Swimmers enjoy cold swims
Many people enjoy swimming in icy cold water. An open-air swimming pool,
Until the lockdown for England was announced on 4 January, outdoor pools were allowed to remain open. “Demand has taken us by surprise,” said Murray Heining, a volunteer at the Woburn Lido. Over Christmas and New Year, the lido had to offer extra openings to keep up with the demand from
Cold-water swimming has grown in popularity in the UK over the past few years. A survey found that 7.5 million people in England had swum in outdoor pools, as well as lakes, rivers and the sea, in 2018. In some areas, such as the river Wharfe in Yorkshire, this new trend has made environmental groups think more about
Some people make it a regular practice;
The Outdoor Swimming Society classifies temperatures below 6℃ as “Baltic” and from 6-11℃ as “freezing”. They advise people
It wasn’t just the water that was cold—many people experienced a white Christmas; snow fell in several counties including Yorkshire and Suffolk. Paul Davies, the UK Met Office’s chief meteorologist (气象学家), a scientist
1. 出国读大学的益处；
2. 出国读大学的弊端；
3. 发表自己的看法，并倡导同学们理性看待出国留学。
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 teachers and students,
I’d like to express my feelings on studying abroad.
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| A．He couldn’t find his hotel. | B．He fell into water. | C．He was caught in the rain. |
4 . Every festival has its own meaning. Labor Day, for example, celebrates the value of hard work. Thanksgiving is about showing thanks to people around you. And Valentines’ Day is a time when you express love to your loved ones. But somehow it now seems that all festivals we just care about one thing — shopping. And that can be a big problem.
“In a way, over-consumption (过度消费) is the mother of all our environmental problems,” Kalle Lasn once told CNN. Lasn is the organizer of Buy Nothing Day, a day set up in Canada in 1992 to fight against unhealthy spending habits, and has now become an international event. It’s held on the day, which is known as Black Friday — a famous shopping day in the US and Canada.
You can see the irony (讽刺) here.
Even though the idea of Buy Nothing Day was brought up 26 years ago, we seem to need it now more than ever. It’s just as Lasn said, all the different kinds of pollution in our lives today — bad air quality, the reduction of forest area, endangered animal species, and plastic bags found in the ocean — seem to be the same cause: over-consumption.
The latest example is the Singles’ Day shopping craze of Nov 11, which saw a new sales record. But as Nie Li, a campaigner at Greenpeace, told Reuters, “Record-setting over-consumption means record-setting waste.” And it was reported that last year the Singles’ Day packages left more than 160,000 tons of waste, including plastic and cardboard. The Collins Dictionary has also just named “single-use” its Word of the Year, pointing out the problem that there’re too many things we tow out after only using them once.
So, Buy Nothing Day might only be here for one day a year, but it’s not just to remind us to the a break from shopping on that day, but to change our lifestyle completely, focusing on fun “with people we care about” rather than wasting money on useless things.
1. What’s the authors purpose of writing the first paragraph?| A．To express the people’s love for all festivals. |
| B．To talk about the meaning of the festivals. |
| C．To appreciate the value of the festivals. |
| D．To bring out the topic of the passage. |
| A．To help people save money. | B．To cut the cost for daily life. |
| C．To prevent over-consumption. | D．To set up a new sales record. |
| A．Opposed (反对的). | B．Supportive. |
| C．Unknown. | D．Neutral (中立的). |
| A．Creating a New Lifestyle | B．Buy Nothing Day |
| C．Festivals Around the World | D．A Change in People’s Life |
5 . In recent years, Britain has seen a rise in interest in learning and teaching Chinese as a second language. In 2015, Britain’s Department for Education devoted 10 million pounds to Chinese teaching in state schools across the country. Hundreds of pupils are taking part in the program, which aims to make at least 5, 000 young people fluent in Chinese by 2022.
A Chinese-English nursery named Hatching Dragons was established in London in 2015, accepting babies from as young as 6 months to 5 years old. Two years later, the first bilingual (双语的) English and Chinese primary school was opened at Kensington, London.
Petts Wood Mandarin-English Preschool, which opened Friday at Bromley in southeastern suburb of London, is the first Chinese immersion (沉浸式) preschool founded in Britain. After three years of planning and preparation, the school has drawn expert opinions on Chinese immersion learning from Europe, the US and China. It offers Chinese and English bilingual immersive education for children aged 2 to 5.
Bromley Councillor Kim Botting, who has visited China three times, is very interested in Britain-China education exchanges. He called the school a wonderful and fantastic thing for the community while attending the opening ceremony on Friday.
The local community showed huge interest and support to the newly established preschool. Xu Zhi, head teacher of Petts Wood, said the preschool offered up to 25 places and six children registered (before the opening, with many families signed up for trial lessons in the next few weeks.
“I had the idea of establishing a bilingual preschool three years ago when I realized that more and more British families wanted an earlier start for their children’s Chinese learning,” Xu said. “Many high school students in Britain also learn Chinese at school for two or three hours each week, but that is not enough and also a bit late for language learning.”
1. What do we know about Petts Wood Mandarin-English Preschool?| A．It opens to all children aged 2 to 6 in the community. |
| B．It requires all students to register before the opening. |
| C．It is the first Chinese immersion preschool in Britain. |
| D．It employs teachers from Europe, the US and Japan. |
| A．Positive. | B．Doubtful. | C．Unconcerned. | D．Unclear. |
| A．To show the difficulty of learning Chinese. | B．To stress the importance of bilingual learning. |
| C．To praise high school students for their efforts. | D．To explain the necessity of a bilingual preschool. |
| A．A short story. | B．A book review. | C．A news report. | D．A research article. |
| A．Her chair was lost. | B．Her arm was hurt. | C．Her leg was broken. |
7 . From self-driving cars to carebots (care+ robots) for elderly people, rapid development in technology has long represented a possible 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 2035 as artificial intelligence (AI) 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.
Another study by Pew Research Centre 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.”
“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. Why are carebots mentioned?| A．To give a definition. | B．To provide an example. |
| C．To make a comparison. | D．To explain a theory. |
| A．People will take the place of AI. |
| B．US technology balances job opportunities. |
| C．Many people have to change occupations. |
| D．Big companies are more innovative and flexible. |
| A．Hopeful. | B．Doubtful. | C．Unconcerned. | D．Worried |
| A．Art. | B．Travel. | C．Education. | D．Technology. |
赞成(45%) | 反对(50%) | 没有发表意见(5%) |
| 1.很多人只是聊天或玩电子游戏，浪费时间； 2.很多网站内容不适合学生。 | 1.上网是现代化的交流方式； 2.查阅信息，上网校，收发电子邮件等。 | 征求编辑的意见 |
1.可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯；
2.词数：100词(开头语已为你写好，但不计入总数)。
Dear Editor,
Some students go to the net bars near our school almost every day.
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Yours sincerely,
Li Hua
9 . The artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT can offer everything from answers to basic general knowledge questions, to writing essays and poems. Ask ChatGPT to write about the history of the French Revolution or Battles of Hastings, and it will provide a perfect essay in less than a second. It's such a powerful tool openly accessible to any student for free. However, AI-based plagiarism (抄 袭) or so called “AIgiarism” is fast taking off across student populations internationally, ringing alarm bells in schools and universities around the world
The developers OpenAI have since decided to prevent the misuse of its technology. The company is developing a system, water marks, for identifying those who cheat by submitting essays written by ChatGPT. By using the system which changes certain works into a recognizable pattern, the machine written text could be identified by anyone looking for the signs. These changes would not be noticeable to the reader. The researchers say that by setting up this kind of security system, it could prevent the technology from being misused for whatever reason. Such measures will also prevent an overdependence on the tool, which still has a long way to go before improving its accuracy, due to the fact that it collects the information from all over the internet. The CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, said in a statement that it would be a mistake to depend on it for anything important at this stage.
Schools also in turn have tried to take matters into their own hands, with many across Europe and the US updating their policies to warn of punishments for those who are caught using the program improperly.
Other schools have limited internet network access to ChatGPT on campus. Examiners have the sense to identify essays written by ChatGPT by a lack of emotion or personal experiences in them. This ability is a human advantage—AI will struggle to copy.
1. Why does the author mention French Revolution and Battles of Hastings?| A．To explain what they are. | B．To introduce the history of France. |
| C．To show the power of ChatGPT. | D．To make a comparison between them. |
| A．It will make ChatGPT helpless for people. |
| B．It will probably prevent an overdependence on ChatGPT. |
| C．The readers are worried about the system's future. |
| D．It has successfully recognized essays written by ChatGPT. |
| A．AI is able to match humans. |
| B．AI has no ability. |
| C．AI has an advantage over humans. |
| D．There is something that AI can't copy from humans. |
| A．Actions Against the Misuse of ChatGPT |
| B．ChatGPT Is Forbidden |
| C．All the Systems of OpenAI |
| D．ChatGPT—A Powerful Tool |
| A．The man. | B．The firefighters. | C．The man’s brother. |
