Globalization is the connection of different parts of the world. The process of globalization is very controversial. Many people say globalization will help people communicate. Aid agencies can respond more quickly
I have often thought it would be a blessing if each human being were stricken blind and deaf for a few days at some time during his early adult life.
Thomas Gainsborough was an 18th-century English painter. One of his works,
4 . Steph Clemence always intended to go to college. She had good grades and considered herself college bound. But life has a tendency to throw obstacles in the way. When her father died tragically in a car accident, leaving her mother to support three daughters on a modest income, paying for college became out of the question.
Around that time, Steph tried to figure out what to do with a life that had differed so much from the plan she’d carefully laid out. The answer came one afternoon when she was cleaning her bedroom closet and found a list from the English teacher she’d had in her junior year, Dorothy Clark. One afternoon, Mrs. Clark walked into the classroom carrying a stack of papers. She instructed each students to take one. The handout was titled Mrs. Clark’s Book List. “It wasn’t homework,” the teacher announced, “but it could be a road map. Some of you might not go on to higher education, but you can continue to learn.” It would, she believed, form the equivalent of two years at a liberal arts college.
“She knew the income levels of the kids in my high school,” says Steph. “Working-class and logging families. She knew most of us would not go to college. She was right. But she knew we could continue to learn after high school. She was also right about that.” Steph studied the list. Each of those books sparked her passion to learn more about the person, subject matter, or time in history. That made her look for other books that weren’t on the list, hoping to deepen her knowledge. Over the years, the reading list was a constant in her life, traveling with her even on vacations.
Now Steph is 70 and she never did get to college. But she has only four books left to read from the list. She expects to complete them sometime in 2023. “Each of the books has added something to who I am and how I see the world.” she says, “I now have gained an insight to see why things happened and what it might mean.”
1. What prevented Steph going to college?| A．Her bad grades. |
| B．The lack of financial support. |
| C．Her low income. |
| D．Her tragic accident. |
| A．To prepare students for college. |
| B．To serve as a reading task for students. |
| C．To share her favorite books with students. |
| D．To encourage students to continue learning. |
| A．Regretful. |
| B．Moved. |
| C．Fulfilled. |
| D．Determined. |
| A．A good reading habit. |
| B．An influential reading list. |
| C．An impressive English teacher. |
| D．A memorable experience in high school. |
Like Shen, Nan Rendong dedicated his life to the country. He led the research of China’s Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), the world’s
The Chinese government
Since China
Local reports from Chinese
A series of water-conserving and recycling designs have been put into place
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8 . A man wearing sunglasses grabs the mic and stands in a relaxed posture ready to make the audience laugh. Seeing how easily he moves, one can hardly notice that the stylish comedian, Gao Xiang, has any problems with vision.
Gao was diagnosed with the rare eye disease — Stargardt. Initially, he refused to accept the cruel situation. He kept escaping the fact until 2013, when he could use the computer more efficiently with the help of special programs designed to help visually disabled people . Consequently, he got the courage to be frank about his and found that people didn’t care about the problem as he had imagined. His working ability also helped remove any feelings of inferiority that he had. He tried to become mentally stronger to accept reality and get his life back on track.
Two years ago, he decided to become a full-time stand-up comedian. What has been motivating Gao to be so active in the comedy industry is his eagerness to draw the public’s attention to the disease. “As it is a rare disease, medical institutions and companies might lack the driving force to make great efforts to find a cure,” he says. “I want to unite the patients in China and voice out loud our urgent demands.”
Besides, he and two friends launched a public account on WeChat called Stargardt Care Center, through which they share inspiring stories of people suffering from the eye disorder, instructions for those on how to use computers and translations of foreign essays that explore the possibilities of curing the disease. By now, the account has managed to attract more than 1, 000 Stargardt patients and their family members. And some Non- Governmental Organisations also have got in touch with them to see if they could provide help to the community.
“Stand-up comedy has saved me and enabled me to meet interesting people and do what is worth doing,” Gao says.
1. What does the underlined word “inferiority” in paragraph 2 mean?| A．Being proud. | B．Being bored. | C．Being unconfident. | D．Being modest. |
| A．His eagerness for money. | B．His faith in challenging himself. |
| C．His ability in performance. | D．His desire to fight the disease. |
| A．The visually disabled can learn computer skills. |
| B．Experts can provide medical help for the patients. |
| C．Patients can read original articles about the disease. |
| D．Comedians can post jokes to meet interesting people. |
| A．Sensible and tolerant. | B．Positive and inspiring. |
| C．Talented and aggressive. | D．Enthusiastic and punctual. |
9 . Virtual reality is quickly becoming the new technological frontier. Tech companies everywhere seem to be racing to get their foot in the VR door. However, Virtual reality has a set of challenges and hurdles that it must overcome in order to work well. Michael Abrash, a writer and programmer, listed a number of these in a speech from 2014; they include things like low latency, high refresh rate, high resolution, a wide field of view and rock solid tracking, among others. Even if you don’t quite understand the technical aspects of those terms, it should be noted that VR is heavily dependent on being very fast, very accurate and very good-looking. If it isn’t, the viewer will feel motion sick or disconnected from the world that VR is trying to create.
Now that we can actually build VR headsets that begin to meet these requirements, we are seeing a rising interest in VR. As it rises, so does the interest in creating new media to be experienced in using virtual reality. Journalism is a medium built on relevance. Journalists should always be finding new ways to tell stories and deliver content. It is a goldmine for storytelling. What better ways to tell a story to someone than to put them right in the center of it?
Some journalists and publications are already utilizing VR. Vice creative director Spike Jonze, in a collaboration with director and visual artist Chris Milk, put viewers at the scene of the Millions March protest in New York in December, 2014. The University of Southern California created “Project Syria,” which allows viewers to experience the bombing of a crowded neighborhood and visit a refugee camp in the titular, war-torn country. These are just a few examples of a growing number of projects that are out there.
Virtual reality is a powerful tool for journalists. The consumer isn’t just reading or watching something play out; they’re experiencing it. The immersive nature of VR allows for people to connect with the subject matter on a much deeper level than just reading about it. The experience is emotional, speaking more to our instinct than our intellect. The possibilities for storytelling here are legion, and any storyteller wanting to do something more interesting than their peers should surely be considering the sheer power of VR.
The question of virtual reality, though, is not how powerful it is. That is immediately apparent. The question of VR is one of viability and availability. Telling stories must be easy to do, and access to those stories must be readily available. This is the biggest challenge that VR faces. If the tools to tell a story with VR aren’t easy to pick up and learn, VR will fail. If VR technology isn’t both top-of-the-line and affordable, VR will fail.
Accessibility was one concern for Thomas Hallaq, assistant professor of journalism and mass communications, who said that current VR technology is pretty exclusive right now. Despite that, he said he doesn’t think the exclusivity of this technology will be a problem in the long run.
“I think it’s very promising,” Hallaq said. “We’re seeing more technology become accessible, and more people having access to that technology. Just look at smartphones.” If the technology is widely available and companies like Oculus, Samsung, HTC and Valve can overcome the inherent hurdles, VR will succeed in being a desirable means of storytelling. Like radio, TV and the Internet before it, virtual reality will change the way we tell stories.
1. Why is VR considered a powerful tool for journalism?| A．Because it is an exclusively new tool. |
| B．Because it is very powerful and popular. |
| C．Because people can experience the story in person. |
| D．Because it is very fast, accurate and good-looking. |
| A．How powerful and interesting it can be. | B．Whether people will have easy access to it. |
| C．Whether qualified VR headsets can be built. | D．What new ways people will find to deliver content. |
| A．optimistic | B．neutral | C．pessimistic | D．concerned |
| A．The Wide Popularity of Virtual Reality | B．The Future Development of Virtual Reality |
| C．Challenges and Hurdles of Virtual Reality | D．Virtual Reality is the Future of Storytelling |
10 . What are pillows really stuffed with? Not physically, but symbolically? The question occurred to me with the photos in the news and social media from the 50 cities around the world that staged public celebrations for International Pillow Fight Day. Armed with nothing more than bring-our-own sacrificial cushions, strangers struck heavily each other in playful feather from Amsterdam to Atlanta, Warsaw to Washington DC. But why? Is there anything more to this delightful celebration?
As a cultural sign, the pillow is deceptively soft. Since at least the 16th Century, the humble pillow has been given unexpected meanings. The Chinese playwright Tang Xianzu tells a famous story about a wise man who meets a depressed young scholar at an inn and offers him a magic pillow filled with the most vivid dreams of a seemingly more fulfilling life. When the young man awakens to discover that his happy 50-year dream has in fact come and gone in the short space of an afternoon’s nap, our impression of the pillow’s power shifts from wonder to terror.
Subsequent writers have likewise seized upon the pillow. When the 19th-Century English novelist Charlotte Bronte poetically observed “a ruffled (不平的) mind makes a restless pillow”, she didn’t just change the expected order of the adjectives and nouns, but instead she made unclear the boundaries between mind and matter — the thing resting and the thing rested upon.
It’s a trick perhaps Bronte learned from the Renaissance philosopher Montaigne, who once insisted that “ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head”. On Montaigne’s thinking, intelligence and happiness confront each other forever in a pillow fight that only one can win.
With the words of Tang. Bronte, and Montaigne, we can perhaps more easily measure the attraction of the global pillow fight. Like a ritual of release, the annual international pillow fight amounts to a kind of cleansing, a brushing off of daily worries: an emptying of the world’s collective mind. Rather than a launch-pad for weightless rest, the pillow is a symbol of heavy thought: an anchor that drags the world’s soul down — one that must be lightened.
1. The example of Tang Xianzu is used to illustrate that ________.| A．pillows give people satisfactory dreams |
| B．dreams are always wonderful while the real world is cruel |
| C．people’s impression of pillows changes from wonder to terror |
| D．pillows symbolically convey the meaning in contrast to their soft appearance |
| A．wrote poems about pillows |
| B．regarded pillows as reflections of our minds |
| C．shared the same viewpoint as Tang Xianzu on pillows |
| D．was likely to have been influenced by the thoughts of the Renaissance |
| A．pillows give us comfort |
| B．pillows make people more intelligent |
| C．people with too many thoughts have less inner peace |
| D．people can easily fall asleep when they know nothing |
| A．Because it is a ritual release. |
| B．Because it makes life delightful. |
| C．Because it comforts restless minds. |
| D．Because it contains a profound meaning of life. |
