Languages have been coming and going for thousands of years, but in recent times there has been less coming and a lot more going. When the world was still populated by hunter-gatherers, small, tightly knit(联系) groups developed their own patterns of speech independent of each other. Some language experts believe that 10,000 years ago, when the world had just five to ten million people, they spoke perhaps 12,000 languages between them.
Soon afterwards, many of those people started settling down to become farmers, and their languages too became more settled and fewer in number. In recent centuries, trade, industrialization, the development of the nation-state and the spread of universal compulsory education, especially globalisation and better communications in the past few decades, all have caused many languages to disappear, and dominant languages such as English, Spanish and Chinese are increasingly taking over.
At present, the world has about 6,800 languages. The distribution of these languages is hugely uneven. The general rule is that mild zones have relatively few languages. Often spoken by many people while hot, wet zones have lots, often spoken by small numbers. Europe has only around 200 Languages: the Americas about 1,000, Africa 2,400; and Asia and the Pacific perhaps 3,200, of which Papua New Guinea alone accounts for well over 800. The median number(中位数) of speakers is a mere 6.000, which means that half the worlds languages are spoken by fewer people than that.
Already well over 400 of the total of 6,800 languages are close to extinction(消亡), with only a few elderly speakers left. Pick, at random, Busuu in Cameroon (eight remaining speakers), Chiapaneco in Mexico(150). Lipan Apache in the United States(two or three) or Wadjigu in Australia (one, with a question-mark): none of these seems to have much chance of survival.
1.What can we infer about languages in hunter-gatherer times?
A.They developed very fast. B.They were large in number.
C.They had similar patters. D.They were closely connected
2.Which of the following best explains "dominant" underlined in paragraph 2？
A.Complex. B.Advanced.
C.Powerful. D.Modern.
3.How many languages are spoken by less than 6, 000 people at present?
A.About 6,800 . B.About 3,400
C.About 2,400 D.About 1,200.
4.What is the main idea of the text?
A.New languages will be created.
B.Peoples lifestyles are reflected in languages.
C.Human development results in fewer languages.
D.Geography determines language evolution.
Good Morning Britain’s Susanna Reid is used to grilling guests on the sofa every morning, but she is cooking up a storm in her latest role — showing families how to prepare delicious and nutritious meals on a tight budget.
In Save Money: Good Food, she visits a different home each week and with the help of chef Matt Tebbutt offers top tips on how to reduce food waste, while preparing recipes for under £5 per family a day. And the Good Morning Britain presenter says she’s been able to put a lot of what she’s leant into practice in her own home, preparing meals for sons, Sam,14, Finn,13, and Jack, 11.
"We love Mexican churros, so I buy them on my phone from my local Mexican takeaway restaurant," she explains. "I pay £5 for a portion(一份), but Matt makes them for 26p a portion, because they are flour, water, sugar and oil. Everybody can buy takeaway food, but sometimes we’re not aware how cheaply we can make this food ourselves. "
The eight-part series(系列节自), Save Money: Good Food, follows in the footsteps of ITV’s Save Money: Good Health, which gave viewers advice on how to get value from the vast range of health products on the market.
With food our biggest weekly household expense, Susanna and Matt spend time with a different family each week. In tonight’s Easter special they come to the aid of a family in need of some delicious inspiration on a budget. The team transforms the family’s long weekend of celebration with less expensive but still tasty recipes.
1.What do we know about Susanna Reid? 学-科网
A.She enjoys embarrassing her guests. B.She has started a new programme.
C.She dislikes working early in the morning. D.She has had a light budget for her family.
2.How does Matt Tebbutt help Susanna?
A.He buys cooking materials for her. B.He prepares food for her kids.
C.He assists her in cooking matters. D.He invites guest families for her.
3.What does the author intend to do in paragraph 4?
A.Summarize the previous paragraphs. B.Provide some advice for the readers.
C.Add some background information. D.Introduce a new topic for discussion.
4.What can be a suitable title for the text?
A.Keeping Fit by Eating Smart B.Balancing Our Daily Diet
C.Making yourself a Perfect Chef D.Cooking Well for Less
Who cares if people think wrongly that the internet has had more important influences than the washing machine? Why does it matter that people are more impressed by the most recent changes?
It would not matter if these misjudgments were just a matter of people’s opinions. However, they have real impacts, as they result in misguided use of scarce resources.
The fascination with the ICT(Information and Communication Technology) revolution, represented by the internet, has made some rich countries wrongly conclude that making things is so “yesterday” that they should try to live on ideas. This belief in “post-industrial society” has led those countries to neglect their manufacturing sector(制造业), with negative consequences for their economies.
Even more worryingly, the fascination with the internet by people in rich countries has moved the international community to worry about the “digital divide” between the rich countries and the poor countries. This has led companies and individuals to donate money to developing countries to buy computer equipment and internet facilities. The question, however, is whether this is what the developing countries need the most. Perhaps giving money for those less fashionable things such as digging wells, extending electricity networks and making more affordable washing machines would have improved people’s lives more than giving every child a laptop computer or setting up internet centres in rural villages, I am not saying that those things are necessarily more important, but many donators have rushed into fancy programmes without carefully assessing the relative long-term costs and benefits of alternative uses of their money.
In yet another example, a fascination with the new has led people to believe that the recent changes in the technologies of communications and transportation are so revolutionary that now we live in a “borderless world”. As a result, in the last twenty years or so, many people have come to believe that whatever change is happening today is the result of great technological progress, going against which will be like trying to turn the clock back. Believing in such a world, many governments have put an end to some of the very necessary regulations on cross-border flows of capital, labour and goods, with poor results.
Understanding technological trends is very important for correctly designing economic policies, both at the national and the international levels, and for making the right career choices at the individual level. However, our fascination with the latest, and our under valuation of what has already become common, can, and has, led us in all sorts of wrong directions.
1.Misjudgments on the influences of new technology can lead to ________.
A.a lack of confidence in technology
B.a slow progress in technology
C.a conflict of public opinions
D.a waste of limited resources
2.The example in Paragraph 4 suggests that donators should ________.
A.take people’s essential needs into account
B.make their programmes attractive to people
C.ensure that each child gets financial support
D.provide more affordable internet facilities
3.What has led many governments to remove necessary regulations?
A.Neglecting the impacts of technological advances.
B.Believing that the world has become borderless.
C.Ignoring the power of economic development.
D.Over-emphasizing the role of international communication.
4.What can we learn from the passage?
A.People should be encouraged to make more donations.
B.Traditional technology still has a place nowadays.
C.Making right career choices is crucial to personal success.
D.Economic policies should follow technological trends.
Would you BET on the future of this man? He is 53 years old. Most of his adult life has been a losing struggle against debt and misfortune. A war injury has made his left hand stop functioning, and he has often been in prison. Driven by heaven-knows-what motives, he determines to write a book.
The book turns out to be one that has appealed to the world for more than 350 years. That former prisoner was Cervantes, and the book was Don Quixote（《堂吉诃德》）. And the story poses an interesting question: why do some people discover new vitality and creativity to the end of their days, while others go to seed long before?
We’ve all known people who run out of steam before they reach life’s halfway mark. I’m not talking about those who fail to get to the top. We can’t all get there. I’m talking about people who have stopped learning on growing because they have adopted the fixed attitudes and opinions that all too often come with passing years.
Most of us, in fact, progressively narrow the variety of our lives. We succeed in our field of specialization and then become trapped in it. Nothing surprises us. We lose our sense of wonder. But, if we are willing to learn, the opportunities are everywhere.
The things we learn in maturity seldom involve information and skills. We learn to bear with the things we can’t change. We learn to avoid self-pity. We learn that however much we try to please, some people are never going to love us—an idea that troubles at first but is eventually relaxing.
With high motivation and enthusiasm, we can keep on learning. Then we will know how important it is to have meaning in our life. However, we can achieve meaning only if we have made a commitment to something larger than our own little egos(自我), whether to loved ones, to fellow humans, to work, or to some moral concept.
Many of us equate(视……等同于) “commitment” with such “caring” occupations as teaching and nursing. But doing any ordinary job as well as one can is in itself an admirable commitment. People who work toward such excellence—whether they are driving a truck, or running a store—make the world better just by being the kind of people they are. They’ve learned life’s most valuable lesson.
1.The passage starts with the story of Cervantes to show that ________.
A.loss of freedom stimulates one’s creativity
B.age is not a barrier to achieving one’s goal
C.misery inspires a man to fight against his fate
D.disability cannot stop a man’s pursuit of success
2.What does the underlined part in Paragraph 3 probably mean?
A.End one’s struggle for liberty.
B.Waste one’s energy taking risks.
C.Miss the opportunity to succeed.
D.Lose the interest to continue learning.
3.What could be inferred from Paragraph 4？
A.Those who dare to try often get themselves trapped.
B.Those who tend to think back can hardly go ahead.
C.Opportunity favors those with a curious mind.
D.Opportunity awaits those with a cautious mind.
4.What does the author intend to tell us in Paragraph 5？
A.A tough man can tolerate suffering.
B.A wise man can live without self-pity.
C.A man should try to satisfy people around him.
D.A man should learn suitable ways to deal with life.
5.What is the author’s purpose in writing the passage？
A.To provide guidance on leading a meaningful adult life.
B.To stress the need of shouldering responsibilities at work.
C.To state the importance of generating motivation for learning.
D.To suggest a way of pursuing excellence in our lifelong career.
The problem of robocalls has gotten so bad that many people now refuse to pick up calls from numbers they don’t know. By next year, half of the calls we receive will be scams(欺诈). We are finally waking up to the severity of the problem by supporting and developing a group of tools, apps and approaches intended to prevent scammers from getting through. Unfortunately, it’s too little, too late. By the time these “solutions”(解决方案) become widely available, scammers will have moved onto cleverer means. In the near future, it’s not just going to be the number you see on your screen that will be in doubt. Soon you will also question whether the voice you’re hearing is actually real.
That’s because there are a number of powerful voice manipulation(处理) and automation technologies that are about to become widely available for anyone to use. At this year’s I/O Conference, a company showed a new voice technology able to produce such a convincing human-sounding voice that it was able to speak to a receptionist and book a reservation without detection.
These developments are likely to make our current problems with robocalls much worse. The reason that robocalls are a headache has less to do with amount than precision. A decade of data breaches(数据侵入) of personal information has led to a situation where scammers can easily learn your mother’s name, and far more. Armed with this knowledge, they’re able to carry out individually targeted campaigns to cheat people. This means, for example, that a scammer could call you from what looks to be a familiar number and talk to you using a voice that sounds exactly like your bank teller’s, tricking you into “confirming” your address, mother’s name, and card number. Scammers follow money, so companies will be the worst hit. A lot of business is still done over the phone, and much of it is based on trust and existing relationships. Voice manipulation technologies may weaken that gradually.
We need to deal with the insecure nature of our telecom networks. Phone carriers and consumers need to work together to find ways of determining and communicating what is real. That might mean either developing a uniform way to mark videos and images, showing when and who they were made by, or abandoning phone calls altogether and moving towards data-based communications—using apps like FaceTime or WhatsApp, which can be tied to your identity.
Credibility is hard to earn but easy to lose, and the problem is only going to get harder from here on out.
1.How does the author feel about the solutions to problem of robocalls?
A.Panicked. B.Confused. C.Embarrassed. D.Disappointed.
2.Taking advantage of the new technologies, scammer can ________.
A.aim at victims precisely B.damage databases easily
C.start campaigns rapidly D.spread information widely
3.What does the passage imply?
A.Honesty is the best policy.
B.Technologies can be double-edged.
C.There are more solutions than problems.
D.Credibility holds the key to development.
4.Which of the following would be the best title for the passage?
A.Where the Problem of Robocalls Is Rooted
B.Who Is to Blame for the Problem of Robocalls
C.Why Robocalls Are About to Get More Dangerous
D.How Robocalls Are Affecting the World of Technology
Money with no strings attached. It’s not something you see every day. But at Union Station in Los Angeles last month, a board went up with dollar bills attached to it with pins and a sign that read, “Give What You Can, Take What You Need.”
People quickly caught on. And while many took dollars, many others pinned their own cash to the board. “People of all ages, races, and socio-economic(社会经济的) backgrounds gave and took,” said Tyler Bridges of The Toolbox, which created the project. “We even had a bride in her wedding dress come up to the board and take a few dollars.” Most of the bills on the board were singles, but a few people left fives, tens and even twenties. The video clip(片段) shows one man who had found a $ 20 bill pinning it to the board.
“What I can say for the folks that gave the most, is that they were full of smiles,” Bridges said. “There’s a certain feeling that giving can do for you and that was apparent in those that gave the most.” Most people who took dollars took only a few, but Bridges said a very small number took as much as they could.
While the clip might look like part of a new ad campaign, Bridges said the only goal was to show generosity and sympathy. He added that he hopes people in other cities might try similar projects and post their own videos on the Internet.
“After all, everyone has bad days and good days,” he said. “Some days you need a helping hand and some days you can be the one giving the helping hand.”
1.What does the expression “money with no strings attached” in paragraph 1 mean?
A.Money spent without hesitation.
B.Money not legally made.
C.Money offered without conditions.
D.Money not tied together.
2.What did Bridges want to show by mentioning the bride?
A.Women tended to be more sociable.
B.The activity attracted various people.
C.Economic problems were getting worse.
D.Young couples needed financial assistance.
3.Why did Bridges carry out the project?
A.To do a test on people’s morals.
B.To raise money for his company.
C.To earn himself a good reputation.
D.To promote kindness and sympathy.
