Only three local students won Chinese Blog（博客） Competition. And 15 of the 18 awards went to students from China. Zxxk
Themes ranged from local opinions------such as the usage of Singlish,1.(educate) and whether Singapore can be a cultural centre------2.food blogs. Zxxk
The entries were judged on language proficiency（ 熟练程度）and the quality of writing, as well as the design and level of exchanging ideas with readers. Zxxk
Academics from the National University of Singapore and the SIM University IT experts, and a journalist from Chinese newspaper Lianhe Zaobao in Singapore made up the3. (judge). Zxxk
In the end, only three Singaporean students made it to the award list—the rest of the awards 4.(sweep) up by students from China. Zxxk
“No surprise. ”said Mr. Chow Yaw Long, 37 , the teacher in charge from Ianova Junior Collage, which organized 5. event. “Although the topics were local subjects, the foreign students were6.(general) better in terms of the content of the posts and7.(they)grasp of the Chinese language.”
One of the three local students8.(win) the first prize in the Best Language Award was blogger Christina Gao 19, from the Saint Andrew’s Junior Collage, 9.spared no effort 10. (research) for and write her blog. Each entry took her between five and seven days to produce.
When I was a freshman in college I received a letter that forever opened a window in my soul. I had just started writing and the ____of my local county newspaper had been kind enough to ____ some of my work. About a month later the ____ arrived.
Here is what it said. “You may not ____ me. We last saw each other in kindergarten and my ____ moved the next year. We ____ get the county paper in the mail, though, and when I saw your name I had to write you. You see that first year in school was very ____for me. I was a tiny, ____, and ordinary-looking girl that the other children ____ me every day. The thing I remember about you is that you ____ did. When we ____to go out, the teacher always put me beside you and you would hold my hand as we ____ the street. You talked to me and played with me. You ____ me as a person, not someone different and I will be forever ____ for that. My whole life was ____ because of how you treated me all those years ago.”
I carefully wrote back to my kindergarten friend and we____ for several years____ the illness that she had ____ with since childhood finally took her life. I will never forget, however, just how much that simple kindness I had shared ____ to her.
Every act of kindness we do ____ another’s heart. Every bit of goodness we share makes the world a better place. Let’s use that power and make both Earth and Heaven smile.
1.A. teacher B. director C. editor D. leader
2.A. print B. publish C. report D. check
3.A. newspaper B. message C. work D. letter
4.A. remember B. recognize C. hear D. forget
5.A. parents B. family C. school D. classmates
6.A. still B. also C. just D. even
7.A. busy B. happy C. difficult D. easy
8.A. honest B. naughty C. sunny D. sick
9.A. kidded B. helped C. hated D. beat
10.A. occasionally B. never C. seldom D. always
11.A. got up B. lined up C. ended up D. cheered up
12.A. adventured B. visited C. cleaned D. crossed[
13.A. judged B. heard C. knew D. saw
14.A. grateful B. hopeful C. regretful D. skillful
15.A. harder B. better C. easier D. healthier
16.A. cooperated B. corresponded C. lived D. worked
17.A. after B. when C. before D. while
18.A. experienced B. studied C. treated D. struggled
19.A. meant B. done C. appeared D. got
20.A. discovers B. obtains C. enriches D. touches
Recently some American scientists have a useful piece of advice to people in industrialized nations. They say people should eat more of the same kind of food eaten by humans living more than 10, 000 years ago.1.
The scientists say that the human life has changed greatly. Our bodies have not been able to de
al with these changes in lifestyle and this has led to new kinds of sicknesses. These new sicknesses were not known in ancient times.So they are called “diseases of civilization”. 2.
Scientists noted that people in both the Old Stone Age and the New Stone Age enjoyed very little alcohol or tobacco, probably none.3. However, a change in food is one of the main differences between life in ancient times and that of today.
Stone Age people hunted wild animals for their meat, which had much less fat than domestic ones. They ate a lot of fresh wild vegetables and fruits. They did not have milk or any other dairy products, and they made very little use of grains.4.We eat six
times more salt than our ancestors. We eat more sugar. We eat twice as much fat but only one third as much protein and much less vitamin C.
5. But scientists say that we would be much healthier if we eat much the same way the ancient people did, cutting the amount of fatty, salty and sweet food.
A. People today probably don’t want to live like our ancestors.
B. Ancient people also got lots of physical exercise.
C. Stone Age people lived a simple life.
D. Many cancers and diseases of the blood system are examples of such diseases.
E. Modern people used to suffer from “diseases of civilization.”
F. But today, we enjoy eating a lot of these.
G. In that case, they would live much healthier.
Since 2013, Torobo, a robotic arm designed to test the limits of artificial intelligence. has had one ambition—to be admitted to the University of Tokyo. However, it has repeatedly failed. This year was no exception.
In early November Torobo took an exam to prepare for an all-important standardized test. While Torobo’s total score of 525 out of 950 was 14 points higher than in 2015，its standard score of 57.1% was slightly lower, because human students did better in the 2016 test.
Though the score，which is higher than the national average, is enough to get the robot admitted to many other famous Japanese universities, it falls short of the minimum required for the University of Tokyo.
A closer analysis of the results showed that Torobo's newly programmed ability to solve complex physics problems helped increase its year-over-year physics score from 46. 5% to 59%. The robot also dug deep into its database of information from textbooks and websites to obtain an impressive 66.3% in world history. The average 60% scores acquired in the two math sections, were not too shabby either.
But，while Torobo is able to handle knowledge-based questions and ones involving complex mathematical calculations, it has a hard time thinking independently. As a result, the robot is unable to fully understand multiple sentences and phrases to arrive at the logical conclusions required in the English language tests. This weakness was reflected in the weak oral and writing scores, which came in at 36.2% and 50.5% , respectively.
Fortunately, after four tiring years, the robot's creators have decided to free Torobo from its annual test-taking suffering, the research team will instead focus on improving the robot’s ability to pick out specific answers from massive sets of data—a skill that led to its excellent history scores. They believe the expertise(专业技术）will help Torobo succeed as an industrial robot.
1.What is the disadvantage of Torobo?
A. It has much difficulty searching for facts.
B. It doesn't own language skills.
C. It has weak independent thinking ability.
D. It couldn’t get through the exams.
2.What does the underlined word “it” in the third paragraph refer to?
A. the score B. Torobo
C. the University of Tokyo D. the national average
3.What did the exam results show?
A. Torobo's score didn’t reach the national average.
B. Torobo's programmed ability improved its math score.
C. Torobo was admitted to a university.
D. Torobo did well in the history exam.
4.What is the text mainly about?"
A. Subjects a robot are good at.
B. A robot's performances in exams.
C. Majors that are suitable for a robot.
D. A robot's ways to deal with exams.
Visitors to the grounds of New College at England’s Oxford University pass under an iron gate with the advice: Manners make the man. Even after an appropriate update to: Manners make the person, it’s thought-provoking(引人深思的)—especially to today’s Americans.
When we think about what makes the person—it’s more likely the degree, the job, the salary. Since when do we count manners as a measure of success?
We do know that these would make life nicer, if more tolerable. However, we forget or overlook our manners. So , it seems, does everyone else—including, unluckily, our children.
As a university president, one of my great joys is to visit our campuses and see our students, though we’re separated by different generations, interests, and, of course dressing, each student tells me something within the first few minutes that we meet: whether he or she has been taught manners. I sense this in different ways: through her words or her gestures, in the way she listens or how he refers to friends and faculty, how she greets and says goodbye, how he responds when an elderly person enters the room.
In the absence of manners, however, I make some allowances. For instance, the many ethnic(种族的)groups that students represent often have different explanations of what makes up good manners. In other cases, some students may reject what they’ve learned to break from their parents and be accepted by other students. Whether students are being different or openly opposing, a recent experience I had with them tells me that there’s some hope for reviving and good manners.
Good manners don’t just guarantee acceptance. Good manners open doors to deeper connections and more meaningful roles in our society. Good manners are gentle signals that show we care about one another and allow us to relate to another person in a thoughtful way but at a respectable distance.
1.Which of the following is seldom a mark of success to people today?
A. Handsome income. B. An academic degree.
C. High ranks in the office D. Polite behavior.
2.What does the underlined part “make some allowances” in Paragraph 4 probably mean ?
A. treat the absence of manners differently
B. reject the absence of manners
C. oppose bad manners somehow
D. partly permit being in the absence of manners
3.Which of the following is the benefit by good manners?
A. Good manners makes people thoughtful
B. Good manners help deeper connections with others
C. Good manners guarantee acceptance of ourselves
D. Good manners inspire people to care about one another
Imagine that you’re looking at your company-issued smartphone and you notice an e-mail from Linkedln: “These companies are looking for candidates like you!” You aren’t necessarily searching for a job, but you’re always open to opportunities, so out of curiosity, you click on the link. A few minutes later your boss appears at your desk. “We’ve noticed that you’re spending more time on Linkedln lately, so I wanted to talk with you about your career and whether you’re happy here,” she says. Uh-oh.
It’s an awkward scene. Attrition (损耗) has always been expensive for companies, but in many industries the cost of losing good workers is rising, owing to tight labor markets. Thus companies are making greater efforts to predict which workers are at high risk of leaving so that managers can try to stop them. Methods range from electronic monitor to well-designed analyses of employees’ social media lives.
Some of this work may be a reason to let employees to quit. In general, people leave their jobs because they don’t like their boss, don’t see opportunities for promotion or growth, or are offered a higher pay; these reasons have held steady for years.
New research conducted by CEB, a Washington-based technology company, looks not just at why workers quit but also at 
when. “We’ve learned that what really affects people is their sense of how they’re doing compared with other people in their peer group, or with where they thought they would be at a certain point in life, says Brian Kropp, who heads CEB’s HR practice. “We’ve learned to focus on moments that allow people to make these comparisons.”
Technology also provides clues about which star employees might be eyeing the exit. Companies can tell whether employees using work computers or phones are spending time on (or even just opening e-mails from) career websites, and research shows that more firms are paying attention to these things. Large companies have also begun searching for badge swipes (浏览痕迹)---- employees’ use of an ID to enter and exit the building or the parking garage---to identify patterns that suggest a worker may be interviewing for a job.
1.What can we infer about Linkedln in the text?
A. an e-mail B. a job from the Internet
C. a world-famous company D. a professional social network
2.According to the passage, how can companies prevent workers from quitting?
A. Companies can analyze workers’ social media lives.
B. Companies need to find out workers likely to quit.
C. Companies must try to reduce the cost of losing good workers.
D. Companies should be stricter with workers.
3.According to the research by CEB, which of the following might be the most probable reason for workers to quit their jobs?
A. Workers are always doing comparisons.
B. Not seeing opportunities for promotion.
C. To find a higher-paid job.
D. They don’t like their bosses.
4.What is the author’s purpose in writing the text?
A. To show a new trend in the job market.
B. To stress the role of new technologies.
C. To make a review on a phenomenon.
D. To tell us the leader’s concerns.
