I had no idea she would be there. My apologies for her ______ had been prepared.
When my teacher announced we would be having a(n) ______ mother-daughter tea, I felt ______ I would not be serving my mother at this special event. So I will never forget ______ the beautifully decorated gym-and there she was, sitting calmly, and ______! As I looked at her, I imagined all the arrangements this ______ woman must have had to make to be able to be with me for that one hour.
Who was ______ Granny? She was ill in bed, and Mom had to do everything for her. How did she get here? We didn’t own a car, and she couldn’t ______ a taxi. It was a long walk to get the bus, plus at least five more blocks to the ______.
And the pretty dress she was ______, red with tiny white flowers, was just right for the tea. There was no money for extra clothes, and I knew she had gone into ______ again to have it.
I was so proud! I served her tea with a ______, thankful heart, and introduced her to the group when our ______ came. I sat with my mother that day, just like the rest of the ______, and that was very ______ to me. The look of love in her eyes told me she ______.
I have never forgotten. One of the ______ I made to myself and to my children was that I would always be there for them. That promise is ______ to keep in today’s busy world But I have a(n) ______ before me that puts any ______ excuses to rest. I just recall again when mother came to tea.
1.A. absence B. error C. lateness D. rudeness
2.A. urgent B. formal C. private D. frequent
3.A. proud B. angry C. certain D. embarrassed
4.A. staying at B. returning to C. walking into D. dropping into
5.A. sobbing B. smiling C. singing D. suffering
6.A. educated B. lonely C. strange D. great
7.A. attending on B. laughing at C. cheering for D. chatting with
8.A. advance B. afford C. admit D. arrange
9.A. home B. station C. school D. market
10.A. wearing B. making C. designing D. holding
11.A. detail B. business C. action D. debt
12.A. strong B. brave C. happy D. broken
13.A. turn B. chance C. message D. decision
14.A. team B. company C. family D. class
15.A. annoying B. important C. interesting D. surprising
16.A. understood B. accepted C. agreed D. remembered
17.A. choices B. mistakes C. efforts D. promise
18.A. unfair B. difficult C. false D. wise
19.A. role B. rule C. lesson D. example
20.A. awkward B. polite C. poor D. meaningful
New Lives for Old Phones
When a new mobile phone starts to be sold in stores, many people rush out to buy one. We all want the newest, latest thing. 1..
Mike Townsend works at Total Recall, a mobile phone recycling company. “Don’t throw your old phone away. 2. if you throw it away, it goes with other rubbish to become landfill. In other words, it is put in a big hole in the ground and it becomes a big problem,” he says.
Mobile phones contain some poisonous materials. If your phone goes to a landfill, these poisonous materials can get out and get into the water under the ground. That’s the water we need to drink or water goes into rivers or the ocean. 3. That’s a lot of landfill and a lot of poisonous materials.
“At Total Recall, we separate the old phones into pieces. Most of the materials in the mobile phones can be recycled and used again. 4. For example, phone batteries contain nickel and cadmium. The nickel is used to make steel and the cadmium can be used to make new batteries.” explains Mike.
“5. You can usually just take it into a mobile phone shop and they wilt send it to us,” says Mike.
So before you throw that old mobile phone away, use it the last time: search for a recycler near you and give them a call.
A. Recycling your old phone is easy.
B. Send it to us and we’ll recycle it.
C. How much is your old mobile phone worth?
D. But what should we do with our old mobile phones?
E. Millions of mobile phones are thrown away every year.
F Recycling materials helps keep the environment greener and cleaner.
G. We take apart the old phones and they are used to make new products.
Endless queues and long waits at the ticket inspection desks at China’s major train stations were signature of the Spring Festival travel rush before this year. Every year, as the country’s biggest national holiday unfolded a huge flow of travelers would leave staff at the check-in desks facing a dilemma.
But with the installment (安装) of artificial intelligence (AI) in dozens of train stations this year, including a facial recognition system which is able to process passenger identification within five seconds and therefore speed up the waiting process, busy scenes started to become something of the past.
When a passenger approaches the camera inside the facial recognition system at the station, it scans his face and then quickly compares it with the photograph shown on his identification card in real time. If the information matches, the barrier gates will open and allow the passenger to go through.
Such use of facial recognition technology is in line with discussions heard at the recent two sessions meeting, a key annual political event, which focused on the widespread application of a security network named Tianwang (“Sky Net” in English) currently being used by China’s public security department.
The network, according to reports by the People Daily, has the potential to recognize the facial features of anyone in the world and match them on the spot with photographs on a database of criminal suspects. In fact, it can analyze photographic identity so quickly that it can scan every single Chinese face on the planet in just one second, and it would only take two seconds to scan every face in the world, with an accuracy rate of up to 99.8 percent.
Those are just two examples that highlight the development of Chinese visual AI technology, which industry insiders predict could contribute to powerful growth in the global technology sector this year.
1.What’s the author’s purpose in writing the first paragraph?
A. To introduce the following topic of the passage.
B. To describe the Spring Festival.
C. To inform readers of the development of China.
D. To explain the dilemma of the staff.
2.What’s the solution to the Spring Festival travel rush?
A. Using artificial intelligence.
B. Opening more barrier gates.
C. Limiting the number of passengers.
D. Increasing more staff at the check-in desks.
3.What can we know about facial recognition technology?
A. Its application leads to a heated discussion.
B. Its application is useless to policemen.
C. Its operating speed is not yet high enough.
D. Its accuracy rate is very high.
4.What’s the author’s attitude towards Chinese visual AI technology?
A. Depressed. B. Positive.
C. Doubtful. D. Indifferent.
Both honeybees and ants are social insects that live in groups called colonies. They survive by means of their collective intelligence. Their decision-making power is distributed throughout the group; that is, no one ant or bee makes decisions for the group. Instead, they work together. As Deborah M. Gordon, a biologist of Stanford University, says, “Ants aren’t smart. Ant colonies are.” The same is true for bee colonies. Although bees and ants are quite different physically, they have a lot in common in terms of their behavior. Specifically, honeybees and ants have similar roles within the colony, both have communication systems, and both have the capacity of learning.
Ants communicate by using chemicals called pheromones, which can alert others to danger or to a food source. For example, when worker ants find a promising source, they let the rest of colony know how to find it by leaving a trail of pheromones on the way back to the colony. The other ants pick up the message using their sense of smell. Bees, on the other hand, use movement to communicate with each other. Worker bees send message to each other by means of a “dance”. Different speeds and movements send different messages. For example, when worker bees called scouts go out to find a new hoe for the colony, they return and do a dance for the other worker bees that indicates the location of the new home and how suitable it is. The faster the scouts dance the better the new location is.
Honeybees and ants are both capable of learning. One Chinese study found that bees can be trained to learn and remember a route to a food source. The researchers also found that bees can be taught to recognize hidden objects and use the concepts of “sameness” and “difference” to accomplish certain tasks. Ants take this one step further. Recent America research has shown that ants not only have the ability to learn, but also can teach their foraging skills to other younger ants. They observed that older ants accompany young ants in search of food and teach them the route and how to avoid obstacles.
As we can see, the social behavior of honeybees and ants is quite similar. Both coordinate complex actions and accomplish crucial survival tasks by cooperating in groups consisting of many individuals. Unintelligent as they may be as individuals, as groups they often show amazing brilliance as they go about their everyday activities.
1.What do ants and bees have in common?
A. They make use of collective intelligence.
B. They live in similar-sized colonies.
C. They have small leadership groups that make all decisions.
D. They use the same method to communicate with each other.
2.What docs the speed of a bee’s dance indicate?
A. The distance to a neighboring colony.
B. The quality of a new colony location.
C. The discovery of a new food source.
D. The direction to a potential food source.
3.In paragraph 3, how docs the author demonstrate the idea that Honeybees and ants are both capable of learning?
A. By using statistics. B. By explaining reason.
C. By presenting study findings. D. By stating opinions.
4.What does the underlined part “foraging skills” refer to in the third Paragraph?
A. The skills of communicating. B. The skills of sacking food.
C. The skills of leaning. D. The skills of finding a new home.
This story happened when I was in Saint Lucia with my family. My sister, Diane, who also happens to be my best friend and one of the funniest and kindest people I know, went blind in one eye about 9 years ago. Diana sometimes feels concerned about the way her eve look now. The pupil (瞳孔) is no longer black; it’s sort of “glows” in photos. Diana recently purchased a special contact lens (隐形镜片) that makes her eye look like it did before it changed color, but she doesn’t wear this lens often because it becomes quite painful after about an hour.
One night during our holiday, a hotel photographer was taking pictures of the guests as they entered the area set up for dinner. Diana casually said if she had known there was going to be pictures taken to capture this special memory, she would have worn her contact lens so her eye wouldn’t be so shiny in the picture.
The next day, I was sitting with Diana and her husband Ted. While we were talking, the photographer who had been at the dinner the night before, handed her a photo, leaned in and quietly said, “I matched the color of your eyes in the picture.”
As he walked away, my sister happily said to me and Ted, “Look! He fixed my eye!” The photographer stopped. He turned around and walked back to our table. He put his hand on Diana’s shoulder, leaned in again and gently said, “Just to be clear: I didn’t fix your eye. There isn’t anything wrong with your eye. I simply matched the color.” Her eyes filled up with tears. It was very healing for: her heart to hear these beautiful words. It didn’t take much time but made so much difference. It helped her change the way she feels about herself.
I have always loved the quote: “The world is full of good people. If you can’1 find one, be one!” Your acts of kindness can impact the world in pro found ways!
1.My sister bought a contact lens in order to ________.
A. keep the pupil comfortable
B. show off the beautiful color of her pupil
C. protect her eye from the strong sunlight
D. avoid the pupil being too bright and shiny
2.Diana felt ________ when she knew there was a photo taken for the dinner.
A. excited B. proud
C. regretful D. shocked
3.Tears welled up in Diana s eyes because
A. she was touched by the photographer
B. she felt her eyes were so painful
C. she was hurt by the gesture of the photographer
D. she felt so sad that she didn’t wear her lens
4.What’s the best title of the passage?
A. A Shiny Pupil B. A Considerate Photographer
C. The Act of Kindness Counts D. The Contact Lens Makes a Difference
Adult education courses
Computer studies Technology is advancing at a rapid pace, and we rely more and more on computers for everything from cooking to organizing our taxes. This six-week course will give you an understanding of computer fundamentals including the use of software packages (Word, Excel and Power Point) and how to use the Internet. Start: May 2, 2019 Time: Wed 7pm-9pm Cost:￥300 Length: 6 weeks Place: Shandong University | Woodwork Learn the basics of woodworking with simple hands-on projects to build your confidence and skills. Each lesson explores a different area of woodworking that will provide you with the skills needed for any woodworking project. Flexible learning allows you to choose only the lessons that interest you. Start: April 15, 2019 Time: Mon 5pm-7pm Cost:￥30 per lesson Length: 12weeks Place: Adult Learning Centre |
Web Design Provides advanced training in software, design, and coding for the web. Students must have already completed a recognized basic web design course or have at least 2 years’ relevant work experience. Students completing the course will receive the Diploma in Advanced Web Design. Start: June 1, 2019 Time: Weekdays 9am-4pm Cost: ￥4,990 Length: 40 weeks Place: University of Technology | Art This practical course is intended to help established artists take their creativity further. From sketching and colour, to composition, painting and experimenting with style, you will study and explore an engaging variety of creative media and subject matter. Start: April 21, 2019 Time: Thur 3pm-6pm Cost:￥750 Length: 15weeks Place: City Art Centre |
1.Which courses arc suitable for beginners?
A. Web Design and Art. B. Computer Studies and woodwork.
C. Woodwork and Web Design. D. Computer Studies and Art.
2.Which course awards students an official certificate?
A. Art. B. Woodwork.
C. web Design. D. Computer Studies.
3.How much will a student who attends only half of all the woodwork lessons pay in total?
A. ￥30. B. ￥360.
C. ￥250. D. ￥180.
