1 . Smartwatches and fitness trackers (健身追踪器) have gained popularity recently. These tools can record your daily steps, heart rates, etc.
It’s a struggle to overcome the addiction to fitness trackers.
Of course, failing to meet your daily goal can be discouraging. You might focus on your shortcoming rather than your progress. Another problem is that you might find yourself paying too much attention to the step number rather than how your body feels.
Therefore, if you’re spending too much time looking at your smartwatch, limit your daily step count to a comfortable level.
| A．How can you tell whether you’re addicted to your fitness tracker? |
| B．Actually this addiction to step count can be risky, mentally and physically. |
| C．Don’t overuse your smartwatch. |
| D．However, do you find yourself checking your steps and heart rates too often? |
| E．After all, reaching a daily step count can be so appealing. |
| F．Besides, you can find other things to do that don’t involve checking your fitness tracker. |
| G．It doesn’t covey what you’re really feeling. |
2 . Computers are pretty good at answering questions. Just ask Alexa, Amazon’s voice assistant, who can tell you the weather or directions. Computers are good at spitting back facts, but haven’t shown the same critical or creative thinking that humans have. That could be changing, at least when it comes to reading, because of advances in AI (artificial intelligence).
Research teams at Microsoft and Chinese tech company Alibaba reached what they described as a milestone (里程碑) earlier this January. Their AI systems outperformed the estimated human score on a reading comprehension test.
The test was developed at Stanford University. It showed that, in at least some situations, computers can beat humans at quickly “reading” hundreds of Wikipedia articles. AI machines could come up with accurate answers to questions about warrior-king Genghis Khan, or the Apollo space program.
The computers, however, also made mistakes that many people wouldn’t have. Microsoft, for instance, failed an easy football question. The computer was asked which member of the Carolina Panthers football team intercepted (拦截) the most passes in the 2015 season. The correct answer was Kurt Coleman, not Josh Norman. Any person who carefully read the Wikipedia passage would have discovered the right answer. However, the computer made a mistake in the word “most” and didn’t understand that seven is bigger than four.
“We’re still a long way from computers being able to read and comprehend general text in the same way that humans can,” Kevin Scott, Microsoft’s head of technology, wrote. He praised the AI system for passing the test, calling it a major achievement by the company’s researchers.
“It strikes me for the kind of problem that they’re solving that it’s not possible to do better than people, because people are defining what’s correct,” Littman said. “The impressive thing here is that they met human performance, not that they’ve exceeded (超越) it.”
1. The research teams described their work as a milestone because ________.| A．their computers showed critical and creative thinking like humans |
| B．their AI systems beat humans in reading comprehension |
| C．their AI systems could tell you weather and direction |
| D．their computers are good at answering questions |
| A．Genghis Khan and the Apollo space program. |
| B．Smart AI machines were answering questions. |
| C．AI machines did better than humans in reading. |
| D．Stanford University developed the reading test. |
| A．AI still struggles with logical reasoning. |
| B．Computers often mistake seven for four. |
| C．Computers seldom make stupid mistakes. |
| D．The Wikipedia passage was controversial. |
| A．A milestone in reading comprehension. |
| B．Great advance in artificial intelligence. |
| C．Computers already think critically. |
| D．AI beats humans in reading test. |
3 . A quick scan of any social media will confirm something everyone already knows: People love inspirational quotes. We pick them up and share them from a variety of places, whether they come from the brilliant Maya Angelou, reminding us to “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better,” or live on a T-shirt that you proudly wear, proclaiming “I have superpowers… I TEACH!”
Every educator knows that words matter a whole lot! A thoughtless comment about another canceled school day can feel very personal to a teacher who shows up every day. Hearing a simple “thank you” for all that you do from a family member can fill your tank and keep you going even when you’re tired. Encouragement and kind words are especially important in times of hardship or self-doubt. So, reading a great quote reminds us of who we are or who we expect to be.
Since we couldn’t physically bring together the educators from all over the country, we asked you to send us the inspirational quotes that you most wanted to share with your fellow teachers. We hoped that you would share quotes that would provide a much-needed pick-me-up and reenergize those who may be feeling tired. You didn’t disappoint! In 24 hours, we received over 1,000 responses.
Some were very timely.
★ “Spread kindness, not germs.” (Some were timeless.)
★ “If you can dream it, you can do it.” (Some were very practical.)
★ “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” (Arthur Ashe. And others were just about remembering how awesome you are.)
★ “YOU ARE DOING AMAZING, SWEETIE” (Kris Jenner).
So why do we love inspirational quotes? Because, in a way, reading them is kind of like having a conversation with a really great friend who always cheers you on to be the very best you. So, remember this.
1. Which word can replace the underlined word “proclaiming” in paragraph 1?| A．Announcing. | B．Advocating. | C．Warning. | D．Discussing. |
| A．A teacher who feels tired. | B．A student who is confident. |
| C．A person who does little for his family. | D．A member who is part of a community. |
| A．Students. | B．Teachers. | C．Parents. | D．Children. |
| A．The Power of Words | B．The Importance of Education |
| C．People Love Inspirational Quotes | D．Famous People Share Kind Words |
4 . You may be wondering how to clear your mind. Perhaps you’re facing a tough presentation at work and really need to focus, or maybe you have got a long going on at home and just need to relax for a few minutes.
The only problem is that you can’t completely erase the thousands of thoughts you have each day. The goal is to be able to observe those thoughts without engaging with them. The good news is that clearing your mind comes from a simple act of acknowledging your present state first.
Now that you have acknowledged where you are and how you feel, you can take action. You can take a few moments to ground yourself back into the present moment.
With so many thoughts in your head, it sounds difficult to clear our minds.
| A．This may be as simple as taking a walk. |
| B．We have to acknowledge that our mind is disturbed. |
| C．However, the above methods are powerfully effective. |
| D．Acknowledgment is regarded as an important technique. |
| E．Another powerful practice is writing down all the thoughts in your head. |
| F．Whatever the reason is, having a clear mind can help you find your center. |
| G．This will allow your heart rate to slow down so as to reduce your anxiety. |
5 . As a younger child, Adom didn’t have a choice in how much he volunteered since he was regularly along with his parents while they volunteered. They organized book drives for kids, joined backpack giveaways, served food to the hungry and delivered Christmas presents to children with imprisoned parents.
Now Adom, who lives in Spartanburg, South Carolina, is a teenager. He has a lot more to say in what he does with his time. He’s recently taken his volunteerism to a new level.
Over the past three years, he has raised over $70,000 for nonprofit groups in his area. He had done in part by organizing annual charity basketball games involving local community leaders, as well as college and professional athletes. Adom named his project Ball4Good.
Adom was recently awarded a 2019 Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes, which honors outstanding young leaders. As one of 15 top winners, he was awarded $10,000. He’s putting half towards the charity he founded and the rest towards his college fund.
Since 2017, Adom and Ball4Good have supported 18 community organizations, including the local Boys & Girls Clubs of the Upstate; Miracle Hill Ministries, which serves homeless children and adults in South Carolina; the Project Hope Foundation, which provides services for individuals of all ages with autism (自闭症); and the Children’s Advocacy Center of Spartanburg, Cherokee and Union, which helps children who have been abused.
Adom does more than just deliver the cash; he gets involved, just as he did as a younger kid. He is the youngest board member for the Boys Girls Clubs of the Upstate and continues to volunteer at other organizations, such as Children’s Cancer Partners of the Carolinas, which supports families of youths fighting cancer.
“Books, fundraisers, summer camp services, national spelling bees — Adom is doing a lot,” said Greg Tolbert, president of the Boys Girls Clubs of the Upstate.
1. As a young child, Adom ________.| A．followed his parents volunteering | B．organized volunteering activities |
| C．had no choice but to volunteer | D．helped imprisoned parents |
| A．involved local community leaders in volunteering |
| B．organized a charity basketball game |
| C．raised $70,000 for nonprofit groups |
| D．made great efforts in volunteerism |
| A．He devotes himself to helping the old. |
| B．He raises money for various causes. |
| C．He focuses on saving sick children. |
| D．He mainly volunteers in his community. |
| A．A talker. | B．A thinker. | C．A doer. | D．A designer. |
6 . Are you the type of person who always try to complete the task to the best of your ability? Perhaps your high expectations make sure that you always expect the very best from not only yourself, but also your students. If so, you should like the ideal candidate for this school.
Science Teacher — Permanent Vacancy (空缺)
● September start, permanent, direct school contract
● Exceptional training and development
● Positive and experienced teachers are welcomed
● Great career development opportunity
Person Specification (用人要求)
You must have obtained QIS by September and be an ambitious, dynamic and engaging science teacher who can bring your passion for science to life in creative and fun lessons to students aged 11～18.
A recent track record of good to outstanding lesson observations is designed as you will be expected to deliver good lessons, making sure of students’progress at an appropriate level in line with their expectations.
You should ideally be the type of science teacher who desires to become a leader in the next few years. This school is open to applicants newly qualified and experienced. For those with more experience, there is the possibility to take on some additional responsibility straight away.
School Information
Located in the Wolverhampton, it’s a lovely school of average size and recently had a glowing Ofsted (英国教育标准局) inspection which highlighted how all areas were “GOOD”. The school enables teachers to develop into outstanding practitioners (从业者) and gives teachers the tools needed to go on to a leadership role.
Please send your CV to Jamie at i-teachers to be considered for this role and other similar position in our school.
1. What quality should the applicant have?| A．Being kind-hearted and sensible. | B．Being capable and aggressive. |
| C．Being friendly and outgoing. | D．Being brave and humorous. |
| A．His/her expectation of the students. |
| B．The proof of his/her working experience. |
| C．The record of his/her good teaching ability. |
| D．His/her communicative skills with co-workers. |
| A．To learn about a school’s environment. |
| B．To see a school’s working conditions. |
| C．To show a school’s achievements. |
| D．To test a school’s comprehensive performance. |
7 . Art and science may seem like opposite things. One means the creative flow of ideas, and the other means cold, hard data-some people believe. In fact, the two have much in common. Now, a study finds art can help students remember better what they have learned in the science class.
Mariale Hardiman, an education specialist at Johns Hopkins University, noticed that students who used art in the classroom listened more carefully. They might ask more questions. They might volunteer more ideas. What’s more, students seemed to remember more of what they had been taught when their science lessons had involved(涉及) art. To prove that, Hardiman teamed up with some researchers and six local schools.
In the experiment, the researchers worked with teachers in 16 fifth-grade classrooms. They provided traditional science lessons and art-focused ones. In a traditional science class, for example, students might read aloud from a book. In the art-focused one, they might sing the information instead.
The team randomly assigned(随机分配) each of the 350 students to either a traditional science classroom or an art-focused one. Students then learned science using that way for the whole unit-about three weeks. When they changed to a new topic, they also changed to the other type of class. This way, each student had both an art-focused class and a traditional one. Every unit was taught in both ways, to different groups of students. This enabled the researchers to see how students did in both types of classes.
The team found that students who started off in a traditional class performed better after they moved into an art-focused class. But those who started off in an art-focused class did well even when they went back to a traditional science class. These students appeared to use some of the art techniques(技巧) after going back to a traditional class. Classroom teachers reported that many students continued to sing the songs that they learned after finishing the unit. “The more we hear something, the more we retain it,” Hardiman says. “It suggests that the arts may help students apply creative ways of learning on their own.”
1. Why did Mariale Hardiman do the study?| A．To prove the importance of art at school. |
| B．To see if art might improve science learning |
| C．To find a way to help her students learn better. |
| D．To know how to encourage students to ask questions. |
| A．Take two types of classes. | B．Learn three units in total. |
| C．Learn two topics for three weeks. | D．Choose what they’d like to learn. |
| A．Finish. | B．Express. | C．Improve. | D．Memorize. |
| A．Art helps students develop creativity. |
| B．Art-focused classes interest students a lot. |
| C．Art can make science easier to remember. |
| D．Art has something in common with science. |
8 . “Tell me the story of me, Momma,” my daughter Sophie always asks when we sit on my grandmother’s rocking chair at the end of the day. “The first time I saw your beautiful face, it was nearly covered by a blue-and-white hat. You were surrounded by a soft blue blanket (毛毯). All I could see was a rosy face.” “And I looked like a tiny fairy baby?” she asks. “You did, and you weren’t older than a minute,” I always answer. “The nurse handed a tiny little girl to me, and I was so surprised because you felt so light. I thought if I threw off the blanket, I’d find no baby there at all, only air.”
From that moment, I became a mother. But that moment was just special and magical as if she’d come from my body directly into my arms. From that day on, she was my daughter in every way that mattered.
It’s easy sometimes to forget there was another mother out there with whom I share my title. Sophie’s birth mother, who was also my friend, lost her life to cancer not long after giving birth to Sophie. And I’ll never forget that it was her difficult decision — her tears and her pain — that made me a mom.
As my daughter grows, she will understand that sometimes life is a relay race (接力赛), and you never know who in this world will hand you your baton (接力棒). It could be someone you know for years, or it could be someone who you even never meet, someone you will never be able to repay for giving you the life you always wanted.
1. How does the author start the text?| A．By remembering her grandmother. | B．By asking her daughter questions. |
| C．By describing her past life. | D．By showing a conversation. |
| A．Disappointed. | B．Worried. | C．Thankful. | D．Surprised. |
| A．Taking up the baton | B．Being thankful for life |
| C．Two mothers’ love | D．The mystery of Sophie’s birth |
9 . Foreign visitors to the UK might be disappointed when they learn that not everyone there speaks like Harry Potter and his friends. Usually, there’s an assumption by many non-Brits that everyone in Britain speaks with what’s known as a Received Pronunciation (RP，标准发音) accent, also called “the Queen’s English”. However, while many people do talk this way, most Britons speak in their own regional accents (口音).
Scouse, Glaswegian and Black Country — from Liverpool, Glasgow and the West Midlands — are just three of the countless non-RP accents that British people speak with. There are even differences in accents between towns or cities just 30 kilometers apart. What is even more disappointing is that not speaking in a RP accent may mean a British person is judged and even treated differently in their everyday life.
In a 2015 study by The University of South Wales, videos of people reading a passage in three different UK accents were shown to a second group of people. The group then rated how intelligent they thought the readers sounded. The lowestrated accent was Brummie, native to people from Birmingham, a city whose accent is considered working class.
However, there is no need to be disappointed though you are not speaking in a RP accent. In fact, doing the opposite may even give you strength.
Kong Seongjae, 25, is an Internet celebrity from Seoul. After studying in the UK, he picked up several regional accents. He’s now famous for his online videos, where he shows off the various accents he’s learned. “British people usually get really excited when I use some of their local dialect words, and they become much friendlier. I think it makes a bit of bond between local people and foreigners to speak in their local accent,” he said.
So if you’re working on perfecting your British accent, try to speak like someone from Liverpool, Glasgow or Birmingham. You may not sound like Harry Potter, but you are likely to make more friends.
1. What can we infer from Paragraph 1?| A．Non-Brits usually hold that all Britons speak in a RP accent. |
| B．Only “the Queen’s English” is accepted in the UK. |
| C．Foreign visitors are disappointed at their on spoken English. |
| D．Any Received Pronunciation around the world is also called “the Queen’s English”. |
| A．Favored by foreign visitors to the UK. | B．Closest to the RP accent. |
| C．Smart and easy to understand. | D．Spoken by people of lower class. |
| A．Speaking in a RP accent. | B．Speaking in regional accents. |
| C．Speaking the Brummie accent. | D．Speaking like Harry Potter. |
| A．A study about the most intelligent accent in Britain. |
| B．A comparison between different British accents. |
| C．How much British people value the RP accent. |
| D．The influence of regional accents on people’s lives. |
10 . The next time you have cheese, remember the French scientist Louis Pasteur who discovered that bad milk, and many diseases are caused by bacteria(细菌).
Louis Pasteur is known as the father of microbiology. In his lifetime, he not only proved that bacteria are the cause of diseases, but also discovered the process of vaccination (接种疫苗) which has saved billions of lives.
When Pasteur worked with chickens that were suffering from cholera(霍乱) during his experiments, he accidentally spread cholera to his chickens. Pasteur’s chickens became mildly sick but did not die. This was strange as every chicken that came near cholera earlier had died. He realized soon that the cholera had become weak. By the time he tried again, the chickens he had cured earlier did not get cholera anymore. He realized that a weak cholera helped his chickens develop an antibody against it.
Later, Pasteur went on to try this on cows, pigs and dogs. All his research helped him develop different vaccines. We now know that the process of vaccination introduces a weakened kind of bacteria into our body. Our body reacts by creating antibodies to fight the bacteria. Now, when our body comes across the same bacteria which are much stronger, it can fight them off.
Louis Pasteur received numerous awards for the advancement of biology, chemistry, and medicine. He founded the Pasteur Institute to study diseases. It was the first university to teach microbiology and today there are 32 institutes across 29 countries. For every child vaccinated against a deadly disease, we have Louis Pasteur to thank.
1. What do we know about Louis Pasteur?| A．His discoveries weren’t used at his time. |
| B．He discovered the connection between bacteria and diseases. |
| C．He was a professor at the Pasteur Institute. |
| D．His discoveries brought many profits and awards to him. |
| A．Cholera was not a deadly disease then. |
| B．Pasteur spread cholera to chickens on purpose. |
| C．All chickens suffered from cholera died at last. |
| D．The weakened cholera couldn’t kill the living creatures |
| A．It builds up people’s body. |
| B．Without it, people will die. |
| C．It improves people’s ability to avoid diseases. |
| D．It can kill all the diseases and make the sick bealthy. |
| A．Because he wants to honour Louis Pasteur and his contribution to the world. |
| B．Because he wants to show the discoveries of the vaccination. |
| C．Because be wants to call on children to learn from Louis Pasteur |
| D．Because he wants to introduce an important invention in microbiology. |
