1 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

OpenAI publishes Elon Musk’s emails. ‘We’re sad that it’s come to this’

OpenAI fired back at Elon Musk, who sued the ChatGPT company last week for chasing profit and     1     (diverge) from its original, nonprofit mission. Tuesday night, OpenAI published several of Musk’s emails from the early days of the company that appear to show Musk acknowledging OpenAI needed to make a ton of money to fund the incredible computing resources needed to power     2     AI ambitions.

In the emails, parts of     3     have been redacted (修订), Musk argues that the company stood virtually no chance of building a successful generative AI platform by raising cash alone, and the company needed to find alternate sources of revenue to survive.

In a November 22, 2015, email to CEO Sam Altman, Musk, an OpenAI co-founder, said the company needed to raise much more than $100 million to “avoid sounding hopeless.” Musk suggested a $1 billion funding commitment and promised that he would cover     4     did not get raised.

OpenAI in a blog post Tuesday night said Musk never followed through on his promise,     5     (commit) $45 million in funding for OpenAI,     6     other donors raised $90 million. Lawyers for Musk declined to comment on OpenAI’s claims.

Musk, in a February 1, 2018, email, told company executives that the only path forward for OpenAI was for Tesla, his electric car company, to buy it. The company refused, and Musk left OpenAI later that year.

In December 2018, Musk emailed Altman and other executives that OpenAI would not be relevant “    7     a dramatic change in execution and resources.”

“This needs billions per year immediately or forget it,” Musk emailed. “I really hope I’m wrong.”

OpenAI executives agreed. In 2019, they formed OpenAI LP, a for-profit entity that exists within the larger company’s structure. That for-profit company took OpenAI from effectively worthless to a valuation of $90 billion in just a few years — and Altman     8     (credit) as the mastermind of that plan and the key to the company’s success.

Microsoft has since committed $13 billion in a close partnership with OpenAI.

Musk’s complaint,     9     (file) last week in California state court, said that company and its partnership with Microsoft violated OpenAI’s founding charter, representing a breach of contract. Musk is asking for a jury trial and for the company     10     (pay) back the profit they received from the business.

2 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Recreating Childish Drawings

Five art galleries have invited a man to exhibit recreations inspired by a series of artworks drawn by his four-and-a-half-year-old daughter.

The father    1    family name is Jin, from Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province,gained popularity for reproducing his daughter's childish drawings over a month-long period. Jin said he had spent time     2    (inspire) his girl to practice drawing. “    3    she was very little, I've been telling her that she is a painter. That's why she then fell madly in love with drawing," Jin told Star Video. He said both he and his wife never forced their daughter to paint but always praised the drawings she had produced.

Jin said it became clear that his daughter got a lot of fun and pleasure from drawing. At one point she drew a little girl     4    (dress) in red. He liked it so much    5    he immediately had the idea of recreating and adapting her artwork. “I was too obsessed (痴迷的) to stop     6    (recreate) her drawing," Jin said. Within a month, he turned the ears on the girl's head in the drawing into a variety of forms including ribbons moving with the wind, a heart shape, and a scarf. He also created different images for the girl, for example, an elegant but icy lady and a mysterious stranger    7    an indifferent (漠不关心的) facial expression.

Jin realized the potential they might have only after some of his adapted creations     8    (share) on the internet. "Five art galleries reached out to me to invite me     9    (launch) exhibitions," Jin said. He added that his artworks were in hot demand, and he     10    (choose) one from the five galleries soon. He hopes the gallery will provide a good place where his recreated artworks can be displayed.

3 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passages coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Vertical Farms: Is the sky really the limit?

At a hyper-controlled indoor farm in industrial South San Francisco, four robots carefully transfer seeds from barcoded trays into 4.5-meter towers that then are hung vertically (垂直地) inside a 445 sq metre grow room. Workers in branded jumpsuits     1     (inspect) the greens for imperfect produce, but there is almost     2    . Then the pesticide-free product is packaged and put on a truck     3     (deliver) to a local market where the customer becomes the first person to touch it. With the world’s population expected to reach nearly 10 billion by 2050, most of     4     will be living in cities, experts say a 70% increase from current levels of global food production will be needed. But agricultural land is     5     short supply thanks to the climate crisis and urbanization.

Indoor farming raised more than $1 bn in 2021, exceeding the combined funding in 2018 and 2019. But critics say the massive energy costs     6    (need) to run vertical farms and greenhouses make the practice far less eco-friendly than their branding suggests.

Designed to produce yields hundreds of times larger than traditional outdoor farming, vertical farms occupy spaces such as buildings or shipping containers while using 70 to 95% less water     7     they can recapture and recycle rather than waste it due to poor irrigation (灌溉) or evaporation. Products are fully traceable from seed to shelf, stay fresher longer and there’s little risk of bacteria, infected animal faces (粪便) or     8    (have) to transport them long distances in trucks and planes.

Entrepreneurs like Irving Fain, CEO and founder of Manhattan-based Bowery Farming, say that they’re gathering knowledge about plant growth and agronomy (农学) that     9     take traditional farmers outdoors hundreds of years to accumulate. The possibilities raised by vertical farms have also captured the imagination of a number of large venture capitalists and private equality funds. “While it is still too early to tell     10     these high-tech, high-rise growing machines will become a real estate asset class in their own right, some investors are starting to take a serious look at vertical farming as a possible new asset category.” said Fain.

4 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank. (10%)

In the center of Rome stands the Pantheon (万神庙) --- a temple dedicated to all gods. A mere 6,611 kilometers away, China has its own “pantheon” --- the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, Northwest China’s Gansu province.

Mogao is a complex of caves cut out of the side of a sandstone and rock cliff that     1     (stretch) almost two kilometres beside a dry riverbed in the Gobi Desert.

Having been a key outpost on the ancient Silk Road for centuries, the city of Dunhuang provided shelter for tired traders along the route east to west or vice versa. And it is     2     its location that the Mogao Caves can also be called a pantheon. It is not just Buddhist art that decorates its walls. There are Taoist artworks, traditional Chinese mythological characters,     3     influences from Central Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

When I experienced the Mogao Caves and Dunhuang for the first time, the mighty weight of history was perceivable: the artworks awe-inspiring and the stories     4     (tell) beautifully.

For many, the feeling one gets when dipping their toes in the ocean or breathing crisp mountain air is a unique experience tied to the landscape. So     5     the unique feeling one experiences when in the desert.

Golden dunes stretch out into the distance, going up and down like the sea in a storm. Sand is whipped up by the wind and carried,     6     (spread) the desert’s influence further and further, The desert is one harsh and amazing environment. It has been months     7     my visit and I still have sand in my shoes.

It is remarkable that many of the artworks of Mogao exist today considering the relentless power of the desert and the climate     8     they were made in.

But here is     9     humans step in once more. Work, in turn, is relentlessly being carried out to preserve and protect the treasures of Mogao. Stakeholders such as the Dunhuang Academy, and others, work tirelessly to ensure     10     remains there today remains there for future generations, too.

5 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage cohcrent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

We Britons have about 60 words for happiness: blissfulness, ecstasy, pleasure, delight...The list is as varied as it is surprising, given that we only just scraped into the top 20 happiest countries in the world this year. Finns, who     1     (name) the happiest nation for the sixth year running, are either onnellinen or iloinen. The latter roughly translates as joyful or glad: you might be iloinen that you’re heading off on boliday. Onnellinen, on the other hand, speaks to the notion of being content with your life,     2     describing a fleeting feeling.

In the decade     3     the first World Happiness Report was released in 2012, four countries have held the top position: Denmark, Switzerland, Norway and now Finland. It’s based on an evaluation in which respondents are asked to assess the overall happiness of their current lives on a scale of one to 10.

For the fourth year running, the UK has slipped down the global happiness rankings,     4     (drop) two places to number 19. Even more worryingly, however, the 2022 global Oracle happiness report for the UK specifically found that nearly half of Britons have not felt true happiness in two years. We’re currently behind the US, Israel, New Zealand and Luxembourg, but mercifully ahead of the likes of Afghanistan and Lebanon-currently the two     5     (happy) countries in the world. This persistent decline in British contentment is concerning.

    6     (find) out what we miserable Britons can leam from the Finns, I went to Lake Saimaa — a three-and-a-half-hour drive from Helsinki —   to take part in a masterclass in happiness. It is a resort designed around taking things slowly. Each villa has its own sauna (桑拿浴),     7     (set)in a fragrant pine forest.     8     many friends rightly pointed out, how could anyone not be happy here?

In many ways, though, my admittedly luxurious stay revealed to me     9     the Finns approach happiness for everyone. There’s no doubt they have got a lot of things right — their love of saunas, for one. Known for their health benefits, saunas are fantastic for calming the mind. And with     10     estimated 3 million saunas for a population of just over 5.5 million, they are certainly integrated into everyday life.

6 . Directions: After reading the passage belows fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Though a student’s complaint that a question is too hard might be more a matter of effort than ability, it is true       1    some questions are just harder than others. The difficulty of a question or assignment comes down to the level of critical thinking it requires.

        Simple skills such as identifying a state capital are quick and easy to assess, while complex skills such as the construction of a hypothesis are more difficult     2    (quantify). Bloom’s taxonomy(认知分类)     3    be used to make the process of categorizing questions by difficulty easier and more straightforward.

Blooms taxonomy is a long-standing cognitive framework that categorizes critical reasoning in order to help educators set more well-    4    (define) learning goals. Benjamin Bloom,     5     American educational psychologist, developed this pyramid to define levels of critical thinking required by a task. Since its inception in the 1950s and revision in 2001, Bloom’s Taxonomy     6     (give)teachers a common vocabulary for naming specific skills required for proficiency.

There are six levels in the taxonomy that each     7    (represent) distinct levels of abstraction. The bottom level includes the most basic cognition and the     8    (high) level includes the most intellectual and complicated thinking. The idea behind this theory is that students cannot be successful in applying higher-order thinking to a topic     9    they have first mastered a ladder of rudimentary tasks.

The goal of education is to create thinkers and doers. Bloom’s taxonomy gives a path to follow from the beginning of a concept or skill to its end, or to the point       10    students can think creatively about a topic and solve problems for themselves. Learn to incorporate all levels of the framework into your teaching and lesson plans in order to scaffold(提供支架) the learning that your students are doing.

7 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

From Passion to Structure: The Journey of Small Businesses

Wal-Mart started small. So did Microsoft. So did Apple. So did General Electric and Ford and almost every other company     1     made it big. They didn’t start by acquisition or achieve mass scale overnight. Nearly every company or organization starts the same way: with an idea.     2     an organization grows to become a multi-billion-dollar corporation like Wal-Mart or fails in the first few years, most of them started with a single person or small group of people who had an idea.

At the beginning, ideas     3     (fuel) by passion — that every convincing emotion that causes us to do quite irrational things. That passion drives many people to make sacrifices so that a cause bigger than themselves can be brought to life. Some drop out of school or quit a perfectly good job     4     a good salary and benefits to try to go it alone. Some work extraordinarily long hours without a second thought, sometimes     5     (sacrifice) the stability of their relationships or even their personal health. This passion is so exciting that it can affect others as well.     6     (inspire) by the founder’s vision, many early employees demonstrate classic early-adopter behavior. Relying on their courage, these first employees also quit their perfectly good jobs and accept     7     (low) salaries to join an organization with a 90 percent statistical chance of failing. But the statistics don’t matter; passion and optimism persist and energy is high. Like all early adopters, the behavior of those who join early says more about them than     8     does about the company’s prospects.

The reason why so many small businesses fail, however, is     9     passion alone can’t cut it. For passion     10     (survive), it needs a structure. A WHY without HOWs, passion without structure, has a very high probability of failure.

8 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

You only live once

Jia Ling has won the love and respect of audience with her unique comic style and unremitting efforts.

“YOLO,” which stands for “you only live once,” is the theme Jia aims     1     (convey) in her new film. The story follows an overweight, disheartened woman who becomes isolated from society. However,     2     Le Ying meets a boxing coach and takes up the sport, she begins to regain her passion and finds her way in life. The filming was divided into five phases, from when Jia had to gain 20 kilograms for the role to the final stage    3     she lost a significant amount of weight and became muscular. This method mirrors     4     some Hollywood stars, such as Christian Bale, have done, but Jia’s effort is jaw-dropping and takes it to an even    5     (extreme) level.

Yet, the film’s core goes     6     physical transformation. “This film is not about weight loss, nor is it much about boxing. It’s about a woman     7     (transform) from a weak, kind, and people-pleasing personality into one who finds     8    , enjoys, and controls her own life” Jia said. The same seems to apply not just to the role, but to the actress herself.

One factor for Jia’s success may be her passion for comedy. Jia graduated from Beijing’s Central Academy of Dram a in 2003. In the last 18 years she     9     (perform) crosstalk in various competitions and shows. She has also played comedic roles in many comedies on the big screen, which ultimately led to the connection between the stage and film.

Jia said she is not afraid of being typecast about the comedic roles. “For the moment, I don’t have the desire to star in non-comedy works. For an actor, performance should come from their heart. Besides     10     (fill) with emotions, I don’t have other big talents,” she told The Beijing News.

Jia’s impact has attracted international attention. Sony Pictures Entertainment announced on Feb. 10 that it had acquired the international distribution rights to “YOLO”.

9 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fit s each blank.

Snow and warm hearts boost Harbin tourism

Known for its winter tourism, Harbin, the capital city of China’s northeastern province of Heilongjiang, has witnessed a significant boom that has caused it to trend on social media this winter.

The number of tourists to Harbin to enjoy ice and snow activities began to increase as 2023     1     (draw) to a close. With the arrival of the New Year’s holiday, Harbin’s popularity soared to new heights. According to the bureau of culture, broadcasting, TV and tourism of Harbin, during the three-day New Year holiday, Harbin received 3.05 million tourists and made revenue of 5.91 billion yuan, both of    2     reached record highs.

Harbin spared no effort     3     (show) its sincerity to tourists. The city went all in,     4     (attend) to every detail to provide tourists with the best experience and memories possible. At Harbin Ice and Snow World, a renowned ice-and-snow theme park, a lot of brand new experiences were provided, such as hovercrafts and bicycles on ice, Ferris wheels and hot air balloons.     5     arrival, tourists found themselves welcomed with live performances at the airport and temporary dressing rooms lined up for tourists to slide into warm clothing.

Various topics     6     (relate) to Harbin have dominated the trending list across different social media platforms. Many of the tourists are from southern China, where     7     rarely snows. These tourists from the south are petite compared to locals in Heilongjiang     8     they were given an affectionate nickname “southern small potatoes”, which quickly went viral online. Tourists then happily embraced the nickname on social platforms and shared their warm memory about the city. In the era of social media, these details and heartwarming moments shared by tourists really mattered.

The holiday tourism boom in Harbin might as well be     9     the domestic tourism market needs to kick off the New Year. Hopefully, such sincerity, hospitality and attention to detail     10     be seen across more cities.

10 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fit s each blank.

The History of Snacks

Hamburgers, sandwiches and pizza are some of the worlds’ favourite snacks, but have you ever wondered     1     first ate them? Read on to find out more.

The hamburger

The hamburger started life as small pieces of raw beef     2    (eat) by the Tartars, a tribe who invaded Europe in the Middle Ages.     3     they ate it, they used to put the meat on their horse under the saddle (马鞍) they were sitting on in order to make it soft. When the Tartar s arrived in Hamburg, the people mixed the beef with local spices, fried it and called it the Hamburg Steak. Germans who came to the USA took this recipe with them and it became known     4     a hamburger there.

The sandwich

People say that it was John Montague, the Fourth Earl of Sandwich,     5    invented the sandwich. Montague enjoyed playing cards in his favourite restaurant, the Beef Steak Club in London. He could     6    (find) there most days and some of his games lasted for hours. One day, instead of stopping     7    (eat) lunch, Montague asked a servant to bring him some meat between two slices of bread to prevent the cards from getting dirty. When the other players saw this, they began to order’ the same as Sandwich’, and so the sandwich got its name.

Pizza Margherita

In 1889, Queen Margherita of Italy invited chef Rafaelle Esposito from his pizzaria to visit the royal palace and     8    (bake) a selection of pizzas for her.     9    (want) to impress the queen, Rafaelle made a very special pizza. It was large and topped with tomatoes, mozzarella cheese and fresh herbs to represent the Italian flag,       10     is red, white and green. The Queen was delighted with this design and the pizza became one of her favourite foods. When people heard about this, they all wanted to try it and so the pizza Margherita was born.