1 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. abusive       B. bounds       C. descriptions       D. dramatic       E. emerges       F. essentially G. fantastic       H. promises       I. settings       J. trust       K. unusually

Are You Scared of AI?

A recent Monmouth University survey has found that only 9 percent of Americans believe that computers with artificial intelligence will do more good than harm to society. When the same survey was conducted 35 years ago, about one in five said AI would benefit mankind. In other words, people have less complete     1     in AI now than they did dozens of years ago, when the technology was more science fiction than reality.

“It’s     2     that there is public doubt about AI. There absolutely should be,” said Meredith Broussard, an artificial intelligence researcher and professor at New York University. Most Americans     3     agree with Broussard that AI has a place in our lives, but not for everything.

When asked questions about     4     in which AI might be used, most people said it was a bad idea to use AI for military aircraft that try to distinguish between enemies and civilians. Some are worried about the     5     use of AI in policing, disturbing people’s privacy. Most respondents said it was a good idea for machines to perform risky jobs such as coal mining.

The term “AI” is a catch-all for everything. It can be the constant use of technology, such as our daily preference to autocomplete in web search queries (关键词). It can also be the software that     6     to predict crime before it happens. People afraid of AI may be influenced by     7     of evil computers from books and movies — like Skynet, the super-intelligent machines in “The Terminator” movies. Broussard said the ways AI can end up destroying your quality of life won’t be as     8     as murderous fictional computers.

Actually, the fear of AI     9     due to the fact that we just don’t know where AI is going and how soon it will take us to get there. Technology makes surprising and unusual leaps and     10     in ways we never think it will. Anyway, whether we like it or not, artificial intelligence is here to stay.

2 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in each blank with a proper word given in the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one more word than you need.

A. architects       B. influenced       C. merely        D. aimed        E. projected       F. deliberate G. boundaries     H. significantly   I. contain          J. producing   K. range

An entirely new art form is developing. This art form goes beyond     1     giving viewers one thing to look at. Instead, it surrounds them with images and sounds. This usually takes the form of rooms where music plays and images are     2     onto walls, changing when visitors interact with them. Sometimes pleasant smells are added to draw people in through yet another sense. These rooms are known as immersive (沉浸式的) exhibits because they seek to involve viewers completely.

The most famous company     3     immersive exhibits is called teamLab. What this company does is draw on people with a huge range of skill sets: artists, engineers,     4     and even mathematicians. All of these skills are necessary to produce the complex immersive exhibits teamLab is known for. Much of the company’s art is based on nature. This is a(n)     5     choice as their goal is to help people feel more connected to the rest of the world. This goal reflects some traditional Asian philosophies, which makes sense because teamLab is a Japanese company. TeamLab’s philosophy states that it seeks to transcend (超越) the     6     that people have set up to separate them from other things.

Other companies are also developing immersive exhibitions     7     at providing entertainment, education or both. For example, American company Imagine Exhibitions has designed over 40 exhibitions, which combine art, lighting, textures, scents and more. Physical objects are carefully selected and placed throughout the exhibits to add to their realism. The topics of their exhibits     8     from the history of ancient Egypt to nature to TV shows and games such as Angry Birds.

Immersive exhibits maybe a new development, but they are     9     by older art forms. Some immersive exhibits are even apparently about the work of artists who worked in other media, such as the painter Vincent van Gogh. Even those who do not reference other artists so clearly are often influenced by older art styles. And many of the immersive exhibits also     10     some form of music.

By combining skills and technologies in creative ways, teams are developing new ways for people to experience art.

3 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in each blank with a proper word given in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. applications	B. connections	C. emotions	D. identify	E. intervene	F. notifications
G. sacred	H. shared	I. specialize	J. stressed	K. technological

Animal Communication

Many pet owners long to talk with their animals. After all, if pets were able to talk, people could take care of them more easily and have closer emotional     1     to them, so a number of companies are working on devices and apps that could translate what animals say.

One such app is called MeowTalk. Using voice recognition software, this app recognizes different sounds a cat makes and offers English translations of them. For example, one type of sound might mean “feed me” while another could be translated “let me outside.” The app can use machine learning to assess its translations and improve at recognizing one particular cat’s voice. In other words, it can     2     in understanding your cat in particular. This is important because cats do not all have a(n)     3     language, but individual cats frequently use particular sounds to mean certain things.

In the future, MeowTalk could connect to a smart collar that would hear the cat meow and play the translation out loud. Perhaps if the cat is outside and needs to be let in, it could even send     4     to the owner’s phone.

For dogs, a Japanese company called Inupathy has developed a harness (保护带) with a heart rate monitor and an app. The heart rate monitor is used to assess a dog’s     5    . This is possible because, like humans, dogs’ heart rates go up when they are excited or     6    . The harness also has a light that turns red when the dog is excited, but when the dog is relaxed, the light is blue.

The most obvious use of this technology is to help pet owners     7     with and provide for their pets better. The more owners know about their pets, the easier it is to meet their needs.

There are other     8     of technology that help us understand animals. For example, some sheep farmers are using artificial intelligence to scan and determine if they are in pain, which helps them find out sick animals. As a result, they can     9     more quickly to treat the animal.

Anyone who interacts regularly with animals could benefit from understanding their animals better. Thus these     10     developments might transform the way we interact with the creatures around us.

4 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each -word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. targeted            B. culture        C. consumption       D. interview        E. combine F. distributed       G. especially     H. compete       I. extremely       J. estimates       K. old-fashioned

Spain Looks to Chinese Travelers

Spain's tourism industry is looking to Chinese tourists for its high-end market, according to the president of the Spain-China Tourism Association.

“It is the kind of tourism that is not only interested in the sun, beach and the all-included     1     . They enjoy good food, wine, history and nature, and the new Chinese tourists would also want to spend more money in Spain,” said Rafael Cascales in a recent    2     with Xinhua.

The Spanish business leader described the     3     Chinese tourists as being younger, more international, and perhaps including more women. “They also travel on their own or in couples or in smaller groups. The     4     large groups of visitors have not disappeared, but this new form of traveling is becoming more important,” he said.

Speaking of the     5     pattern of the new kind of Chinese tourists the Tourism Association president said, “The money they spend is     6     better because they will book one flight with one airline, the hotel with another company and the restaurant with another.”

In his eyes, “Chinese tourists are very important because they     7     two things: there are a large number of them and they spend more money than anyone else — almost four times more than tourists from other countries.”

They not only travel abroad in the summer months when Spain has to    8     with the sun and beaches in countries such as Turkey and Egypt, but also travel in the off-peak seasons of a year, according to Cascales.

Spain is the second most popular tourist destination in the world, only after France. It attracted about 82 million visitors in 2017, 700,000 of them from China, a number which the United Nations World Tourism Organization     9     will rise to about 1 million by 2021.

“We are ready; we have the infrastructure (基础设施)at every level,     10     in hotel capacity. Here those visitors can find what they are looking for, including the luxury items which distinguish them,” Cascales noted.

5 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. prey     B. internalize     C. attachment     D. initial       E. insufficient F. struggling G. capped H. edge I. imposed     J. suspected   K. ignorance

As colleges and universities nationwide revealed their admission decisions, news broke of a dramatic decline in acceptance rates-and not just at Ivy League schools. The shift meant that many high school students who pinned all their hopes on particular dream schools might find themselves     1     with real disappointment.

Why were admissions so low these years? It’s a number game. These years, colleges saw the number of applicants soar to record-high levels. But considering     2     budgets, the number of spots colleges could offer had to be     3    . As a result, both state schools and private colleges kept seeing their acceptance rates fall rapidly.

It’s not that most students won’t get into colleges at all. Instead, there are more than enough spots nationwide for every qualified applicant to find a place for study. But for many, the school they end up enrolling in may not have been their first, or even third choice. The     4     strike of rejection, in some cases, could be heartbreaking. These are kids who are used to being the best of the best.

But some of the pressure is     5    , without excuses, by students themselves, according to Laurence Steinberg, professor of Psychology. He thinks that Americans fall     6     to their own addiction to school rankings and fame. Students and their parents have formed strong commitments to particular schools long before admission decisions are made. “When they are rejected, it’s like being rejected by a boyfriend or girlfriend,” Steinberg says. “They     7     it: What’s the matter with me? What could I have done differently?”

That emotional     8     is often only about what school name students will paste on their parents’ cars but it may also lead to families’     9     of what may actually be the suitable school for the students.

Actually, painful as the rejection is, in the long run, getting into a high-ranking university doesn’t necessarily mean competitive     10     in terms of job prospects and earnings. A research shows that many students rejected by highly selective schools earn as much as Ivy League graduates. What really matters is how seriously students take their studies.

6 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once.   Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. mobility        B. concerning        C. joblessness        D. upcoming        E. unemployed F. automated       G. deliberately       H. inequality       I. quoted        J. assumed        K. significantly

Will a Robot Really Take Your Job?

It is one of the most widely quoted data of recent years. No report or conference presentation on the future of work is complete without it. It has been pointed to as evidence of a(n)     1     jobs disaster by think-tanks and government agencies. The finding that 47 percent of American jobs are at high risk of being     2     by the mid-2030s comes from a paper written by two Oxford academics, Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne. It has since been     3     in more than 4,000 other academic articles. Such misunderstandings reflect the polarized (两极分化的) debate     4     the nature of automation and the future of jobs.

At one extreme are the negativists. They warn of mass technological     5     just around the corner. One advocate of this position, Martin Ford, has written two best-selling books on the dangers of unemployment caused by automation. He worries that middle-class jobs will disappear, economic     6     will cease, and the richest people in a country could “shut themselves away in gated communities, perhaps guarded by self-directed military robots and drones.” The     7     masses will live on a universal basic income.

At the positive end of the debate, classical economists argue that in the past, new technology has always ended up creating more jobs than it has destroyed. It was several decades before industrialization led to     8     higher wages for British workers in the early 1800s. While automation is likely to increase     9     in the short run by pushing some people into lower-paid jobs, it eventually increases the overall size of the economic pie.

Frey is often     10     to be in the first camp. His paper simply wanted to point out that 47 percent of the current jobs in America were more likely to be affected by automation. It got more attention than they would ever have expected. In part, this is because fear sells, particularly when it is stirred up by a misunderstanding.