1 . John H. Johnson was born in a black family in Arkansas City in 1918. His father died in an accident when John was six. He was reaching high school age, but his hometown offered no high school for blacks.

Luckily, he had a strong-willed, caring mother. John remembers that his mother told him many times, “Son, you can be anything you really want to be if you just believe. She told him not to be dependent on   others, including his mother. “You have to earn success,” said she. “All the people who work hard don’t succeed, but the only people who do succeed are those who work hard.”

These words came from a woman less than a third grade education. She also knew that believing and hard work don’t mean everything. So she worked hard as a cook for two years to save enough to take her son, who was then 15, to Chicago.

Chicago in1933 was not the promised land (乐土、希望之地) that black southerners were looking for, John’s mother and stepfather could not find work. But there John could go to school, and there he learned the power of words — as editor of the newspaper and yearbook of Du Stable High School. His wish was to publish a magazine for blacks.

While others discouraged him, John’s mother offered him more words to live by: “Nothing beats a failure but a try.” She also let him pawn (典当) her furniture to get the $500 he needed to start the Negro magazine.

It is natural the difficulties and failures followed John closely until he became very successful. He always keeps his mother’s words in mind. “Son, failure is not in your vocabulary.”

Now John H. Johnson is one of the 400 richest people in America — worth $150 million.

1. Why did John’s mother decide to move to Chicago? Because ________.

A．John’s father died in his hometown when he was very young

B．life was too hard for them to stay on in their hometown, while life in Chicago would be better for blacks

C．there were no schools for blacks in their hometown

D．John needed more education and he could go to school there

2. What kind of woman was John’s mother? She was a ________.

A．woman with little school education but knew a lot about life

B．woman who would not do anything for her son

C．strong woman with much knowledge

D．woman who didn’t know how to encourage her son

3. The underlined sentence in the fifth paragraph means ________.

A．if you try, you will succeed in the end

B．a failure is difficult to beat, even if you try

C．a try is always followed by failure

D．nothing but a try can help you out of failure

4. What’s the main idea of the passage?

A．How John H. Johnson became somebody.

B．The mental support John’s mother gave him.

C．The importance of a good education.

D．The key to success for blacks.

2 . British Cycling had recently hired Dave Brailsford as its new director. At the time, professional cyclists in Great Britain had________ nearly one hundred years of mediocrity (平庸). In fact, their performance had been so poor that one of the top bike companies in Europe ________ to sell bikes to the team because they were afraid that it would hurt sales if other professionals saw the Brits using their bikes.

What made Brailsford different from previous coaches was his philosophy of searching for a tiny improvement in everything they do. The whole principle came   from   the   idea   that   if   you _________ everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, improve it by 1 percent and you will get a ________ increase when you put them all together.

Brailsford and his coaches began by making small _________. They redesigned the bike seats to make them more comfortable. They asked riders to wear electrically heated overshorts to ________ ideal muscle temperature while riding and used biofeedback sensors to ________ how each athlete responded to a particular workout.

But they didn’t stop there. They ________ to find 1 percent improvements in overlooked areas. They hired a(n) __________   to teach each rider the best way to wash their hands to reduce the ___________   of catching a cold. They even painted the inside of the team truck white, which helped them _________ little bits of dust that would normally slip by _________   but could affect the performance of the _________ tuned bikes.

As these and hundreds of other small improvement __________, the results came faster than anyone could have ________. Just five years after Brailford took over, they dominate the road and truck cycling events in all the important events.

1.

A．lost

B．enjoyed

C．showed

D．suffered

2.

A．failed

B．refused

C．expected

D．pretended

3.

A．broke down

B．took down

C．put up

D．add up

4.

A．flexible

B．temporary

C．significant

D．random

5.

A．differences

B．adjustments

C．programs

D．efforts

6.

A．maintain

B．raise

C．reduce

D．discover

7.

A．change

B．monitor

C．manage

D．produce

8.

A．continued

B．happened

C．learned

D．bothered

9.

A．coach

B．secretary

C．assistant

D．surgeon

10.

A．sessions

B．chances

C．records

D．reactions

11.

A．gather

B．recognize

C．spot

D．send

12.

A．surrounded

B．unnoticed

C．removed

D．discovered

13.

A．finely

B．initially

C．slightly

D．positively

14.

A．took off

B．picked up

C．built up

D．got off

15.

A．achieved

B．remembered

C．mentioned

D．imagined

3 . Losing two important players was a big challenge, but Lang Ping did not________ ________（失去信心）. (根据汉语提示完成句子）

4 . 你校英文报将举办有关“健康睡眠，高效学习”的征文活动，请写一篇英语短文投稿，内容包括：
1. 简述学生的睡眠现状；
2. 论述睡眠的重要性；
3. 提出倡议。
注意：1. 词数80左右；
2. 可适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

5 . From self-driving cars to carebots (care+robots) for elderly people, rapid development in technology has long represented a potential threat to many jobs normally performed by people. But experts now believe that almost 50 percent of occupations existing today will be completely unnecessary by 2025 as artificial intelligence continues to change businesses.

“The next fifteen years will see a revolution in how we work, and a revolution will necessarily take place in how we plan and think about workplaces,” said Peter Andrew, Director of Workplace Strategy for CBRE Asia Pacific.

A growing number of jobs in the future will require creative intelligence, social skills and the ability to use artificial intelligence.

The report is based on interviews with 200 experts, business leaders and young people from Asia Pacific, Europe and North America. It shows that in the US technology already destroys more jobs than it creates.

But the report states: “Losing occupations does not necessarily mean losing jobs — just changing what people do.” Growth in new jobs could occur as much, according to the research.

“The growth of 20 to 40 person companies that have the speed and technological know-how will directly challenge big companies,” it states.

A report by Pew Research found 52 percent of experts in artificial intelligence and robotics were optimistic about the future and believed there would still be enough jobs in the next few years. The optimists pictured “a future in which robots do not take the place of more jobs than they create,” according to Aaron Smith, the report's co-author.

“Technology will continue to affect jobs, but more jobs seem likely to be created. Although there have always been unemployed people, when we reached a few billion people there were billions of jobs. There is no shortage of things that need to be done and that will not change,” Microsoft's Jonathan Grudin told researchers.

1. We can infer from the text that in the future ________.

A．people will face many difficulties

B．people will take up more creative jobs

C．artificial intelligence will threaten people's lives

D．most jobs will be done in traditional workplaces

2. According to the report, ________.

A．people won't necessarily lose jobs

B．big companies will face fewer challenges

C．small companies will win against big companies

D．most people will become interested in technology

3. What is the attitude of most experts in artificial intelligence and robotics to the future?

A．Mixed.	B．Worried.
C．Doubtful.	D．Optimistic.

4. Jonathan Grudin's words in the last paragraph suggest that ________.

A．there will be enough jobs for people

B．things will change a lot in a few years

C．many people will become unemployed

D．technology will totally change future jobs

9 . Elizabeth Spelke, a cognitive psychologist at Harvard, has spent her career testing the world’s most complex learning system-the mind of a baby. Babies might seem like no match for artificial intelligence (AI). They are terrible at labeling images, hopeless at mining text, and awful at video games. Then again, babies can do things beyond the reach of any AI. By just a few months old, they’ve begun to grasp the foundations of language, such as grammar. They’ve started to understand how to adapt to unfamiliar situations.

Yet even experts like Spelke don’t understand precisely how babies or adults learn. Consider one of the most impressive examples of AI, Alpha Zero, a programme that plays board games with superhuman skill. After playing thousands of games against itself at a super speed, and learning from winning positions, Alpha Zero independently discovered several famous chess strategies and even invented new ones. It certainly seems like a machine eclipsing human cognitive abilities. But Alpha Zero needs to play millions more games than a person during practice to learn a game. Most importantly, it cannot take what it has learned from the game and apply it to another area.

To some AI experts, that calls for a new approach. In a November research paper, Francois Chollet, a well-known AI engineer, argued that it’s misguided to measure machine intelligence just according to its skills at specific tasks. “Humans don’t start out with skills; they start out with a broad ability to acquire new skills,” he says. “What a strong human chess player is demonstrating is not only the ability to play chess, but the potential to fulfill any task of a similar difficulty.”

1. Compared to an advanced AI programme, a baby might be better at ________.

A．playing games

B．identifying locations

C．labeling pictures

D．making adjustments

2. What does the underlined word “eclipsing” in Paragraph 3 probably mean?

A．Imitating.

B．Beating.

C．Limiting.

D．Promoting.

3. According to the text, Francois Chollet may agree that ________.

A．AI is good at completing certain assignments.

B．AI is likely to gain abilities with less training.

C．AI lacks the ability of acquiring specific skills.

D．AI performs better than humans in cognitive ability.

4. Which would be the best title for this passage?

A．What is exactly intelligence?	B．Why is modern AI advanced?
C．Where is human intelligence going?	D．How do humans face the challenge of AI?

10 . Sometimes, you are not good at some of your subjects.     1     You probably think you will never be a top student. This is not necessary so, however. Anyone can become a better student if you want to. Here’s how:

Plan your time carefully. When you plan your work, you should make a list of things that you have to do. After making this list, you should make a schedule of your time. First your time for eating, sleeping, dressing, etc., then decide a good, regular time for studying.     2     A weekly schedule may not solve all your problems, but it will force you to realize what is happening to your time.

Find a good place to study. Look around the house for a good study area. Keep this space, which may be a desk or simply a corner of your room, free of everything but study materials. No games, radios, or television! When you sit down to study, concentrate on the subject.

Make good use of your time in class.     3     Listening carefully in class means less work later. Taking notes will help you remember what the teachers say.

Study regularly. When you get home from school, go over your notes, review the important points that your teacher is going to discuss the next day, read that material.     4     If you do these things regularly, the material will become more meaningful, and you will remember it longer.

Develop a good attitude about tests. The purpose of a test is to show what you have learned about a subject. It helps you remember your new knowledge. The world won’t end if you don’t pass a test, so don’t be over worried.

    5     You will probably discover them after you have tried these.

A．Maybe you are an average student.

B．This will help you understand the next class.

C．Don’t forget to set aside enough time for entertainment.

D．No one can become a top student unless he or she works hard.

E．There are other methods that might help you with your studying.

F．Take advantage of class time to listen to everything the teachers say.

G．Make full use of class time to take notes of what the teachers say in class.