Directions: Read the following passage. Summarize the main idea and the main point(s) of the passage in no more than 60 words. Use your own words as far as possible.
Now, it may seem strange to learn from someone who writes about pretty dresses every day, but you don’t have to be pretty and you don’t have to spare no effort to be pretty just to please others.You don’t have to feel bothered for your plain looking that makes you unnoticed. After all, every one of us, whether charming or not, is a drop in the ocean and you don’t owe prettiness to anyone.
Admittedly, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t be pretty if you want to. Being pretty is pleasant, fun, refreshing and satisfying, making people feel delighted and smile at you unconsciously. But in terms of importance, prettiness stands several steps down from happiness, is way below health, and if done as an obligation, can be far away from independence.
But what does you-don’t-have-to-be-pretty mean in everyday terms? It means you don’t have to blame your parents for not giving you the world-desired appearance and that you don’t have to apologize for wearing things that are held to be “unflattering” or “unfashionable”—especially if, in fact, they make you happy on some level deeper than just being pretty does. As long as you are clean, covered enough, and have bandaged any open wounds，you can wear any color or style you please, holding your heads high，if it makes you happy.
Prettiness, it’s sad to say, can have a shelf life. It’s so tied up with youth that, at some point (if you’re lucky), you’re going to have to graduate from prettiness, sometimes before you know it. But you won’t even get there if you think you have to follow all the signs that say “this way to prettiness”. You get there by travelling the route you find most interesting.
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Directions: Complete the following passage by using the sentences in the box. Each sentence can only be used once. Note that there are two sentences more than you need.
A period of important agricultural development began in the early 1700s in Great Britain and the Low Countries(Belgium, Luxembourg. and the Netherlands, which lie below sea level). 1.
One of the most important of these developments was an improved horse-drawn seed drill invented by Jethro Tull in England. Until that time，farmers sowed seeds by hand. Tull’s drill made rows of holes for the seeds. By the end of the 18th century, seed drilling was widely practiced in Europe. Many other machines were developed in the United States. 2. At about the same time，John and Hiram Pitts introduced a horse-powered thresher (脱粒机) that shortened the process of separating grain and seed from straw. John Deere’s steel plow (犁), introduced in 1837, made it possible to work the tough soil with much less horsepower.
Along with new machines，there were several important advances in selective farming. By selectively breeding animals (breeding those with desirable traits), farmers increased the size and productivity of their livestock. Plants could also be selectively bred for certain qualities. In 1866, Gregor Mendel’s studies in heredity (遗传) were published in Austria. 3. His work paved the way for improving crops through genetics.
New crop planting methods also evolved during this time. Many of these were adopted over the next century or so throughout Europe. For example，the Norfolk four-field system, developed in England，proved quite successful. It involved the yearly rotation (轮作) of several crops, including wheat, turnips, barley, clover, and ryegrass. 4. Moreover, this method enabled farmers to grow enough to sell some of their harvest without having to leave any land unplanted.
Not all parts of the world benefited from these developments instantly. However，farmers in other parts such as Australia and Africa continued to use old ways of agriculture for a long time.
A.This could add desired nutrients to the soil thanks to the rich variety of crops.
B.Over centuries, the growth of agriculture contributed to the rise of civilizations.
C.In experiments with pea plants, he learned how traits were passed from one generation to another.
D.In the 1830s Cyrus McCormick’s harvesting machine helped modernize the grain-cutting process.
E.This helped to produce extra food to trade for other goods and allowed people to work at other tasks.
F.New agricultural inventions dramatically increased food production in Europe and European colonies.
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
