假设你是红星中学高二（1）班学生李华。请你根据以下四幅图的先后顺序，给21世纪英文报写一封稿件，介绍上周你班同学参观北京市规划展览馆（Beijing Planning Exhibition Hall）的全过程。
注意：同数不少于60；
提示如：沙盘 urban planning model 讲解员 docent
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假设你是红星中学高三学生李平，你的英国笔友Chris即将高中毕业，他在邮件中和你探讨上大学的问题。请你给Chris回复邮件，告诉他你的想法，内容包括：
1. 上大学的重要性；
2. 选择大学考虑的因素。
注意：1. 词数不少于50；
2. 开头和结尾已给出，不计入总词数。
Dear Chris,
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Yours,
Li Hua
A Wonder Plant
Every rainy season, the mountain gorillas (大猩猩) of Central Africa migrate to the foothills and lower parts of the Virunga Mountains to feed on bamboo. For the 650 or so that remain in the wild, it’s a vital food source. 1. Gorillas aren’t the only locals keen on bamboo. For the people near the mountains, it’s a valuable raw material used for building houses and making household items. But in the past 100 years, resources have come under increasing pressure as populations have exploded and large areas of bamboo forest have been cleared to make way for farms.
2. All over the world, the ranges of many bamboo species appear to be reducing, endangering the people and animals that depend upon them. A report published by the UN Environment Programme has revealed just how profound our ignorance of global bamboo resources is.
Bamboo is a wonder plant. Its ecological role extends beyond providing food and habitat for animals. Bamboo tends to grow in stands made up of groups of individual plants that grow from root systems. Its extensive root systems are crucial in preventing water loss and soil erosion.3. In India 25% of paper produced is made from bamboo fiber, and in Brazil, 100,000 hectares of bamboo are grown for its production. Because of its flexibility and strength, it has traditionally been used in construction. Bamboo is often the only readily available raw material for people in many developing countries.
4. Ray Townsend, vice president of the British Bamboo Society, says, “Some plants are threatened because they can’t survive in the habitat—they aren’t strong enough or there aren’t enough of them, perhaps. But bamboo can take care of itself-it is strong enough to survive if left alone.5.” When forest goes, it is transformed into something else: there isn’t anywhere for forest plants such as bamboo to grow if you create a cattle grass land.
A. Sadly, this isn’t a single story.
B. It is the physical disturbance that is the threat to bamboo.
C. Until now, bamboo has been viewed as a second-class plant.
D. Without it, their chances of survival would be reduced significantly.
E. Besides, bamboo’s most immediate significance lies in its economic value.
F. More than a billion people rely on bamboo for either their shelter or income.
G. Despite bamboo’s value in economy and ecology, its situation is all the more worrying.
That robots, automation, and software can replace people might seem obvious to anyone who’s worked in automotive manufacturing. But MIT business scholars Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee’s claim is more troubling and controversial. They believe that rapid technological change has been destroying jobs faster than it is creating them.
They believe that technology increases productivity and makes societies wealthier, but it became clear to them that the same technologies making many jobs safer, easier, and more productive were also reducing the demand for many types of human workers. Technologies like the Web, artificial intelligence, and big data are automating many routine tasks. Countless traditional white-collar jobs, such as many in the post office and in customer service, have disappeared.
As evidence, Brynjolfsson and McAfee point to a chart on which separate lines represent productivity and total employment in the United States. For years after World War II, the two lines closely tracked each other, with increases in jobs corresponding to increases in productivity. Then, beginning in 2000, the lines diverge; productivity continues to rise steadily, but employment suddenly shrinks. By 2011, a significant gap appears between the two lines, showing economic growth with no parallel increase in job creation.
United States Productivity and Employment
But are these new technologies really responsible for a decade of lackluster (无生气) job growth? David Autor, an economist at MIT who has studied the connections between jobs and technology, doubts that technology could account for such a sudden change in total employment. Moreover, he also doubts that productivity has, in fact, risen steadily in the United States in the past decade. If he’s right, it raises the possibility that poor job growth could be simply a result of a depressed economy. The sudden slowdown in job creation “is a big puzzle,” he says, “but there’s not a lot of evidence that it’s linked to computers.” “To be sure, computer technologies are changing the types of jobs available, but that is very different from saying technology is affecting the total number of jobs,” he adds. “Jobs can change a lot without there being huge changes in employment rates.”
Lawrence Katz, a Harvard economist, says that while technological changes can be painful for workers whose skills no longer match the needs of employers, no historical pattern shows these shifts leading to a net decrease in jobs over an extended period. Still, Katz doesn’t dismiss the notion that there is something different about today’s digital technologies. Though he expects the historical pattern to hold, it is “genuinely a question,” he says. “If technology disrupts enough, who knows what will happen?”
1.Which period on the chart strongly supports McAfee’s claim?
A. 1947—1967. B. 1985—1987.
C. 1997—2000. D. 2011—2013.
2.According to David Autor, the change in job growth ________.
A. is not necessarily caused by technology
B. results from a weakening economy
C. has no connection with productivity
D. affects the current types of jobs
3.What is Lawrence Katz’s attitude towards the topic?
A. Optimistic. B. Defensive.
C. Objective. D. Disapproving.
4.The main purpose of the passage is to ________.
A. show the relation between productivity and job creation
B. discuss the effect of technological advances on employment
C. argue against the wide use of artificial intelligence
D. explain the impact of technologies on productivity
Scientists say we are all born with a knack for mathematics. Every time we scan the cafeteria for a table that will fit all of our friends, we’re exercising the ancient estimation center in our brain.
Stanislas Dehaene was the first researcher to show that this part of the brain exists. In 1989, he met Mr. N who had suffered a serious brain injury. Mr. N couldn’t recognize the number 5, or add 2 and 2. But he still knew that there are “about 50 minutes” in an hour. Dehaene drew an important conclusion from his case: there must be two separate mathematical areas in our brains. One area is responsible for the math we learn in school, and the other judges approximate amounts.
So what does the brain’s estimation center do for us? Harvard University researcher Elizabeth Spelke has spent a lot of time posing math problems to preschoolers. When he asks 5-year-olds to solve a problem like 21+30, they can’t do it. But he has also asked them questions such as, “Sarah has 21 candles and gets 30 more. John has 34 candles. Who has more candles?” It turns out preschoolers are great at solving questions like that. Before they’ve learned how to do math with numerals and symbols, their brains’ approximation centers are already hard at work.
After we learn symbolic math, do we still have any use for our inborn math sense? Justin Halberda at Johns Hopkins University gave us an answer in his study. He challenged a group of 14-year-olds with an approximation test: The kids stared at a computer screen and saw groups of yellow and blue dots flash by, too quickly to count. Then they had to say whether there had been more blue dots or yellow dots. The researchers found that most were able to answer correctly when there were 25 yellow dots and 10 blue ones. When the groups were closer in size, 11 yellow dots and 10 blue ones, fewer kids answered correctly.
The big surprise in this study came when the researcher compared the kids’ approximation test scores to their scores on standardized math tests. He found that kids who did better on the flashing dot test had better standardized test scores, and vice versa (反之亦然). It seems that, far from being irrelevant, your math sense might predict your ability at formal math.
1.From the first two studies, we can learn that estimation center ________.
A. is divided into two separate mathematical areas
B. can help figure out numerals and symbols problems
C. functions independently in both kids’ and adults’ brains
D. works better when symbolic parts are injured or undergrown
2.What most surprised Justin in the study of 14-year-olds?
A. The variety of math abilities in different students.
B. The link between technology skills and estimation skills.
C. The difficulty of the task as the number of dots increased.
D. The connection between estimation skills and formal math ability.
3.What could be the best title for the passage?
A. Born with a Sense of Math
B. Go beyond What You Can Learn
C. Symbolic Math and Estimation Math
D. Our Brain一a Born Mathematician
Three Feet From Gold
Darby’s uncle was caught by the “gold fever” in the gold-rush days, and went west to dig and grow rich. After months of labor, he was rewarded by the discovery of the shining ore (矿石). He needed machinery to bring the ore to the surface. So, with the “strike”, he returned home. And with the help of Darby, he borrowed a lot of money. After buying the machinery and having it shipped, Uncle and Darby went back to work the mine.
The first car of ore was mined. And the returns proved they had one of the richest mines in Colorado! Down went the drills! Up went the hopes of Uncle and Darby!
Then something happened! The vein (矿脉) of gold ore disappeared! They drilled on, but all in vain. Finally, they decided to quit and sold the machinery to a junk man for a few hundred dollars. The junk man called in a mining engineer to look at the mine and do a little calculating. The engineer’s calculations showed that the vein would be found just three feet from where the Darbys had stopped drilling! The junk man took millions of dollars in the vein, because he knew enough to seek expert’s advice before giving up.
Most of the money which went into the machinery was borrowed through the efforts of Darby, who was then a very young man. The money came from his relatives because of their faith in him. He paid back every dollar of it, although he was years in doing so.
Long afterward, Mr. Darby made another discovery that desire can be changed into gold. This discovery came after he went into the business of selling life insurance. Remembering that he lost a huge fortune, for he stopped three feet from gold, Darby profited by the experience in his chosen work, saying to himself, “I stopped three feet from gold, but I will never stop because men say ‘no’ when I ask them to buy insurance.”
Darby sold more than a million dollars in life insurance annually. He owes his “stickability” to the lesson he learned from his “quitability” in the gold mining business.
1.Darby’s uncle went back home to ________.
A. receive his reward
B. seek financial support
C. look for more helpers
D. consult an engineer
2.The Darbys failed in mining business because of ________.
A. quitting drilling on
B. the disappearance of the vein
C. the shortage of the machinery
D. competing against the junk man
3.From the passage, we can know Darby ________.
A. was unable to pay off the debts
B. mined his gold from the failure
C. learned a lesson from selling insurance
D. devoted himself to making new discoveries
4.The author intends to tell us that ________.
A. hopes and difficulties exist side by side
B. correct decisions stems from correct judgement
C. we should catch it when an opportunity comes
D. we won’t reach our goal unless we persist
