1 . Both misinformation, which includes honest mistakes, and disinformation, which involves an intention to mislead, have had a growing impact on teenage students over the past 20 years. One tool that schools can use to deal with this problem is called media literacy education. The idea is to teach teenage students how to evaluate and think critically about the messages they receive. Yet there is profound disagreement about what to teach.
Some approaches teach students to distinguish the quality of the information in part by learning how responsible journalism works. Yet some scholars argue that these methods overstate journalism and do little to cultivate critical thinking skills. Other approaches teach students methods for evaluating the credibility of news and information sources, in part by determining the incentive of those sources. They teach students to ask: What encouraged them to create it and why? But even if these approaches teach students specific skills well, some experts argue that determining credibility of the news is just the first step. Once students figure out if it’s true or false, what is the other assessment and the other analysis they need to do?
Worse still, some approaches to media literacy education not only don’t work but might actually backfire by increasing students’ skepticism about the way the media work. Students may begin to read all kinds of immoral motives into everything. It is good to educate students to challenge their assumptions, but it’s very easy for students to go from healthy critical thinking to unhealthy skepticism and the idea that everyone is lying all the time.
To avoid these potential problems, broad approaches that help students develop mindsets in which they become comfortable with uncertainty are in need. According to educational psychologist William Perry of Harvard University, students go through various stages of learning. First, children are black-and-white thinkers—they think there are right answers and wrong answers. Then they develop into relativists, realizing that knowledge can be contextual. This stage is the one where people can come to believe there is no truth. With media literacy education, the aim is to get students to the next level—that place where they can start to see and appreciate the fact that the world is messy, and that’s okay. They have these fundamental approaches to gathering knowledge that they can accept, but they still value uncertainty.
Schools still have a long way to go before they get there, though. Many more studies will be needed for researchers to reach a comprehensive understanding of what works and what doesn’t over the long term. “Education scholars need to take an ambitious step forward,” says Howard Schneider, director of the Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook University.
1. As for media literacy education, what is the author’s major concern?A.How to achieve its goal. | B.How to measure its progress. |
C.How to avoid its side effects. | D.How to promote its importance. |
A.Importance. | B.Variety. | C.Motivation. | D.Benefit. |
A.compare different types of thinking |
B.evaluate students’ mind development |
C.explain a theory of educational psychology |
D.stress the need to raise students’ thinking levels |
A.Media Literacy Education: Much Still Remains |
B.Media Literacy Education: Schools Are to Blame |
C.Media Literacy Education: A Way to Identify False Information |
D.Media Literacy Education: A Tool for Testing Critical Thinking |
2 . While English is getting more important in our schools, Chinese has become popular among foreign kids. But Chinese can be more difficult to learn. At least 16-year-old Piao Chenglong thinks so. “English is easier for me. Chinese characters (汉字) have too many strokes (笔画),” said Piao. “But I want to learn it. I want to study at Beijing University when I grow up.” Piao is from Korea. He came to China in 2008.
In Korea, there are more than 300, 000 Chinese learners like Piao. Some Korean students begin to learn to write the language on their first day at school. To help students learn Chinese, Korea holds speaking competitions for high school students every year.
Chinese isn’t just popular in Korea. People from all the world want to learn it. The Ministry of Education of China says that nearly 130 million people from 85 countries are learning Chinese. This number will be increasing to 800 million in the coming years.
In America, Chinese is the second most popular foreign language after Spanish. Some American middle schools have Chinese classes. Students learn to make jiaozi and tie Chinese knots (中国结). Some even try to write and draw in the Chinese way!
People want to learn Chinese because China is becoming such an important country. Foreign countries want to understand China better to help them with business. The Chinese government is also helping the world learn Chinese. It has sent more than 200 Chinese teachers to more than 60 countries in the world. Many more Confucius Institutes (孔子学院) will be set up in the world. These institutes will teach Chinese to foreign students.
1. Which of the following is the topic sentence for the text?A.Chinese has become popular among foreign kids. |
B.Chinese can be more difficult to learn. |
C.In America, Chinese is the second most popular foreign language after Spanish. |
D.Students learn to make jiaozi and tie Chinese knots. |
A.China. | B.America. | C.Korea. | D.Spain. |
A.making jiaozi |
B.writing and drawing in the Chinese way |
C.tying Chinese knots |
D.singing Chinese songs |
A.Because Chinese is getting more important in their schools. |
B.Because Chinese characters have too many strokes. |
C.Because the number of people learning Chinese will be 800 million. |
D.Because China is becoming more and more important in the world. |
3 . When I was little, Friday’s night was our family game night. After supper, we would play card games of all sort in the sitting room. As the kid, I loved to watch cartoons, but no matter how many times I asked to watching them, my parents would not to let me. They would say to us that playing card games would help my brain. Still I unwilling to play the games for them sometimes. I didn’t realize how right my parents are until I entered high school. The games my parents taught me where I was a child turned out to be very useful later in my life.
I’ve always known that I’m very quick with my hands. If someone throws something, I catch it almost before I’m aware it has been thrown. When I was young, I had no idea how useful this skill would become.
Last week, I was going to visit a friend with her newborn and was on my way to a toy store to buy a gift. I’d once lived in the neighbourhood and I decided to head back to my old cupcake shop for a coffee. Sitting alone at a table outside with my drink, I was approached by an older man, who in a calm and very matter-of-fact way told me to call 911, because there was a baby on a fire escape.
I jumped up to see where the baby was. I was so surprised to see it, wearing a little onesie (连体衣) and lying on the fire escape railings (栏杆) between the second and third storeys. I was nervous, so the baby boy became my only priority.
As I was on the phone to the emergency services, I made eye contact with the child, keeping him calm, telling him to stay there. Some people were going up the stairs to find the parents, who were apparently sleeping through the whole drama.
I just wanted the child to feel safe. I hoped he’d stay there until somebody could rescue him. Apparently he had slipped through pieces of cardboard placed next to an air-conditioning unit in the window, and without bars to protect him he’d crawled (爬) out and up the fire escape towards the next storey. He was only 16 months old. For him to even climb up and balance in that position was incredible.
Then he slipped. Instinctively (本能), he grabbed on the railing as he fell, hanging by his arms. I knew he couldn’t hold on, 25 feet above the street, for long. I sensed people had gathered behind, but my attention was purely focused on my intention to catch the baby.
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。
I made sure I was positioned to catch him.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________The moments after he was saved were exciting.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________5 . It was a quiet morning in the library, and we librarians were enjoying a rather loud chat. Suddenly, a patron (常客) marched up to us, gave us an annoyed “Shush!” and went back to her seat. How strange for a group of librarians to be shushed by a patron! Shouldn’t it be the other way around?
Well, it’s complicated. If you’re like me, a middle-aged woman, you probably remember libraries as places of silent reading. These days, however, libraries are more like active community centers.
In the past, most libraries didn’t focus much on programs for kids whose age made it impossible for them to be quiet on demand. But growing knowledge about the importance of kids and teens learning through hands-on experiences has since caused a sea change in how libraries connect with young readers. Now libraries begin offering interactive programs for kids, including crafts, board games, and story times. These types of programs certainly aren’t designed to be silent.
Along with more programs for ever-younger children, technology today has played a part in the transformation of libraries into places where both kids and adults can use computers, make something on a 3D printer and more. In addition, many libraries now offer programs for adults, who can participate in in book discussion, learn calligraphy, and even take college classes.
Of course, libraries still need peaceful phones. These days, many libraries have glassed-off study rooms or quiet areas. They are also less noisy in the early afternoons, after morning children’s programs and before the after-school kid crowd arrive.
It’s clear to me now that on the day my colleagues and I were shushed by a patron, we should have been using our “library voices” as we talked. Still, it’s unlikely that libraries will ever return to the days when they were places of silence. There’s just too much fun and learning happening.
1. How did the author respond to the patron’s behavior?A.She approved of it. | B.She was disappointed at it. |
C.She hesitated about it. | D.She was astonished at it. |
A.The past and the present of libraries. | B.The reason for the change of libraries. |
C.The activities for young children in libraries. | D.The connection between libraries and readers. |
A.They heavily depend on technology. | B.They offer online programs for adults. |
C.They still provide silent reading places. | D.They care much about time arrangement. |
A.Libraries Should be Loud | B.Reading Can be Fun in Libraries |
C.Libraries Make Learning Happen | D.Library Programs Target Children |
6 . “Shuan Q” is a meme(网络流行语)which can be used as a popular way to say “I’m speechless” with a matching emoji(表情包)at ached behind. No-one can deny the power of the Internet. Some believe it makes language weaker but some see a brighter side, believing it makes online communication easier between strangers.
An elementary school teacher in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, says that the evolution of Internet slang is not all fun and carefree. From his daily observations, he believes the “geographic boundary” between Internet slang and formal language is disappearing. On many occasions, the composition she has received from pupil have been flooded with abbreviated slangs(网络梗).
During last year’s Two Sessions, several representatives put forward proposals such as “regulating online language” and “banning vulgar(粗俗)words”, specifically to address this issue, expressing the need to reduce online language misuse and strengthen the protection of Chinese.
However, many experts and scholars of linguistics and communication including Feng Zhiwei disagree. Feng, believes that Internet language is a natural product of the dynamic development of language, and it is not necessary to ban it.
1. What made the meme “Shuan Q” become popular?A.The power of internet | B.The protection of Chinese |
C.Geographic boundary | D.Strangers’s communication |
A.They are formal. | B.They are funny and carefree. |
C.They are flooded among pupils. | D.They were supported by all people. |
A.They are natural. | B.They are misused. |
C.They should be banned. | D.They are disappearing. |
A.Doubtful | B.Objective | C.Indifferent | D.Favorable |
7 . In 1970s, a psychologist named J. P. Guilford conducted a famous study of creativity known as the nine-dot puzzle (九点谜题). He challenged research subjects to connect all nine dots using just four straight lines without lifting their pencils from the page. All the participants limited the possible solutions to those within the imaginary square. Only 20 percent managed to break out of the confinement (束缚) and continue their lines in the white space surrounding the dots.
The fact that 80 percent of the participants were effectively blinded by the boundaries of the square led Guilford to jump to the sweeping conclusion that creativity requires you to go outside the box. The idea went viral. Overnight, it seemed that creativity experts everywhere were teaching managers how to think outside the box. The concept enjoyed such strong popularity that no one bothered to check the facts. No one, that is, before two different research teams-Clarke Burnham with Kenneth Davis, and Joseph Alba with Robert Weisberg-ran another experiment.
Both teams followed the same way of dividing participants into two groups. The first group was given the same instructions as the participants in Guilford’s experiment. The second group was told that the solution required the lines to be drawn outside the imaginary box. Guess what? Only 25 percent solved the puzzle. In statistical terms, this 5 percent improvement is insignificant as this could be called sampling error.
Let’s look a little more closely at the surprising result. Solving this problem requires people to literally think outside the box. Yet participants’ performance was not improved even when they were given specific instructions to do so. That is, direct and clear instructions to think outside the box did not help. That this advice is useless should effectively have killed off the much widely spread — and therefore, much more dangerous — metaphor (比喻) that out-of-the-box thinking boosts creativity. After all, with one simple yet brilliant experiment, researchers had proven that the conceptual link between thinking outside the box and creativity was a misunderstanding.
1. What did the nine-dot puzzle study focus on?A.Visual perception. |
B.Thinking patterns. |
C.Practical experience. |
D.Theoretical knowledge. |
A.To test the catchy concept. |
B.To contradict the initial idea. |
C.To collect supporting evidence |
D.To identify the underlying logic. |
A.Groundless. | B.Inspiring. | C.Fruitless. | D.Revealing. |
A.Puzzle Solving: A Key To Creativity |
B.Thinking Outside the Box: A Misguided Idea |
C.Nine-Dot Puzzle: A Magic Test |
D.Creative Thinking: We Fell For The Trap |
8 . Imagine that as you are boarding an airplane, half the engineers who built the plane tell you there is a 10 percent chance the plane will crash, killing you and everyone else on board. Would you still board?
In 2022, over 700 top academics and researchers behind the leading artificial intelligence companies were asked in a survey about future AI risk. Half of those surveyed stated that there was a 10 percent or greater chance of human extinction from future AI systems.
The fear of AI has haunted humanity since the mid-20th century, yet until recently it has remained a distant prospect, something that belongs in sci-fi more than in serious scientific and political debates.
In the beginning was the word.
A.Humans often don’t have direct access to reality. |
B.Language is the operating system of human culture. |
C.In games like chess, no human can hope to beat a computer. |
D.By gaining mastery of language, AI is seizing the master key to civilization. |
E.Technology companies are caught in a race to put all of humanity on that plane. |
F.For thousands of years we humans have lived inside the dreams of other humans. |
G.It’s difficult for human minds to grasp the capabilities of GPT-4 and similar tools. |
9 . In the days before the Internet, critical thinking was the most important skill of informed citizens. But in the digital age, according to Anastasia Kozyreva, a psychologist at the Max Planck Institute of Human Development, and her colleagues, an even more important skill is critical ignoring.
As the researchers point out, we live in an attention economy where content producers on the Internet compete for our attention. They attract us with a lot of emotional and eye-catching stories while providing little useful information, so they can expose us to profit-generating advertisements. Therefore,we are no longer customers but products, and each link we click is a sale of our time and attention. Toprotect ourselves from this, Kozyreva advocates for learning the skill of critical ignoring, in which readers intentionally control their information environment to reduce exposure to false and low-quality information.
According to Kozyreva, critical ignoring comprises three strategies. The first is to design ourenvironments, which involves the removal of low-quality yet hard-to-resist information from around. Successful dieters need to keep unhealthy food out of their homes. Likewise, we need to set up a digital environment where attention-grabbing items are kept out of sight. As with dieting, if one tries to bank onwillpower not to click eye-catching “news”, he’ll surely fail. So, it’s better to just keep them out of sightto begin with.
The next is to evaluate the reliability of information, whose purpose is to protect you from false and misleading information. It can be realized by checking the source in the mainstream news agencies which have their reputations for being trustworthy.
The last goes by the phrase “do not feed the trolls.” Trolls are actors who internationally spread false and hurtful information online to cause harm. It may be appealing to respond to them to set the facts straight, but trolls just care about annoying others rather than facts. So, it’s best not to reward their bad behaviour with our attention.
By sharpening our critical ignoring skills in these ways, we can make the most of the Internet while avoiding falling victim to those who try to control our attention, time, and minds.
1. What can we learn about the attention economy from paragraph 2?A.It offers little information. | B.It features depressing stories. |
C.It saves time for Internet users. | D.It seeks profits from each click. |
A.To discuss the quality of information |
B.To prove the benefits of healthy food. |
C.To show the importance of environments. |
D.To explain the effectiveness of willpower. |
A.Reveal their intention. | B.Turn a deaf ear to them. |
C.Correct their behaviour. | D.Send hard facts to them. |
A.Reasons for critical thinking in the attention economy. |
B.Practising the skill of critical ignoring in the digital age. |
C.Maximizing the benefits of critical ignoring on the Internet. |
D.Strategies of abandoning critical thinking for Internet users |
10 . 假定你是校学生会主席李华,最近发现不少同学沉迷于购买盲盒。请给校英文报写一封 倡议书,号召理性消费,内容包括:
1.陈述所观察到的现象:
2.提出建议并给出理由。
参考词汇: 盲盒blind boxes
注意:
1.写作词数应为80左右:
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Dear fellow students,
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Students’ Union