Part I Writing [15 marks]

Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a passage titled “The Development of AI and the Destiny of Humanity”. You should write about 120-180 words.

Part II Words and Structure [25 marks]

Directions: In this section there are 25 incomplete sentences. You must read the four choices marked A), B) C) and D) after each sentence, and decide which one is the best answer for each sentence. Then mark the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet with a single line through the centre.

1. Please complete your ( ) within 10 minutes to avoid session timeout.

2. The patient made a ( ) recovery, surprising all the doctors who had given up hope.

3. You can easily ( ) your software to the latest version by following these simple steps.

4. John applied for a ( ) to buy his first house.

5. The heavy storm caused the boat to ( ) rapidly.

6. Many teenagers experience ( ) on social media platforms, which can negatively impact thei mental health.

7. The recipe ( ) of three main ingredients:floureggs, and sugar.

8. The city center is always full of ( ), especially during the holiday season.

9. The hacker was arrested for spreading ( ) software that damaged thousands of compute

10. The number of people attending the event was surprisingly ( ), given the remote location and lack of publicity.

11. She managed to ( ) the error in the document before it was sent out.

12. The feeling of ( ) he experienced after failing the exam was overwhelming.

13. The software can automatically ( ) reports based on the latest data.

14. The new policy was introduced after a thorough discussion in the ( ) meeting.

15. The new streetlights were installed to ( ) the dark alleys and make them safer for pedestrians at night.

16. The weather in this region is ( ) hot in the summer, with temperatures onten exceeding 35 degrees Celsius.

17. The sweater will ( ) if you wash it in hot water.

18. The amount of work she had to complete before the deadline completely ( ) her.

19. In order to ( ) the premises, the company installed a new state-of-the-art alarm system.

20. The project must be completed by the ( ) set by the client, or we might tace penalties.

21. The board of directors decided to ( ) a new CEO to lead the company into the next decade

22. The air felt heavy and uncomfortable because it was very ( ).

23. During the long meeting, James found himself feeling increasingly ( ) and struggled to stay focused.

24. The ( ) of data over the internet has significantly improved with the advancement of technology.

25. In her ( ) time, she enjoys reading books and gardening.

Part III Word Bank [10 marks]

Directions: In this part there are 10 incomplete sentences. You are required to select one word/expression for each blank from the word bank above the sentences. You may not use any of the words/expressions more than once. Two are extra.

Please mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet with a single line through the centre.

A. make for

B. sweep

C. vulnerable

D. interpretation

E. agent

F. unaccountable

G. parade

H. attribute

I. cater for

J. vision

K. idle

L. prestigious

26. We aim to 【暂无答案】 the need of customers of different ages.

27. Technology is a chief 【暂无答案】 of industrial change.

28. The new computers 【暂无答案】 much greater productivity

29. It is said that three-fold smartphone will 【暂无答案】 both the domestic and the overseas markets.

30. Meanwhile, the disadvantaged and 【暂无答案】 among us need new opportunities more than ever.

31. This is one of the best equipped and most 【暂无答案】 universities in the country.

32. People often 【暂无答案】 these words to Socrates but he did not actually say or write them.

33. He has already formed a clear 【暂无答案】 or his future career.

34. Understanding how the author’s life experience shaped her can help with the 【暂无答案】 of her works,

35. Their anonymity makes them 【暂无答案】 for the information they provide.

Part IV Reading Comprehension [30 marks]

Section A

Directions: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A), B), C) and D). You should decide on the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet with a single line through the centre.

Passage One

Questions 36 to 40 are based on the following passage.

Viktoriia Radchuk, an evolutionary ecologist at Berlin’s Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, wanted to know how animals were responding to climate change.

So she scoured the results of more than 10,000 animal studies—on species from frogs to snakes, from insects to birds to mammals—looking for information on how changing environments were affecting animal behavior. Based on the available data, she decided to focus on birds in the Northern Hemisphere.

As detailed in a new paper in Nature Communications, Radchuk and her coauthors found that many birds are adapting to climate change—but probably not fast enough. Which means, on average, these species are at risk of extinction, she says.

The data focused on common and abundant bird species, such as tits, song sparrows and magpies (which are also the most well documented in studies). They showed that some bird populations are breeding, laying eggs and migrating earlier, which makes them better prepared for earlier onsets of spring—a significant effect of climate change.

Radchuk explains that when temperatures warm, plants flower earlier, and insects also develop earlier.

For many birds, insects are their food source, which means that birds [should] time their egg laying to correspond to the peak of prey abundance,” she says, so their chicks have lots of food. Some birds have been shifting to earlier dates.

“We’ve known for a long time that global climate change is happening. We’ve known for a long time that animals are changing in response to this. But what we really haven’t known is how well the animals are keeping up with the selection,” says Meliss Bowlin an ecologist at the University of Michigan Dearborn who was not involved with the study.

The paper, which is largely based on studies from the past 30 years, comes to a stark conclusion: “The temperature is changing so fast that evolution isn’t able to keep up,” Bowlin says.

The abundance of the species in the studies is evidence that they are already better able to adapt to changing environments, says Radchuk. “So we would expect that the species that are rare and in danger already—from habitat fragmentation or invasive species or any other environmental change—would be even more sensitive to climate change.”

Bridget Stutchbury, a field biologist and ornithologist at York University in Toronto, is optimistic because birds have shown resilience in the past.

“At least for birds, many of the studies are done on species that are relatively short-lived, and they reproduce very easily,” she says. “Those traits allow them to adapt and respond quickly to changes.”

Stutchbury points to the bald eagle, whose U.S. population in the lower 48 states declined to 417 pairs in the 1960s but then rebounded to nearly 10,000 in the mid-2000s, after the federal government banned DDT and helped protect their habitat. “They can recover very quickly if we can put the environment back on track for them,” she says.

36. What can we conclude from the third paragraph?

37. According to the passage, how did birds adapt themselves to the climate change?

38. According to Radchuk, what kind of species will be more sensitive to climate change?

39. What’s the attitude of Bridget Stutchbury towards the future of these birds?

40. According to the passage, what will allow birds to adapt and respond quickly to changes?

Passage Two

Questions 41 to 45 are based on the following passage.

Sociologists have developed elaborate theories of who spreads small talks and news—who tells whom, who matters most in social networks—but they’ve had less success measuring what kind of information travels fastest. Do people prefer to spread good news or bad news? Would we rather shock the readers with improper behavior or enlighten them? Which stories do social creatures want to share and why?

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that people preferred e-mailing articles with positive rather than negative themes, and they liked to send long articles on intellectually challenging topics. Perhaps most of all, readers wanted to share articles that inspired astonishment, an emotion that the researchers investigated after noticing how many science articles made the list. In general, they found 20 percent of articles that appeared on the Times home page made the list, but the rate rose to 30 percent for science articles. “Science kept doing better than we expected, said Dr. Berger, a social psychologist and a professor of marketing at Penn’s Wharton School.” We anticipated that people would share articles with practical information about health, and they did, but they also sent articles about earth science. You’d see articles shooting up the list that were about the physics of light of deer vision.

The motivation for mailing these astonishment-inspiring articles is not as immediately obvious as with other kinds of articles, Dr. Berger said. Sharing cooking skills or financial tips or medical advice makes sense according to classic economic utility theory: I give you something of practical value in the hope that you’ll someday return the favor.

There can also be self-interested reasons for sharing surprising articles: I get to show off how well informed I am by sending news that will shock you.

But in general, people who share this kind of article seem to have greater motives than trying to impress their friends. They’re seeking emotional communication, Dr. Berger said. “If I’ve just read this story that changes the way I understand the world and myself, I want to talk to others about what it means. If you read the article and feel the same emotion, it will bring us closer together.”

41. What is the present situation of sociologists’ study on news travel in people’s life?

42. What did researchers at the University of Pennsylvania find about people’s preference of news?

43. What was the result of investigation on types of artcles sent by readers?

44. According to Dr. Berger, why did people love to share astonishment-inspiring articles?

45. What can be inferred from this passage?

Section B

Directions: In this section, you are going to read a passage with ten statements atached 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. Each paragraph is marked with a letter/letters.You should decide on the best choice and mark the corresponding letter(s) on Answer Sheet with a single line through the centre.

A. How would you feel about getting therapy from a robot? Emotionally intelligent machines may not be as far away as it seems. Over the last few decades, artificial intelligence (AI) has become increasingly good at reading emotional reactions in humans. But reading is not the same as understanding. If AIs cannot experience emotions themselves, can they ever truly understand us?

B. The latest generation of AIs have come about thanks to an increase in data available for computers to learn from, as well as their improved processing power. These machines are increasingly competitive in tasks that have always been perceived as human. AIs can now among other things, recognize faces, turn face sketches into photos, recognize speech and play Go.

C. Recently, researchers have developed an AI that is able to tell whether a person is a criminal just by looking at their facial features. The system was evaluated using a database of Chinese ID photos and the results are jaw dropping. The AI mistakenly categorized innocents as criminals in only around 6 per cent of the cases, while it was able to successfully identify around 83 per cent of the criminals. This leads to a staggering overall accuracy of almost 90 per cent.

D. The system is based on an approach called “deep learning”, which has been successful in perceptive tasks such as face recognition. Deep learning builds a neural network, loosely modelled on the human brain. Given the success of deep learning, it is not surprising that artificial neural networks can distinguish criminals from non-criminals—if there really are facial features that can discriminate between them. The research suggests there are three. One is the angle between the tip of the nose and the corners of the mouth, which was on average 19.6 per cent smaller for criminals. The upper lip curve was also on average 23.4 per cent larger for criminals while the distance between the inner corners of the eyes was on average 5.6 per cent narrower.

E. This analysis seems to suggest that outdated views that criminals can be identified by physical attributes are not entirely wrong. However, it may not the full story. It it interesting that two of the most relevant features are related to the lips, which are our most expressive expression, but it could be that the AI managed to find hidden emitions in those photos. These may look at the sample photos displayed in the paper, which is yet to be peer reviewed. Indeed, a careful photos are available so we cannot generalize our conclusions to the whole database.

F. This would not be the first time that a computer was able to recognize human emotions.The so-calld field “affective computing” has been around for several years. It is argued that, if we are comfortably live and interact with robots, these machines should be able to understand and appopriately react to human emotions. There is much work in the area, and the possibilities are vast. For eaxmple, researchers have used facial analysis to spot struggling students in computer tutoring sessions. The AI was trained to recognize different levels of engagement and frustration, so that the system could know when the students were finding the work too easy or too difficult. This technology could be useful to improve the learning experience in online platforms.

G. AI has also been used to detect emotions based on the sound of our voice by a company called BeyondVerbal. They have produced software which analyzes voice change and seeks specific patterns in the way people talk. The company claims to be able to correctly identify emotions with 80 per cent accracy. In the futre, this type of technlogy might, for instance, help autistic (患自闭症的) individuals to identify emotions. Sony is even trying to develop a robot able to form emotional bonds with people. There is not much information about how they intend to achieve that, or what exactly the robot will do. However, they mention that they seek to “integrate hardware and services to provide emotionally compelling experiences”.

H. An emotionally intelligent AI has several potential benefits, be it to give someone a companion or to help us perform certain tasks—ranging from criminal questioning to talking therapy. But there are also ethical problems and risks involved. Is it right to let a patient with mental problems rely on an AI companion and believe it has an emotional life when it doesn’t? And can you convict a person based on an AI that classifies them as guilty? Clearly not. Instead, once a system like this is further improved and fully evaluated, a less harmful and potentially helpful use might be to trigger further checks on individuals considered “suspicious”’ by the AI.

I. So what should we expect from AI going forward? Subjective topics such as emotions are still difficult for AI to learn, partly because the AI may not have access to enough good data to analyze them objectively. For instance, could AI ever understand sarcasm (讽刺)? A given sentence may be sarcastic when spoken in one context but not in another.

J. Yet the amount of data and processing power continues to grow. So, with a few exceptions, AI may well be able to match humans in recognizing different types of emotions in the next few decades. But whether an AI could ever experience emotions is a controversial subject. Even if they could, there may certainly be emotions they could never experience—making it difficult to ever truly understand them.

Statements:

46. AI has the potential to improve online learning experience by recognizing students’ different emotions and assessing the difficulty level of work.

47. AI still has difficulty understanding the context-dependent language.

48. It is still unknown whether intelligent machines can understand humans when they cannot experience emotions themselves.

49. Research shows there are three facial features that can help to identify criminals.

50. There is software that can detect emotions through the analysis of voice change.

51. It is a subject of much debate whether AI could experience emotions.

52. The latest Al can perform tasks as well as humans can due to the availability of more data and their better processing power.

53. It might be reasonable to expect an Al system to aid in identifying a criminal as opposed to relying entirely on its judgment.

54. The AI system’s ability to notice hidden emotions may also explain why the system can identify criminals.

55. A recently developed AI system can recognize criminals based on their facial features with grea accuracy.

Part V Collocation [10 marks]

Directions: In this part, there are 10 sentences. Fill in each blank with an appropriate preposition or adverb.

Please finish this part in the Answer Book.

56. You played your heart 【暂无答案】 on the football pitches and cricket fields, or paraded across the stage as a leading light of the university dramatic society.

57. You would usually keep up with the work,too, by doing the required reading and dashing 【暂无答案】 the week’s essay at the last minute.

58. 【暂无答案】 the case of Moussambani, another motto would have been more appropriate:Slow Slower, Slowest.

59. But after they had both been disqualified for leaping 【暂无答案】 the blocks early,Moussambani had to race alone.

60. If China were able to build a time machine and send one of its citizens to a rural area back in the late 1970s, that person would probably be subject 【暂无答案】 a life without electronics and illuminated by only kerosene lamps.

61. With one billion strong population of Internet users, China is at the forefront 【暂无答案】 mobile communication.

62. At the back of everyone’s mind was what we would do when we left university in a few months. Early the next morning we set 【暂无答案】 along the estuary.

63. Tucked 【暂无答案】 from the hustle and bustle of the busy streets the lanes allowed me to find some calm just a few steps away from the chaos of the main thoroughfares.

64. I was fascinated to think of the long and rich life my neighbour had experienced growing up in Shanghai, along 【暂无答案】 the vast changes to the city she would have witnessed.

65. But we are bombarded 【暂无答案】 news about their lives, the details of which usually show their finest moments.

Part VI Translation [10 marks]

Directions: For this part, you are going to read five incomplete sentences. Complete the sentences by translating the Chinese in brackets into English. The underlined parts should be translated with the newly-learnt expressions in the textbook.

Please finish this part in the Answer Book.

66. Whatever your chosen career, the companies were all 【暂无答案】 (排着队来聘用你).

67. A search through history may give you 【暂无答案】 (有一个更好的认识) the performance of Moussambani.

68. The economy is 【暂无答案】 (更加以创新为导向) and this has prioritized AI, alongside big data and cloud computing, to power economic growth.

69. Libraries were even 【暂无答案】 (座无虚席) until the early hours of the morning.

70. This often makes us feel uneasy, because we worry that our lives are 【暂无答案】 (活得比别人差).