2 . The saying “You need to walk a mile in their shoes” couldn’t be truer. It goes for a person in a wheelchair to attend an event. You can’t fully grasp what it would be like for your attendees who use a wheelchair to experience your event until you’ve sat in their seat.

With that in mind, Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA) offered participants an opportunity to attend the “Event Mobility & Accessible Design — An Immersive Tour” in a wheelchair. The event was led by accessibility advocate Rosemarie Rossetti, who has been in a wheelchair since an accident paralyzed (使瘫痪) her from the waist down 25 years ago. Rossetti took us for a test run of the wheelchair tour, which opened our eyes to the challenges those in a wheelchair face when attending events and gave us a better understanding of how to make those events more welcoming for them.

After we started pushing ourselves around, I was immediately reminded of a recent article on how San Diego Comic-Con attendees were disappointed except for those in a wheelchair. The exhibit hall of the event was not carpeted. The first thing you realize when pushing yourself in a wheelchair is that it’s far less physically taxing on cement (水泥) than on carpeting. You should know the truth that it takes more energy and time to navigate in a wheelchair.

I hope that my temporary experience in a wheelchair won’t fade from memory and that I will look at every event with fresh eyes. In the registration form, it’s not enough to ask whether the attendees need wheelchair access but what convenience they need.

What can be especially helpful to those in wheelchairs, Rossetti shared, was to feature an accessible navigation map in the app to highlight a wheelchair-only access route. Rossetti accompanied planners on their site visits to make sure the attendees would be fully accessible, but she also suggested proactive use of a wheelchair on the next site visit.

1. Why were the wheelchairs offered to the attendees at the event led by Rossetti?

A．To make disabled people know the event’s challenges.

B．To help them get used to disabled persons’ daily life.

C．To make the event understood better by the organizers.

D．To help them experience the event from disabled persons’ view.

2. What does the underlined word “taxing” in paragraph 3 mean?

A．Demanding.

B．Attractive.

C．Ignorant.

D．Rewarding.

3. What does the experience inspire the author to do?

A．Organize more events.

B．Care for many attendees.

C．Make events more accessible.

D．Design advanced wheelchairs.

4. What is the last paragraph mainly about?

A．The achievements Rossetti made in the past.

B．The feelings Rossetti had during the previous events.

C．Rossetti’s suggestions on helping disabled attendees.

D．Rossetti’s opinions on setting up accesses for disabled people.

4 . Cordero is the farm manager at Ollin Farms, not far from Boulder, Colorado. The locally grown vegetables on the farm aren’t just pretty. “We play an important role in public health nutrition programs,” says Cordero’s dad, Mark Guttridge, who started this farm with his wife, Kena, 17 years ago.

At a meeting with about a dozen local farmers, two state representatives, and the Colorado officials of agriculture, Guttridge explains how Boulder county has made creative investments in his farm that could be spread to the state or even national level. Before the meeting, Guttridge shows them one of those investments.

A dozen sheep, which Guttridge raises for wool, feed on root vegetables like radishes that have been leftover for them. “So these guys are out fertilizing the vegetable field,” Guttridge laughs. “They’ll be out here a couple more weeks, and then we’ll get our next summer vegetables planted right there.” Around the field is a special moveable type of fencing that Ollin Farms bought using financial aid from the Boulder County Sustainability Office. It allows them to move the sheep from one field to another, fertilizing as they go. The goal of these investments is “really building up our soil health,” he explains. “That relates directly to the nutrient quality of the food-healthy soil grows healthy food.”

The county also makes an effort to get that healthy food out to different communities to boost public health. That’s where the Boulder County Public Health department comes in. It created a coupon program to give discounts to people buying fruits and vegetables from Ollin Farms. Nutrition incentive programs, like those public health fruit and vegetable coupons, are spreading all over the country, and most are funded through the federal farm bill. Amy Yaroch, executive director at the Gretchen Swanson Center for Nutrition, says “It’s a trip le win. It’s basically good for the consumers who live in that particular community because they’re getting the healthy food, it’s good for the farmer, and then it’s good for the economy.”

1. What does Ollin Farms do?

A．It makes public nutrition health plans.

B．It offers financial aid to other farms.

C．It provides cheap food to the local community.

D．It grows fruits and vegetables rich in nutrition.

2. How does Boulder county support sustainable farming practices at Ollin Farms?

A．By raising sheep on radishes.	B．By buying fences for farmhouses.
C．By funding the farm’s soil health.	D．By giving advice about fertilizing fields.

3. What is Amy’s attitude towards “nutrition incentive programs”?

A．Cautious.

B．Dismissive.

C．Unclear.

D．Approving.

4. Which is the most suitable title for the text?

A．Couponing for Health: Stimulating Nutrition Choices

B．Growing Health: Innovations in Farm and Public Health Initiatives

C．Fertile Fields and Furry Friends: A Farming Fairy Tale

D．Local Produce, Global Impact: The Nutrition Choices of Ollin Farms

5 . Think what the places you go to for nature was like in your parents’ or grandparents’ time. In many cases, the natural places of today are more developed or surrounded by more development, than they were decades ago. But to you, they still feel like nature.

That’s what psychology professor Peter Kahn calls “environmental generational amnesia (失忆症)”. What each generation comes to think of as “nature” is relative, based on what they’re exposed to.

In early research, Kahn studied children’s concepts of the environment in Houston, one of the largest and most polluted cities in the country. He found that, when children were asked about air pollution, most could explain it and point out other cities that were polluted — but not their own. “Each generation tends to see that degraded condition as the nondegraded condition, as the common experience,” Kahn wrote.

Interacting with nature makes a difference in how people view and move in the world, Kahn said. He turned to a preschool in Seattle and observed children developing skills in nature there. “The skills are not given,” Kahn said. “We have an entire generation that spends so much time in front of screens that, when they do go out into nature, they don’t know how to interact with it, or handle themselves.”

Meaningful interactions with nature not only can teach, but also help people revive, reflect and recognize the importance of the outdoors. Developing a “nature language” — meeting the environment in ways large and small that result in positive feelings — can begin to overturn environmental generational amnesia.

Here in Seattle, the city’s largest park can serve as a laboratory for how people interact with nature. “A park of that size allows for interactions with nature that are almost impossible to have in the city. It’s not enough, but it’s better than not having it.” Kahn said. “A bigger park is better than a smaller park, and a smaller park is better than no park. You can’t take nature for granted anywhere.”

1. What can we learn from the first two paragraphs?

A．Deforestation goes better.	B．Nature disappears quickly.
C．The concept of nature changes.	D．Environmental amnesia worsened.

2. What do children in Houston think of their environment?

A．Comfortable.

B．Sustainable.

C．Accessible.

D．Acceptable.

3. From the text, meaningful interactions with nature may ________.

A．offer positive feelings	B．improve people’s memory
C．make surroundings greener	D．develop cities’ economy

4. What can we learn from Khan’s words in the last sentence?

A．Seattle’s parks aren’t natural.	B．Seattle’s nature is well-preserved.
C．More parks should be encouraged.	D．People can enjoy nature in the laboratory.

6 . 你校英文报在举办征文比赛。清你根据下面两张漫画，以“A Different Angle”为题写一篇短文进行投稿。内容包括：
1. 漫画内容；2. 你的看法。
注意：
1. 词数80左右；2. 短文的题目已给出。

A Different Angle

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7 .        近来，不少城市的“博物馆热(museum fever)”持续升温，到博物馆去已然成为一种新的生活方式。假定你是李华，请给校英文报投稿，就此现象发表评议，内容包括：1.说明“博物馆热”的现象；2.分析“博物馆热”产生的原因；3.谈谈你对“博物馆热”的看法。
注意：1．词数80左右；2．请按如下格式在相应位置作答。
                                                                                                                                Museum Fever
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8 . We grow up with a mixed message: making mistakes is a necessary learning tool, but we should avoid them. And that’s a real shame. Because when we tell kids that learning is all about the results, we teach them that mistakes are something to be feared and avoided. We stifle (压制) their interest in experimenting because experimenting means you’re going to make a mess and fail. And that’s too big a risk.

Here’s a fascinating experiment that shows how children absorb what we say about effort vs. results. One of professor Carol Dweck’s experiments asked 400 5th graders in New York City schools to take an easy short test, on which almost all performed well. Half the children were praised for “being really smart”. The other half were complimented for “having worked really hard”. Then the students were asked to take a second test and given the option of either choosing one that was pretty simple and that they would do well on, or one that was more challenging, but on which they might make mistakes. Of those students praised for effort, 90 percent chose the harder test. Of those praised for being smart, the majority chose the easy test. Professor Dweck told me: “One thing I’ve learned is that kids are exquisitely (敏锐地) familiar to the real message, and the real message is ‘Be smart’. It’s not ‘We love it when you struggle or when you learn and make mistakes.’”

One way we can fix this is by understanding the concepts of “fixed mindsets” and “growth mindsets”. Those with fixed mindsets believe either we’re good at something — whether it’s math or music or baseball — or we’re not. When we have this fixed mindset, mistakes serve no purpose but to highlight failure. Those with growth mindsets are much more likely to be able to accept mistakes because they know that they’re part of learning. And it’s been shown that when students are taught about growth mindsets, their motivation to learn improves.

1. Why do children often avoid experimenting?

A．They consider the process time-consuming.

B．They prefer easy tasks over challenging ones.

C．They are not interested in hands-on activities.

D．They are afraid of making mistakes and failing.

2. What lesson can we learn from professor Carol Dweck’s experiment?

A．Praise promotes children’s self-confidence.

B．Keep children away from struggle and mistakes.

C．Praise children for their devotion instead of their talent.

D．Parents should give their children timely encouragement.

3. Where is the text most probably taken from?

A．A guidebook to parenting.

B．A report on the art of praise.

C．An introduction to a psychology book.

D．A review of modern teaching.

4. What is the best title for the passage?

A．Is Making Mistakes a Challenging Process?

B．Is Making Mistakes a Bad Thing Among Kids?

C．Should Kids Be Praised for Efforts or Results?

D．Should Kids Have Fixed Mindsets or Growth Mindsets?

10 . In the last few months, companies, often backed by governments, have raced to launch or begin building AIs for their native languages including Indonesian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean and multiple Indian languages. But will they ever be able to compete or offer a solid alternative to Silicon Valley’s AI bots like ChatGPT?

Machine learning engineer Yennie Jun started noticing the problem when she was testing ChatGPT-4 in different languages. “I saw that it was slower, and just not as good when using it in Korean and Chinese which usually have good quality training data to draw on,” she said.

Earlier this month Yennie decided to test GPT-4 — the latest AI model from Open AI — with some tricky maths problems. She asked the same maths questions in 16 different languages and found it much better at solving problems in certain languages like English, German and Spanish. In fact, GPT-4 was able to correctly solve the maths problems in English more than three times as often compared to other languages, such as Armenian or Farsi. It wasn’t able to solve any of the tough questions in Burmese or Amharic.

“I think the current state of AI will accelerate inequality. Emerging markets just don’t have the computing power, data sets or the AI resources to compete with the western world’s models,” said Nick Adams, founding partner at Differential Ventures.

However, one promising project launched by India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology aims to improve the amount of training data in low-resourced languages by crowd sourcing. The project invites people to “make your own AI language models better by confirming data”. Participants are played audio from podcasts or shows in different Indian languages and then given digital medals in reward for translating them in their own languages. But there is a mountain to climb. Despite the huge populations of native speakers, only a few thousand people have so far got involved.

1. Why does the author ask the question in paragraph 1?

A．To present an argument.	B．To question building AIs.
C．To introduce the topic.	D．To showcase expectations.

2. What do the underlined words “draw on” in paragraph 2 mean?

A．Turn on.

B．Keep on.

C．Focus on.

D．Depend on.

3. What’s Nick’s attitude towards the present situation of AI?

A．Negative.

B．Hopeful.

C．Ambiguous.

D．Tolerant.

4. What is the last paragraph mainly about?

A．An AI language model.	B．An approach to training data.
C．A language to translate.	D．A plan launched by India.