1 . We are encountering real-world examples of how AI can harm human relations. As digital assistants such as Alexa or Siri become popular, we become accustomed to talking to them as though they were alive. Writing in these pages several years ago, Judith Shulevitz described how some of us are starting to treat them as friends and therapists. Shulevitz herself says she confesses (忏悔) things to Google Assistant that she wouldn’t tell her husband. If we grow more comfortable talking to our devices about our secrets, what happens to our human marriages and friendships? Designers and programmers typically create devices whose responses make us feel better—but may not help us be self-reflective or think over painful truths. As Al goes deeper into our lives, we must face the possibility that it will prevent our emotions and deep human connects.
Besides, we will fight with some other challenges. The age of driverless cars, after all, is upon us. These vehicles promise to considerably reduce the exhaustion and distraction that put human drivers in danger, thus preventing accidents. But what other effects might they have on people? Driving is a very modern kind of social interaction, requiring high levels of cooperation. I worry that driverless cars, by taking away from us an occasion to exercise this ability, could contribute to its decline.
Not only will these vehicles be programmed to take over driving duties and hence to remove from humans the power to make moral judgments (for example, about which pedestrian to hit when a crash is unavoidable) , they will also affect humans with whom they’ve had no direct contact. For instance, drivers who have steered awhile alongside an autonomous vehicle traveling at a steady, changeless speed might drive less attentively, thus increasing their likelihood of accidents once they’ve moved to a part of the highway occupied only by human drivers. Alternatively, experience may reveal that driving alongside autonomous vehicles travelling in perfect accordance with (按照) traffic laws actually improves human performance.
Either way, we should be careful to launch new forms of AI without first taking such unexpected social effects into account. We must apply the same effort that we apply to the hardware and software that make self-driving cars possible to managing AI’s potential effects on those outside the car. After all, we install brake lights on the back of your car not just, or even primarily, for your benefit, but for the sake of the people behind you.
1. What can be inferred about human relationships from the first paragraph?| A．AI will lead to distant inter-personal relationships. |
| B．We will feel comfortable speaking to others online. |
| C．AI will enable people to communicate more with others. |
| D．We will be more self-reflective in interaction thanks to Al. |
| A．drivers’ interaction with the cars |
| B．drivers’ exhaustion and distraction |
| C．our ability to cooperate with others while driving |
| D．our ability to deal with emergencies while driving |
| A．They may be better at making more judgments than human drivers. |
| B．They need to vary their speed to make contact with human drivers. |
| C．They may make human drivers in other cars drive more safely. |
| D．They need to force human drivers to concentrate in the car. |
| A．To present the challenges brought by AI. |
| B．To explain the reason why AI may harm human relations. |
| C．To put forward how to solve the unexpected effect of AI. |
| D．To discuss the advantages and disadvantages of driverless cars. |
South Koreans have enjoyed their first close-up look of new baby giant pandas at a name-revealing ceremony that is also
What to name the twin sisters was widely discussed among netizens after they were born on July 7 in theme park Everland. The names were
The baby pandas,
Everland said it would monitor the twins’ health
3 . Food companies engineer junk food to make it addictive. They label their products to make them seem much healthier than they are. And their advertisements target children.
All of this is according to a news report read recently by students in a Texas middle school. They were taking part in an experiment run by the University of Chicago and the University of Texas. Researchers had students learn about food-industry advertising strategies. They wanted to know if learning about them would change how kids feel about junk food. All over the world, kids are eating more foods that are high in salt, sugar, and fat. That is partly the result of clever ads that make junk food attractive. Companies use varying strategies. An ad with cartoon characters may make cereal seem fun to eat. A professional athlete enjoying a sugary drink may make it look cool. Advertisers know that if kids want a product, they’ll beg their parents to buy it.
Christopher J. Bryan led the study. He says that when kids question the motives behind junk-food ads, they feel like they’re fighting injustice. “The reward is knowing you’re doing the right thing,” he says. In the Texas study, Bryan had students view ads on an iPad. Their job was to write or draw on the screen, to make each ad’s message true. For example, a McDonald’s ad showed a Big Mac and the words. “The thing you want when you order salad.” To the end of the sentence, a student added “should be salad.”
The results of Bryan’s Texas study were published in April. They showed that three months after analyzing ads, students were still choosing healthier snacks: milk instead of sugary juices, fruit over cookies. “Kids are becoming aware of themselves as agents in the world,” Bryan says. “They see a chance to make the world a better place.”
1. What are the researchers trying to do with this experiment?| A．To teach kids to design unreal ads. | B．To help kids to perform better at school. |
| C．To draw public attention to kids’ education. | D．To change the way kids think about junk food. |
| A．They sell their products at a discount. | B．They use various attractive advertising. |
| C．They try to influence kids’ parents. | D．They increase the quantity of their products. |
| A．By correcting unreal advertisements. | B．By offering suggestions to food industry. |
| C．By making up their own advertisements. | D．By studying industry advertising strategies. |
| A．Indifferent. | B．Neutral. | C．Satisfied. | D．Critical. |
| A．Clear the road. | B．Run to the meeting. | C．Wait in the car. |
5 . Who says that being roommates with someone from a completely different generation has to be strange? Lately, more and more Americans are becoming intergenerational (代际的)roommates, and they’re changing the way people think they should be living.
Explained as those that are separated by at least one generation living together, there has been a major increase in intergenerational roommate arrangements (安排)within the United States since 1971. In fact, statistics show that this number has actually quadrupled (增长四倍)since then. In a Pew Research Center article, it shared that by March 2021, there were at least 59. 7 million Americans that had many generations living under one roof.
There are a ton of reasons that come into play for these types of arrangements. For some, it’s because of the increase in the average life-expectancy age(平均预期寿命), a decreased birth rate, a rise in college tuition, the ever rising rentals in almost every coastal city, and more. But if anything, many say that one main reason behind the rise is that older people have space to rent out and that having younger people around just makes them happier.
According to a 25-year-old robotics student living in Massachusetts, Nadia Abdullah, who moved in with her 64-year-old roommate Judith in 2019, “It was perfect——Judith has become like my family.”
Their arrangement was $700 a month from Nadia, plus the promise of her doing some help around the house. This also allowed Nadia to live just 6 miles from Boston and 30 minutes from her robotics job located in Beverly Mass. Nadia was matched with Judith through website, a renting center specifically created to find intergenerational roommates.
Another young renting center reviewer, Kaplan, also gave some opinions on the service and why it’s so special, saying, “Through this, I lived with Sarah while attending Harvard. She provided the type of knowledge you just can’t Google——showing me how to garden, how to cook fish, and add French Romanticism to life.”
1. What is the increasing housing trend mentioned in the text.| A．More people are living together as roommates. |
| B．Strangers of a generation are living together like a family. |
| C．Different generations are living under the same roof. |
| D．Family members of different generations are living together. |
| A．The types of the arrangements. | B．The reasons for the arrangements. |
| C．The solutions to the arrangements. | D．The problems with the arrangements. |
| A．How to google special knowledge. | B．How to build a garden. |
| C．How to fish. | D．How to live a romantic life |
| A．The website is popular with university students. |
| B．The intergenerational roommates should help each other. |
| C．The intergenerational roommate arrangements work well. |
| D．The elderly benefit more than the young from the arrangements. |
6 . About one-tenth of the world’s population suffers from hunger and nearly one in three people face food insecurity, according to recent estimates. Yet behind those striking figures hides another, closely related threat: water insecurity.
In a new 25-country study, researchers report a strong link between water insecurity, a lack of reliable access to sufficient water, and food insecurity. The researchers analyzed data from a nationally representative sample of over 31, 000 people ages 15 and older in 25 low-and middle-income countries across Africa, Latin America and Asia. Overall, about 18% of participants were classified as water insecurity. This ranged from about 15%in Asia to over 34% in sub-Saharan Africa.
The findings, based on data collected for the first time in 2020 by Northwestern University and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations(FAO), suggest that improving access to water could be key to sustainably and effectively addressing food insecurity in many places.
While the study did not assess the causes of food or water insecurity, researchers said several factors could explain the linkage. For those living in poverty, spending money on water can mean less money available for food. For farmers, water insecurity can mean less water available for growing crops and raising livestock. Time is also an issue: Traveling far from home to collect water shifts the time available to generate income or prepare food.
Based on these findings, researchers suggested food insecurity and water insecurity should be measured and addressed at the same time. This would ensure that insufficient water does not pose an additional barrier to food security and in particular to food utilization (使用), for example, by preventing people from using food provided by food assistance programs because there is no water to prepare it. As such, efforts to improve access to water could also bring benefits for food security.
1. What is the purpose of paragraph 1?| A．To list some figures. | B．To make an estimate. |
| C．To introduce the topic. | D．To make a comparison. |
| A．Through experimental test. | B．Through doing surveys. |
| C．Through field research. | D．Through data analysis. |
| A．By bettering water supply. | B．By raising food awareness. |
| C．By exploring water sources. | D．By improving access to food. |
| A．No place to prepare it. | B．Lack of water to cook it. |
| C．No means to transport it. | D．Short of money to buy it. |
7 . The passenger who successfully landed a plane after its pilot fell unconscious told about the experience. Darren Harrison was on his way back from a fishing trip in the Bahamas when the pilot told him and the other passenger, a friend of the pilot’s, that he didn’t feel right.
Harrison quickly asked the pilot what needed to be done by the point when the pilot was already unresponsive. Making his way to the front of the plane, he realized that the aircraft was in a nose dive, moving at a very fast rate over the open ocean. “At that point, I knew if I didn’t react, we would die,” said Harrison.
Harrison reached over the pilot’s body and positioned his arms over him to grab the controls, slowly starting to pull back on the stick and turn. He did all this just out of common sense. Harrison said that the first moments before he made any communication with ground controls stood out to him as the scariest part of the whole story.
Barefoot in the front of the plane, he placed the headset that the pilot had been wearing on his head, only to discover the cord (电线)was worn and unplugged. From there, he asked the other passenger for his headset and was able to connect. with air traffic control, who guided him on how to safely land. Once they reached the ground, Harrison said he slowly feathered the brakes as they made it down the runway.
When the aircraft finally came to a stop, Harrison said he thanked the man on the other side of the headset before throwing it on the dash of the plane. He said his strongest prayer was “for the guy in the back” while he prayed for the safety of everything that happened.
1. What did Harrison do before boarding the aircraft?| A．He went fishing. | B．He swam in the sea. |
| C．He hiked along the seaside. | D．He learned how to fly a plane. |
| A．After hearing the pilot’s words. | B．After realizing what happened. |
| C．During the landing of the plane. | D．Before initially contacting air traffic control. |
| A．Paragraph 1 and paragraph 2. | B．Paragraph 2 and paragraph 3. |
| C．Paragraph 3 and paragraph 4. | D．Paragraph 4 and paragraph 5. |
| A．Rich and successful. | B．Calm and responsive. |
| C．Optimistic and happy. | D．Humorous and helpful. |
1. 简述你校食堂餐桌浪费现象；
2. 提出解决办法；
3. 倡议共同行动。
注意：1. 可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯；
2. 词数100左右（开头已经给出，但不计入总词数)。
参考词汇：节约 thrift； 光盘行动 “Clean Your Plate” campaign
Dear fellow students,
I am Li Hua, president of the Student Union.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Student Union
增加：在缺词处加一个漏字符号（∧），并在其下面写出该加的词。
删除：把多余的词用斜线（\）划掉。
修改：在错的词下划一横线，并在该词下面写出修改后的词。
注意：1. 每处错误及修改均仅限一词；
2. 只允许修改10处，多者（从第11处起）不计分。
Two years before, I traveled to Brazil and I rented for a car. Unfortunate, I had an accident and hit another car, and I needed to stay in a hospital for at least two week. I called my parents, so I did not tell them what had happened. I knew that they will be worried about myself because I was so farther away, and that my mother would not sleep if she knew. Therefore, I told them interested stories and how I was enjoying Brazil. As a result, nobody knew truth. I still think that it was the right thing to do.
10 . One of the most important things of the U. S. government’s routine in 2020 is to raise the federal (联邦) legal age for buying tobacco from age 18 to 21.
Beginning in the summer of 2020, it will be against the law to sell tobacco to anyone under the age of 21. Since 1990, the legal age permitted to buy cigarette is at least 18. The law also includes e-cigarette, not just traditional tobacco products like cigarettes and cigars, adding regulation to this industry, which has developed largely unchecked.
The use of E-cigarette has increased sharply among U. S. teenagers. According to the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, 27.5% of U. S. high school students have used e-cigarette in the past month. Raising the age one can buy tobacco is intended to avoid what many people are calling an epidemic, which is doing great harm to the health of American teenagers.
A recent outbreak of the disease related to e-cigarette has raised even more concern about e-cigarette products , although the disease is largely linked to cartridges (药筒) filled with addictive Vitamin E acetate sold in black market.
In a statement to TIME, the American Lung Association considered raising the age one can buy tobacco as an easy way to protect children’s health and prevent them from getting addicted to nicotine.
Those in favor of e-cigarette have made it clear that they support raising the legal age permission for buying and using tobacco, arguing that e-cigarette products are never designed for young people. Some anti-cigarette (反对吸烟) people have expressed their doubt of this opinion.
At present, twenty states have already raised the legal age to buy cigarette to 21.
1. What can we learn about the new law for buying tobacco?| A．It’s good for the tobacco market. | B．It also works for e-cigarette. |
| C．It aims to stop selling cigarette. | D．It’ll be illegal to buy cigarette. |
| A．Crime. | B．Shoplifting. | C．Disease. | D．Burglary. |
| A．E-cigarette products are aimed at young people. |
| B．Cigarettes only do harm to young people. |
| C．E-cigarette should not be allowed. |
| D．People don’t have to obey the legal law. |
| A．Science. | B．Culture. | C．Health. | D．Economy. |
