Those who are concerned that robots are taking over the world can rest easy—for now. Though the androids have proved useful at performing ordinary tasks, they are not ready for the greatest time. At least that appears to be the case at Japan’s Henn-na Hotel chain where over half of the robot staff are being replaced by humans.
The first location of the unique hotel opened in July 2015 was at Nagasaki’s Huis Ten Bosch Theme Park. The hotel’s owner, Hideo Sawada, promised the hotel to be managed primarily by robots. Guests were greeted and checked-in by a dinosaur robot, while a cute android called Churi, placed inside each room, provided information about attractions. Not surprisingly, the lodging, recognized in 2016 as the world’s first robot-staffed hotel by Guinness World Records, drew in curious visitors from all around the world.
But as the years have passed, the hotel’s main draw is becoming less novel and more unsatisfactory. Also as the robots are “aging”, they are costing more to repair. Among the 283 androids being replaced are the chain’s two dinosaur receptionists. In addition to scaring young guests, they are also unable to photocopy guests’ passports, forcing human employees to step in each time. Also out are the cute Churi robots, which annoyed guests by interrupting their conversations. For example, one guest told The Wall Street Journal that Churi mistook his snoring for a command and kept asking him to repeat his request all night.
Sawada told The Wall Street Journal, “When you actually use robots you realize there are places where they aren’t needed—or just annoy people.” While Sawada may be cutting back on his use of androids, the recently-opened Smart LYZ Hotel and the Fly Zoo Hotel in China, are run entirely by robots, with not a human in sight. Whether the employees have more competence than those “hired” by the Henn-na Hotel chain remains to be seen.
1.What makes Japan’s Henn-na Hotel unique?
A.Its robot employees. B.Its advanced equipment.
C.Its convenient location. D.Its successful management.
2.What is the author’s purpose with the example in paragraph 3?
A.To entertain readers. B.To prove Churi’s drawback.
C.To introduce Churi’s functions. D.To persuade people not to book the hotel.
3.What does the owner of Japan’s Henn-na Hotel think of his robot staff now?
A.Attractive. B.Costly.
C.Pioneering. D.Disappointing.
4.What is the best title for the text?
A.Robots Are Taking Over the World.
B.The Boom of Robots-staffed Hotel.
C.Robot Staff Are Fired For No Competence.
D.The First Robots-staffed Hotel Won Guinness World Record.
In 1947, the province Bengal of Pakistan was divided into two parts: the western part became India and the eastern part is known as East Bengal which was later known as East Pakistan. At that time there were many economic, social and cultural problems. In 1948, when government announced Urdu as the national language, it caused the protest among the Bengali speaking majority of Pakistan. The protest got out of control and ended with the death of four protestors of the University of Dhaka who were shot by the police on 21st February, 1952. The students’ deaths during the fight for their mother language are now remembered as The International Mother Language Day (IMLD).
Each year on Feb 21, UNESCO holds the event to draw attention to the disappearance of the world’s languages: dozens of them are disappearing each year. What happens when a language dies out? Something huge is lost -- not just sounds and marks but the way that people make sense of the world and communicate with each other. And it is through language that we have culture and tradition. Kill a language and all this is killed too.
Through IMLD, more people are becoming more aware of the destruction of linguistic (语言的) diversity in modern times and trying to stop it. The Myaamia Project is a kind of effort. This is an attempt to revive (复兴) the language spoken by the Miami and Illinois tribes (部落) of the US. Project members work to encourage people to study and communicate with this language, which formally died out in the 1960s.
This is why we should remember the wise words of Nelson Mandela: “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to a man in his own language, that goes to his heart.”
1.What can we know from the first paragraph?
A.Bengal had the biggest population in Pakistan.
B.The conflict resulted from linguistic controversy.
C.The Bengali were the majority who spoke Urdu.
D.The police shot four students to end the protest.
2.What message does Paragraph 2 mean to convey?
A.Dozens of languages die out every February.
B.The world is known merely through languages.
C.Language helps to preserve and promote culture.
D.Much attention has been paid to language protection.
3.What does the Myaamia Project aim to do?
A.Keep linguistic diversity. B.Protect an American tribe.
C.Raise money to help the locals. D.Focus on native language learning.
4.Why does the author mention Mandela’s words?
A.To show his contribution to language protection.
B.To stress the difficulty in learning a dying language.
C.To reflect the possibility to preserve a local language.
D.To emphasize the importance of one’s mother tongue.
Duplays Ramadan netball league
This is one of the most popular women’s leagues, so sign your team up now for five weeks of netball.
Price: Dhs 2,250 per team.
Time: Sun. and Mon., 7 pm-10:30 pm, June 8 to July 13.
Place: Emirates International School, Umm Suqeim 3.
www. duplays. com (04 447 2394)
Bounce’s first anniversary
The first national indoor trampoline (蹦床) park is celebrating its first anniversary with an After Dark Party. Fans of Bounce can come together on the trampolines and jump to party tunes from DJ Scott Forshaw.
Limited tickets available.
Price: Dhs 80.
Time: On Thursday June 4, 8 pm-midnight.
Place: Bounce, 4B Street, Al Quoz.
www. bounce. ae (04 3211 400)
Jump Boxx Beatz
Enjoy new Thursday night jump sessions at Jump Boxx indoor trampoline park. DJs will spin your favorite tracks as you bounce. Tickets are abundant on the spot.
Price: Dhs 69 per hour, plus Dhs 11 for grip (防滑力) socks.
Time: Thur. 7 pm-11 pm, July 8 to August 8.
Place：Uptown Mirdif.
www.jump-boxx.com (800 5867)
Fit Republik’s summer sports camp for kids
Sign your kids up now for a summer of sport at Fit Republik. The camp takes place from Sunday July 5 to Thursday August 27 and will offer children aged 4 to 14 a variety of daily activities including martial (军事的) arts, gymnastics, aquatics (水上的) sports and functional training. Call to register your child in advance.
Price: Dhs 270 per child, per day, Dhs 950 for five days. Prices include lunch.
Time: Sun.-Thur. 8:45 am-2:15pm, July 5 to August 27.
Place: Dubai Sports City.
www.fitrepublik.com (04 556 1800)
1.What makes the second and third events similar to each other?
A.They are both celebrations.
B.They are both intended for kids.
C.Music is to be played at the parties.
D.They both open at exactly the same time.
2.Which of the four events will last longest?
A.Duplays Ramadan netball league.
B.Bounce’s first anniversary.
C.Fit Republik’s summer sports camp for kids.
D.Jump Boxx Beatz.
3.What can we learn from the text?
A.You have to pay to take part in the events.
B.Teamwork is a must in all the events.
C.Students of all ages can register for Fit Republik.
D.Tickets for the four events are to be booked ahead of time.
Directions: Translate the following sentences into English, using the words given in the brackets.
1.我认为盯着别人看是不礼貌的。(consider)
2.吵闹声不绝于耳，我精神无法集中于学习。(concentrate)
3.她的仔细观察使得她能够发现其他医生没有发现的问题。(enable)
4.坚持运动不是一件容易的事情，但只要你能够坚持你的计划，就一定能成功。(stick)
Directions: Complete the following passage by using the sentences given below. Each sentences can be used only once. Note that there are two more sentences than you need.
The Benefits of a Summer Job
Have you ever had a summer job? For many young people, summer is an exciting period where education stops and fun begins. 1. And the very group who have the time to benefit from the fun summer has to offer may not have the funds to do so. The solution? A summer job.
The concept of students and younger members of society being gainfully employed over the summer period is not a new one. And there are opportunities out there for those who want to earn. 2. In many cases, the jobs only pay minimum wages, which may only help you out. But the money is not the only thing that’s gained.
3. Indeed, when talking about their experiences of summer jobs, people said they got “invaluable training” and learnt skills such as punctuality, tolerance, and the importance of hard work. These opportunities are thought to be so important that the UK government has placed 20,000 summer job vacancies on its Find a Job website.
4. The percentage of young people working while studying has more than halved since 1997, falling from 42% to 18% in 2014. Those are the findings of a UK government report on the death of the Saturday job. Ester McVey believes this is because young people are choosing to focus more on education rather than earning extra money.
A.Summer and Saturday jobs prepare young people for successful careers in later life, teaching vital soft skills.
B.Students take summer jobs mainly to cover their tuition and this practice is highly appreciated by their parents.
C.That said, holidays, festivals and time spent with friends cost money.
D.This move comes at a time of apparent need.
E.Soft skills are so essential to students’ future career that they have to take summer jobs to acquire them.
F.Vacancies can range from roles as boring as fry cook, to seasonal work at a theme park.
If you are over 20, look away now. Your cognitive （认知的）performance is probably already on the wane. The speed with which people can process information decreases at a steady rate from as early as their 20s.
A common test of processing speed is the “digit symbol substitution test”, in which a range of symbols are paired with a set of numbers in a code. Participants are shown the code, given a row of symbols and then asked to write down the corresponding number in the box below within a set period. There is nothing cognitively challenging about the task: levels of education make no difference to performance. But age does. Speed declines as people get older.
Why this should be is still uncertain, but a range of tentative（尝试性的）explanations has been put forward. One points the finger at myelin, a white, fatty substance that coats axons, which carry signals from one neuron to another. Steady reductions in myelin as people age may be slowing down these connections. Another possibility, says Timothy Salthouse, director of the Cognitive Ageing Laboratory at the University of Virginia, is exhaustion of a chemical called dopamine（多巴胺）.
Fortunately, there is some good news to go with the bad. Psychologists distinguish between “fluid intelligence”, which is the ability to solve new problems, and “crystallised intelligence”, which roughly equates to an individual’s stock of accumulated knowledge. These reserves of knowledge continue to increase with age: people’s performance on vocabulary and cognitive decline. In an old but instructive study of typists ranging in age from 19 to 72, older workers typed just as fast as younger ones, even though their tapping speed was slower. They achieved this by looking further ahead in the text, which allowed them to keep going more smoothly.
What does all this mean for a lifetime of continuous learning? It is encouraging so long as people are learning new tricks in familiar fields. “If learning can be absorbed into an existing knowledge base, advantage favours the old,” says Mr Salthouse.
1.The phrase “on the wane” (in paragraph 1) is closest in meaning to _______.
A.declining B.improving
C.varying D.maintaining
2.By “age does” (in paragraph 2), the writer means that _______。
A.the level of a participant’s education is related to how old he is
B.the older a participant is, the more slowly he writes down the number
C.a participant’s age affects his ability to figure out what the symbol means
D.how much time a participant is given to finish the task depends on his age
3.What can be inferred from the passage?
A.Dopamine has been proved to be a chemical that affects people’s cognitive ability.
B.One way to avoid cognitive decline is to have as much experience as possible in life.
C.Moving older workers into an entirely new area of knowledge is less likely to go well.
D.Crystallised intelligence plays an important role in keeping people alert in new situations.
4.What is the passage mainly about?
A.Why the brain fails with the age needs to be explored.
B.“Digit symbol substitution test” proves to be groundless.
C.One’s knowledge base matters more than his cognitive ability.
D.The brain changes in both good and bad ways as one ages.
