An unlucky experience in my youth left me with an almost extreme fear of snakes. No matter how much I tried to learn about snakes, I found myself shaking with fear at so much as a photograph in a magazine or a toy snake.
Then, I became a mother. Time flew. When my son reached Cub Scout (童子军) age, I signed him up for the local pack. Within a short time, I volunteered to work as a caregiver.
A family camping trip to the local Scout campgrounds provided opportunities for the boys to learn at a variety of nature stations. I went from one post to another with the kids excitedly. All my positive feelings disappeared, however, when the staff member pointed us up the path to the next post.
“You guys are going to love the reptile (爬行动物) station,” a staff member announced.
“They’ve got a live snake you can hold.”
Live? Hold? Was he kidding? I almost turned and ran away until I remembered I was responsible for these boys. I couldn’t leave them.
The boys ran to the reptile station. I forced my feet to follow them.
The young man there went through his presentation on the importance of snakes in the environment with good humor and lots of information.
“Are you ready to meet Humphrey?” he asked.
The boys cheered. The young man carried a snake from a covered container beside the table.
He regarded Humphrey as a camp mascot (吉祥物) for a few years. As he talked about the characters of the species, he held the snake on his arm. The snake rested quietly there as the young man spoke. He explained the snake was not a threat to humans.
“Watch this,” he said, and placed the snake on the tabletop beside him. The snake stayed there quietly.
He offered the boys a chance to touch the snake.
“Don’t you want to hold him, Ms. Mary Beth?” one of the boys asked me.
| A．To work | B．Worked | C．To be working | D．Having worked |
| A．Yes, I wouldn’t | B．No, I would | C．Yes, I would | D．No, I wouldn’t |
| A．it was what that caused the disease | B．what it was that caused the disease |
| C．what was it that caused the disease | D．that it was what caused the disease |
| A．that; where | B．which; that | C．that; that | D．that; which |
New research suggests that dogs might be able to help save diseased citrus trees.
A group of scientists trained dogs to use their sense of smell to detect a crop disease called citrus-greening. The disease has affected orange, lemon and grapefruit trees in the American states of Florida, California and Texas.
The dogs can detect the disease weeks to years before it appears on tree leaves and roots, the researchers report. A study on their findings was published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The report says using dogs is also faster, less costly and more exact than having people collect hundreds of leaves for lab analysis.
Timothy Gottwald is a researcher with the U. S. Department of Agriculture and a co-writer of the study. He told The Associated Press, “This technology is thousands of years old-the dog’s nose. We’ve just trained dogs to hunt new prey.”
Citrus-greening is caused by a bacteria (细菌) that is spread by a tiny insect that feeds on the leaves and stems of citrus trees. Once a tree is infected (感染), there is no cure. The disease has also hurt citrus crops in Central and South America and Asia. In one experiment involving grapefruit trees in Texas, trained dogs were correct 95 percent of the time in telling the difference between newly infected trees and healthy ones. “The earlier you detect a disease, the better chance you have at stopping an epidemic (流行病) by removing infected trees,” Gottwald said.
Matteo Garbelotto studies plants at the University of California, Berkeley. He says the new research shows that dogs can detect an infection well before current methods. Garbelotto has been involved in similar research but had no part in the new study.
Laura Sims is a plant scientist with Louisiana Tech University. She praised the steps taken to find out if the dogs were detecting the bacteria itself or a plant’s reaction to an infection. To do that, the researchers infected different kinds of unrelated plants with the bacteria in a laboratory. The dogs were still able to pick out the infected plants.
Gottwald said, “You’ve seen dogs working in airports, detecting drugs and explosives. Maybe soon you will see them working on more farms. ”
1．According to the research, trained dogs can ________.| A．help infected trees recover from diseases | B．recognize a crop disease in its early stage |
| C．cause fruit trees to grow faster than usual | D．reduce the cost of planting some fruit trees |
| A．Infected plants. | B．Fruit trees. | C．Tiny insects. | D．Favourite foods. |
| A．To further prove the findings. | B．To explore the plant diseases. |
| C．To present different opinions. | D．To discover a plant’s reactions. |
| A．Doubtful. | B．Positive. | C．Indifferent. | D．Curious. |
For years, you’ve been told that stress can be deadly and is something to be avoided. Therefore, an anxious situation is often accompanied by a sense of fear. However, recent studies suggest that stress-related harmful effects on your health are not unavoidable.
One study followed 30,000 people over eight years and measured their stress levels. Those who believed that stress is harmful died at a higher rate than those who were under stress but didn’t acknowledge the so-called negative effects. The latter group was healthier, and many of them lived long, happy lives.
Stressful feelings start out in a small region of the brain that affects how people feel emotions, especially fear. The small region is very sensitive to possible threats. When it senses danger, it alerts the brain, and feelings of fear or stress can result. These feelings give people a warning message when they need to pay attention and when they need to take action. For instance, when the sight of a speeding car triggers (触发) the region to release a lightning-fast message, we know immediately to move out of the way!
Another study carried by Health psychologist Dr. McGonigal found a link between stress and the amount of sympathy people showed to others. Researchers tracked 1,000 adults, their descriptions of the level of stress in their lives and the amount of time spent helping others. With each major stressful event, such as a family tragedy or financial crisis, the risk of dying increased by 30 percent. But for the group who spent time helping others, there was no increase in stress-related deaths, even for those who had faced their own personal tragedies. According to Dr. McGonigal, “Chasing meaning is better for your health than trying to avoid discomfort. Go after what it is that creates meaning in your life and then trust yourself to handle the stress that follows.”
1．What does the study in paragraph 2 suggest?| A．Stress caused many deaths over eight years. |
| B．Stress won’t hurt you if you don’t acknowledge its presence. |
| C．It is not the stress but our response to it that creates problems. |
| D．Those without stress usually live long and happy lives. |
| A．Stress is harmful to the brain. |
| B．Stress can cause danger. |
| C．Stress can be a threat to us. |
| D．Stress can lead to timely action. |
| A．People without stress spend more time caring others. |
| B．Stress often causes a family tragedy or financial crisis. |
| C．Stress can be avoided by helping others. |
| D．People chasing meaning in life suffer less from stress. |
| A．Stress Is Not Your Enemy | B．Man Can Conquer Stress |
| C．We Need Remove Stress | D．Stress Is Nearly Harmless |
That cold January night, I was growing sick of my life in San Francisco. There I was, walking home at one o’clock in the morning after a tiring practice at the
As I walked down empty streets under tall buildings, I felt very small and cold. I began
About a block from my apartment, I heard a sound behind me. I turned quickly, half
Suddenly I wasn’t cold or tired anymore. I ran out of the door and back to
Just as I was about to give up the search, I heard the garbage truck pull up to the sidewalk next to me. When a voice called from the inside, “Alisa Camacho?” I thought I was
It was nearly 3 A.M. by the time I got into bed. I wouldn’t get much sleep that night, but I had gotten my wallet back. I also had gotten back some
| A．theatre | B．stadium | C．bank | D．school |
| A．accounts | B．numbers | C．songs | D．lines |
| A．taking up | B．giving up | C．starting up | D．mixing up |
| A．walking | B．crying | C．running | D．shaking |
| A．actors | B．drivers | C．beggars | D．robbers |
| A．careless | B．homeless | C．sleepless | D．aimless |
| A．expecting | B．hoping | C．preparing | D．calculating |
| A．Therefore | B．Instead | C．Moreover | D．Still |
| A．cellphone | B．wallet | C．book | D．passport |
| A．when | B．which | C．where | D．what |
| A．sleeping | B．playing | C．dreaming | D．imagining |
| A．ran | B．jumped | C．climbed | D．fell |
| A．throwing | B．tearing | C．putting | D．holding |
| A．enjoyment | B．sorrow | C．reflection | D．imagination |
| A．curious | B．anxious | C．willing | D．determined |
Adults are often embarrassed about asking for aid. It’s an act that can make people feel emotionally unsafe.
New research suggests young children don’t seek help in school, even when they need it, for the same reason. Until recently, psychologists assumed that children did not start to care about their reputation and their friends’ thoughts about them until around age nine.
But our research suggests that as early as age seven, children begin to connect asking for help with looking incompetent in front of others. At some point, every child struggles in the classroom.
To learn more about how children think about reputation, we created simple stories and then asked children questions about these situations to allow kids to showcase their thinking.
Across several studies, we asked 576 children, ages four to nine, to predict the behavior of two kids in a story. One of the characters genuinely wanted to be smart, and the other merely wanted to seem smart to others. In one study, we told children that both kids did poorly on a test.
| A．Kids could be afraid to ask their parents for help. |
| B．Seeking help could even be taught as socially desirable. |
| C．In another study we told them that only one kid did poorly. |
| D．Such reputational barriers likely require reputation-based solutions. |
| E．The moment you ask for directions, after all, you reveal that you are lost. |
| F．But if they are afraid to ask for help because their classmates are watching, learning will suffer. |
| G．We then asked which of these characters would be more likely to raise their hand in front of their class to ask the teacher for help. |
My 21-year-old niece, a second-year undergraduate, mentioned that she watches video lectures offline at twice the normal speed. Struck by this, I asked some other students I know. Many now routinely speed up their lectures when learning offline — often by 1.5 times, sometimes by even more. Speed learning is not for everyone, but there are websites where students discuss how odd it will be once they return to the lecture theatre. One contributor wrote: “Normal speed now sounds like drunk speed.”
Education was adapting to the digital world long before Covid-19 but, as with so many other human activities, the pandemic has given learning a huge push towards the virtual. Overnight, schools and universities closed and teachers and students had to find ways to do what they do only via the internet. “This is a time for schools and systems to reimagine education without schooling or classrooms,” says Professor Yong Zhao. Dr Jim Watterston in Australia thinks that, while the traditional classroom is still alive and well, education needs to be more adventurous and flexible. Earlier this year, Zhao and Watterston co-authored a paper in which they identified some major changes that should happen in education post-lockdown.
The first concerns the content, which should emphasize such things as creativity, critical thinking and leadership, rather than the collection and storage of information. “For humans to progress in the age of smart machines, it is essential that they do not compete with machines.”, they wrote, “Instead, they need to be more human.”
The second is that students should have more control over their learning, with the teacher’s role shifting from instructor to supervisor of learning resources, advisor and motivator. This is where so-called “active learning” comes in with a growing body of research suggesting that comprehension and memory are better when students learn in a hands-on way — through discussion and interactive technologies, for example. It’s also where the concept of “productive failure” applies. Professor Manu Kapurin argues that students learn better from their own or others’ failed attempts to solve a problem before or even instead of being told how to solve it.
If the progress of the times is unable to hold back the coming revolution in education, it seems unlikely that the traditional classroom is going to have any luck in its attempts trying to turn back the clock. As Laurillard puts it, “It took a global pandemic to drive home what we’ve been saying for 20 years.”
1．By giving examples of “speed learning” in the first paragraph, the author wants to show that _________.| A．digital world is dramatically reforming the way of learning. |
| B．speed learning completely replaces normal speed learning. |
| C．returning to the lecture theatre is strange after speed learning. |
| D．education begins to adapt to digital world after Covid-19. |
| A．It is essential for smart machines to be more human. |
| B．Students should possess more information about creativity. |
| C．Students value others’ failure over their own failure. |
| D．“Active learning” calls for diverse ways of involvement. |
| A．①④ | B．②③ | C．①③ | D．②④ |
| A．Speed learning harms students’ learning efficiency. |
| B．The coming revolution in education is irreversible. |
| C．Teachers will play a less important role in the future. |
| D．The traditional classrooms will eventually disappear. |
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