1 . The Assassin's Creed series has been about building immersive （沉浸式的）and accurate historical worlds. As their newest game releases f Assassins Creed Origins, they have also released their Discovery Tours. These tours give players a chance to walk the streets of ancient Egypt, explore Alexandria and the pyramids, and learn about wildlife and geography. For students, experiencing the ancient world in this interactive way can be more interesting and effective than just reading a textbook or watching a documentary about what they are studying.
Assassins Creed is not the only game series that can be educational either. What is important about the role of historical games is the level of choice. When watching a film, students are passive receivers of content. However, when playing a game students have an active role to play in history. A focus on choice and consequence is an important element of teaching and understanding history, so historical games can be a valuable teaching tool even if they aren't completely historically accurate. They have the power to immerse students in faraway worlds and allow them to think critically about cause and consequence, think about why historical events unfolded the way they did, and even think about possible alternative outcomes. All of these are critical for historical thinking processes. No longer do students need to rely only on reading textbooks or on instructors for knowledge.
When carrying this out in your class, remember that not all students enjoy playing video games, but they can still be a valuable learning tool. The instructor also needs to be an active facilitator and taking note of teachable moments. A video game is not going to teach a class ； it requires an awesome instructor to make everything come together. With the power of video games, ancient worlds no longer need to be limited to the pages of a textbook.
1. What does the underlined phrase “this interactive way“ in paragraph 1 refer to?| A．Walking an ancient street. | B．Playing a new game. |
| C．Reading a textbook. | D．Watching a documentary. |
| A．Why it is different from the film. | B．Why it gains popularity. |
| C．How it benefits teaching. | D．How it came into being. |
| A．The teachers. | B．The players. |
| C．The designers. | D．The audiences. |
| A．A vivid description of ancient architecture. |
| B．An account of a new history learning method. |
| C．A detailed explanation of a social problem. |
| D．An online advertisement of a stylish trend. |
2 . Sometimes it’s hard to let go. For many British people, that can apply to institutions and objects that represent their country’s past-age-old castles, splendid homes… and red phone boxes.
Beaten first by the march of technology and lately by the terrible weather in junkyards (废品场), the phone boxes representative of an age are now making something of a comeback. Adapted in imaginative ways, many have reappeared on city streets and village greens housing tiny cafes, cellphone repair shops or even defibrillator machines (除颤器).
The original iron boxes with the round roofs first appeared in 1926. They were designed by Giles Gilbert Scott, the architect of the Battersea Power Station in London. After becoming an important part of many British streets, the phone boxes began disappearing in the 1980s, with the rise of the mobile phone sending most of them away to the junkyards.
About that time, Tony Inglis’ engineering and transport company got the job to remove phone boxes from the streets and sell them out. But Inglis ended up buying hundreds of them himself, with the idea of repairing and selling them. He said that he had heard the calls to preserve the boxes and had seen how some of them were listed as historic buildings.
As Inglis and, later other businessmen, got to work, repurposed phone boxes began reappearing in cities and villages as people found new uses for them. Today, they are once again a familiar sight, playing roles that are often just as important for the community as their original purpose.
In rural areas, where ambulances can take a relatively long time to arrive, the phone boxes have taken on a lifesaving role. Local organizations can adopt them for l pound, and install defibrillators to help in emergencies.
Others also looked at the phone boxes and saw business opportunities. LoveFone, a company that advocates repairing cellphones rather than abandoning them, opened a mini workshop in a London phone box in 2016.
The tiny shops made economic sense, according to Robert Kerr, a founder of LoveFone. He said that one of the boxes generated around $13,500 in revenue a month and cost only about $400 to rent.
Inglis said phone boxes called to mind an age when things were built to last. “I like what they are to people, and I enjoy bringing things back,” he said.
1. The phone boxes are making a comeback ______.| A．to form a beautiful sight of the city |
| B．to improve telecommunications services |
| C．to remind people of a historical period |
| D．to meet the requirement of green economy |
| A．They were not well-designed. | B．They provided bad services. |
| C．They had too short a history. | D．They lost to new technologies. |
| A．their new appearance and lower prices | B．the push of the local organizations |
| C．their changed roles and functions | D．the big funding of the businessmen |
3 . Have you ever fallen for a novel and been amazed not to find it on lists of great books? Or walked around a sculpture known as a classic, struggling to see why it is famous? If so, you’ve probably thought about the question a psychologist, James Cutting, asked himself: How does a work of art come to be considered great?
The direct answer is that some works of art are just great: of inner superior quality. The paintings that win prime spots in galleries, get taught in classes are the ones that have proved their artistic value over time. If you can't see they’re superior, that's your problem. But some social scientists have been asking questions of it, raising the possibility that artistic canons(名作目录)are little more than old historical accidents.
Cutting, a professor at Cornell University, wondered if a psychological pattern known as the“mere-exposure effect”played a role in deciding which paintings rise to the top of the cultural league. Cutting designed an experiment to test his hunch(直觉). Over a lecture course he regularly showed undergraduates works of impressionism for two seconds at a time. Some of the paintings canonical, included in art-history books. Others were lesser known but of comparable quality were exposed four times as often. Afterwards, the students preferred them to the canonical works, while a control group liked the canonical ones best. Cutting’s students had grown to like those paintings more simply because they had seen them more.
Cutting believes his experiment casts light on how canons are formed. He reproduced works of impressionism today bought by five or six wealthy and influential collectors in the late 19th century.Their preferences given to certain works made them more likely to be hung in galleries and printed in collections. And the fame passed down the years. The more people were exposed to, the more they liked it, and the more they liked it, the more it appeared in books, on posters and in big exhibitions. Meanwhile, academics and critics added to their popularity. After all, it's not just the masses who tend to rate what they see more often more highly. Critics'praise is deeply mixed with publicity. “Scholars”, Cutting argues,“are no different from the public in the effects of mere exposure.”
The process described by Cutting show a principle that the sociologist Duncan Watts calls“cumulative advantage”:once a thing becomes popular, it will tend to become more popular still.A few years ago, Watts had a similar experience to Cutting's in another Paris museum. After queuing to see the"Mona Lisa "at the Louvre, he came away puzzled: why was it considered so superior to the three other Leonardos, to which nobody seemed to be paying the slightest attention?
When Watts looked into the history of"the greatest painting of all time", he discovered that, for most of its life, the"Mona Lisa"remained in relative obscurity. In the 1850s, Leonardo da Vinci was considered no match for giants of Renaissance art like Titian and Raphael, whose works were worth almost ten times as much as the"Mona Lisa" It was only in the 20th century that"Mona Lisa rocketed to the number-one spot. What brought it there wasn’t a scholarly re-evaluation, but a theft.In 1911 a worker at the Louvre walked out of the museum with the " Mona Lisa"hidden under his coat. Parisians were shocked at the theft of a painting to which, until then, they had paid little attention.When the museum reopened, people queued to see it. From then on, the"Mona Lisa "came to represent Western culture itself.
The intrinsic (本质的) quality of a work of art is starting to seem like its least important attribute. But perhaps it's more significant than our social scientists admit. Firstly, a work needs a certain quality to reach the top of the pile. The"Mona Lisa"may not be a worthy world champion but it was in the Louvre in the first place, and not by accident. Secondly, some objects are simply better than others.Read“Hamlet”after reading even the greatest of Shakespeare's contemporaries,and the difference may strike you as unarguable.
A study suggests that the exposure effect doesnt work the same way on everything, and points to a different conclusion about how canons are formed. Great art and mediocrity (平庸)can get confused, even by experts. But that’s why we need to see, and read, as much as we can. The more were exposed to the good and the bad, the better we are at telling the difference.
1. What is the function of the questions in the first paragraph?| A．To arouse readers' interest in the topic to be discussed. |
| B．To serve as an introduction to the topic to be discussed. |
| C．To explain the reasons for some works being great. |
| D．To share the similarity of classics to sculpture. |
| A．His subjects liked the famous paintings because of their comparable quality. |
| B．His subjects liked lesser known works because of more exposure to them. |
| C．His subjects showed no difference between the two types of works. |
| D．All the subjects preferred the famous works shown to them. |
| A．The preference of wealthy and influential collectors. |
| B．The theft of the painting by a worker. |
| C．The fame of Leonardo Da Vinci. |
| D．The cumulative advantage. |
| A．remained relatively unknown |
| B．became publicly known |
| C．was widely recognized |
| D．remained totally unchanged |
| A．“Hamlet”is the greatest work of Shakespeare. |
| B．the"Mona Lisa "is no comparable to"Hamlet" |
| C．the greatest of an art work lies in its inner value |
| D．The works of Shakespeare are worse than his contemporaries. |
| A．How exposure leads to fame |
| B．Why the Mona Lisa stands out |
| C．Cumulative advantage makes great works |
| D．The Mona Lisa,the greatest painting of all time |
Who built the first canal? Perhaps some people long ago, living in
Today, most countries in the world have canals. Even in the 2lst century, goods can be moved more
Most of the canals have a long history. Canals existed in Egypt thousands of years ago. And the Grand Canal of China was begun about 2,500 years ago. and took centuries to finish. During the seventeenth century, France built many canals that are still
5 . I've written this article and you're reading it. So we are members of the same club. We're both literate一we can read and write. And we both probably feel that literacy is essential to our lives. But millions of people all over the world are illiterate. Even in industrialized Western countries, such as the UK and the USA, approximately 20% of the population have "low literacy levels". But what exactly does that mean?
My parents both left school at 14. They could read and write, but except for a quick look at the daily newspaper, reading and writing didn’t play a big part in their lives. There were very few books in the house. My mother was amazed because the woman who lived next door always wrote a list of what she needed before she went to the supermarket. Why couldn’t she remember? We laughed about that for weeks. Our family didn’t write lists! And when I was only 14 years old my father gave me an important letter that he'd written to the bank and asked me to check it for grammar and spelling mistakes. And there were quite a lot. He never usually wrote letters or postcards or even Christmas cards. So when he had to write he wasn't comfortable or confident. Does that mean that my father had a "low level of literacy"? I don't think so.
There are lots of different definitions of literacy. Some experts define it as having the reading and writing skills that you need to be independent in your everyday life. So, for example, if you can read instructions, write a cheque, fill in a form, 一anything that you need to do in everyday life一then you are "functionally literate".
Other people say that you are illiterate if you think that you are illiterate. In other words, if you feel that you can’t read or write as well as you would like to.
If you live in a society where most people are literate then you will feel ashamed or embarrassed and avoid situations in which you have to read or write. The father of a friend of mine finally admitted to his family that he couldn't read when he was 45 years old. He bought the newspaper every day and pretended to read it一and believe it or not, his family had no idea.
We often forget that writing is a recent invention. Many years ago, the word "literate" meant being able to communicate well in speaking, in other words what we now call "articulate". Story telling was an important activity in the past and still is today in some societies. Reading was often a cooperative activity一someone would read aloud to a group, often from a religious text such as the Koran or the Bible.
Only a hundred years ago, in the United States, you were considered to be literate if you could sign your name to a piece of paper. It was an important skill. You were not allowed to vote if you couldn’t sign the voting register, so literacy was connected with political rights, and many people were excluded from the democratic process.
Nowadays we see reading and writing as being connected, but that wasn’t so in the past. Many people could read, but not write. Writing was a skilled profession. If you needed something written then you paid an expert to write it for you.
And of course, rich and important people have always employed people to write things for them. Important company bosses dictated letters to their secretaries or personal assistants. And now with new computer software you can dictate directly to your computer.
Being illiterate can have a big effect on people’s lives. For example, a study in the UK showed that people who write and spell badly are seen as careless, immature and unreliable, and often unintelligent. So it is more difficult for them to find jobs, even when reading and writing are not necessary for the work.
World-wide statistics show that literacy problems are associated with poverty and a lack of political power. More women than men are illiterate. Illiterate people have worse health, bigger families and are more likely to go to prison. So literacy campaigns must be a good thing. But don’t forget that an illiterate person, or someone with a low level of literacy, isn't necessarily stupid or ignorant — and may not be unhappy at all. Knowledge and wisdom isn't only found in writing.
1. Why does the author give two examples in Para 2?| A．To show that Father was more literate than Mother. |
| B．To show that literacy is interpreted in different ways. |
| C．To indicate how important reading and writing are. |
| D．To compare the level of literacy between neighbours. |
| A．independent | B．psychological | C．functional | D．social |
| A．Reading and writing have always been regarded as equally difficult. |
| B．People had to read and write well in order to be allowed to vote. |
| C．Reading and writing have always been viewed as being connected. |
| D．Reading often requires more immediate interaction than writing. |
| A．Effects of illiteracy and employment problems. |
| B．Effects of illiteracy on one’s personality development. |
| C．Effects of illiteracy and associated problems. |
| D．Effects of illiteracy on women’s career development. |
6 . Rosetta Stone
The Rosetta Stone is an incomplete grey and pink stone dating from 196 BCE which presents a priest’s decree（法令） concerning King Ptolemy V of Egypt. The text is in three different versions: Hieroglyphic（象形文字）, Demotic (古埃及通俗文字) and Greek, a fact which invaluably helped to finally explain Egyptian hieroglyphics.
The stone was discovered at Rosetta on the Nile Delta in Egypt in 1799 CE by Bouchard，who was an officer of engineers in Napoleon’s army, and removed the stone from an old wall which was being pulled down as part of the construction work on Fort Julien. Bouchard’s commanding officer, one General Menou, realizing its importance, had the stone sent to Alexandria. Casts and copies were made, but the stone was later seized by the British general Tomkins Turner and so the artefact eventually found a permanent home in the British Museum in London.
Several noted international scholars attempted to use the stone to explain hieroglyphics, but it was the Englishman Thomas Young who first identified some of the hieroglyphs which related to Ptolemy V (205—180 BCE) and the direction in which the symbols should be read. However, it was in the early 1820s CE that the text was fully explained by Frenchman. Consequently, the full significance of Egyptian hieroglyphs, lost for 1,600 years, was finally rediscovered.
The stone measures 112.3 cm by 75.7 cm and is 28.4 cm thick. The text on the stone is composed of a hieroglyphic text of 14 lines, a demotic text of 32 lines and a Greek text of 54 lines. As portions of the stone are missing — especially the two top corners and bottom right corner — none of the texts are complete. Hieroglyphs was the language of Egyptian priests, demotic script was the commonly used language and Greek was used for administrative purposes. The text of all three writing systems refers to a decree passed by a priestly council of Memphis which prove to be their admiring King Ptolemy V of Egypt, one year after his coronation(加冕).
The text of the stone begins with a lengthy praise of the achievements and good rule of Ptolemy V. We are told the king has brought great prosperity to Egypt and he has invested large sums of money on temples, both building new ones and restoring old ones, and he has provided grain for the people. Taxes have been reduced or eliminated, and many prisoners who were previously considered enemies of the state have been released during his reign. The king has also put down Egypt’s enemies, and a specific campaign against an enemy fortress（堡垒） is mentioned, the fall of which was due to canals being held back to block the city’s water supply. To honour all of these deeds, a statue of the king wearing ten gold diadems is to be set up in all temples titled ＂Ptolemy Defender of Egypt＂.
| Rosetta Stone | |
| Definition | The stone has a |
| Recovery | The stone was removed from an old wall by a Because of the stone, people discovered again the importance of Egyptian hieroglyphs which has |
| Properties | The |
| The text of the stone is mainly in praise of Ptolemy V. The fall of the enemy city is for | |
1. How long did it take to build the Golden Gate Bridge?
| A．Three years. | B．Four years. | C．Seven years. |
| A．A camera. | B．A bike. | C．A jacket. |
| A．Four. | B．Eight. | C．Twelve. |
| A．It's not worth visiting now. |
| B．It's still a famous attraction in the world. |
| C．It's the oldest bridge of its kind in the world. |
8 . During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, almost nothing was written about the contributions of women during the colonial period and the early history of the newly formed United States. Lacking the right to vote and absent from the seats of power, women were not considered an important force in history. Anne Bradstreet wrote some significant poetry in the seventeenth century, Mercy Otis Warren produced the best contemporary history of the American Revolution, and Abigail Adams penned important letters showing she exercised great political influence over her husband, John, the second President of the United States. But little or no notice was taken of these contributions. During these centuries, women remained invisible in history books.
Throughout the nineteenth century, this lack of visibility continued, despite the efforts of female authors writing about women. These writers, like most of their male counterparts, were amateur historians. Their writings were celebratory in nature, and they were uncritical in their selection and use of sources.
During the nineteenth century, however, certain feminists showed a keen sense of history by keeping records of activities in which women were engaged. National, regional, and local women's organizations compiled accounts of their doings. Personal correspondence, newspaper clippings, and souvenirs were saved and stored. These sources from the core of the two greatest collections of women's history in the United States one at the Elizabeth and Arthur Schlesinger Library at Radcliffé College, and the other the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College. Such sources have provided valuable materials for later generations of historians.
Despite the gathering of more information about ordinary women during the nineteenth century, most of the writing about women conformed to the "great women" theory of history, just as much of mainstream American history concentrated on "great men." To demonstrate that women were making significant contributions to American life, female authors singled out women leaders and wrote biographies, or else important women produced their autobiographies. Most of these leaders were involved in public life as reformers, activists working for women's right to vote, or authors, and were not representative at all of the great of ordinary woman. The lives of ordinary people continued, generally, to be untold in the American histories being published.
1. What does the passage mainly discuss?| A．The role of literature in early American histories. |
| B．The place of American women in written histories. |
| C．The keen sense of history shown by American women. |
| D．The "great women" approach to history used by American historians. |
| A．a woman's status was changed by marriage |
| B．even the contributions of outstanding women were ignored |
| C．only three women were able to get their writing published |
| D．poetry produced by women was more readily accepted than other writing by women |
| A．Newspaper accounts of presidential election results. |
| B．Biographies of John Adams. |
| C．Letters from a mother to a daughter advising her how to handle a family problem. |
| D．Books about famous graduates of the country’s first college. |
9 . Lost cities that have been found
The White City
In 2015, a team of explorers to Honduras in search of"the Lost City of the Monke God"led to the discovery of the White City. They found the ruins in the Mosquitia region of the Central American country which is known for poisonous snakes, vicious jaguars and deadly insects. It is believed that local people hid here when the Spanish conquerors(征服者) occupied their homeland in the16th century.
Canopus and Heracleion
Modern researchers were teased by the ancient writings about the Egyptian cities Canopus and Heracleion- where Queen Cleopatra often visited. But the cities weren’t found until 1992, when a search in Alexandria waters found that the two cities had been flooded for centuries. Artifacts(史前器物) showed that the cities once highly developed as a trade network, which helped researchers piece together more about the last queen of Egypt.
Machu Picchu
A Yale professor discovered "the Lost City in the Clouds"in 1911. A combination of palaces, plazas, temples and homes, Machu Picchu displays the Inca Empire at the height of its rule. The city, which was abandoned in the 16th century for unknown reasons,was hidden by the local people from the Spanish conquerors for centuries keeping it so well preserved.
Troy
The ancient city of Troy in homer's The Iliad was considered a fictional setting for his characters to run wild. But in 1871, explorations in northwestern Turkey exposed nine ancient cities layered (层叠) on top of each other, the earliest dating back to about 5,000 years before. It was later determined that the sixth or seventh layer contained the lost city of Troy and that it was actually destroyed by an earthquake, not a wooden horse.
1. Why did people hide in the White City in the 16th century?| A．To survive the war |
| B．To search for a lost city. |
| C．To protect their country. |
| D．To avoid dangerous animals |
| A．The White City |
| B．Canopus and Heracleion |
| C．Machu Picchu |
| D．Troy |
| A．It was built by Homer. |
| B．It consisted of nine cities |
| C．It had a history of 5,000 years |
| D．It was ruined by a natural disaster. |
10 . DINERS
TONY SOPRANO’S LAST MEAL
Between 1912 and the 1990s, New Jersey State was home to more than 20 diner manufacturers who made probably 95 percent of the diners in the U.S, says Katie Zavoski, who is helping hold a diner exhibit. What makes a diner a diner? (And not, say, a coffee shop?) Traditionally, a diner is built in a factory and then delivered to its own town or city rather than constructed on-site. Zavoski credits New Jersey’s location as the key to its mastery of the form. “It was just the perfect place to manufacture the diners,” she says. “We would ship them wherever we needed to by sea.”
VISIT “Icons of American Culture: History of New Jersey Diners,” running through June 2017 at The Cornelius House/Middlesex County Museum in Piscataway, New Jersey
GOOD FOOD, GOOD TUNES
Suzanne Vega's 1987 song “Tom's Diner” is probably best known for its frequently sampled “doo doo doo doo” melody rather than its diner-related lyrics. Technically, it’s not even really about a diner — the setting is New York City’s Tom's Restaurant, which Vega frequented when she was studying at Bamard. Vega used the word “diner” instead because it “sings better that way,” she told The New York Times. November 18 has since been called Tom’s Diner Day, because on that day in 1981, the New York Post's front page was a story about the death of actor William Holden. In her song Vega sings: “I Open /Up the paper/There’s a story /Of an actor /Who had died/While he was drinking.”
LISTEN “Tom’s Diner” by Suzanne Vega
MEET THE DINER ANTHROPOLOGIST
Richard J.S. Gutman has been called the “Jane Goodall of diners” (he even consulted on Barry Levinson’s 1982 film, Diner).His book, American Diner: Then Now, traces the evolution of the “night lunch wagon,” set up by Walter Scott in 1872, to the early 1920s, when the diner got its name (adapted from “dining car”), and on through the 1980s.Gutman has his own diner facilities (floor plans, classic white mugs, a cashier booth); 250 of these items are part of an exhibit in Rhode Island.
READ American Diner: Then & Now (John Hopkins University Press)
VISIT “Diners: Still Cooking in the 21st Century,” currently running at the Culinary Arts Museum at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island
1. In what way is a diner different from a coffee shop?| A．Its location. | B．Its management. |
| C．From what it is built. | D．Where it is constructed. |
| A．It warns people not to drink. | B．It was inspired by Tom’s Diner Day. |
| C．Its melody is preferred to its lyrics. | D．Its original title was Tom’s Restaurant. |
