much more than silly situations and funny words. It is about the places we live in, the people who are with us, the events we experience and the problems we face. These humorous English stories will make you laugh first, then think. Here are some funny stories in English to get you started!
“Hunting the Deceitful Turkey” by Mark Twain
Good for: Intermediate to advanced students
Considered one of the funniest turkey tales in American literature, Twain tells a true incident where he tries to shoot a turkey for Thanksgiving dinner.
The story is a humorous account of his failure. It also relates to the American holiday of Thanksgiving, where turkey is the main dish in the feast (宴会).
Since the story was written in 1906, you might read some words which are not commonly used anymore. For instance, the word “swindler” means “cheat” or “fraud.” It might be helpful to have access to a good English dictionary while you read this.
“Let’s Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir” by Jenny Lawson
Good for: Mature intermediate learners
Have you ever felt that you did not fit in, or that you were strange or awkward? The author of this book felt like that throughout her life.
There are tales about her sister going to school in a bird costume, her “message-board” cat, her relationship and more. Her story is equal parts funny and enlightening (something which makes you aware).
The core message is that the moments that embarrass us are really the ones that define (界定) us. If you are still unsure about the book, you can read this article by The Washington Post.
“The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year” by Sue Townsend
Good for: Intermediate learners
Eva, the main character, is disappointed with her family. When her children leave home, she climbs into bed and stays there.
She refuses to be a dutiful wife to her indifferent (漠不关心的) husband, and she stops being an ideal mother to her careless children. Soon, unexpected things start happening. The true face of every person in the household starts to come out.
The novel is funny but also seeks to question traditional family roles. For a more detailed overview, read this review by The Guardian.
1. Which book is for intermediate learners?| A．Let’s Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir. |
| B．The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year and Let’s Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir. |
| C．Hunting the Deceitful Turkey and Let’s Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir. |
| D．Hunting the Deceitful Turkey and The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year. |
| A．It is not a real story. |
| B．Twain failed to catch the turkey in the end. |
| C．The language in this story is simple and easy to understand. |
| D．You can use this book as a good English dictionary. |
| A．The writer’s sister always goes to school in a bird costume. |
| B．The writer always fails to fit in with society. |
| C．The writer is always unsure whether she will overcome an embarrassing moment. |
| D．In difficult or uncomfortable situations, people may reveal their true selves and learn and grow from them. |
| A．To make fun. | B．To describe Eva’s bad family life. |
| C．To question traditional family roles. | D．To expect the unexpected. |
| A．An English stories site. | B．A residency contract. |
| C．A library brochure. | D．A technical instruction book. |
4 . Ancient documents are an important part of ancient civilization. Unfortunately, such documents are often vulnerable (易受……伤害的) to aging and related damage, which greatly reduce their legibility (易读性).
An international group of computer scientists have teamed up to strike up the conversation with ancient people through their writing that have been broken down by time. They have developed a computer-assisted method to help us have a conversation with people from the distant past.
Appreciating ancient documents, even when in good condition, can require a reader to dig into the role of a cryptologist (密码学家). That’s because the combination of a writer’s handwriting legibility, lettering styles, old-fashioned spelling and grammar conventions or abbreviations (缩写) can make even a native language seem unfamiliar. Besides, the same document’s legibility can be reduced even more by faded ink, widened lettering due to exposure to wetness, and so on.
Typical digital reconstruction changes a document into black text on a white background in an attempt to reveal the text through noise filtering (过滤) and contrast improvement. However, in this current method, the image is much more of a restoration effort, keeping much of the look and virtual feel of the document.
Researchers applied a complex integration of several digital color interpretation techniques and Gaussian mixture models to identify and separate features of text, paper, and historical objects. This allows for the specific selection of different layers of information based on slight spectral (光谱的) differences. So a user could decide whether a notation (符号), page decoration, coffee mug ring stain or another feature was critical to the understanding by adding or removing layers.
In some cases, the technique could preserve features that would otherwise be lost, such as the vague watermarks of a paper manufacturer, which could offer vital insights to historians. “For example, Leonardo da Vinci’s famous works were written on pages with watermarks from various paper suppliers that allowed document historians to group them into likely writing periods,” said Usman Habib, an expert on digital restoration.
According to the paper, the processing can be accomplished on a standard desktop computer, and it takes just a few minutes. This would make it a great tool for historical document researchers and people attempting to figure out old family recipes.
1. What does the international team mainly aim to do?| A．Categorize documents of the past. |
| B．Share developments in computer science. |
| C．Analyze causes of ancient works’ breakdown. |
| D．Restore historical writing digitally. |
| A．Risky but rewarding. | B．Complicated and challenging. |
| C．Repetitive but fruitless. | D．Straightforward and accessible. |
| A．It helps remove the trouble of doing repair work. |
| B．It saves time by applying contrasting backgrounds. |
| C．It preserves the original appearance of the documents. |
| D．It raises the quality of images through noise filtering. |
| A．Translating the text into different languages. |
| B．Generating alternative copies of documents. |
| C．Identifying the dates of the related historical objects. |
| D．Getting rid of unnecessary layers of information. |
| A．Critical. | B．Unclear. | C．Favorable. | D．Intolerant. |
5 . Many people love the Halloween season, particularly young ones. It’s not hard to understand. The Halloween season is a time for fun-sized candy, giving rocks to trick or treaters, apple cider donuts, and frights. The very last-frights, are generally all in good fun. But can they be dangerous? Can someone be scared to death?
The key factor in an imagined scare-caused death is a little chemical that anyone who’s played a particularly intense game of hide-and-seek is very familiar with: adrenaline (肾上腺素). Fear puts the body in a state of severe emotional anxiety, which in turn causes the autonomic fight-or-flight response.
The fight-or-flight response is an evolutionary defence mechanism (机制) which acts in your best interest when there is a noticed threat. You sweat a lot, your anxiety is exacerbated, your blood glucose (葡萄糖) levels are increased, and your heart rate is higher. Like a cornered animal, you’re a bit less reasonable, a bit stranger, but a bit more ready to survive.
Now, back to the adrenaline. Adrenaline causes all of these processes, but there’s just one organ, which, if overloaded, can lead to sudden death. The human body doesn’t immediately come to an end as soon as a kidney (肾) fails, but when a heart stops working, the whole business fails. This is what happens to your body during an adrenaline rush.
Adrenaline causes calcium (钙) to enter the heart at a higher rate, and when there’s more calcium rushing through the heart, it has harder time resetting to its normal resting rate. This can cause a dangerous condition, which prevents blood from pumping to the rest of the body. Without immediate treatment, this can lead to sudden death.
Of course, such cause of death isn’t unique to being scared. Any event that increases one’s adrenal level could lead to this dangerous condition. So if you are planning on scaring others the next Halloween season, be sure to do it in a controlled setting, especially if you have a history of heart problems.
1. What do we learn about the fight-or-flight response mentioned in Paragraph 2?| A．It makes us think in a better way. |
| B．It prevents adrenaline from rising. |
| C．It has nothing to do with little kids. |
| D．It is meant to help us survive better. |
| A．acquired | B．relieved | C．worsened | D．addressed |
| A．Having a failed kidney. |
| B．Having faster blood circulation. |
| C．Having too much calcium in our blood. |
| D．Having irregular heartbeats. |
| A．enjoy Halloween in a controlled way |
| B．avoid low blood glucose levels |
| C．exercise to protect ourselves from heart disease |
| D．avoid scaring others during the Halloween screen |
| A．Is it enjoyable to frighten others? |
| B．Is it possible to be scared to death? |
| C．Why is too much adrenaline dangerous? |
| D．What to watch out for during the Halloween season? |
— OK, I will.
| A．facilitate | B．complicate |
| C．compensate | D．conserve |
Priscilla and I had been classmates for several years but we never really liked each other. We had different groups of friends. Priscilla’s friends were very good at sports while my friends and I performed well in our studies. Priscilla was our school’s top athlete and was constantly praised by our teachers. I was jealous of her athletic abilities and her popularity at school. Maliciously (怀有恶意地), I thought she was just manipulating the teachers and her friends with her charm. I felt she was an insincere and shallow person. Therefore, I wanted to have nothing to do with her.
One afternoon, our class attended an adventure camp. One of the activities we participated in was rock climbing. I was very keen to learn rock climbing. We practiced first on a rock climbing wall, and once we had mastered the skills, we could go on to climb the cliff in the forest reserve. Rock climbers must work with a partner. While one person climbs, the partner must hold on tightly to the other end of the rope for safety. If the climber falls, the partner is responsible for stopping the fall.
The trainer assigned Priscilla to be my partner! I was very upset. How could I trust Priscilla? She would not stop me from falling. She would probably wish that I would fall. However, there was nothing I could do because the trainer wouldn’t allow us to change partners. So I climbed and Priscilla held on to the safety rope.
While climbing, a wave of joy and confidence came over me. I cautiously made my way up the wall, caught each notch (凹槽) above tightly, and pulled myself up. Every muscle in my body was shaking from the strain of climbing but I wanted to prove to everyone that I was a better rock climber than Priscilla. Thinking about outperforming Priscilla, my focus on climbing left me as I reached for a notch that was too far from my reach. I took a risk and jumped up to grab it.
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。
The next thing I knew was that I was falling down quickly.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Fortunately, Priscilla came to the rescue just in time.
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8 . Given the buzz it’s created, there’s a good chance you’ve heard about ChatGPT. It’s an interactive chatbot powered by machine learning. The technology has basically devoured the entire Internet, reading the collective works of humanity and learning patterns in language that it can recreate. All you have to do is give it a prompt (提示), and ChatGPT can do an endless array of things: write a story in a particular style, answer a question, explain a concept, compose an email—write a college essay-and it will spit out coherent, seemingly human—written text in seconds. The technology is both awesome and terrifying.
22-year-old Edward Tian is working feverishly on a new app to combat misuse of ChatGPT.
Over the last couple years, Tian has been studying an AI system called GPT-3, a predecessor to ChatGPT that was less user-friendly and largely inaccessible to the general public because it was behind a paywall. As part of his studies this fall semester, Tian researched how to detect text written by the AI system while working at Princeton’s Natural Language Processing Lab.
Then, as the semester was coming to a close, OpenAI, the company behind GPT-3 and other AI tools, released ChatGPT to the public for free. For the millions of people around the world who have used it since, interacting with the technology has been like getting a peek into the future; a future that not too long ago would have seemed like science fiction.
For many users of the new technology, wonderment quickly turned to alarm. How-many jobs will this kill? Will this empower nefarious (恶意的) actors and further corrupt our public discourse (公共话语)? How will this disrupt our education system? What is the point of learning to write essays at school when AI-which is expected to get exponentially better in the near future-can do that for us?
Tian had an idea. What if he applied what he had learned at school over the last couple years to help the public identify whether something has been written by a machine?
Tian already had the know-how and even the software on his laptop to create such a program. Ironically, this software, called GitHub Co-Pilot, is powered by GPT-3. With its assistance, Tian was able to create a new app within three days. It’s a testament to the power of this technology to make us more productive.
On January 2nd, Tian released his app GPTZero. It basically uses ChatGPT against itself, checking whether “there’s zero involvement or a lot of involvement” of the AI system in creating a given text.
When Tian went to bed that night, he didn’t expect much for his app. When he woke up, his phone had blown up. He saw countless texts and DMs from journalists, principals, teachers, you name it, from places as far away as France and Switzerland. His app, which is hosted by a free platform, became so popular it crashed. Excited by the popularity and purpose of his app, the hosting platform has since granted Tian the resources needed to scale the app’s services to a mass audience.
1. Which of the following statements is TRUE about GPT-3?| A．It’s designed and researched by Edward Tian in Princeton University |
| B．Not many ordinary people have used it because it is not free. |
| C．It is in the same AI system series as ChatGPT and GPTZero. |
| D．It used to be less user-friendly than ChatGPT but has outdone it now. |
| A．AI may replace human beings in the future when it comes to writing essays. |
| B．Actors may turn bad or even evil if the new technology is adopted in acting. |
| C．The education system may be badly impacted by the misuse of the new technology. |
| D．Many people may be out of employment because of the new technology. |
| A．the app is hosted by a free platform which is very popular. |
| B．they know many journalists are also very interested in it. |
| C．they are eager to share the resources Edward Tian is granted. |
| D．they are worried about the possibility of students cheating in writing. |
| A．Harm set, harm get. | B．Birds of a feather flock together. |
| C．Fight a man with his own weapon. | D．Great minds think alike. |
9 . Every spring, as the weather warms, trees up and down the East Coast explode in a display of bright green life as leaves fill their branches, and every fall, the same leaves provide one of nature’s great color displays of vivid yellow, orange and red.
Thanks to climate change, the timing of these events has shifted over the last two decades, Harvard scientists say.
Andrew Richardson, an associate professor of organismic and evolutionary biology, and research associate Trevor Keenan worked with colleagues from seven different institutions on a study which found that forests throughout the eastern United States are showing signs of spring growth dramatically earlier, and that the growing season in some areas extends further into the fall.
Richardson said, “Climate change isn’t just about warmer temperatures. It’s also about changes in precipitation (降水) patterns... so in the future, an earlier spring might not help forests take up more carbon dioxide if they end up running out of water in mid-summer.”
The research combined information from three sources. Using satellite data, Keenan tracked when forests across the region began to turn green in the spring, and when leaves began to turn yellow in the fall. Ground observations made every three to seven days at the Harvard Forest in Petersham and a long-term research site in New Hampshire provided information about the state of buds, leaves and branches. When combined with records from instrument towers, the data sets allowed the researchers to paint a richly detailed picture that shows spring starting earlier, and the growing season lasting longer than at any point in the past two decades.
Another important result, Richardson said, was the discovery of a significant source of error in existing computer models on how forest ecosystems work.
“This shows an opportunity to improve the models and how they simulate how forests will work under future climate scenarios forecast.” he said.
The real power of the findings, however, may be in helping to make the effects of climate change clearer to the public, the researchers said.
1. What is the reason of the earlier spring according to the Harvard scientists?| A．The human activities. | B．The climate change. |
| C．The tree growth. | D．The reduction in water. |
| A．An earlier spring can only bring benefits. |
| B．The influence of climate change is complex. |
| C．The water in mid-summer will increase. |
| D．The role of forests becomes less important. |
| A．Change | B．Explain | C．Imitate | D．Create |
| A．It helps scientists to figure out how forest ecosystems work. |
| B．It reflects how the growing season is extending faster. |
| C．It provides an opportunity to improve the computer models. |
| D．It helps to make the effects of climate change clearer to the public. |
| A．To tell us people should be more aware of the climate change. |
| B．To tell us the climate change has some effects on the world. |
| C．To tell us the early spring in eastern USA is a good time to travel. |
| D．To tell us high technology is useful to detect the climate change. |
10 . Utah is the second most wasteful states in the US. Everyone always complains about how much construction there is all the time— on campus you can’t walk ten steps without running into another pit— but no one seems to be doing anything about it. Every year the city has a surplus of money and they spent it on unneeded road construction. Instead, this money should be spent on developing Utah’s solar energy capabilities (能力).
People may think that solar power technology isn’t advanced enough to sustain (维持) an entire state year-round. However, Utah is one of the six states in the country getting more than enough sunlight to run completely on solar power every year according to Solar Nation. For reference, one might look at places similar to the Hotel at Oberlin in Ohio, a hotel remodeled in the summer of 2016 to run completely on solar power. Anywhere west of Ohio has no excuse for not using solar energy.
Many think it would be bad for the economy to switch to solar power because electrical workers would lose their jobs. But this isn’t necessarily true. They could transfer to solar companies. Considering how many panels (电池板，面板) would need to be built and installed (安装) and maintained, there’s plenty of work for electrical workers. Solar panel installation may be expensive at first, but as it stands currently, solar panels are expected to pay for themselves within 11 years of installation, saving solar panel owners up to $700 in electric bills per house in the first year.
Moreover, we, the humans of planet Earth, would never run out of solar energy. The sun will exist long after humanity goes. And while solar panels may be expensive, they cost the Earth much less than using coal and natural gas.
It’s bad enough that Utah is the most wasteful when it comes to the use of water. And the city is killing its citizens with air pollution. But when we have the physical capability of making changes that will ultimately save the environment and deepen our pocketbooks (财力、钱袋子), and we don’t make those changes, we’re actually lazy rather than being cautious.
1. Which of the following statements would the author agree with?| A．Roads in Utah should be repaired. |
| B．Money should be better used in Utah. |
| C．Construction is very important to Utah. |
| D．Schools in Utah are really in poor condition. |
| A．To explain how solar power is used in Ohio. |
| B．To show it is possible to use solar power in summertime. |
| C．To show solar power can be relied on year-round in Utah. |
| D．To prove many hotels are taking advantage of solar power. |
| A．benefit the environment | B．prevent waste in Utah |
| C．improve work efficient | D．lead to many changes in Utah |
| A．To call on people to reduce energy waste. |
| B．To show us the importance of using solar energy. |
| C．To ask government to pay attention to air pollution. |
| D．To appeal to Utah officials to develop solar energy. |
| A．①②-③④-⑤ | B．①-②③-④⑤ |
| C．①-②③④-⑤ | D．①②③-④⑤ |
