A powerful storm erupted in North Carolina, causing many roads to be severely damaged and some houses to collapse. In the aftermath of the terrible storm, an animal protection society discovered a surprise at their booster that both broke and warmed their hearts.
The surprise was that a group of baby dogs were left with a sad note, revealing a tale of sympathy in the hardship. The note, written by a homeless man, explained that the heartbreaking circumstances led him to adopt the baby dogs. He regularly fed their mother dog, but he discovered that she had unfortunately been hit by a car. Despite his own homelessness, he had provided the baby dogs with a chance to have a better life. However, the storm destroyed his temporary residence, and he had to leave them at the animal protection society’s doorstep with a heartfelt request for help.
The note read, “Please help! I was sad to find a local homeless dog that I used to feed when I could, dead by the road. What made me sadder was that her babies were left homeless. I’m sorry for leaving them like this, but I am also homeless and cannot afford to look after them. My heart breaks for them and their mother. I just want them to be taken good care of. I know that it’s wrong to abandon them. But please don’t think poorly of me. I really don t have any other choice. Sincerely, a homeless man, George.”
David, who was in charge of the animal protection society, posted the story, on the social media pages, expressing gratitude to the homeless man and admiration for his selfless act. David assured nim that his kindness, had not gone unnoticed and promised to honor his gesture by offering the baby dogs the love and care they would deserve. David also gave an invitation to him which read, “If you would like, please come to the animal protection society to see how the baby dogs will live, and I think that they will be glad to see you again!”
注意：1. 续写词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
A few days later, George, the homeless man, walked into the animal protection society.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Then George and David started looking for new homes for the baby dogs.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________2 . Volunteer Art &Architecture Tour Guide for Boston Public Library, Copley Square
The goal is to generate public interest in the history, art, and architecture of Boston Public Library, including its special collections and exhibitions at the Central Library in Copley Square.
ROLE AND EXPECTATIONS
●To conduct public and private group tours of the Central Library’s art, architecture, and exhibitions, answering questions from groups and recording attendance statistics after tours conclude.
●To continue to inform oneself of the art, architecture, history, holdings, and exhibitions of Boston Public Library.
QUALIFICATIONS
● Interest in history, art, and architecture in general, and of Boston Public Library in particular.
● Confidence in addressing and presenting information to large groups; prior guiding or public speaking experience desirable.
●A strong command of the English language is required, and fluency in other languages is highly preferred.
TRAINING
Accepted candidates will be asked to attend tour guide training meetings. New guides are expected to complete training around four months. Progress evaluations will be ongoing throughout the training period, and continue through the first six months of working as a full guide.
REQUIREMENTS
●Minimum commitment of two tours per month (or 24 tours per year).
●Commitment to attending tour guide meetings and enrichment programs for continuing education.
REVIEW
Regular assessments and evaluations will be conducted based on the above criteria to ensure that volunteers meet the necessary qualifications.
Interested candidates should complete the application form below and send it to tours@bpl.org.
1. What does a volunteer tour guide need to do after tours?| A．Ensure safety of the artworks. |
| B．Maintain cleanness of the hall. |
| C．Document the numbers of visitors. |
| D．Answer questions about qualifications. |
| A．4 months. | B．6 months. | C．10 months. | D．12 months. |
| A．Insufficient (不足的) working hours. |
| B．Absence of a second language. |
| C．Little relevant volunteer experience. |
| D．Limited knowledge about exhibitions. |
1. What is the aim of the campaign?
| A．To remind people of Earth Day. |
| B．To encourage people to reduce garbage. |
| C．To warn people of the bad effects of pollution. |
| A．Planting trees. | B．Designing posters. | C．Collecting garbage. |
| A．Paint paper. | B．Stop driving cars. | C．Decorate classrooms. |
| A．Absurd. | B．Hollow. | C．Practical. |
4 . Imagine if your clothes could pick up the sounds of everything going on around you. Scientists have created a fibre (纤维) which can pick up sounds and could be used as a hearing aid, to monitor heartbeats or even in spacecraft.
The new fibre works like a microphone. It picks up sounds and turns them into vibrations (震动) and then electrical signals, in a similar way to how ears work. When woven (编织) into a shirt, the researchers say the fibre can even detect a wearer’s heartbeat. The fibre can hear sounds as low as those in a quiet library to louder sounds like heavy road traffic. It can even accurately tell the direction of sudden sounds like handclaps.
The fibre was created by engineers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and researchers at Rhode Island School of Design. “Wearing a piece of clothing that can hear, you might talk through it to answer phone calls and communicate with others,” said lead author Yet Wan, who created the technology at MIT.
Once they had created the fibre, the team wove it into a more traditional piece of clothing which was much more flexible. When it was woven into the back of a shirt it was able to pick up the sound of people clapping, even picking up the direction the clapping was coming from. When woven into the shirt’s inner lining (内衬) it could pick up the person’s heartbeat, which the researchers think could be used in a pregnant woman’s clothes to monitor a baby’s heartbeat.
As well as wearable hearing aids, and clothes that track your heartbeat, the team says there are possibilities beyond clothing. “It can be integrated with spacecraft skin to listen to space dust, or embedded into (嵌入) buildings to detect cracks or strains,” Yet suggests. “It can even be woven into a smart net to monitor fish in the ocean.”
1. What is the scientists’ new invention?| A．A lightweight fibre. | B．A new spacecraft skin. |
| C．A fibre that can hear. | D．A microphone that can talk. |
| A．It is easily distracted by loud sounds. |
| B．It can even pick up faint sounds. |
| C．It works more accurately than human ears. |
| D．It fails to recognise the direction of sounds. |
| A．They wove it into babies’ clothes. | B．They turned it into a fishnet. |
| C．They put it into mass production. | D．They tested its performance. |
| A．The fibre has a wide range of applications. | B．The fibre can bring in a big profit. |
| C．The fibre needs to be improved. | D．The fibre is less flexible than traditional clothes. |
5 . The process of sorting through my childhood stuff started out easy. At first, I was excited to toss everything out. But as the bedroom emptied out, I felt a creeping sense of sadness. My childhood was over, and I entered full-fledged (成熟的) adulthood. And I wondered:
Before you start sorting, determine how much storage space you’re willing to devote to your childhood items.
During this process, it can be useful to have someone you trust by your side. They can help you honor the memories associated with each object and let go.
And you don’t have to pile your childhood stuff in the attic (阁楼).
Remember, there is someone who care enough to hold on all old stuff for you. This is a value of all of the time and effort and money your parents have poured into you. This has been saved in love.
| A．Get creative and think outside the box. |
| B．Could my childhood memories be regained? |
| C．You can find meaning in your life experiences. |
| D．Loved ones can also help you decide what to save. |
| E．But it will probably still be a bittersweet experience. |
| F．That will help you figure out how much stuff you can keep. |
| G．Was there a less heartbreaking, more strategic way to do this? |
6 . Hundreds or even thousands of jackdaws (寒鸦) are known to launch into the winter sky at once from the treetops at sunrise, and then split into smaller groups to feed throughout the day. Now, ecologists know that this synchronized (同步的) departure is timed with a complicated behavior called “consensus decision-making”, where the majority agree to take action.
To figure it out, researchers in the United Kingdom recorded hundreds of hours of their bird calls in Cornwall over several months. They measured when the first jackdaws began their calls, how loud the birds were, and how quickly the swell (增强) of calls rose, and then compared these sounds to footage (镜头) of those birds’ departures. The team found that the jackdaw group left together once the chorus of calls reached a critical mass--the more rapidly the chorus swelled, the earlier the birds left.
“They all leave together in a few seconds. The sky just fills with black birds forthwith. It is just like a black snowstorm,” Alex Thornton, an ecologist at the University of Exeter, UK, told New Scientist. Every call is a jackdaw casting its vote to leave. “At first you just get a few calls, then more and more birds join in and it builds and builds. And the steeper the increase, the earlier they leave,” Thornton added. On rare occasions, when the intensity of the chorus doesn’t build enough and the jackdaws don’t agree, the birds instead launch off in small numbers.
The team also found that once jackdaws reached a consensus they departed almost immediately, with hundreds of individuals flying in less than five seconds. When scientists played past recordings of calls back to the jackdaws, getting in the way of the group’s natural crescendo (渐强的声音), they were able to push forward the birds’ launching by more than six minutes. The birds did not, however, change their launch times in response to other noises.
“The gregarious (群居的) birds prefer to leave as a group, although each jackdaw will have a slightly different preference as to when they want to leave, based on factors like their size and hunger,” Alex Dibnah, a University of Exeter graduate student and lead author of the study, said in a statement. “Leaving the roost (栖息处) together has various benefits, including safety from predators and access to information such as where to find food.”
This research shows the critical role vocalizations (发声) play in group decision-making for this species. One next step for this research, according to the authors, is to figure out how human-created noises might affect this process and the spread of information throughout these communities.
“Imagine a big roost near a town or busy road,” Thornton said. “If the birds can’t hear each other and can’t form a consensus to leave together, it could have big impacts on their population.”
1. What is the purpose of the research in Cornwall?| A．To understand how jackdaws reach an agreement. |
| B．To study what makes jackdaws’ departure time unique. |
| C．To make a comparison of jackdaws’ calls with other birds’. |
| D．To assess the importance of jackdaws’ complicated behaviors. |
| A．Frequently. | B．Gradually. | C．Traditionally. | D．Immediately. |
| A．It can reach an agreement within seconds. |
| B．Its launch times vary little from season to season. |
| C．It can distinguish its natural calls from other noises. |
| D．It makes no response to the past recordings of calls. |
| A．The impacts of human hunting on jackdaws’ population. |
| B．The effects of noises on jackdaws’ group decision-making. |
| C．The way jackdaws spread information in their communities. |
| D．The role of jackdaws’ vocalizations in group decision-making. |
注意：1. 写作词数应为80左右；2. 可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
I choose to exhibit
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________8 . Language gives us the power to describe countless actions, properties and relations that compose our experiences, real or imagined. As for how languages were created, scientists found iconicity might play a key role.
People can’t bridge language gap and understand each other without iconicity. When playing a game of charades (猜字谜) , we act out our meaning, using our hands and bodies to describe the sizes and shapes of objects. The key to this process of forming new symbols is the use of iconicity. Not limited to gesturing, iconicity appears in our visual communication too. Traffic signs, food packaging, maps. . . wherever there are people communicating, you will find iconicity.
According to our research, iconicity might also exist in our voices. We organized a contest in which we invited contestants to record a set of sounds to express different meanings. The winner of the contest was determined by how well listeners could guess the intended meanings of the sounds based on a set of written options. Critically, the sounds that contestants submitted couldn’t include actual words or onomatopoeias (拟声词) .
Listeners were remarkably good at interpreting the meanings of the sounds. Yet, all of the contestants and listeners were speakers of English. Thus, it was possible that listeners’ success relied on some cultural knowledge that they shared with the speakers. Did the listeners also understand the speakers from completely different cultural backgrounds?
Later, an Internet survey translated into 25 different languages was carried out. Participants listened to each sound from the English speakers and guessed the meaning by choosing from six written words. Guessing accuracy for the different groups ranged from 74 percent for English speakers to 34 percent for Portuguese speakers. It is far from perfect, but well above the chance rate of eight percent expected by us.
Taken together, these studies show that our capacity for iconic communication has played a critical role. Without this special talent, language would likely never have gotten off the ground.
1. Which of the following can explain “iconicity” ?| A．A skill in foreign language learning. | B．The process of acting out our meanings. |
| C．The connection between form and meaning. | D．A barrier between different language speakers. |
| A．It required sounds containing meanings. | B．Its winners were creative in recordings. |
| C．It aimed to prove iconicity in words. | D．Its entries were familiar to listeners. |
| A．English pronunciations differ. | B．The research has a limitation. |
| C．The cultural gap is narrowing. | D．Listening skills vary in cultures. |
| A．Clarifying the influence of sounds. | B．Proving the necessity of exchanges. |
| C．Uncovering the origin of languages. | D．Identifying the function of gestures. |
9 . Over 40 students with low vision study at a school in Gandhinagar, Gujarat. It was designed by Anand Sonecha, founder of an architecture company. Featuring a bright yellow entrance door, which stands out against the white walls, the school is decorated with a variety of sweet-smelling plants everywhere. Inside the classrooms, the walls feel smooth in contrast to the rough outside of the building. These all help students familiarize themselves with the area straightforwardly, without any trouble.
The school provides an open space serving as a platform for the visually-challenged students to play, perform, or celebrate festivals and the students are easy to orient themselves according to the sound, smell, sight and touch. “The idea behind the design was to make the school more accessible to the students,” Sonecha says, “They come from remote villages and towns in Gujarat, and I am eager to help them.”
During the construction, Sonecha used contrasting colors so that students could easily distinguish between the elements. Blue was used for all classroom doors, yellow for the entrance gate, black for switch buttons, and yellow and green for the furniture. All these colors contrasted with the white walls of the school, helping the students locate different elements. Different areas are of different height and width, which makes the sounds and noises change according to the echo (回音) produced in these spaces. Furthermore, he cooperated with fellow landscape architect Lokendra Balasaria to plant more than 1,000 plants of 37 species. These sweet plants have been grown not only to lead the children to move in the school through smell but also to attract butterflies and birds, and provide shade.
“The structure of the building is designed similarly to any other school building, only with a few clever elements. My intention was to avoid making it look distinct from other schools,” Sonecha explains, “I hope that there are no different schools for such students. Instead, all these elements should be added to public spaces for them. And my follow-up efforts may be there.”
1. Why did Sonecha design the school in Gandhinagar?| A．To explore architecture styles. | B．To raise funds for his company. |
| C．To offer convenience to the students. | D．To improve students’ learning ability. |
| A．Relax. | B．Waken. | C．Cheer. | D．Direct. |
| A．By expanding activity areas. | B．By stimulating multiple senses. |
| C．By offering behavioral guidelines. | D．By strengthening safety measures. |
| A．Promote accessibility in the public regions. | B．Modernize architecture with smart devices. |
| C．Build special schools for disabled students. | D．Decorate schools with traditional elements. |
10 . One of the best parts of travel is always the food. Or, more specifically, the junk food. It’s a delight people are unlikely to get to experience during the pandemic. But in one corner of the Internet, hungry people are keeping the joy of international snacks alive.
On r/SnackExchange, users trade the delights of their homeland by mail. First, you find someone on the board to swap (交换) with. You and your partner then post each other a box full of local finest processed foods, eventually uploading photos of your haul (收获) on the board for others to see.
First created in 2010, r/SnackExchange’s membership now totals 102,000. Most come to experience snacks they can’t find at home.
For the users who take part in snack exchanges, it’s a way to learn more about the world. For Meghan Quallick, a snack swapper from California, part of the motivation for swapping with an Australian was to get her hands on a specific item: Cadbury Black Forest bars. A colleague of hers had eaten the chocolate bars on a trip to Australia in years past and fallen in love with them, but was then unable to source them at home. Quallick’s snack partner included 10 bars of the chocolate in her package. “To get some and bring them to her was pretty exciting,” Quallick said. “My colleague had tears in her eyes.”
Snack exchanges do come with obvious financial disadvantages. Part of the process is to agree on a budget before you swap — on average that’s around the US$40-50 mark. But you should be prepared to spend twice as much on shipping as the actual snacks. Occasionally swappers get scammed (欺骗) by partners who don’t deliver on their end of the deal.
Often, the snack exchanges are about more than just the food. Heather Clarke, a snack swapper from Melbourne says, “They’re often cultural exchanges as well. You get people going, ‘Can you tell me what this is?’” Often, users enclose (随信附上) instructions on how to best consume the snacks. Going the extra mile is in the spirit of the community.
1. What is paragraph 2 mainly about?| A．The history of snack exchanges. | B．How users exchange snacks on r/ SnackExchange. |
| C．Why people love to exchange snacks. | D．The influence the pandemic has on snack exchanges. |
| A．She got what she desired to eat from Quallick. | B．She failed to find a swapper online. |
| C．She found the snack she ate before online. | D．She quarreled with Quallick. |
| A．Swappers easily get scammed. |
| B．Swappers seldom find exactly what they want. |
| C．Swappers may spend more time than usual shopping. |
| D．Swappers have to spend more on shipping. |
| A．They should be improved. | B．They are lacking in community spirit. |
| C．They promote cultural exchanges. | D．They should have detailed guides from swappers. |
