1. 表达歉意并说明原因；
2. 提出建议并给出理由。
注意：
1. 词数100左右；
2. 适当增加细节，以使行文连贯；
3. 作文开头和结尾已经给出，不计入总字数。
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
2 . Various Apps to Learn
Apps are typical digital learning tools, which can give you diverse and personalized content to meet your needs. Want to find an app that can help you learn? Here are some great ideas for you.
| Khan Academy allows you to learn almost anything for free. It covers subjects such as math, physics, biology, and even computer science. The real magic of this app is that you can learn at your own pace. You can review subjects that you are not good at, or start learning a subject you like. The app is in English. If you want to see its translation you can visit http: //open. 163. com/khan. |
| BrainPOP mixes learning and technology in a fun and simple way. It’s free and teaches you something new every day. From the solar system to DNA, each topic starts with an interesting cartoon movie. After you’ve watched it, you can take a test to see how much you’ve learned. |
| Udemy is a “learn on demand” website and app. It is for career-oriented individuals to start their course pricing at $10. 99. This app allows you the flexibility to take your time on a course you purchase over the course of several months, without worrying about recurring (重复的) payments before you finish. This flexible learning app allows you to take things slow, fast, or anywhere in-between with complete control on your end. |
| Duolingo is the premier leader in language education for learning apps. You can learn to speak 29 different languages, all at the touch of a button. You’ll be invited not only to read new words, but to speak them. You’ll learn grammar and conversational strategies. This app helps you learn to communicate with a new portion of its inhabitants! |
| A．Khan Academy and Udemy. | B．Udemy and Duolingo. |
| C．Khan Academy and BrainPOP. | D．BrainPOP and Duolingo. |
| A．Technical support. | B．Career training. |
| C．Subjects reviewing. | D．Speaking practice. |
| A．To provide various learning activities. |
| B．To help find the suitable learning apps. |
| C．To introduce the development of learning technology. |
| D．To compare the difference of different learning methods. |
3 . Albert Einstein’s 1915 masterpiece The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity is the first and still the best introduction to the subject, but it probably wouldn’t be publishable in a scientific journal today. Why not? After all, it undoubtedly would pass the tests of correctness and significance. And while it’s believed that the paper was incomprehensible to its first readers, in fact many papers in theoretical physics are much more difficult. As the physicist Richard Feynman wrote, “There was a time when the newspapers said that only 1.2 men understood the theory of relativity, which is not true. After reading the paper, a lot of people understood the theory of relativity in some way or other, certainly more than 1.2.”
No, the problem is its style. It starts with a leisurely philosophical discussion of space and time and then continues with an explanation of known mathematics. Those two sections, which would be considered extraneous today, take up half the paper. Worse, there are zero citations of previous scientists’ work, nor are there any graphs. Those features might make a paper not even get past the first editors.
A similar process of professionalisation has transformed other parts of the scientific landscape. Requests for research time at major laboratories are more strictly structured. And anything involving work with human objects, or putting instruments in space, involves piles of paperwork.
We see it also in the Regeneron Science Talent Search, the Nobel Prize of high school science competitions. In the early decades of its history, the winning projects were usually the sort of clever but naive, amateurish efforts one might expect of talented beginners working on their own. Today, polished work coming out of internships at established laboratories is the norm.
These professionalising tendencies are a natural consequence of the explosive growth of modern science. Standardisation and system make it easier to manage the rapid flow of papers, applications and people. But there are serious downsides. A lot of unproductive effort goes into jumping through bureaucratic hoops(繁文缛节).
Of course, Einstein would have found his way to meeting modern standards and publishing his results. Its scientific core wouldn’t have changed, but the paper might not be the same taste to read.
1. According to Richard Feynman, which statement about Einstein’s 1915 paper is true?| A．It attracted few professionals. | B．It turned out to be comprehensible. |
| C．It needed further improvement. | D．It was a classic in theoretical physics. |
| A．Unrealistic. | B．Imprecise. | C．Unattractive. | D．Irrelevant. |
| A．The selection of young talents. | B．The evaluation of laboratories. |
| C．The principle of scientific research. | D．The application of research findings. |
| A．How to write quality papers? | B．Will science be professionalised? |
| C．Could Einstein get published today? | D．How will modern science make advances? |
4 . Bertie knew there was something in the wind. His mother had been sad in recent days, not sick, just strangely sad. The lion had just lain down beside him, his head warm on Bertie’s feet, when Father cleared his throat and began, “You’ll soon be eight, Bertie. A boy needs a proper education. We’ve found the right place for you, a school near Salisbury in England.”
His heart filled with a terrible fear, all Bertie could think of was his white lion. “But the lion,” he cried, “What about the lion?”
“I’m afraid there’s something else I have to tell you,” his father said. Looking across at Bertie’s mother, he took a deep breath. Then he told Bertie he had met a circus owner from France, who was over in Africa looking for lions to buy. He would come to their farm in a few days.
“No! You can’t send him to a circus!” said Bertie. “He’ll be shut up behind bars. I promised him he never would be. And they will come to see him and laugh at him. He’d rather die. Any animal would!” But as he looked across the table at them, he knew their minds were quite made up.
Bertie felt completely betrayed. He waited until he heard his father’s deep breathing next door. With his white lion at his heels, he crept downstairs in his pyjamas, took down his father’s rifle from the rack and stepped out into the night. He ran and ran till his legs could run no more. As the sun came up over the grassland, he climbed to the top of a hill and sat down, his arms round the lion’s neck. The time had come. “Be wild now,” he whispered. “You’ve got to be wild. Don’t ever come home. All my life I’ll think of you, I promise I will.” He buried his head in the lion’s neck. Then, Bertie clambered down off the hill and walked away.
When he looked back, the lion was still sitting there watching him; but then he stood up, yawned, stretched, and sprang down after him. Bertie shouted at him, but he kept coming. He threw sticks. He threw stones. Nothing worked.
There was only one thing left to do. Tears filling his eyes and his mouth, he lifted the rifle to his shoulder and fired over the lion’s head.
1. Bertie’s mother was sad probably because she________.| A．had lied about her good health condition | B．had decided to send Bertie to a new school |
| C．knew selling the lion would upset Bertie | D．knew Bertie would hate to go to England |
| A．some audience | B．other animals | C．Bertie’s friends | D．circus’s owners |
| A．kill the lion out of helplessness | B．protect himself from being chased |
| C．threaten the lion back to the wild | D．show his anger towards his father |
| A．circuses are the last places for animals to live |
| B．animals belonging to the wild should be set free |
| C．parents are sometimes cruel to their children |
| D．people and animals can be faithful to each other |
5 . Blind Olympic Athletes Show the Universal Nature
Tune into any sports coverage on TV, and you will see many athletes proudly raise their arms and heads in victory, while a much larger number hang their shoulders and necks in defeat. Studies have revealed why—they are universal behaviours, performed by humans in response to success and failure.
The discovery came from Jessica Tracy from the University of British Columbia and David Matsumoto from San Francisco State University, who wanted to see how people showed feelings of pride and shame.
The answer was Athens, during the 2004 Olympic Games. Its sister competition—the Paralympics—included many athletes who were born blind.
These actions were also remarkably consistent between contestants from every part of the world. Tracy and Matsumoto argue that pride and shame deserve a place alongside other primary emotions like happiness, fear and surprise.
| A．Analyzing the data, they found that the sighted and sightless athletes behaved in almost exactly the same ways. |
| B．In fact, the culture was found to have only a very small effect on their body language. |
| C．In particular, they wanted to know whether these expressions were culturally determined and learned through observation. |
| D．The athletes’ behaviours give strong evidence that they have had the actions naturally since birth. |
| E．The result suggested that the athletes were showing their pride based on careful observation. |
| F．Therefore, they could not have witnessed how other people reacted to winning and losing. |
| G．They are inborn behaviours and are accompanied by their own distinct sets of actions. |
Shared Services Need More Imagination
Suppose you need to drill a hole in the wall to hang an item but do not own a power drill. You may regard it as expensive to buy a power drill and consider renting one. Sharing is the solution. The sharing industry is an emerging. highly flexible economic network that allows people to share resources, either free or for a fee.
The important idea of the sharing industry is that people might only need an item for a relatively short period. The private part of shared services has been moving towards this area since the beginning of the 1980s, and then the public part has taken note of the benefits and continued for best practice. The United States and Australia among others have had shared services in government since the late 1990s.
With the rise of the sharing industry, the best-known shared bikes and shared cars have got a lot of public attention. This kind of transportation is so environmentally-friendly that it is increasingly popular among people in many cities.
Of course shared services don’t need to be limited to machines. The real pay-off in shared services probably lies in renting out smaller, less heavy items. For example, in today’s casual environment, you don’t need a tie unless you’re going to a wedding or a job interview. So some companies, would let you pick up a tie when you needed it and only when you needed it. Another example is an umbrella-sharing service. Since visitors don’t want to be carrying umbrellas all the way, it would be cheaper and easier to simply borrow an umbrella on one street corner and drop it off on another.
Recently organizations that have centralized their IT functions have begun to take a close look at the technology services that their IT departments provide for customers, evaluating where it makes sense to provide technology components. E-mall and scanning (归描) operations were obvious early candidates. Many organizations are now oftering their document-intensive operations is a shared service, There is no doubt that people are calling for the expansion of shared services to more and more treas.
1. What is the sharing industry?2. Why does shared transportation receive attention from people?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
Shared services are getting increasingly popular for their convenience, but there are still calls for expansion to wider areas because they are currently restricted to machines
4. Please provide another example of shared services and explain your reason. (about 40 words)
7 . When it came time to vote for the speaker at graduation in the class meeting, Ms. Lenihan asked who would like to be our class speaker. Being a (an)
After spending the whole week practicing a speech, I stood up in front of my classmates. There were eight to ten other participants, and I didn’t
Over the next month I worked on my graduation speech. When I stood up in front of the whole school, I was still nervous,
| A．shy | B．honest | C．outgoing | D．lazy |
| A．duty | B．shame | C．loss | D．relief |
| A．stayed up | B．climbed up | C．marched up | D．pulled up |
| A．disappointed | B．depressed | C．embarrassed | D．frightened |
| A．faith | B．interest | C．pride | D．ambition |
| A．win | B．expect | C．prove | D．share |
| A．threat | B．anxiety | C．excitement | D．depression |
| A．achievement | B．destination | C．failure | D．challenge |
| A．till | B．then | C．but | D．so |
| A．proceeded | B．promised | C．encouraged | D．changed |
8 . Whether hunting or competing for limited space and resources, humans are the planet’s super predator (捕食者). As the human population expands, it’s getting harder for other creatures to find somewhere to hide during the day. Now new findings indicate animals around the world have come up with another strategy: They are becoming nocturnal (夜间活动的).
In a paper published in Science, researchers analyzed 76 previous scientific studies about human impact on animal activity. They compared animals’ activity during the day and night in areas of high human disturbance (from hunting or farming to hiking and other outdoor recreation) and low human disturbance (relatively natural conditions). The analysis showed animals are becoming an average of 1.36 times more nocturnal due to high human disturbance.
For example, in Poland wild boars go from 48% nocturnal in natural forests to 90% nocturnal in urban areas. Even activities people consider relatively innocuous, such as hiking and wildlife viewing, strongly affected animals’ daily rhythms. “We think that we’re leaving no trace often when we’re outdoors, but we can be having lasting consequences on animal behavior,” says Kaitlyn Gaynor, lead researcher for the study.
This is not the first time animals have had to live at night; during the time of dinosaurs, they were also nocturnal. “Dinosaurs were this ubiquitous (无处不在的), scary force, and only after their extinction did mammals (哺乳动物) emerge into the daylight,” Gaynor says. “And now humans have taken over and are pushing other animals back into the night.”
Scientists suspect becoming nocturnal may hurt those species highly adapted to the sun. They might not be able to live well at night, which would ultimately hurt their chances of survival and reproduction. Perhaps even more alarming effects could be in the wider ecosystem. In California’s Santa Cruz Mountains, coyotes have been more nocturnal in response to hikers and have started to alter their diets from daytime prey, such as squirrels and birds, to nocturnal prey, such as rats and rabbits.
Exactly how ecological communities will change, and whether it will be for better or worse, requires further study. Some nighttime shifts may benefit both animals and humans, Gaynor notes. For instance, tigers in Nepal are avoiding potentially deadly conflicts with people as they become more nocturnal.
Studies like this one will eventually help conservation managers make better decisions about how to protect ecosystems. “We’ll need to understand local dynamics to really understand how we should be changing management of wildlife populations or human activities,” Gaynor notes, “One potential approach might be to manage the timing of human activities so that we leave some of the daylight for other animals.”
1. How do animals respond to increasing human disturbance?| A．By limiting food intake. | B．By leaving their habitat. |
| C．By controlling population. | D．By adjusting daily routine. |
| A．Harmless. | B．Recreational. | C．Organized. | D．Irregular. |
| A．To highlight the importance of daylight. | B．To indicate the domination of humans. |
| C．To illustrate mammals’ adaptability. | D．To demonstrate dinosaurs’ power. |
| A．It has led to a new ecological balance. | B．It demands more conservation areas. |
| C．It may encourage bio-diversity. | D．It might be double-edged. |
Frederick Law Olmsted was born on April 26, 1822, and grew to become nineteenth-century America's number one landscape architect. To create the new park, partners and Olmsted removed nearly 5 million cubic yards of dirt,
