1 . Under the first full moon of the year, music lovers in Norway sit on seats made of ice and covered with animal skins. On a frozen stage, musicians in furry hats and coats play instruments carved from ice! This show is the Ice Music Festival, the only concert in the world of its kind. This cool idea began in 1999, when musician Terje Isungset played music inside a frozen waterfall. The amazing sounds that he heard led him to start using ice as a musical instrument. Isungset spent years experimenting with ice instruments. The more he learned, the more excited he became. After years of trial and error, he was ready to start the Ice Music Festival in 2016.
To prepare the frozen instruments, Isungset hunts for the best natural sources of ice. He tests each source of ice by cutting out a piece, tapping it with his finger, and listening to the sound it produces. Experience tells him whether the ice will make a good instrument. He prefers not to use human-made ice, because he believes frozen lake water sounds better. This may be supported by science. Scientists have noticed that natural ice has fewer bubbles (气泡), which could lead to a clearer sound.
Once the ice has been sourced, professional ice carvers use tools to create instruments. They carve everything from saxophones to xylophones. The carvers often change the look of the instruments, which helps them produce special, even unique, sounds. Each year, the goal of the festival is to challenge musicians to make creative music when playing these one-of-a-kind ice instruments.
Playing the frozen instruments is a challenge. Each performance surprises both the musicians and the audience. After the concert is over, Isungset jokes that the musicians will drink their instruments. Actually, they just leave their stage and instruments behind, giving it all back to nature.
1. What inspired Isungset’s interest in ice music?| A．Learning to play an ice instrument. |
| B．Attending the first Ice Music Festival. |
| C．Playing music in a frozen environment. |
| D．Experimenting with frozen instruments. |
| A．By testing the sound that it makes. |
| B．By referring to scientific explanations. |
| C．By comparing the sources of ice pieces. |
| D．By checking the number of bubbles it has. |
| A．Playing in such cold weather. |
| B．Getting rid of their instruments. |
| C．Selecting their instruments’ look. |
| D．Predicting their instruments’ sounds. |
| A．To promote the talents of Terje Isungset. |
| B．To review a recently-held music festival. |
| C．To introduce a new and original type of music. |
| D．To encourage people to join in the Ice Music Festival. |
2 . China has a history of more than four thousand years, and the Chinese people have established a colorful culture.
Ingredients——varieties of material choices allow Chinese food to provide many possibilities for Chinese chefs to be more creative.
The Chinese also use poultry, eggs and milk. Poultry includes chicken, duck, goose, turkey, pigeon, quail, and pheasant. Seafood and freshwater fish-hair tail, salmon, squad, sea cucumber, oyster, black carp, catfish, grass carp, variegated carp, shrimp, prawn, crab, and turtle-are also used in Chinese food.
Dried vegetables are also cooked, such as eggplant, bean, turnip, potato and pepper. Dried pork and dried fish are also often used in Chinese cooking. Drying vegetables is a way to store produce to use in winter.
In the north of China, people also preserve vegetables in salty water to pickle (腌制) them. Pickling offers a special taste, in addition to that of dried vegetables.
| A．Chinese cuisine is a necessary part of it. |
| B．Chinese dishes always look very beautiful. |
| C．But taste is the most distinct characteristic of Chinese food. |
| D．Dried meat is a very important ingredient of Chinese cuisine. |
| E．More importantly, it has a special taste different from fresh vegetables. |
| F．These include various grains, vegetables and the meat of different animals. |
| G．Chinese cuisine emphasizes the combination of color, fragrance and taste in its food. |
3 . A baby smiles and laughs. You also smile and laugh. The baby pounds (敲打) his tiny fist on the table. You mirror his action, lightly pounding your back. This imitation game comes naturally. It’s a simple way for parents to have fun with their babies. And new research shows that babies not only realize that adults are imitating them, but they also seem to enjoy it.
For the study, some researchers from Lund University in Sweden met 6-month-old babies in their homes and played with them. They either imitated everything the babies did in mirror-like fashion, or imitated the actions without any expressions on their face, or responded with a different action when the babies acted.
In the study, the babies looked and smiled longer and tried to approach the adult more often when their actions were being most closely mirrored. “Imitating young babies seems to be an effective way to attract their interest and build relationships with them,” lead author Sauciuc said in a statement.
While the babies were playing with the researchers, they also showed some testing behavior. For example, if the baby hit the table just once and the researcher imitated the action, then the baby would hit the table several times, carefully watching the researcher for a response. When the researcher showed no emotions (情绪) while imitating the baby, the babies still seemed to recognize that they were being imitated and they responded with testing behavior to the researcher.
“This was quite interesting. When someone actively tests the person who is imitating them, the imitated individual usually realizes that there is a link between their own behavior and the behavior of the other,” Sauciuc said. The results were published in PLOS One.
Scientists have guessed that imitation is key for babies about how to get on with others, and that sharing actions is linked with sharing feelings. But there isn’t a lot of research to back up those theories.
“By showing that 6-month-old babies recognize when they’re being imitated, and that imitation has a positive effect on communication, we begin to fill this gap (空缺),” Sauciuc added.
1. What did the researchers do during the study?| A．They showed some testing behavior to the babies. |
| B．They observed how the babies behaved in the lab. |
| C．They played with the babies in different ways. |
| D．They made the babies imitate some behavior. |
| A．improve their babies’ communication skills |
| B．amuse their babies by catching their attention |
| C．help their babies acquire the ability to observe |
| D．develop their babies’ interest in playing games |
| A．A biology textbook. | B．A scientific journal. |
| C．An entertainment magazine. | D．A travel brochure. |
| A．The future research direction. | B．The problems with the study. |
| C．The new findings of the study. | D．The practical value of the study. |
4 . I was never addicted to skydiving, but I definitely enjoyed it. I made my first skydiving when I was 19. I was one of a selected few who got a chance to attend the US Air Force Academy’s Freefall school, a program that taught mostly Air Force Academy cadets how to jump out of planes. It wasn’t intended to make us operational paratroopers(伞兵), but to teach us about accomplishing tasks in high-stress situations. And this training program was the only one that allowed jumpers to perform freefall skydiving and pull their own ripcords(开伞索) without a trained instructor jumping alongside of them.
When I returned to Columbus for my college study, I proudly wore my parachutist badge(伞兵徽章). About a month later, I made my first private skydiving and the rest was history. I jumped more and more, only paying for the jumps and necessary training when I had the funds to do it.
Eventually, I had made 10 skydiving, and then it was 20, and I found that I was making jumps at different drop zones. I even bought my own parachute system.
I kept jumping during my senior year. The last jump I made, however, was in the fall of 2006 when I was in Cleveland. My new job needed me to work six days a week and I just didn’t have time to skydive regularly. When I moved to the DC area, I suffered from herniated disk(椎间盘突出) and I knew I would never jump out of a plane again.
My skydiving career ended with 55 jumps, with more than 40 minutes of freefall time. I met great people along the way and did some pretty crazy jumps. I’ll never forget meeting Adam Abelow, the head of the skydiving club, who gave me a ride to get my first jump, and Jen White, who coached me on many of my jumps. I’ll never forget getting my license and the time when my grandparents came to watch me jump.
1. Why did the author choose the program at the US Air Force Academy’s Freefall school?| A．To get a badge of honor. |
| B．To be admitted by the school. |
| C．To prepare to be a real paratrooper. |
| D．To learn to complete tasks under high pressure. |
| A．His colorful college life. | B．His experience of skydiving. |
| C．His achievements in skydiving. | D．The development of skydiving. |
| A．His busy schedule. | B．His demanding work. |
| C．His physical condition. | D．His failure to raise money. |
| A．present his views about skydiving | B．reflect on his past experiences |
| C．show his love for skydiving | D．express his appreciation |
5 . Cheap and even free volunteering programs are everywhere. Don’t worry about a budget that may stop you from volunteering abroad! Kindred Spirit Elephant Sanctuary (保护区) is the right place for you.
Highlights
Volunteer with elephants and bring them back into their natural habitat.
Make a difference in the conservation efforts to save elephants living under awful conditions.
Help teach English to the communities and raise awareness about the captive (圈养的) elephant situation.
Wander the forests and observe elephant’s natural behaviours in their home environment.
Our Sanctuary
Our sanctuary has rescued 5 elephants from the tourism industry and we have now brought them home to live out their lives in the forest, in semi-wild conditions. We need volunteers to help us keep these elephants happy and healthy in their natural habitat. With volunteer support. we hope to return more elephants to the forest soon.
Your tasks
Performing research on the natural elephant behaviours and the surrounding forest.
Taking part in community projects such as teaching English at the school and to other locals.
Carrying out litter pick-ups with the kids to educate on waste management.
Your Rough Schedule:
Day 1: Pickup from Chiang Mai at 9 am. Travel through a national park and stunning mountains until you arrive in our unique village. Meet your homestay family and the other volunteers, and immerse yourself in hill tribe culture.
Day 2: Wake up early to hike in the forest and find our elephants. Spend the morning recording and learning about these amazing animals and their natural behaviours. Return to the village in the late afternoon and take part in our community & teaching projects.
Day 3: Another early start to like to observe our elephants one last time. Return to Chiang Mai in the afternoon.
1. Which of the following highlights the volunteer work at the sanctuary?| A．Looking after captive elephants. |
| B．Seeking elephants in natural forests. |
| C．Learning local communities’ folk arts. |
| D．Saving elephants in poor environment. |
| A．Establish experimental bases. |
| B．Promote educational programs. |
| C．Enhance cultural exchange. |
| D．Start anti-poverty projects. |
| A．You should have good ability of hiking. |
| B．You can choose your own transportation. |
| C．You may camp on the mountain for days. |
| D．You must be familiar with local languages. |
6 . Whenever Alyssa Bohart heard a voice from her computer repeatedly- status alert, status alert—the search was on. The warning came from a radar device installed in Churchill, Manitoba—a modified (改进的) military system programmed with artificial intelligence (AI) and trained to detect polar bears.
Over the past four years, the nonprofit Polar Bears International (PBI) has led radar, or “bear-dar”, tests to hopefully help northern communities stay safe. Polar bears are powerful predators, and for people in the Arctic, an essential part of coexisting with bears is maintaining a respectful distance. But with climate changes reducing sea ice, polar bears conflicts are spending more time on land. The chances of polar bears and humans conflicts are increasing, which can have terrible consequences for both parties.
The project came into being when PBI was looking for new ways to prevent human-polar bear conflicts. A chance meeting with SpotterRF, a company that makes military radar devices, gave them an idea: maybe they could use the radar system to detect polar bears heading toward towns and send out an early warning.
In their initial tests, the researchers discovered that “the technology works great”, says Geoff York, FBI’s senior director of conservation. “If anything, it detects too much.” The radar turned out to send thousands of motion alerts. So in 2020, the team turned to AI to try to narrow down the hits. “By incorporating this AI, we are truly teaching this radar to learn what a polar bear is,” says Alysa McCall, a staff scientist with PBI.
This past fall, the team positively identified 28 polar bears and had 89 alerts that didn’t turn out to be bears. McCall says their goals is to have more positive identifications than negative. In rare events, the team noticed polar bears, either on the camera or in person, that the bear-dar didn’t identify. In those cases, the two most confusing variables for the bear-dar were variations in the bears’ sizes, and the direction the bears were walking in relation to the radar. “We are not quite there yet. But I think the results have proved we have a good direction of where to go with the AI,” says MeCall.
1. What is PBI trying to do?| A．To provide new homes for polar bears. |
| B．To help humans stay away from polar bears. |
| C．To protect polar bears with advanced technology. |
| D．To look into the cause of human-polar bear conflicts. |
| A．It was often damaged by polar bears. |
| B．It cost too much money to operate well. |
| C．It sent out unnecessary warning signals. |
| D．It needed much time to find the target. |
| A．Hopeless. | B．disappointed. | C．Concerned. | D．satisfied. |
| A．AI does a great job in polar bear conservation |
| B．Climate change intensifies human-bear conflicts |
| C．Bear-dar warns humans of approaching polar bears |
| D．Polar bears pose a big threat to northern communities |
7 . Last summer, the missing white-letter hairstreak butterfly was spotted in Scotland for the first time in 133 years. Conservationists wondered if the creature had established a breeding colony in the country. As Russell Jackson reports for the Scotsman, volunteer naturalists recently found a cluster of tiny white-letter hairstreak eggs on an elm tree in Lennel, a small village near the country of Berwick-shire.
Volunteers with the UK’s Butterfly Conservation have been carefully tracking white-letter hair-streak migrations for more than ten years. The butterfly is native to the UK and was once widespread in England and Wales. But white -letter hairstreak numbers have declined drastically in recent decades, largely due to an outbreak of Dutch elm disease, and illness that took hold in the 1960s. The disease has killed millions of British elm trees, which is the food source for white-letter hairstreak caterpillars (蝴蝶或蛾的幼虫).
Recently, there have been signs that the butterfly’s populations are recovering. The Butterfly Conservation team has observed the white-letter hairstreak gradually spreading northwards, possibly due to warming climates. But the white-letter hairstreak is still a very rare sight in Scotland, and the volunteers who found the cluster of eggs — Ken Haydock and Jill Mills — were thrilled by the discovery.
“It was a lovely sunny morning and we were searching the elm trees by the River Tweed at Lennel when Jill called me over,” Haydock says in a Butterfly Conservation statement, “I could see by the look on her face that she had found something. We were both smiling with disbelief and delight when we realized what Jill had found and within seconds I was fumbling in my pack for the camera —my hands were shaking!”
That Haydock and Mills managed to spot the eggs is quite remarkable; according to Vittoria Traverso of Atlas Obscura, white-letter hairstreak eggs are smaller than a grain of salt. The volunteers were also excited to discover an old, hatched eggshell amid the cluster of new eggs. According to the Butterfly Conservation, this suggests that the white-letter hairstreak could have been breeding in the area since at least 2016.
Paul Kirkland, the director of the Butterfly Conservation’ s Scotland chapter, says in the statement that conservationists will “need to have a few more years of confirmed sightings” before they can classify the white-letter hairstreak as a resident species of Scotland. “If this happens, it would take the total number of butterflies found in Scotland to 34,” he says, “which really would be something to celebrate.”
1. What mainly accounted for the sharp decrease of the special butterfly species?| A．An outbreak of the butterfly disease. | B．A great loss due to its mass migration. |
| C．The mass death of British elm trees. | D．The consequence of global warming. |
| A．It has been native to the US and spread to England. |
| B．Its population is decreasing due to global warming. |
| C．Signs have shown that its number is rising again now. |
| D．People can see them every now and then in Scotland. |
| A．It was on a rainy day that they made the discovery. |
| B．Ken looked puzzled the moment Jill called him over. |
| C．Jill made the discovery first and took a photo of it. |
| D．They felt it unbelievable to make their discovery. |
| A．Volunteers can find more eggs of the special butterfly in the future. |
| B．The total number of butterfly species found in the UK adds up to 34. |
| C．Conservationists will have more years of confirmed sightings. |
| D．The number of butterfly species found in Scotland increases again. |
8 . In a world as fast-changing and full of information as our own, all of us need to know how to learn well. Yet evidence suggests that most of us don’t use the learning techniques that science has proved the most effective.
The scientific literature evaluating these techniques goes back to decades and across thousands of articles. It’s far too extensive and complex for the average parent, teacher or employer to look through. Fortunately, a team of five leading psychologists have done the job for us.
Professor John Dunlosky and other psychologists closely examined 10 learning strategies and rated each from high to low utility(实用) on the basis of the evidence they’ve gathered. Here’s part of their conclusions:
In contrast to familiar practices, the effective learning strategies with the most evidence to support them aren’t well known outside the lab. Take distributed practice, for example. This strategy involves spreading out your study time, rather than engaging in one marathon. Cramming (死记硬背)information at the last minute may allow you to get through that test or meeting, but the material will quickly disappear from your memory. It’s much more effective to look through the material at intervals over time.
And the longer you want to remember the information, whether it’s two weeks or two years, the longer the intervals should be.
The second learning strategy that is highly recommended by Dunlosky is practice testing. Yes, more tests--but there not for a grade. Research shows that the mere act of calling information to mind strengthens that knowledge and aids in future retrieval (检索). While practice testing is not a common strategy--despite the strong evidence supporting it --there is one familiar approach that captures its benefits: using flash cards. And now flash cards can be presented in digital form. Both distributed practice and practice testing were rated as having “high utility” by Dunlosky.
1. How did the psychologists study and rate the learning strategies?| A．By analyzing the materials gathered in the past years. |
| B．By asking some students questions about their study. |
| C．By doing some experiments on the objects in the lab. |
| D．By asking parents and teachers to look through the articles. |
| A．small in amount | B．easy or quick to do |
| C．more than is needed | D．dealing with a lot of information |
| A．many students have benefited a lot from them | B．they were first put forward by John Dunlosky |
| C．only a small number of experts know about them | D．psychologists are studying whether they are effective |
| A．we should not study for long hours every day | B．reviewing what we have studied is of little help |
| C．the shorter the interval is, the better we’ll study | D．doing repetition at intervals is the best way |
| A．is a way to use flash cards to help study | B．is mainly used to help us remember well |
| C．helps know about students’ grades in time | D．is a way widely used to strengthen memory |
9 . Babies appear to know how to help those in need, according to researchers who studied signs of altruism in almost 100 children.
Researchers who wanted to see whether children would give up their food to a stranger without encouragement found the kids did just that — even when they were hungry.
The scientists recruited 96 19-month-old children. During the experiments, a child and a researcher sat across from each other. In the control group of the first set of experiments, researchers threw a piece of fruit onto a plate where they couldn’t reach, but the child could. They then waited. In contrast, researchers in the test group pretended to drop the fruit on the plate, then tried and failed to reach it. This signaled to the child that the adult wanted the food.
Among the control group, only 4 percent of the children gave the piece of fruit to the researchers, compared with 58 percent, or over half, in the test group.
Next, the team explored if children would still be generous when it was at a cost to themselves. The first set of experiments was repeated with a separate group of kids before their lunchtime, when they were likely to be hungry. Similarly, 37 percent of the test group handed over their fruit, compared with none in the control group.
The experiments were repeated four times. Researchers got similar results each time. Babies with siblings (兄弟姐妹) and babies from Latino or Asian families shared more of the fruit, the team also found.
Carter Morgan, lead professor of the study, said, “We often think of babies as selfish. But here we find that they are willing to help others even when it comes at some ‘cost’ to the self.”
Addressing why children with siblings or from certain cultural backgrounds were more likely to share their fruit, Morgan said, “We believe this partly reflects what social psychologists call ‘ interdependence’, which stresses on the importance of interpersonal connections and adjusting to others. These social experiences that shape attitudes towards sharing appear to have an effect very early in life.”
1. The underlined word “altruism” most probably means ________.| A．generosity | B．creativity |
| C．friendliness | D．confidence |
| A．They know when to have lunch. |
| B．They understand signals for help. |
| C．They can classify different fruits. |
| D．They can express their needs freely. |
A． |
B． |
C． |
D． |
| A．Attitudes towards sharing change greatly as people get older. |
| B．Babies from families with an only child are not willing to share. |
| C．It’s easier to control babies’ selfish desires when they are hungry. |
| D．Social experiences play a role in affecting babies’ behavior of sharing. |
10 . Australian magpies (喜鹊) are common in Australia, loved and feared in equal measure. The fear arises from the fact that nesting females aggressively dive at animals-including, or perhaps especially, humans-often drawing blood. The love comes from the fact that they are simply everywhere, easy to identify, and possessed of a song that has come to represent the sound of nature.
And also, they seem rather clever. Now, research by zoologists at the University of Wester Australia has corroborated this-but their levels of intelligence are dependent on the size of the group they belong to.
To reach this conclusion, the Australian scientist examined 56 birds from 14 groups of wild magpies living in the suburbs of Western Australia’s capital city, Perth. The groups ranged between 3 and. 12 individuals. Each magpie-tested separately to avoid the risk of it getting help from its mates-was put through four tasks that tested its cognitive(认知的)abilities. These included finding food hidden in a transparent container, finding food hidden in differently colored containers, and a memory test involving finding hidden food. Adult and young birds were tested repeatedly and the results were clear. The birds that lived in larger groups were quicker to master the tasks than those that lived in smaller ones. The difference between intelligent big group members and less intelligent little group members appeared very early in the birds’ lives.
In a paper published in the journal Nature, lead author Benjamin Ashton and his colleagues report that birds living in large groups “show increased cognitive performance”. Moreover, this “general intelligence factor”is strongly linked to reproductive (生殖的)success in females.
Ashton suggests that the findings indicate the evolution of intelligence is influenced by pressures present in a complex social group. “Our results suggest that the social environment plays a key role in the development of cognition, ” he says.
1. Which word best describes Australians’ feelings about Australian magpies?| A．Frightened |
| B．Loving |
| C．Mixed |
| D．Tolerant |
| A．Assessed |
| B．Confirmed |
| C．Disapproved |
| D．Doubted |
| A．They were allowed to seek help. |
| B．They were put in containers. |
| C．They were divided into some groups. |
| D．They were studied individually. |
| A．Magpies seem to be more social birds |
| B．Magpies in small groups often perform better |
| C．Large-group living increases magpies’ intelligence |
| D．Cognitive levels affect magpies’ reproductive success |
