1 . I ran into a friend a few days ago and greeted him in the familiar way. He gave the usual
In today’s world of fast and quickly
The
So, don’t admire other people’s near perfect sides any more. No matter how
| A．point | B．description | C．response | D．goal |
| A．added | B．created | C．wrote | D．spelt |
| A．ridiculous | B．facial | C．lovely | D．grateful |
| A．Obviously | B．Eventually | C．Gradually | D．Excitedly |
| A．slipping | B．infecting | C．competing | D．struggling |
| A．emerging | B．expanding | C．dismissing | D．disappearing |
| A．impression | B．permission | C．pressure | D．affection |
| A．staff | B．dialect | C．catalogue | D．stuff |
| A．express | B．decide | C．believe | D．report |
| A．asking | B．causing | C．damaging | D．losing |
| A．idea | B．fact | C．hope | D．opinion |
| A．panicked into | B．given up | C．tricked into | D．cleared up |
| A．scale | B．occasion | C．level | D．course |
| A．interesting | B．disappointing | C．developing | D．misleading |
| A．successes | B．frustrations | C．setbacks | D．downsides |
| A．perfect | B．poor | C．low | D．cold |
| A．strengths | B．challenges | C．desires | D．influences |
| A．obtain | B．possess | C．remove | D．sense |
| A．react | B．exist | C．float | D．lift |
| A．frequent | B．soft | C．evident | D．different |
2 . With almost all big employers in the United States now using artificial intelligence (AI) and automation in their hiring processes, the public is considering some urgent questions: How can you prevent discrimination in hiring when a machine is keeping the discrimination? What kind of methods might help?
Some 83% of employers, including 99% of Fortune 500 companies, now use some form of automated tools as part of their hiring process, said the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) chair Charlotte Burrows at a hearing on Tuesday. She said everyone needs to speak up on the debate over these technologies. “The risks are simply too high to leave this topic just to the experts. ”
Last year, the EEOC issued some guidance around the use of cutting-edge hiring tools, noting many of their shortcomings. The agency found that resume (简历) scanners that prioritize keywords and programs that evaluate a candidate’s facial expressions and speech patterns in video interviews can create discrimination. Take, for example, ‘a video interview that analyzes an applicant’s speech patterns to determine their ability to solve problems. A person with a speech problem might score low and automatically be screened out. The problem will be for the EEOC to root out discrimination-or stop it from taking place.
The EEOC is considering the most appropriate ways to handle the problem. It’s agreed that inspections are necessary to ensure that the software used by companies avoids intentional or unintentional discrimination. But who would conduct those inspections is a more challenging question. Each option presents risks, Burrows pointed out. A third party may turn a blind eye to its clients, while a government-led inspection could potentially stop innovation.
In previous remarks, Burrows has noted the great potential that AI decision-making tools have to improve the lives of Americans, but only when used properly. “We must work to ensure that these new technologies do not become a high-tech pathway to discrimination,” she said.
1. What does Burrows suggest, people do?| A．Make their own voice heard. |
| B．Follow the experts’ suggestions. |
| C．Stop using AI in hiring processes. |
| D．Watch debates about technologies. |
| A．By scanning keywords. |
| B．By evaluating resumes. |
| C．By analyzing personalities. |
| D．By interpreting speech patterns. |
| A．High expense. |
| B．Unfair results. |
| C．Age discrimination. |
| D．Innovation interruption. |
| A．Favorable. | B．Disapproving. |
| C．Objective. | D．Doubtful. |
This is an unbelievable real Christmas story: one of courage, life and passing on love.
Twenty-five years ago, Ray Anderson, a single parent with a one-year-old son, was returning home after giving out gifts to the needy people on Christmas Eve when he witnessed a terrible accident which took place when the driver of a truck ran a red light and collided (碰撞)with the car of Sandra Jenkins. The influence of the collision killed Sandra instantly, but her three-month-old daughter was left trapped upside down in the burning car seemingly doomed to a fiery tomb.
While others looked on in horror, Anderson jumped out of his car and crawled (爬)into the car through the broken window to try to free the baby. Seconds later, the car was totally on fire, but Anderson was unexpectedly able to pull the baby to safety. While the child came out of the accident with no injuries, Anderson suffered third degree burns over 80 percent of his body.
Two days later, Anderson died, but his heroic act was published widely in the media. Anderson’s son was soon raised by relative, and the family moved to the East Coast.
The most unbelievable part of this story unfolded only last week. Karen and her fiance(未婚夫), Aaron, were looking through some old boxes in the basement of Karen’s home when they came across some old newspapers. “This is me when I was a newborn baby. My mother was busy with some volunteer work when the accidnet happened. I was rescued from a burning car, but my mother died in the accident,” explained Karen. Although Aaron knew Karen’s mother had died years earlier, he never fully understood the situation until he started to skim over the newspaper article. Karen continued to sort through some old books when saw Aaron absorbed in the details of the accident.
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。
Then she noticed, to her much surprise, tears rolling down from his eyes, and he began to cry uncontrollably.
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According to the article, Aaron’s father and Karen’s mother were both on a task of helping the needy families in the area.
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4 . According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, China’s digital economy has increased by 15.9 percent annually since 2012, reaching 45.5 trillion yuan ($6.32 trillion) last year. Facing the growing digital economy and new vacancies developed in the sector such as deliverymen and livestreaming anchors(主播), young people, especially those born after 2000, are expressing a stronger willingness for flexible work relations with companies, and also wish to become “digital workers” with flexible work locations and schedules.
“The Internet helps me a lot. I check emails from my clients and submit my proposals through WeChat, and then we discuss plans via teleconference. I love working from home actually,” said Mi Lu, a 28-year-old new media operator in Beijing. “We work everywhere, perhaps in a cafe, or on a bullet train or even on the table of a restaurant.”
To cater to young people’s work preferences, more companies have begun to include “flexible working mode” in their recruitment advertisements. Zhaopin, a website, said vacancies with flexible work available make up 15 to 20 percent of total vacancies on its platform, especially for industries in the growing gig economy such as transportation and logistics(物流). According to Zhaopin, the proportion of flexible vacancies in these industries has increased to 25 percent this year, up from 10 percent in 2018.
However, the flexibility may bring risks to workers’ rights protection, according to Zhaopin. It said that though roughly 60 percent of companies posting vacancies on its platform offer insurance, the proportion is decreasing.
Li Qiang, vice-president of Zhaopin, said that the greatest risk to those seeking flexible work is whether the company pays the salary fully and on time. “It’s necessary for job seekers to set up a long-term development plan, rather than be shortsighted.” He added that companies may bear risks that flexible employees can’t deliver high-quality work in a limited time period, which requires the companies to establish a sound work delivery standard to help evaluate employee performance.
1. What factor contributes to flexible work?| A．The booming digital economy. | B．The desire for more free time. |
| C．The disappearance of some positions. | D．The improvement of working conditions. |
| A．They ignore the youth’s requests. | B．They follow the old working mode. |
| C．They provide positions accordingly. | D．They reduce working opportunities. |
| A．The companies pay higher salary. | B．The job seekers make a detailed plan. |
| C．The companies make reasonable rules. | D．The job seekers apply for positions on time. |
| A．A new internet-related working model | B．Job seekers more keen on flexible work |
| C．The rapidly developing digital economy | D．Companies well prepared for new risks |
5 . Schools in US are huge consumers of energy. According to ENERGY STAR, K- 12 schools spend more than $6 billion every year on energy, far more than the amount spent on other resources, and at least 30 percent of this energy is used inefficiently or needlessly.
Realizing that, some schools are seeking measures to save energy in several ways, from low-cost adjustments, such as turning off lights in unused rooms, to large-scale projects, such as turning to green equipment.
As solar energy is becoming a more financial choice for powering buildings, more schools are making the move toward the renewable energy and using solar panels(太阳能电池板)on their rooftops. According to an online solar marketplace EnergySage, schools have their strong points to use solar energy. They often have the kind of enough space, suitable locations that are perfect for setting up solar panels.
In September 2020, a nonprofit Generation180 released its third edition of a study on solar use in US schools. The findings showed that more than 7, 300, or 55 percent, of K- 12 public and private schools used solar energy, the number has increased by 81 percent since 2014.
They also described how solar schools were saving millions in energy bills, and provided several cases to show the increased savings achieved by solar-powered school districts. For ex- ample, an Arkansas school district used its every year's energy savings of nearly $100, 000 to increase its teachers' salaries.
The Interstate Renewable Energy Council, which tracks the number of K- 12 schools with solar equipment and helps schools go solar, says on its website that schools with solar setups have an opportunity to educate students about clean energy, and show them that they are de- voted to do something for students' and the planet's health and future.
Third-party ownership also makes funding for 79 percent of schools to use solar energy possible, meaning a majority of schools don't have to spend large amounts of money but can get the rewards of solar energy.
1. How does the author lead in the topic of the text in the first paragraph?| A．By raising a problem. |
| B．By giving an example. |
| C．By making a comparison. |
| D．By offering an evidence. |
| A．Free access to using solar energy. |
| B．Enough space to fix solar equipment. |
| C．Financial support from solar marketplace. |
| D．Being the largest consumers of the energy. |
| A．Increasing their operating expense |
| B．Threatening their teachers' income. |
| C．Raising the students' environmental awareness. |
| D．Reducing their total amount of energy consuming. |
| A．Achievable | B．Doubtful. | C．Challenging. | D．Worrying. |
6 . Science reporting on climate change does lead Americans to adopt more accurate beliefs and support government action on the issue, but these gains are fragile, a new study suggests. Researchers found that these accurate beliefs fade quickly when people are exposed to coverage skeptical of climate change.
“It is not the case that the American public does not respond to scientifically informed reporting when they are exposed to it,” said Thomas Wood, associate professor of political science at the Ohio State University. “But even truly accurate science reporting recedes from people’s frame of reference very quickly.”
Results showed that accurate science reporting didn’t persuade only politicians and people who initially rejected human-caused climate change also had their opinions shifted by reading accurate articles. The study involved 2,898 online participants who participated in four waves of the experiment during the fall of 2020.
In the first wave, they all read authentic articles in the popular media that provided information reflecting the seientifie views on climate change. In the second and third waves, they read either another scientific article, an opinion article that was skeptical of climate science, or an article on an unrelated subjeet. In the fourth wave, the participants simply were asked their beliefs about the science of climate change and their policy attitudes.
To rate participants’ scientific understanding. the researchers asked after each wave if they believed that climate change is happening and has a human cause. To measure their attitudes, researchers asked participants if they favored government action on climate change and if they favored renewable energy.
“What we found suggests that people need to hear the same accurate messages about climate change again and again. If they only hear it once, it recedes very quickly,” Wood said. It was significant that accurate reporting had positive effects on all groups, including those who originally rejected climate change. But it was even more encouraging that it affected attitudes.
1. What does the underlined word “recedes” in paragraph 2 mean?| A．Increases. | B．Graduates. | C．Disappears. | D．Strikes. |
| A．The research object. | B．The research result. |
| C．The research purpose. | D．The research procedure. |
| A．To survey the government’s satisfaction rate. |
| B．To make an assessment on their attitudes. |
| C．To teach them scientific understanding. |
| D．To measure action on climate change. |
| A．Science Report Of Climate Change Can Affect Minds |
| B．Online Participants Joined In A Four-Wave Experiment |
| C．Accurate Science Reporting Don’t Persuade Only Politicians |
| D．People Should Hear Accurate Messages About Climate Change |
7 . Good Morning Britain (GMB) launches special “listening benches” in order to solve loneliness. EastEnders star Maisie Smith joined Susanna and Martin in the studio to talk about her involvement in a special part of the 1 Million Minutes campaign — GMB’s special “listening benches” across the country.
Six special “listening benches” have been designed by six celebrities, and can be found in six cities across the UK — and they’re in place to encourage people to strike up a conversation. Maisie joined the show to share why the campaign is important to her.
“I’m always very open about mental health,” Maisie explained. “It doesn’t matter who you are, where you’re from, what you have — everyone is going through something and I just think the world would be a kinder place if everyone understood that.”
“I think especially growing up in the limelight (引人注目) as a teenager, you’re very judgemental of yourself when you do see comments of other people judging you. It can add to the stress of the things you re already going through. I think people do think I’m confident because I cover my nerves with a big smile and that’s what I’ve been doing in my whole life.”
Susanna asked Maisie if she had a technique for dealing with her nerves. “It depends on what it is,” said Maisie. “A lot of the time — and it’s going to sound really stupid — but I write a script. I write down all of the questions that I could be asked and try to come up with something so that my brain won’t go blank when I’m under pressure.
1. What is the theme of “listening benches”?| A．Caring for oneself. | B．Changing the world. |
| C．Dealing with loneliness. | D．Protecting the environment. |
| A．To let people know about her life. | B．To share her feelings of the campaign. |
| C．To set up a model for other celebrities. | D．To ask more people to express their mind. |
| A．Protective. | B．Private. |
| C．Serious. | D．Outspoken. |
| A．A programme on mental health. | B．GMB interviewing celebrities. |
| C．Techniques for responding to nerves. | D．Preparations before being interviewed. |
8 . Many people try to make society change for the better. The real challenge is how to get good solutions to scale up(按比例放大)for major change. New research suggests that social change may depend on the relationship between beneficial behaviors and policies.
The research, conducted by the University of Maine, University of Vermont and Université Laval in Quebec, Canada, attempted to understand how society can accomplish major, transformative social change, particularly the kind of social change necessary to solve the growing problem of climate change.
The researchers studied a behavior that benefits groups, but does not spread without pol- icy support, such as a costly measure to relieve the effects of climate change. They created a mathematical model, which simulates (模拟) a society where agents live in groups and adopt the beneficial behavior of peers. That behavior, given the right conditions, can spread like viral, but not if the institutional costs are too high.
“Large-scale social change is not just policy or behavior, but the emergence of a new self- reinforcing (自我强化)system that combines both. This allows us to ask new questions, such as “how would a new pattern of behavior and policy spread?’” says Laurent Hébert-Dufresne, lead author on the study.
The results showed that both behavioral change and policy change are required to achieve large-scale social change-and that they need to happen together. Though neither can get the job done on its own, policy change is especially critical. They found that sometimes the beneficial behavior can spread too far. In some cases, the spread of behavior beyond groups with supporting policy can reduce its perceived success and slow the spread of the policy, thereby limiting beneficial social change overall.
In future research, the team aims to apply these types of models to all sorts of beneficial social change, particularly the challenge of tackling climate change.
1. What factor may determine social change according to the research?| A．Beneficial behavior. |
| B．Good policies. |
| C．Public awareness. |
| D．Rules and beneficial action. |
| A．To understand what social change is. |
| B．To figure out the way society changes. |
| C．To accomplish trans-formative social changes. |
| D．To tackle the growing problem of climate change. |
| A．Put theory into practice. |
| B．Write essays about their study. |
| C．Take challenges of climate change. |
| D．Do surveys on their research subject. |
| A．Travel. |
| B．Amusement. |
| C．Society. |
| D．Economy. |
9 . How will this age be remembered? What material or innovation will most define the current era? According to a new exhibition at London’s Design Museum, the typical feature isn’t a game-changing material but rubbish.
Waste Age, the theme of the exhibition, is a wake-up call, not so much to the consumers but to the producer and most importantly the government. lt is not intended to be a criticism of buying that take away coffee on your way to the museum or forgetting your cotton bag, but an eye opening look at the people working on creative solutions. “We want to show how design is best placed to address rubbish issues,” says Justin McGuirk, the exhibition leader.
A striking item on display is created by Ibrahim Mahama, who has built a giant wall of old TV monitors that play videos where workers burn abandoned electrical cables (电缆) to harvest precious metal. Mahamahas asked them to cast the recycled metal in the form of surrounds, which surround the giant wall on display.The poisonous burning scenes in the videos are desperate, but the message is clear; waste is precious.
“In many ways ‘waste’ is a category error,” says McGuirk. It’s often perfectly good material that simply undervalued.” The exhibition attracts designers who are already working on what a future of above-ground mining might look like and exploring how objects and buildings can be taken apart and their parts reused. There is the work of the pioneering Belgian group Rotor, a team of architects who set up a company to carefully remove materials and components from buildings scheduled for the breaking hammer.
The final section of the exhibition moves beyond fixing and recycling to imagine a post-waste world where materials are grown rather than extracted (提炼), like sea stone “on display, a concrete-like material made from seashell pieces. But such biodegradable (可生物降解的) solutions come with a problem: how many times have you thrown a biodegradable container in the garbage can before realizing it is actually compost (混合肥料)? However, we can adjust behaviour and expectations to meet the promising new bio-future.
1. What is the purpose of the exhibition?| A．To display the most widely used material. |
| B．To criticize the current throwaway culture. |
| C．To show possible solutions to waste problems. |
| D．To inform the customers of the harm from rubbish. |
| A．He collects old TV monitors for the exhibition. |
| B．He shows the way to recycle waste into new surrounds. |
| C．He treats the recycled material in a biodegradable way. |
| D．He recycles metal from used electrical cables in person. |
| A．To give a new definition of waste. |
| B．To present the creativity of its architects. |
| C．To make a prediction about recyclable buildings. |
| D．To clarify the concept of above-ground mining. |
| A．Favorable. | B．Doubtful. |
| C．Intolerant. | D．Conventional. |
10 . Talking to your children about the misinformation they may find online is a great idea. Children don’t always have the judgment or critical thinking skills to test what they read or watch, but they’ll develop these abilities quickly if you help them figure out how to separate fact from fiction. We’re here to help you do just that!
Don’t wait for your kids to approach you with questions——instead, take a few minutes to sit down with them. Let them know that there’s a lot of content out there on the Internet, and not all o£ it is true. With everything going on in the world, remind your kids that they might be seeing a lot of confusing, false information going around on social media and other parts of the web.
It’s a good idea to turn news reports and TV shows into teachable moments. Look for small opportunities to start helpful conversations about misinformation with your kids. Take a TV show or newspaper article and transform it into a helpful, easy way to understand what misinformation is9 and how to avoid it.
Misinformation can be really upsetting and stressful for your kids to think about. Let them know that you’re always available to listen and answer their questions if they’re feeling confused. Reassure your kids that there are no stupid questions, and that you’re always willing to explain something for them.
Teach your kids a few tricks to fact-check misinformation online. Remind your kids to be on the lookout for strange-looking website like those ending with co. Tell them to read through the headline. If it has a lot of mistakes, or if it’s written in all capital letters, there’s a good chance that it might be misinformation. Additionally, introduce your kids to official websites, which are quick and easy ways to fact-check information.
1. Why should people talk to their children about online misinformation?| A．There is no information holding true online, |
| B．There is no one else willing to teach the children. |
| C．Children lack the ability to judge the information. |
| D．Children can’t develop the judgement on their own. |
| A．relieve children’s financial burden |
| B．approach children positively to help them |
| C．remind parents to seize every chance to teach |
| D．encourage children to communicate with parents |
| A．A passage on the website www. i21st.cn. |
| B．A passage on the website www. pep. com. cn. |
| C．A passage titled with Origins of the Mandela Effect”. |
| D．A passage titled with ”SHOK! GAS RAN OUT YESTERDAY“. |
| A．Parents. | B．Teenagers. | C．Students. | D．Teachers. |
