No student of a foreign language needs to be told that grammar is complex. By changing the order of the words and by adding a range of auxiliary verbs (助动词) , we are able to communicate variations in meaning. We can turn a statement into a question, state whether an action has taken place or is soon to take place, and perform other word tricks to convey delicate differences in meaning. Besides，grammar is universal and plays a part in every language， no matter how widespread it is. So the question which has confused many linguists is: who created grammar?
At first, this question would appear impossible to answer. To find out how grammar is created，someone needs to be present at the time of a language’s creation, documenting its emergence. Some linguists are able to trace modern complex languages back to earlier languages, but to know the forming of complex languages, the researcher needs to observe how languages are started from scratch. Amazingly, however, this is possible.
Some recent languages evolved due to the Atlantic slave trade. At that time，slaves from different nations were forced to work together. Since they could not learn each other’s languages. they developed a pidgin. Pidgins are strings of words copied from the language of the landowners. Little grammar is found in them，and in many cases it is difficult or a listener to infer when an event happened, and who did what to whom. Speakers need to use circumlocution (迁回曲折的说法) in order to make themselves understood. Interestingly，however, all it takes for a pidgin to become a complex language is for a group of children to be exposed to it. Slave children did not simply copy words from their elders, they adapted them to create a language. It included new word orders and grammatical markers. Complex grammar systems merging from pidgins are termed creoles, which are invented by children.
Some linguists believe that many of the world’s most established languages were creoles at first. The -ed ending in English past tense may have evolved from “did”,”It ended”, which was first used by kids, may once have been “It end-did”. Therefore. it would appear that even the most widespread languages were partly created by children. Children appear to have been born with grammatical machinery in their brains. which can serve to create logical, complex structures, even when there is no grammar present for them to copy.
1.What does paragraph 1 mainly tell us?
A.Language learners know that grammar is of complexity.
B.One cal do a lot with his good command of grammar.
C.Grammar is both complex and universal in languages.
D.Linguists face a question in creating confusing grammars
2.The underlined expression “from scratch” in paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to _________
A.from the very beginning
B.in ancient cultures
C.by copying something else
D.by using written information
3.What can be inferred about the slaves’ pidgin language?
A.It contained a complex grammar system.
B.It was first created by the slaves’ landowners.
C.It was based on a lot of different languages.
D.It was difficult to understand, even among slaves.
4.What can be concluded from the last paragraph?
A.The English past tense system is inaccurate.
B.English was probably once a kind of creole.
C.Linguists have proven that English was created by children.
D.Children use English past tenses differently from adults.
Here’s the bad news: Men are hurting, and, according to many researchers, masculinity (男子气) is what is hurting them and making it hard for them to maintain friendships. Society tells men to hide their feelings and expects them to be aggressive, so many men lose their friendship when growing up. The good news is that those skills can be recovered!
There are a lot of experts who can help, and here’s what they recommend:
1.Accept your own desire and normalize it for the people in your life. Way, an expert, recommends sharing articles about masculinity and friendship so that you can start these conversations! Concentrate on them and don’t forget you have the entire Internet at your fingertips, friend!
2. Model vulnerability. Say the thing that frightens or worries you, like “I’m afraid nobody will go to my party,”or”I miss my grandma every day.” Doing so will make it easier for other people to follow your lead. We are all on the elevator to a society where emotional availability is normalized, and I want you to press “door open”.
3. Ask more questions. People sometimes feel they might be prying (爱打听的) if they ask someone about themselves—especially when their friend is sharing something tough. But if you get curious in moments of vulnerability you will open the door to all kinds of growth in your relationship. Take the opportunity to really see your friend and show them they matter by following up.
4. Get close with the children in your life. Way’s research says that the top priority that helps children (especially boys) grow up to have enriching friendships is to be close with an adult relative who was not afraid to express emotions. So， if you are a father，stepfather，or thinking about becoming one， or if you have nieces or nephews, take the opportunity to be close to them and help them grow up to be good friends, too.
1.What is the common concept of being a man?
A.To have no friends at all.
B.To maintain friendships.
C.Not to show true feelings.
D.Not to hurt others aggressively.
2.Which is NOT recommended according to the passage?
A.A man should show his vulnerability in front of his fellows.
B.A man should accept and normalize people’s desire in his life.
C.A man should take the opportunity to be close to child relatives.
D.A man should show his friends they matter by asking questions.
3.What might be the best title of the passage?
A.Ways to Help Men Have Friendship.
B.How to Express True Feelings.
C.Ways to Become a True Man.
D.How to Be Brave to Have Friends.
Have you ever heard of Nollywood? Nollywood is the name of the Nigerian (尼日利亚的) film industry. Nigeria is one of the largest film industries in the world based on the quantity of films produced, placing them right below India’s Bollywood and above USA’s Hollwood!
Born in around 1992. Nollywood is the youngest compared with the other two “woods”, and uses new forms of financing and production. Now it’s in adulthood. and bigger productions have become more regular. However, this was not always the case. Although movie theaters were rare in Nigeria during earlier period, original stories were not. Despite lack of funds and experience, self-made directors began to use commercial video cameras to shoot their movies and sold them for home viewing. Even though this resulted in movies with low production value, the original stories instantly made them a hit. Today, the film industry is the largest employer after agriculture and makes up 5% of Nigeria’s GDP.
Nigeria is a big player in the industry and it is constantly improving its craft, taking on new challenges. Nollywood is known mainly for its comedies and dramas, but we are increasingly seeing horror movies and musicals.
Although sometimes heavily criticized for low production values. Nollywood continues to grow fans worldwide. Nigerian movies now make up 11% of Nigeria’s non-oil exports! The average movie is produced in 7-10 days on a budget between ￡7,000-12,000 (Hollywood’s average is around ￡60 million per movie with one year production time).This is changing, however, as more filmmakers are receiving proper training and are aiming to make films up to the international standard.
1.What is the advantage of Nollywood?
A.Commercial support. B.Original stories.
C.Dominant comedies. D.Fast production.
2.Which of the following statements about “woods” is NOT true according to the passage?
A.Bollywood produces more films than the other two “woods”.
B.Nollywood is known as the youngest among the three “woods”.
C.Hollywood’ s budget for an average movie is much less than Nollywood’s.
D.It takes much less time to produce a Nollywood film than a Hollywood one.
3.We can infer from the passage that _________.
A.Nollywood’s contribution to Nigera’s GDP is second only to agriculture
B.Nollywood makes fewer comedies and dramas than horror movies and musicals
C.movies made by Nollywood occupy more than 11% of Nigeria’ s export industry
D.more filmmakers in Nollywood are attempting to improve the quality of its films
4.The passage mainly talks about _______.
A.films worth enjoying in Nigeria.
B.major differences among the “woods”.
C.promising future of Nollywood.
D.features and changes of Nollywood.
An artificial intelligence can accurately translate thoughts into sentences, at least for a limited vocabulary of 250 words. The system may bring us a step closer to _______ speech to people who have lost the ability.
Joseph Makin at the University of California, San Francisco, and his colleagues used deep learning algorithms(算法) to study the brain _______ of four women as they spoke. The women, who all suffer from a certain kind of brain disorder, already had electrodes attached to their brains to monitor disease attacks.
Each woman was asked to read aloud from a set of sentences as the team _______ brain activity. The largest group of sentences _______ 250 unique words. The team fed this brain activity to a network algorithm related to nerves, training it to _______ regularly occurring patterns that could be linked to repeated aspects of speech. These patterns were then fed to a second network, which tried to turn them into words to _________ a sentence.
Each woman repeated the sentences at least twice, and the final repetition didn’t form part of the training data, _______ the researchers to test the system.Each time a person speaks the same sentence, the brain activity associated will be similar but not exactly the same. “Memorizing the brain activity of these sentences wouldn’t help, _______ the network instead has to learn what’s similar about them so that it can generalize to this final example,” says Makin. Across the four women, the AI’s best performance was an average translation error rate of 3 per cent.
Makin says that using a small number of sentences made it _______ for the AI to learn which words tend to follow others. For example, the AI was able to __________ that the word “Bear” was always likely to follow the word “Teddy” in a certain set of sentences, from brain activity alone.
The team tried transforming the brain signal data into __________ words at a time, rather than whole sentences, but this __________ the error rate to 38 per cent even for the best performance. “So the network clearly is learning facts about which words go together, and not just which brain activity __________ with which words,”says Makin.
This will make it hard to scale up the system to a/an __________ vocabulary because each new word increases the number of possible sentences, reducing __________. Sophie Scott at University College London says we are a long way from being able to translate brain signal data comprehensively.
1.A.assigning B.conveying C.restoring D.introducing
2.A.systems B.signals C.signatures D.symbols
3.A.illuminated B.discovered C.measured D.stopped
4.A.consisted of B.adjusted to C.agreed with D.focused on
5.A.simplify B.identify C.intensify D.justify
6.A.understand B.form C.describe D.judge
7.A.allowing B.inspiring C.instructing D.advising
8.A.because B.so C.if D.but
9.A.quicker B.slower C.easier D.tougher
10.A.split B.reflect C.decode D.tear
11.A.individual B.common C.modified D.technical
12.A.increased B.decreased C.leveled D.degraded
13.A.furnished B.mixed C.associated D.armed
14.A.passive B.active C.limited D.expanded
15.A.tendency B.currency C.accuracy D.fluency
Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.
After graduation, Susan was asked to become the executive director of the Floating Hospital. She hesitated at first, as it was a demanding job and she wondered whether she could handle it. But on second thoughts, she agreed to take the job. 1. this job turned out rewarding, she soon got tired of it. 2. (seat) at her desk one day, she wanted to go down to the New School for Social Research all of a sudden. Since she always believed intuition（直觉） was an advantage she 3. trust, she decided to have a go.
Without any plan, she titled the course ‘Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway’. Susan was nervous as she faced the first session of the twelve-week course. The two hours went on smoothly, but she then 4. (challenge) with a new fear, for she didn’t know what to present the next week. But surprisingly, every week she found she had more to say. Her confidence level growing, she realized. She had equipped 5. so much over the years about getting over fear and her students were drinking it up. At the end of the course, they were amazed at 6. shifting their thinking really changed their lives.
Susan eventually decided to write a book based on the course she had taught. She faced many obstacles. And after 7. (reject) by four agents and various publishers, she unwillingly put the proposal in a drawer.
After three years of writing, one day she went through the drawer 8. she held her much-rejected book proposal. Picking it up, she had a sharp sense that she held something in her hands many people needed to read. Therefore she set out with much determination 9.(find) a publisher who believed in her book the same way she did. This time, she succeeded. She succeeded beyond her wildest dreams.
She was so happy that she followed her heart and never gave up overcoming fears which stood 10. her way.
Questions are based on the following passage.
1.
A.They are planning activities for the weekend.
B.They are looking for an apartment in the city.
C.They are complaining about the urban living environment
D.They are discussing living places and children’s education.
2.
A.The natural environment is beneficial to children.
B.The countryside is a perfect place for weekends.
C.There is much to do besides work and study.
D.It’s convenient for people to go anywhere.
3.
A.There is a lot to see and do for children and adults.
B.The children are too young to benefit from city life.
C.There isn’t enough for children to see and do in the city.
D.Even adults themselves cannot go everywhere in the city.
4.
A.She is a full-time housewife.
B.She does not care for her children.
C.She lived in the suburbs as a child.
D.She will go to a museum next weekend.
