Section B (10%)Directions: In this section, you are going to read a passage with ten statements attached to it. Each statement contains information given in one of the paragraphs. Identify the paragraph from which the information is derived. You may choose a paragraph more than once. Write the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet.Bots in Our HomesA) In the 2013 movie “Her”, Theodore Twombly, a lonely writer, falls in love with a digital assistant designed to meet his every need. She sorts emails, helps get a book published, provides personal advice, and ultimately becomes his girlfriend. The assistant, Samantha, is AI software capable of learning at an astonishing pace.B) Samantha will remain in the realm of science fiction for at least another decade, but less-functional digital assistants, called bots, are already here. These will be the most amazing technology advances we see in our homes in the years ahead.C) Among the best sellers of the holiday season were Amazon.com’s Echo and Google Home. These bots talk to their users through speakers, and their built-in microphones hear from across a room. When Echo hears the name “Alexa”, its LED ring lights up in the direction of the user to acknowledge that it is listening. It answers questions, plays music, orders Amazon products, and tells jokes. Google’s Home can also manage Google accounts, read and write emails, and keep track of calendars and notes.D) Google and Amazon have both opened up their devices to third-party developers — who in turn have added the abilities to order pizza, book tickets, turn on lights and make phone calls. We will soon see these bots connected to health and fitness devices so that they can help people devise better exercise regimens and remember to take their medicine. And they will control the dishwasher and the microwave, track what is left in the refrigerator and order an ambulance in a case of emergency.E) Long ago, our home appliances became electrified. Soon, they will be “cognified”: Integrated into artificially intelligent systems that are accessed through voice commands. We will be able to talk to our machines in a way that seems natural. Microsoft has developed a voice-recognition technology that can transcribe speech and translate it into multiple languages. Google has demonstrated a voice-synthesis capability that is hard to differentiate from human. Our bots will tell our ovens how we want our food to be cooked and ask us questions on its behalf.F) This has become possible because of advances in artificial intelligence, or AI In particular, a field called deep learning allows machines to learn through neural networks — in which information is processed in layers and the connections between these layers are strengthened based on experience. In short, they learn much like a human brain. As a child learns to recognize objects such as its parents, toys and animals, neural networks, too, learn by looking at examples and forming associations. Google’s AI software learned to recognize a cat, a furry creature with two eyes and whiskers, after looking at 10 million examples of cats.G) It is all about data and example; that is how machines — and humans — learn. This is why the tech industry is rushing to get its bots into the marketplace and are pricing them at a low $150 or less: The more devices that are in use, the more they will learn collectively, and the smarter the technology gets. Every time you search YouTube for a cute cat video and pick one to watch, Google learns what you consider to be cute. Every time you ask Alexa a question and accept the answer, it learns what your interests are and the best way of responding to your questions.H) By listening to everything that is happening in your house, as these bots do, they learn how we think, live, work and play. They are gathering massive amounts of data about us. And that raises a dark side of this technology: The privacy risks and possible misuse by technology companies. Neither Amazon nor Google explains what it is doing with all of the data it gathers and how it will protect us from hackers who exploit weaknesses in the infrastructure leading to its servers.I) Of even greater concern is the dependency we are building on these technologies: We are beginning to depend on them for knowledge and advice and even emotional support. The relationship between Theodore Twombly and Samantha doesn’t turn out very well. She outgrows him in intelligence and maturity. And she confesses to having relationships with thousands of others before she abandons Twombly for a superior, digital life form.J) We surely don’t need to worry yet about our bots becoming smarter than we are. But we already have cause for worry over one-sided relationships. For years, people have been confessing to having feelings for their Roomba vacuum cleaners — which don’t create even an illusion of conversation. A 2007 study documented that some people had formed a bond with their Roombas that “manifested itself through happiness experienced with cleaning”. And according to a recent report in New Scientist, hundreds of thousands of people say “Good morning” to Alexa every day, a half-million people have professed their love for it, and more than 250,000 have proposed marriage to it. K)I expect that we are all going to be suckers for our digital friends. Don’t you feel obliged to thank Siri on your iPhone after it answers your questions? I do, and have done so. 41. Bots will be able to provide more services in the future like answering the phone, planning fitness programs.______ 42. Robot companies set low prices for their products in order to advance machine learning and make them more intelligent.______ 43. The image of keeping a capable digital assistant at home was depicted in a science fiction movie.______ 44. Bots can be programmed to learn like a human brain; they can analyze information and recognize objects.______ 45. Bots, the real digital assistants, will have an increased presence in the homes of the future.______ 46. Our growing dependency on home bots has aroused some people’s concern.______ 47. Bots are now able to serve the users in multiple ways from answering questions to checking emails.______ 48. There have been reports and studies about people’s unusual intimacy with their home bots.______ 49. We will be able to talk with our household appliances in different languages in the future.______ 50. Using bots in our homes can be a threat, posing new dangers to both our privacy and our security.______
举一反三
- Apart from its advantages, travel also has it ____1_____, which make us not take great pleasantness. More often than not, we need a ____2_____ after our vacation. We travel because we need to , because distance and difference are the ______3_______ of creativity. Travel will change our mind to some extent, which in turn can have ___4_____ on everything in our life.
- Section B Directions: In this section, you are going to read a passage with ten statements attached to it. Each statement contains information given in one of the paragraphs. Identify the paragraph from which the information is derived. You may choose a paragraph more than once. Why Study History? A)Let's face it, our first experience with history is that it is a course that we have to take in order to graduate. As a junior and senior high school student, we have to study American history and state history, and perhaps even take a general course in western civilization (文明) or world history. We didn't have a choice. And the fact that we are forced to take history puts us on the defensive. We begin to build that splendid brick wall that will prevent us from getting anything important out of history. B)The main problem as I see it, is not history itself. The study of history can be fun. But there's only one thing that can make our first experience with history a horrible thing indeed: and that's a poor instructor. I was fortunate. I managed to have a number of excellent history instructors throughout my high school years and this was at a time when I was leaning toward the physical sciences, geology and biology to be exact. I might not have been an excellent history student, but I do remember having excellent history teachers. C)Fine. That's my experience. But experience aside, why study history in the first place? What could history offer the business major? the student hoping to study web page development? the student taking her first psychology class? or the lawyer? or the worker on the shop floor? Well, simply stated, everything has a history, whether we like it or not. Even history itself has a history. Try hard as we might, we can't escape the past. We can't let go of the past. And we celebrate the past all the time. D)You may have been told that we study history so that we won't repeat the mistakes of the past. This is the wishful thinking (一厢情愿) school of historical interpretation (诠释). It's too clean. If we have learned from the past then over the centuries we ought to have built on so much knowledge that things like war, poverty, injustice and immorality ought not to exist. Of course, we've still got a long way to go along this line. E)You may also have heard that everything repeats itself, so if we study the past, we can be sure to know something of the future. I don't hold to this view either. To insist that the study of the past will help to know something of the future is a nice idea, but what I really want to know about is the present. History cannot "tell" the future. History can, on the other hand, help to understand all that is the present. So, faced as we are with the question "why study history?" I can only hope to answer by telling you why I study history. F)Well first off, it's extremely important for us to be in touch not only with the past of our own country, but also of the world as well. History tells us things about the world in which we live. When we are young, we know little about the world beyond our immediate family and environment. As we grow older we realize that the world extends far beyond those limited surroundings and we are hungry for more knowledge of the wider world. But no matter how much of it we explore, all we see is the world as it is today. However, the way the world works is a result of a very long period of development, and we can never understand it well enough unless we try to learn as much as possible about our past. G)Most of us want to live meaningful lives, and we want to understand more than is enough for our mere survival. In our search for understanding our place in the world, we turn to history. There we find a much larger store of human beliefs and values than we come across in our everyday lives. In doing so, we develop a wiser understanding of who we are, of what we can achieve, and of what dangers put individuals, families, communities and nations at risk. H)Of course, there are also more practical reasons why we should study history. Historians examine facts, compare them, evaluate (评价) them, and reach conclusions. By studying history, our own ability to perform these tasks is increased, and this ability is crucial in many walks of life. If you think about it, it's what managers, journalists, politicians, doctors, lawyers and many other professionals have to do every day -- each in their profession. I)But history is enjoyable, too. We should know something of our past in order to be proud of our achievements and how we may have played our part in the development of civilization. With increasing globalization, individual countries are losing the traditions and customs of their own regions, but knowing our history would mean that these traditions do not entirely disappear. However, we should not feel that only our history is of value to the world. Every country has been important to the development of civilization and we must not be so arrogant (傲慢) as to think only ours counts. ______11.What the world is now has taught us that it has not come true that we study history to avoid repeating the same mistakes of the past.
- Yeah, I think it does. I think as you get older, you become, probably, a bit more intolerant of certain, sort of, 1) behavior and, as, when you’re younger you’re probably not as 2) it. I think the order people, er, definitely 3) manners, good behavior and good 4) . I suppose so. I suppose we learn how to be more 5) of it. Um, we can be, probably, more short-tempered of it because we’ve probably had it all of our lives and we want it to, sort of, 6) , but I think we learn how to, sort of, either 7) from it or ignore it, that sort of things. It becomes more important as you get older. You have to 8) more people, therefore, be more polite.
- What nature is telling youLike it or not, nature is no longer kind with us. For nature to __________ the day again for our good, let’s sit down on her open grassland free from the debris and facilities of modern life, ___________ ourselves into her as part of her, and listen to her from the perspective of her whole being.Indeed, we have impaired our ability to ________ with nature. There is power in wild animals, for example, so we tame them with whips until they are __________ to our commands. We can’t do much with a cat, so we declaw it and even cut its vocal cords so that it is no longer able to disturb us.We love the breast meat of wild birds in particular, so we have them kept in a repressive way. And meanwhile, we _________ to the belief that nature is far from perfect. So we improve our natural looks through _____________; and we keep everything free from germs through making a steady flow of rules, even though we make our armpits smell good through spraying botanical odor on ourselves.As a result of our alienation from nature, our homes are filled with cage dwellers removed from such __________ as enjoying the _______________, sunbathing through the nodding branches of trees, and plunging into a cold stream upon a hot bath. And unable to feel the ________________ in the open, like the humidity of the summer and the chill of winter, we have to live it out through a _____________________ on TV.
- We have appealed to _______, our friends, and they have come up with the massive offers of support. We need support; we even need doctors, medicine, _______... They don’t have _______, but we are sending them fresh water from the unaffected areas. We have to then start building the _______—hundreds of thousands that have been _______.