25-26-2-新视野英语A（下）-期末

Part I Writing [15 marks]

Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a passage titled “Promoting Traditional Culture in the Digital Age”. You should write at least 120 words.

Please finish this part in the Answer Book.

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. The lack of public awareness became a significant ( ) to the successful implementation of the recycling program.
  1. The area’s high rates of ( ) were attributed to poverty, lack of education, and limited access to healthcare.
  1. The photographer’s ability to ( ) the fleeting emotions of her subjects in every frame is what sets her work apart.
  1. The final report, which was ( ) by several weeks, finally arrived, much to the relief of the anxious stakeholders.
  1. The news of the company’s merger seemed to ( ) a sense of uncertainty among the employees, many of whom feared for their jobs.
  1. The mayor’s ( ) response to the emergency situation helped save several lives, earning her praise from both her colleagues and the citizens.
  1. Her ( ) bearing and eloquent speech immediately marked her as someone accustomed to elegance and high education.
  1. The ( ) nature of the job meant that employees were hired on short-term contracts with no guarantee of renewal.
  1. The new regulations were designed to ( ) the effect of the economic downturn on small businesses, offering them financial aid.
  1. The new policy of the government had ( ) implications, reshaping not only the economy but also societal norms and environmental practices.
  1. The company must ensure ( ) with all environmental regulations to avoid hefty fines and potential shutdowns.
  1. The remote village, with its 50 ( ), has remained largely untouched by modern development.
  1. The ( ) of the research was broadened to include not only economic factors but also social and cultural influences.
  1. His ( ) lifestyle, marked by expensive cars and frequent vacations, soon led to financial troubles.
  1. Students were eager to ( ) in the advanced robotics course, which promised hands-on experience with cutting-edge AI technology.
  1. The corporation was able to ( ) a new term to describe the revolutionary concept that was taking over the tech industry.
  1. The factory is undergoing a thorough ( ) to ensure that all safety standards are being met before the product launch.
  1. As the sun set behind the mountains, the vibrant colours of the sky gradually faded ( ), leaving a calm and peaceful evening.
  1. The doctor decided to ( ) the patient, as his condition had stabilized significantly, after a thorough evaluation.
  1. Seeing two children unexpectedly dart across the street, the bus driver gradually applied the brakes and ( ) a smooth halt, ensuring the safety of everyone on board.
  1. Nobody guessed that such a virus would spread so rapidly and lead to a global ( ).
  1. In order to create a supportive environment for innovation, the company determined to ( ) a culture of open communication and collaboration among its employees.
  1. When considered ( ) isolation, the policy appears beneficial, but it may have unintended consequences when interacting with related measures.
  1. Attendance at the safety training session was ( ) for all employees, regardless of their position or seniority.
  1. The girl ( ) the top off the bottle and poured herself a drink.

Part III Word Bank [10 marks]

Directions: In this section, there is a passage with several blanks. You are required to select one word for each blank from a list of choices given in a word bank beside the passage. Read the passage through carefully before making your choices. Each choice in the bank is identified by a letter or letters. You may not use any of the words in the bank more than once. Please mark the corresponding letter(s) on Answer Sheet.

A. attachment

B. block

C. sensation

D. insightful

AB. budding

AC. far-fetching

AD. in vain

BC. internalize

BD. alleviation

CD. assessment

ABC. bewildering

ABD. bizarre

ACD. diverse

BCD. deprive of

ABCD. intervention

The development of China’s aerospace industry has created a nationwide 26 【暂无答案】, with people of all ages showing great enthusiasm for every space mission. From 27 【暂无答案】 young scientists devoting themselves to aerospace research to experienced experts leading technical innovation, the industry gathers 28 【暂无答案】 talents who work together for the same goal. Before each rocket launch, researchers conduct a rigorous 29 【暂无答案】 of all systems, leaving no room for mistakes, because any careless check will make previous efforts go 30 【暂无答案】.

When facing 31 【暂无答案】 technical problems that once seemed unsolvable, Chinese aerospace engineers never give up. Their 32 【暂无答案】 analysis and precise judgment help break through one bottleneck after another. The 33 【暂无答案】 of the pressure from international technological barriers is achieved through independent research and development, as China has never let external factors 34 【暂无答案】 its pace of space exploration. Moreover, every aerospace practitioner strives to 35 【暂无答案】 the spirit of pursuing excellence, which in turn becomes the enduring inner motivation driving constant progress in China’s space exploration endeavors.

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.

What one culture considers a perplexing or awkward pause, others see as a valuable moment of reflection and a sign of respect for what the last speaker has said. Research conducted at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands in Dutch and also in English found that when a silence in conversation stretched to four seconds, people started to feel unsettled. In contrast, a separate study of business meetings found that Japanese people were happy with silences of 8.2 seconds, nearly twice as long as in Americans’ meetings.

These cultural differences are reflected in the saying in the US that “the squeaky wheel gets the grease”, while in Japan it’s reckoned that “a silent man is the best one to listen to”. In Japan, the power of silence is recognised in the concept of haragei (belly talk), which suggests that the best communication is when you don’t speak at all. “As soon as you need words there’s already a failure to understand each other, so you’re repairing that failure by using words,” says Dr. Deborah Tannen, a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University in the US.

Of course, there are times when it’s better to speak up. Silence can sometimes be misinterpreted, says Tannen. Researchers of courtroom interaction found lawyers advised clients giving testimony to think before answering and not jump in immediately. But juries often suspected that a silence before speaking meant the person was making a lie, she says. “The intention and the effect of silence are often different.”

In the workplace that can mean a manager announcing a decision and assuming that if staff are unhappy they will speak up, she explains. The employees, however, may see no point in saying anything because the boss has made up their mind. “That’s a very dangerous difference,” she says.

Learning how to face silence is an important skill, says Matthew MacLachlan of UK-based Learnlight, a language and soft skills training provider, especially when working across cultures.

In presentations, silence can be far more effective than dramatic passion, he adds. “Before starting, look at the audience and be silent for a moment because that says, I’m in control. I know what I’m doing. I’m confident.” A classic example was when Apple co-founder Steve Jobs launched the first iPhone, says MacLachlan. “He introduced pauses so that you didn’t miss his key points. Because silence makes us nervous, our instinctive reaction is that we’d better pay attention, there’s something going on here.”

“Silence can be a very powerful focal point for understanding ourselves, understanding others, for developing better mutual understanding and more productive outcomes and that applies to business, politics, education, law, medicine, every realm of human life,” says Carbaugh.

Having observed the use of silence in Finland and also among the Blackfeet Nation, a North American Indian tribe in northern Montana in the US, he says he sees benefits far beyond wheeling and dealing.

  1. What is the reaction of the Dutch after a four-second silence in conversation?
  1. What does the sentence “the squeaky wheel gets the grease” (Para. 2) mean?
  1. What did lawyers advise clients to do when giving testimony according to researchers?
  1. Why may employees fail to speak up even when unhappy with their manager’s decision?
  1. Why did Steve Jobs introduce pauses when launching the first iPhone?

Passage Two

Questions 41 to 45 are based on the following passage.

Psychologists have long been in disagreement as to whether competition is a learned or a genetic component of human behaviour. Whatever it is, you cannot but recognize the effect competition is exerting in academics and many other areas of contemporary life.

Psychologically speaking, competition has been seen as an inevitable consequence of human drives. According to Sigmund Freud, humans are born screaming for attention and full of organic drives for fulfilment in various areas. Initially, we compete for the attention of our parents. Thereafter, we are at the mercy of a battle between our base impulses for self-fulfilment and social and cultural norms which prohibit pure satisfaction.

Current work in anthropology has suggested, however, that this view of the role of competition in human behaviour may be incorrect. Thomas Hobbes, one of the great philosophers of the seventeenth century, is perhaps best remembered for his characterization of the “natural world,” that is, the world before the setting of the will of humanity, as being “nasty, brutish, and short.” This image of the pre-rational world is still widely held, reinforced by Charles Darwin’s highly influential work, The Origin of Species, which established the theory of natural selection. This theory, which takes for granted that those species best able to adapt to and master the natural environment in which they live will survive, has suggested that the struggle for survival is an inherent human trait which determines a person’s success. Darwin’s theory has even been summarized as “survival of the fittest” - a phrase Darwin himself never used - further highlighting competition’s role in success.

As it has often been pointed out, however, there is nothing in the concept of natural selection that suggests that competition is the most successful strategy for “survival of the fittest.” Darwin asserted in The Origin of Species that the struggles he was describing should be viewed as metaphors and could easily include dependence and cooperation.

Many studies have been conducted to test the importance placed on competition as opposed to other values, such as cooperation, by various cultures and generally conclude that Americans uniquely praise competition as natural, inevitable, and desirable. In 1937, the world-renowned anthropologist Margaret Mead published Cooperation and Competition among Primitive Peoples, based on her studies of several societies that did not prize competition, and, in fact, seemed at times to place a negative value on it. One such society was the Zuni Indians of Arizona, and they, Mead found, valued cooperation far more than competition. After studying dozens of such cultures, Mead’s conclusion was that competitiveness is a culturally created aspect of human behaviour, and that its popularity in a particular society is relative to how that society values it.

  1. What does the author think is easy to see in many areas of contemporary life?
  1. According to psychology, what do people strive to do following the initial stage of their life?
  1. What do we learn about the “natural world” characterized by Thomas Hobbes?
  1. What can we conclude from Darwin’s assertion in The Origin of Species?
  1. What conclusion did Margaret Mead reach after studying dozens of different cultures?

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. 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.

Finding the Right Home — and Contentment, Too

A. When your elderly relative needs to enter some sort of long-term care facility — a moment few parents or children approach without fear — what you would like is to have everything made clear.

B. Does assisted living really mark a great improvement over a nursing home, or has the industry simply hired better interior designers? Are nursing homes as bad as people fear, or is that an outmoded stereotype? Can doing one’s homework really steer families to the best places? It is genuinely hard to know.

C. I am about to make things more complicated by suggesting that what kind of facility an older person lives in may matter less than we have assumed. And that the characteristics adult children look for when they begin the search are not necessarily the things that make a difference to the people who are going to move in. I am not talking about the quality of care, let me hastily add. Nobody flourishes in a gloomy environment with irresponsible staff and a poor safety record. But an accumulating body of research indicates that some distinctions between one type of elder care and another have little real bearing on how well residents do.

D. The most recent of these studies, published in The Journal of Applied Gerontology, surveyed 150 Connecticut residents of assisted living, nursing homes and smaller residential care homes (known in some states as board and care homes or adult care homes). Researchers from the University of Connecticut Health Centre asked the residents a large number of questions about their quality of life, emotional well-being and social interaction, as well as about the quality of the facilities.

AB. “We thought we would see differences based on the housing types,” said the lead author of the study, Julie Robinson, an associate professor of medicine at the university. A reasonable assumption — don’t families struggle to avoid nursing homes and suffer real guilt if they can’t?

AC. In the initial results, assisted living residents did paint the most positive picture. They were less likely to report symptoms of depression than those in the other facilities, for instance, and less likely to be bored or lonely. They scored higher on social interaction.

AD. But when the researchers plugged in a number of other variables, such differences disappeared. It is not the housing type, they found, that creates differences in residents’ responses. “It is the characteristics of the specific environment they are in, combined with their own personal characteristics — how healthy they feel they are, their age and marital status,” Dr. Robinson explained. Whether residents felt involved in the decision to move and how long they had lived there also proved significant.

BA. An elderly person who describes herself as in poor health, therefore, might be no less depressed in assisted living (even if her children preferred it) than in a nursing home. A person who had input into where he would move and has had time to adapt to it might do as well in a nursing home as in a small residential care home, other factors being equal. It is an interaction between the person and the place, not the sort of place in itself, that leads to better or worse experiences. “You can’t just say, ‘Let’s put this person in a residential care home instead of a nursing home — she will be much better off,’” Dr. Robinson said. What matters, she added, “is a combination of what people bring in with them, and what they find there.”

BC. Such findings, which run counter to common sense, have surfaced before. In a multi-state study of assisted living, for instance, the University of North Carolina researchers found that a host of variables — the facility’s type, size or age; whether a chain owned it; how attractive the neighbourhood was — had no significant relationship to how the residents fared in terms of illness, mental decline, hospitalizations or mortality. What mattered most was the residents’ physical health and mental status. What people were like when they came in had greater consequences than what happened once they were there.

BD. As I was considering all this, a press release from a respected research firm crossed my desk, announcing that the five-star rating system that Medicare developed to help families compare nursing home quality also has little relationship to how satisfied its residents or their family members are. As a matter of fact, consumers expressed higher satisfaction with the one-star facilities, the lowest rated, than with the five-star ones. (More on this study and the star ratings will appear in a subsequent post.)

DA. Before we collectively tear our hair out — how are we supposed to find our way in a landscape this confusing? — here is a thought from Dr. Philip Sloane, a geriatrician (老年病学专家) at the University of North Carolina: “In a way, that could be liberating for families.”

DB. Of course, sons and daughters want to visit the facilities, talk to the administrators and residents and other families, and do everything possible to fulfil their duties. But perhaps they don’t have to turn themselves into private investigators or Congressional subcommittees. “Families can look a bit more for where the residents are going to be happy,” Dr. Sloane said. And involving the future resident in the process can be very important.

DC. We all have our own ideas about what would bring our parents happiness. They have their ideas, too. A friend recently took her mother to visit an expensive assisted living/nursing home near my town. I have seen this place — it is elegant, inside and out. But nobody greeted the daughter and mother when they arrived, though the visit had been planned; nobody introduced them to the other residents. When they had lunch in the dining room, they sat alone at a table.

ABC. The daughter feared her mother would be ignored there, and so she decided to move her into a more welcoming facility. Based on what is emerging from some of this research, that might have been as rational a way as any to reach a decision.

Statements:

  1. Many people feel guilty when they cannot find a place other than a nursing home for their parents.

  2. Though it helps children to investigate care facilities, involving their parents in the decision-making process may prove very important.

  3. It is really difficult to tell if assisted living is better than a nursing home.

  4. How a resident feels depends on an interaction between themselves and the care facility they live in.

  5. The author thinks her friend made a rational decision in choosing a more hospitable place over an apparently elegant assisted living home.

  6. The system Medicare developed to rate nursing home quality is of little help to finding a satisfactory place.

  7. At first the researchers of the most recent study found residents in assisted living facilities gave higher scores on social interaction.

  8. What kind of care facility old people live in may be less important than we think.

  9. The findings of the latest research were similar to an earlier multi-state study of assisted living.

  10. Residents’ satisfaction with a care facility has much to do with whether they had participated in the decision to move in and how long they had stayed there.

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.

  1. Nowadays, many young people are drawn 【暂无答案】 careers in technology and creative industries.

  2. The famous novel was later adapted 【暂无答案】 a successful film that attracted millions of viewers worldwide.

  3. With her sincere speech and friendly attitude, she quickly managed to win 【暂无答案】 the audience at the conference.

  4. The child is deeply attached 【暂无答案】 his grandmother, who has taken care of him since he was born.

  5. Several internationally known actors feature 【暂无答案】 the new television series produced by the BBC.

  6. Last weekend, they spent the evening taking 【暂无答案】 a concert performed by a famous orchestra.

  7. Many social conflicts arise 【暂无答案】 misunderstandings between different cultural groups.

  8. After several attempts to resist the changes, they finally had to bow 【暂无答案】 the inevitable.

  9. Five centimetres 【暂无答案】 the right, and the bullet would have caused a fatal injury.

  10. Although the results are not immediate, the benefits of regular exercise will become evident 【暂无答案】 the long term.

Part VI Translation [10 marks]

Directions: For this part, you are required to translate the following paragraph from Chinese into English.

Please finish this part in the Answer Book.

随着人工智能的发展，自动化将取代许多传统工作岗位。为了应对这一变化，城市需要采取措施来降低风险，并帮助人们获得新的技能。同时，政府和企业应积极探索人工智能的应用场景，确保人工智能不仅可以提高效率，还可以帮助建设宜居、有韧性和智能的城市。如果城市不能及时行动，就可能在未来的发展中落后。因此，各方需要共同努力，应对挑战，抓住机遇。