1 . Phonetic (语音) information—the smallest sound elements of speech - is considered by researchers to be the basis of language. Babies are thought to learn these small sound elements and add them together to make words. But a new study suggests that phonetic information is learnt too late and slowly for this to be the case. Instead, rhythmic (有韵律的) speech helps babies learn language and is effective even in the first few months of life.
Researchers from the Trinity College Dublin investigated babies’ ability to process phonetic information during their first year. Their study, published in the journal Nature Communications. found that phonetic information wasn’t successfully encoded (编码) until seven months old, and did not occur very often at 11 months old when babies began to say their first words. From then individual speech sounds are still added in very slowly—too slowly to form the basis of language.
The researchers recorded patterns of brain activity in 50 babies at four, seven, and eleven months old as they watched a video of a primary school teacher singing 18 nursery rhymes (童谣) to a baby. They found that phonetic encoding in babies appeared inchmeal over the first year of life, beginning with labial sounds (e.g. “d” for “daddy”) and nasal sounds (e.g. “m” for “mummy”), with the “read out” progressively looking more like that of adults.
“The reason why we use nursery rhymes is because that is the best way for babies to discover and connect sounds with language, so we are teaching them how to speak,” said Giovanni Di Liberto, lead author of the study at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland. “Parents should talk and sing to their babies as much as possible or use baby-directed speech because it will make a difference to language outcome,” she added.
1. What should babies learn in the first few months of life according to the new study?| A．Small sound elements | B．Rhythmic information. |
| C．Phonetic information. | D．Individual words. |
| A．The poor phonetic encoding in babies. | B．The advantages of phonetic information. |
| C．The babies’ great ability to learn language. | D．The babies’ growing process in the first year. |
| A．Gradually. | B．Suddenly. | C．Successfully. | D．Occasionally. |
| A．When Babies Are Able to Say Their First Words |
| B．How Phonetic Information Changes Over Time |
| C．Why Phonetic Is Better Than Rhythmic for Babies |
| D．Why Babies Need Nursery Rhymes for Language Mastery |
| A．found that difficult to build | B．found that is difficult building |
| C．found it difficult to build | D．found it is difficult building |
I was ready for bed when the phone rang. This cannot be good. My mind quickly ran through the list of family members that might need my help, but the voice on the other end of the line was only vaguely familiar.
“Lindy, this is Leslie,” she said. “I hope I didn’t catch you sleeping.”
I was a bit confused that she would be calling me at eleven o’clock at night. I didn’t know here very well, and we only occasionally spoke with each other at various community events. I assured her that I was still up and asked what she needed. I was afraid it might be something really terrible to cause her to reach out to someone she barely knew. Instead, she asked me a strange question.
“Do you have room for a turkey in your freezer?” she asked.
We had lots of room in our freezer. In fact, we had too much room. My husband’s business had taken a downturn and we were pretty much at the bottom of our food supply.
“Sure,” I responded, “Did your freezer break down?”
“Not exactly,” Leslie replied, “but if you will give me directions to your house I will explain when I get there.”
This was certainly odd. “Our freezer? Now?” Tom asked. “We hardly know her.” I didn’t have an explanation for him, so I just shrugged my shoulders. We quickly changed back into blue jeans from our nightclothes and scurried to meet her outside so the doorbell would not wake our four children.
Pulling up the driveway was a huge freezer truck. Leslie stepped down from the passenger side and explained that her husband serviced a small grocery store that had just lost its lease. They had to empty all the freezers before midnight and it was a shame to just throw away all this good food so she began to go through her list of contacts. Ours was the last place they planned to stop and anything left would have to be discarded.
注意：1. 续写词数应为 150 左右；
2.请按如下格式在答题纸的相应位置作答。
When she put the turkey in our freezer, Leslie noticed that it was pretty empty.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Looking at the freezer filled with foods, I asked when she would come back for these.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________By the time we reached the airport, my mother was angry. “We’re going to be late,”she said as she pulled into the newly opened parking area.
My husband David and I had come to pick up my oldest son, who had flown to spend theNew Year with the family. As always, Mom had insisted on driving us to the airport.
We picked a lane (车道) that didn’t look too busy. When our turn came, Mom rolled down her window to grab the parking ticket from the machine. We watched and waited for the gate to lift so we could drive through. Instead, we heard a voice,“Please take the ticket.”“Give me a minute,”Mom answered.
It’s a well-known fact that I often talk to myself. So does my mother. So at that time, Ididn’t think anything of my mother’s words.
The machine sounded again. “Please take the ticket.”
“I’m trying. I can’t reach it,”she said.
This time, my husband and I glanced at each other with our eyebrows raised. Certainly,Mom knew the voice was automated (自动化的) and not a real person speaking to her.
“Please take the ticket.”
“I’m trying. I’m trying. It’s too far away. Give me a minute.”
In fairness to my mother, automated machines had recently arrived in the world, and there weren’t many around yet. We had never run into one at the airport before. In the old days, the machine spit out a parking ticket, and if you couldn’t reach the ticket, you simply opened your door and grabbed it. Now, the new metal safety railings (护栏) on either side of the car made it impossible to open the door.
“Please take the ticket.”
“It’s too far. I’m trying. I’m trying.”
The traffic behind us grew impatient. I saw people trying to back their cars so they could find another lane. All the while, the machine continued,“Please take the ticket...”
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。
Mom was frustrated (沮丧的).
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________I managed to reach for my mother’s safety belt and tried to unfasten (解开) it.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________5 . Those who had the pleasure of watching Benny Goodman at work saw a rather ordinary-looking man in rimless glasses and a conservative business suit; but they also saw a human being who could play the clarinet(单簧管) like no one before or since. This made Benny Goodman a unique individual.
Other Americans who have stood out from the flock include Joe DiMaggio, Beverly Sill, Ernest Hemingway and Jonas Salk. They, like Benny Goodman, were recognized and honored for no other reason than excellence.
It is doing something better than other people that makes us unique. Yet a surprising number of people still see individuality as a surface thing. They wear garish clothes, dye their hair strange colors and decorate their skin with tattoos to make some kind of social statement. But an ordinary guy who has dyed his hair purple or orange is nothing more than the same person with a funny-looking head.
The whole purpose of individuality is excellence. Those who invent, who improvise(即兴发挥), who know more about a subject than other people do, and who take something that doesn’t work and make it work––these people are the very soul of capitalism.
Charles Kettering didn’t like the idea of cranking a car to make it start, so he invented the electric starter. Henry Ford figured out the assembly-line technique and made it possible to mass-produce automobiles, and Elisha Otis, inventor of the elevator, indirectly created the city sky-line. These people understood that individualism means working at the top of one’s capacity.
The ones with the purple hair and the funky jewelry are just along for the ride, trying to be “different” and not knowing how to go about it.
The student who earns straight A’s on his report card has grasped the idea and has found the real meaning of individuality. So has the youngster who has designed his own spaceship, who gives piano recitals, who paints pictures of the world around him.
Benny Goodman understood it too. This is why he was at his best, blowing his clarinet, in a blue suit and black shoes.
1. The author mentions the appearance of Benny Goodman to _________.| A．show what a talented musician should look like |
| B．introduce an important figure in the musical world |
| C．contrast with his talent in music performance |
| D．indicate that he can’t stand out from the flock |
| A．an individualist tends to seek difference both in character and appearance |
| B．the essence of individualism lies in pursuing excellence to the full |
| C．being different in appearance is the very first step to being individual |
| D．those who strive to win the recognition of others are real individualists |
| A．A scientist who conducts research solely advancing knowledge for the greater good rather than for personal recognition. |
| B．A social media influencer who conforms to popular opinions to maintain a large following. |
| C．An artist who creates unique works but fail to gain fame and recognition from others. |
| D．An entrepreneur who prioritizes ethical considerations over profit in his business practices. |
| A．specific to general | B．cause and effect |
| C．examples and conclusion | D．comparison and contrast |
1. Why did the speaker go on the tour?
| A．It was the prize of a competition. |
| B．John asked her to go with him. |
| C．It was her travel plan. |
| A．The drinks. | B．The food. | C．The waiters. |
| A．Disappointing. | B．Amazing. | C．Terrible. |
| A．She rode an elephant. |
| B．She went to the mountains. |
| C．She relaxed in the hotel. |
7 . The development of bigger brains has long been considered a hallmark of our species’ increased intelligence and subsequent dominance on this planet. The last two million years of our evolution were marked by a nearly fourfold increase in brain volume.
But a growing body of evidence suggests our brains recently changed in an unexpected way: They declined in size sometime following the end of the last Ice Age.
“Most people think of brain evolution happening in this one-dimensional way. It grows, plateaus and stops,” said Jeremy DeSilva, a professor of paleoanthropology at Dartmouth College. “But we’ve lost brain tissue equal to the volume of a lime - it isn’t a tiny little sliver we’re talking about.”
The precise timing of that Post-Ice Age brain shrink has remained a mystery until now. A group of researchers led by DeSilva used a mixture of fossil and modern specimen data to pinpoint that this loss of gray matter happened between 3, 000 to 5, 000 years ago, according to research published in June in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.
Many anthropologists had initially assumed that the changes coincided with the appearance of agricultural practices around 10, 000 years ago, and a global shift away from hunting and gathering.
The more-recent dates from DeSilva’s group point to booming eras for ancient civilizations in North Africa, the Middle East and South America -complex societies that they think may have played a role in the shrinkage.
They hypothesized that human societies got so cooperatively organized in the past 3, 000 years that we began relying on what researchers call collective intelligence.
“It is the idea that a group of people is smarter than the smartest person in the group,” said James Traniello, a biology professor at Boston University and one of DeSilva’s co-authors. “So basically, if you live in a group, you solve problems more rapidly, more efficiently and more accurately than what’s possible for any individual.”
Traniello said the inspiration for applying this idea to why human brains may have shrunk came from “ultrasocial” insects such as ants. Ants form highly cooperative societies in which division of labor has favored smaller-brained individuals due to an advanced level of social organization.
The researchers suggested that perhaps our need to maintain a large brain c to keep track of information about food, social relationships, predators and our environment—has also relaxed in the past few millennia because we could store information externally in other members of our social circles, towns and groups.
“We’re so social that we don’t have to know everything anymore,” DeSilva said. “And we collectively then operate as a pretty functional society.”
1. What did Jeremy DeSilva mean by saying “But we’ve lost brain tissue equal to the volume of a lime- it isn’t a tiny little sliver we’re talking about.”?| A．The shrinking of human brain is significantly noticeable. |
| B．The shrinking of human brain is a normal result of evolution. |
| C．The shrinking of human brain is not as serious as we imagined. |
| D．The shrinking of human brain is not a big deal. |
| A．A species’ body size is not directly related to its brain size. |
| B．Cooperative social organization is likely to cause brain shrinkage. |
| C．The phenomenon of brain shrinkage is not limited to human beings. |
| D．Human beings and ants are among the most cooperative species. |
| A．The coming-into-being of agriculture. |
| B．The booming civilization in the world. |
| C．The advancement of social organization. |
| D．The development of information technology. |
| A．The reduction of brain size is likely to give rise to serious consequences. |
| B．We humans are still the most intelligent and dominant species in the world. |
| C．Collective intelligence most probably account for human’s smaller brains. |
| D．Social specialization brings more good than harm to us human beings. |
8 . Artist Susan Shepherd is best known for her flower paintings, and the large garden that surrounds her house is the source of many of her subjects. It is full of her favourite flowers, most especially vancties of tulips and poppies. Some of the plants are unruly and seed themselves all over the garden. There is a harmony of colour, shape and structure in the two long flower borders that line the paved path which crosses the garden from east to west. Much of this is due to the previous owners who were keen gardeners, and who left plants that appealed to Susan. She also inherited the gardener, Danny. “In fact, it was really his garden,” she says. “We got on very well. At first he would say, “Oh, it’s not worth it” to some of the things I wanted to put in, but when I said I wanted to paint them, he recognized what I had in mind.”
Susan prefers to focus on detailed studies of individual plants rather than on the garden as a whole, though she will occasionally paint a group of plants where they are. More usually, she picks them and then takes them up to her studio. “I don’t set the whole thing up at once,” she says. “I take one flower up at once,” she says. “I take one flower out and paint it, which might take a few days, and then I bring in another one and build up the painting that way. Sometimes it takes a couple of years to finish.”
Her busiest time of year is spring and early summer, when the tulips are out, followed by the poppies. “They all come out together, and you’re so busy,” she says. But the gradual decaying process is also part of the fascination for her. With tulips, for example, “you bring them in and put them in water, then leave them for perhaps a day and they each form themselves into different shapes. They open out and are fantastic. When you first put them in a vase, you think they are boring, but they change all the time with twists and turns.”
1. In the first paragraph, the author describes Susan’s garden as ________.| A．being only partly finished |
| B．having a path lined with flowers |
| C．having caused problems for the previous owners |
| D．needing a lot of work to keep it looking attractive |
| A．He felt she was interfering in his work. |
| B．He immediately understood her feelings. |
| C．He was recommended by the previous owners. |
| D．He was slow to see the point of some of her ideas. |
| A．She creates her paintings in several stages. |
| B．She spends all day painting an individual flower. |
| C．She likes to do research on a plant before she paints it. |
| D．She will wait until a flower is ready to be picked before painting it. |
| A．look best some time after they have been cut. |
| B．should be kept in the house for as long as possible. |
| C．are not easy to paint because they change so quickly. |
| D．are more colourful and better shaped than other flowers. |
Buzzwords (流行词) Capture How We Lived in 2023
While walking along Suzhou Creek to gather material for my latest “Shanghai Expression” column, I was wondering
Near the creek, I encountered Uncle Chen, fishing in a tranquil spot.
“Nice day for fishing,” I said in greeting him.
He looked up with a smile. “Yes, it’s a break from the mobile phono world.”
It
As I talked with Uncle Chen, the bustle of the city
Tourists and locals alike strolled through the area, some engaged in
Office workers walked by holding fancy coffee cups, a sign of the evolving coffee trends
Watching Uncle Chen, tourists, online celebrities, office workers and delivery people, I saw a changing city in a realm of constant change, summarized by a variety of contemporary buzzwords.
Each buzzword has its own story. Each popular phrase offers a peek into the hearts and minds of people, especially the younger generation. Let’s pause
10 . How many bosses could rely on their employees threatening to quit in mass if they were abruptly forced out? Sam Altman received such a show of support from more than 700 staff after he was fired from Open AI that he was swiftly restored to his position by the board. But this level of loyalty is not typical and may not always be a good thing.
Management experts say staff who are loyal to their employer are inclined to invest more time and effort in their jobs, helping to create an engaged and higher performing workplace. In turn they receive pro notions and pay rises. They have a greater sense of belonging and potentially a longer career at the same organisation. But it is not all rosy. People who are too loyal are more likely to take actions that are deemed wrong to keep their jobs and protect their employer, according to a 2021 academic paper. They might overlook wrongdoing and be less likely to expose corruption. Loyalty is sometimes seen as such a force for good that it can be used to justify bad behavior.
Often companies and senior bosses are the real winner a of employee loyalty. Research led by Matthew Stanley at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business published this year, found that managers were more likely to exploit loyal individuals. Stanley recruited almost 1,400 managers to read about a fictional 29-year-old employee called John, who worked for a company that was trying to keep costs down. They had to decide how willing they would be to ask John to work longer hours and take on more work without more pay. Researchers created various situations including labelling John as loyal versus other traits such as honest and fair. Managers were more willing to ask loyal John to take on the burden of unpaid work.
However, Consultancy Gallup’s latest state of the workplace report showed that half of the 122, 416 employees who took part in a global survey were looking out for new work. “You can’t guarantee anyone will stick around these days,” says a consultant who advises boards. This is particularly true of younger generations. They trust their bosses less and are not as patient when it comes to career progression, seeing little benefit in keeping their heads down and following orders if they do not see results quickly.
1. What does the author want to say by mentioning Sam Altman in Paragraph 1?| A．Open AI’s staff loyalty is quite high. |
| B．Staff loyalty’s rosy side in the work. |
| C．Sam Altman could count on his employees. |
| D．This level of loyalty is not always good. |
| A．Through global surveys concerning a fictional employee named John. |
| B．By creating different situations to ask John ta take on more unpaid work. |
| C．By asking managers to make decisions about work arrangements of John. |
| D．By recruiting managers to read fiction about work traits like loyal and honest. |
| A．Loyalty can be used by management to exploit employees. |
| B．Younger generations are more patient towards their employers. |
| C．Employees who are loyal are more likely to report wrongdoing. |
| D．Loyalty to an employer always leads to a positive work environment. |
| A．How Job Loyalty Affects the Work Environment? |
| B．Why Staff Loyalty is Not Always a Good Thing? |
| C．Are Loyal Employees More Likely to be Promoted? |
| D．Does Work Loyalty Help Career Progress More Quickly? |
