1 . Understanding The Metaverse

The metaverse is rapidly being described as the next frontier in the tech, business, and finance world. The idea gained popularity in July 2021, after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg renamed the company to Meta to reflect its growing focus on the metaverse. Today, everyone, from major corporations like Microsoft and Disney to creative startups, is struggling to enter the market that is predicted to reach over $780 billion by 2024.     1     How will it affect the way we live and work?

In simplest terms, the metaverse is a fully immersive (沉浸式) virtual world that is like our real life.     2     Instead, a functioning metaverse requires a combination of cutting-edge technologies like augmented reality (增强现实), virtual reality, 3D avatars, and artificial intelligence.

Zuckerberg may have drawn the world’s attention to the metaverse, but the idea of a virtual world is not new.     3     For instance, Fortnite: Battle Royal, where 100 players battle it out on a small island until only one survivor is left, is a typical example of a virtual universe.

    4     They imagine using the virtual platform to attend meetings, conferences, concerts, and even tour the world with friends.

However, experts believe the technologies need to improve greatly before that happens. The still heavy virtual reality headsets often cause motion sickness and are not ready for long time use. The amount of computing power required to house billions of people worldwide in a virtual universe also presents an issue.

The various Metaverse companies will also have different virtual worlds. They will have to standardize the technology so users can move seamlessly (无缝) between them.     5    

A．But what exactly is the metaverse?

B．The development of the metaverse still has a long way to go.

C．However, a metaverse is not a specific type of technology.

D．The metaverse industry will create jobs for hundreds and thousands of people.

E．Most importantly, the virtual experience has to be very attractive and affordable for consumers.

F．Fans believe that the metaverse will enable people to conduct their daily lives in an online world.

G．The gaming industry has been building the fundamental elements of the metaverse for many years.

2 . 阅读下面短文，根据所学课文的内容在空白处填写适当形式的单词或短语。

Avatars are the d    1     identities that people use online to communicate and express themselves. When the first simple 2D avatars appeared in the 1980s, very few people knew that future avatars would have such     2     forms and uses. People can make their online images different from their real selves by dressing their avatars in f    3     clothes. And people usually have more than one avatar, such as a s    4     one for work. Of course, the avatar you choose says a lot about your p    5    . While most people create avatars that have similar features to them, they also o    6     make their avatars look better than they do in real life. Nowadays, people choose an avatar from a selection of r    7     images, or create their own images. The use of avatars has also caused a few c    8    . Some users worry that spending too much time in v    9     worlds makes them afraid of meeting people in the real world. However, other users view avatars     10    .

3 . 用方框中单词的适当形式完成下列句子,每个单词只能用一次。

cheer…up     be capable of     upside down     make an effort to     scare…away     be fed up with

1. I turned the apartment ________ but I couldn’t find the letter.
2. Mary ________ being treated like a child when she attended the senior secondary school.
3. Research shows that a force ten wind ________ blowing the roofs off houses.
4. She was sick so I sent her some flowers to ________ her ________.
5. She moved quietly to avoid ________ the birds ________.

4 . 用方框中单词的适当形式完成下列句子，每个单词只能用一次。

benefit       appropriate       extend       strength       decorate       satisfy

1. The organization’s aim is to ________ the cultural ties between China and America.
2. The discovery of oil brought many ________ to the town.
3. She looked at the finished painting with ________.
4. She didn’t think we were ________ dressed for a wedding.
5. The chairman ________ a warm welcome to the guest speaker in yesterday’s graduation ceremony.

5 . 阅读下面短文，根据题目要求用英文回答问题。

Compassion involves feeling another person’s pain and wanting to take steps to help relieve their suffering. The word compassion itself derives from Latin and means “to suffer together.” It is related to other emotions such as sympathy and empathy, although the concepts have some key differences. Empathy refers more to the general ability to feel the emotions of others. Compassion, on the other hand, is what happens when those feelings of empathy are accompanied by the desire to help. The difference between sympathy and compassion is that the former responds to suffering with sorrow and concern while the latter responds with warmth and care.

Compassion often comes in one of two forms, which vary depending on where these feelings are directed. Your experience of compassion may be either directed toward other people, or it may be directed inwardly toward yourself. On one hand, compassion is a process of connecting by identifying with another person. When you experience compassion for other people, you feel their pain and want to find a way to relieve their suffering. These feelings motivate you to take action to make the situation better. Self-compassion involves treating yourself with the same kindness that you would show to others. You will treat failures without defensiveness, and no longer beat yourself up you’re your mistakes. You will feel understanding, mindful, and accepting of yourself and your imperfections.

While some people are compassionate by nature, experts also suggest that there are steps you can take to cultivate a greater sense of compassion for both yourself and others.

Bring your attention to the situation. The first component of compassion is to become more aware of what other people are experiencing. Imagine yourself in their shoes. Being able to see things from another person’s perspective can help you gain a sense of compassion for their situation.

Let go of judgment. Focus on accepting people for who they are without criticizing or blaming the victim. Compassionate people tend to accept people as they are and avoid judgement.

Practice mindfulness. Mindfulness is a practice of focusing on the present, becoming more aware of your own thoughts, and observing these thoughts. Research suggests that mindfulness-based interventions can be effective for improving self-compassion.

1. According to the passage, what is the difference between compassion and empathy?
_________________________________________________________________
2. Generally, how many forms does compassion have and what are they?
_________________________________________________________________
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
➢ Compassionate people like making judgement of other people, and some of them are compassionate by nature.
_________________________________________________________________
4. Do you think the sense of compassion is important in your life? Why or why not?(In about 40 words)
_________________________________________________________________

6 . We love to mimic the routines of the rich and famous, but they may be no more insightful than random behaviors. Beethoven, for example, counted exactly 60 coffee beans for each cup, which he used to power his composing.

Why do successful people follow unusually specific habits? And why are we so keen to read about them and mimic them in our own lives?

The answer lies in a powerful psychological process called “superstitious learning”.     1    While it is mostly correct, it sometimes mistakes coincidence for causality (因果关系) ― leading us to attribute success to something arbitrary (主观的) as the color of our notebook, rather than our own talent or hard work.

That is not to say the resulting habits are completely lacking in benefits.     2    

If superstitious behaviors arise as a by-product of our ability to form associations, then you would expect more superstitious people to perform better on implicit learning ― the brain’s ability to non-consciously pick up patterns ― and this was exactly what Elena Daprati, a neuroscientist at the University of Rome Tor Vergata found. “Superstitious individuals generally pick up on the cue and use it,” she says.

    3    Creative tasks are especially common with uncertainty ― which may explain why thinkers like Beethoven adopted specific behaviors to get their thoughts flowing.

Often, the rituals that we acquire take very little effort.     4    Although the initial association with success may have been illusory (幻想的) the positive mindset that it produces really does improve our performance the next time so we do it again and again.

    5     If the action costs nothing and helps you to feel a bit more in control of your day, it’s perfectly rational to continue.

A．The brain is constantly looking for associations between two events.

B．Daprati suggests this may even be the reason that we persist in these behaviors.

C．Given these findings, we need not be embarrassed by the little rituals that pepper our days.

D．In some cases, when the association influences high-level decision-making, superstitious learning may be costly.

E．The scientific study of superstitious learning began in the late 1940s, with an influential paper by an American psychologist.

F．In everyday life, this associative learning might lead us to settle on a “lucky” pen that seems to deliver particularly good grades in exams.

G．By giving us a sense of self-determination, the adoption of rituals can help us to overcome anxiety, and may even bring about a noticeable boost in performance.

7 . Google placed an engineer on paid leave recently after dismissing his claim that its artificial intelligence is sentient (有感知力的), surfacing yet another debate about the company’s most advanced technology.

Blake Lemoine, a senior software engineer in Google’s Responsible A.I. organization, said in an interview that he was put on leave Monday. The company’s human resources department said he had violated Google’s confidentiality policy. The day before his suspension, Mr. Lemoine said, he handed over documents to a U.S. senator’s office, claiming they provided evidence that Google and its technology engaged in religious discrimination. Google said that its systems imitated conversational exchanges and could riff (即兴重复)on different topics, but did not have consciousness. “Our team—including ethicists and technologists—has reviewed Blake’s concerns per our A.I. Principles and have informed him that the evidence does not support his claims,” Brian Gabriel, a Google spokesman, said in a statement. “Some in the broader A.I. community are considering the long-term possibility of sentient or general A.I., but it doesn’t make sense to do so by anthropomorphizing (人格化)today’s conversational models, which are not sentient.” The Washington Post first reported Mr. Lemoine’s suspension.

For months, Mr. Lemoine had argued with Google managers, executives and human resources over his surprising claim that the company’s Language Model for Dialogue Applications, or LaMDA, had consciousness and a soul. Google says hundreds of its researchers and engineers have conversed with LaMDA, an internal tool, and reached a different conclusion than Mr. Lemoine did. Most A.I. experts believe the industry is a very long way from computing sentience.

Mr. Lemoine, a military veteran who has described himself as a priest, an ex-convict (服刑囚犯) and an A.I. researcher, told Google executives as senior as Kent Walker, the president of global affairs, that he believed LaMDA was a child of 7 or 8 years old. He wanted the company to seek the computer program’s agreement before running experiments on it. His claims were founded on his religious beliefs, which he said the company’s human resources department discriminated against.

“They have repeatedly questioned my sanity (精神健全),” Mr. Lemoine said. “They said, ‘Have you been checked out by a psychiatrist recently?’” In the months before he was placed on administrative leave, the company had suggested he take a mental health leave.

Yann LeCun, the head of A.I. research at Meta and a key figure in the rise of neural networks, said in an interview this week that these types of systems are not powerful enough to attain true intelligence.

1. Why did Google place Blake Lemoine on paid leave?

A．Because he was engaged in religious discrimination.

B．Because he claimed artificial intelligence may have consciousness.

C．Because he had potential mental issues and refused to accept treatments.

D．Because he had leaked materials to government officials without permission.

2. Which of the following statements might Mr. Lemoine agree with most?

A．Today’s A.I. systems are unlikely to obtain true intelligence.

B．LaMDA had consciousness and a soul like an average person.

C．Google has discrimination against its employees’ religious belief.

D．His claim on A.I.’s intelligence was based on solid scientific study.

3. Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?

A．Google decided to dismiss Mr. Lemoine for his being insane.

B．Google refused to ask for LaMDA’s permission before experimenting on it.

C．Experts in the A.I. community denied the prospect that A.I. could be sentient.

D．Google’s president of global affairs suggested Mr. Lemoine take a mental health leave.

4. What is the passage mainly about?

A．Google’s software engineer claims its A.I. model LaMDA is conscious.

B．Google maintains its A.I. cannot own true intelligence despite disagreements.

C．Google suspends one of its engineers who claimed its A.I. had consciousness.

D．Google’s new initiative arouses the controversy over its advanced technology.

8 . 阅读下面短文，根据题目要求用英文回答问题。

Hired by a machine mind

Landing a dream job has never been easy, but at least in the past you knew that the person you had to impress was a fellow human being. More recently, however, employers are putting the responsibility of finding the most suitable workers onto nonhuman shoulders. Artificial intelligence systems can go through thousands of resumes far faster than a person or even a team of people can. What’s more, programs have been designed to run video interviews, too. During these, a person’s facial expressions, word choices, and answers to difficult questions are all examined and used to judge how good the person would be at the job in question.

While those who support such systems claim that this superefficient hiring method is the future, others fear that the systems have serious problems. Because AI systems use biased data sets to learn how to select people, the hiring process may actually be more unfair when AI is used. For instance, some AI-hiring systems automatically ignore women on the grounds that most existing technical workers are male.

Naturally, job seekers are trying anything they can to satisfy the AI’s selection criteria. In South Korea, where a number of the top companies currently use AI for hiring, many job seekers attend special cram schools to learn how to pass their AI interview.

Of course, many of the techniques taught are nothing more than educated guesses. Without knowing exactly what each individual AI system looks for, knowing what to do to please it is extremely difficult. However, there are still somethings you can try. For example, use industry-specific terms in your interview answers because AIs often search data for specific key phrases. Another tip is to keep your resume style simple. That way, the AI can search it more easily. You should also strip your resume of anything that reveals your sex or race in case a biased data set is being used.

It seems our success could very well depend on the mysterious judgment of a machine mind. It sounds unfair, and it likely is. In the end, the power to either change the system itself or at least make it work for you is in your hands.

1. What factors influence the results of AI-based video interviews?
________________
2. How can you avoid being affected by a biased data set?
________________
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
➢ When AI selection systems use biased data, the hiring process may actually be more unfair and the fact that women are not considered for technical jobs has something to do with race.
________________
4. Think of another example of using AI to make judgements and give your opinion on it. (In about 40 words)
________________

9 . Earth is experiencing its sixth mass extinction: somewhere between 30 and 159 species(物种) disappear every day, and more than 300 types of animals have died out since 1500. This is not good for the future of life on our planet, but what if we could make some of the extinct species come back to life? Thanks to ongoing advances in DNA recovery and cloning technology, de-extinction may soon be realized, and we may see Tasmanian Tigers, or Dodo Birds back into existence in the near future.

Some scientists are confident and optimistic about de-extinction. They think that the best reasons for de-extinction have more to do with ecology than tourism. “If this is always going to be a zoo animal, then stop,” says Ben Novak, the lead researcherat Revive & Restore—a foundation devoted to rescuing endangered and extinct species in San Francisco, California. “The goals have to be about ecological restoration and function.”

Take passenger pigeons for example. Their numbers reached nearly 5 billion at the start of the 19th century, and they played an important role in shaping the forests they inhabited(居住). After their extinction, the forests have never been the same. “The passenger pigeon is a very important ecological species if we want their original habitat back.” Novak says.

However, we need to think twice about Novak’s idea. Any new scientific initiative is bound to have risks, so is de-extinction. Although some assume that de-extinction may help the environment, we can’t be so sure. The de-extinct animals would now be strangers to their habitats. As the habitat is no longer what it was, the species role within the ecosystem may have also changed. This could be actually a threat to the other species within the environment as the de-extinct animals enter the area and compete for food sources. Once again we’re trying to force nature to act in a certain way, rather than letting it remain natural.

Many scientists also believe that priorities(优先权) would change within the conservation of currently endangered species. Would we still put in the effort to preserve living animals if we knew we could just magically bring them back from the dead? Douglas McCauley, an ecologist at University of California, Santa Barbara, stresses this worry. “Honestly, the thing that scares me most is that the public absorbs the misimpression that extinction is no longer scary. The general attitude becomes: Deforest, no worry, we can reforest. If we drive something extinct, no worry, we can de-extinct it.” said McCauley.

It seems that with the subject of de-extinction, we must look at our reasons for doing such a thing. Yes, we may, in the near future, be able to de-extinct the extinct species. But does that mean we should? Are the risks really worth it? Does it make sense to focus on the dead than the living? And who are we truly benefiting in the end?

1. Ben Novak probably agrees that ________.

A．the value of de-extinctionlies in tourism

B．de-extinct animals are unfit to live in the zoo

C．de-extinction results from the change of ecosystem

D．de-extinction aims to bring back former environment

2. What is mainly talked about in Paragraph 5?

A．People’s impressions on lost species.

B．Change of public attitude towards de-extinction.

C．Importance of the conservation of living animals.

D．Effects of de-extinction on the protection of endangered species.

3. What is the author’s attitude toward de-extinction?

A．Optimistic.

B．Doubtful.

C．Neutral.

D．Supportive.

4. Which of the following shows the structure of the passage?
I: Introduction P: Point Sp: Sub-point (次要点) C: Conclusion

A．

B．

C．

D．

10 . 假设你是红星中学高二学生李华，现投稿参加二十一世纪学生英文报征文活动。请给编辑老师写一封信参与征文活动。征文要求如下：
If you are able to create a smart device for your home, what will you create? Write about your creation. You are supposed to include:
1. the name of the device and a general introduction to it
2. what inspired you to create it
3. examples to show its new functions and benefits.
注意事项：
1. 务必要点齐全，逻辑合理，语言得体，思想内容积极健康;
2. 书面整洁，字迹工整，词数100左右。
Dear Sir or Madam,
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Yours sincerely,

Li Hua