However, others argue that generalising cultures will always lead to offensive stereotypes. They argue that the best thing we can do is to stop generalising cultures and start treating people as individuals.
All this raises important questions: can making generalisations about groups of people be a positive thing? Or should we always avoid making broad assumptions about different groups?
61. When he said, “It’s like, ‘this must be done absolutely perfectly… tomorrow’”, Jeremy Clarkson really meant ________.
A. the Germans will do it perfectly tomorrow while the Irish won’t B. the combination of half German and half Irish is interesting C. the characteristics of the Germans and the Irish are opposite D. the stereotypes of the Germans and the Irish are not so good 62. Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage? A. The Irish people are considered as lazy, direct and casual. B. The Germans are thought to be efficient, friendly and direct. C. The Swiss can play the alphorn quite well. D. It’s typical of the Swiss to be punctual.
63. Politicians think it important to generalize another culture because ________. A. they think different cultural characteristics are useful B. they don’t want to offend other people
C. cultural characteristics are better than stereotypes D. generalizing will lead to offensive stereotypes 64. The main purpose of this passage is to _________.
A. discuss whether it is good to make generalizations about groups of people B. tell us the differences between stereotypes and cultural characteristics C. illustrate the importance of making generalizations
D. show it is wrong to play jokes on stereotypes of different people
D
Changing technology stimulates (刺激) the brain and increases intelligence. But
that may only be true if the technology challenges us. In a world run by intelligent machines, our lives could get a lot simpler. Would that make us less intelligent?
After the Industrial Revolution, machines began to replace manual workers. The process played out in agriculture as well as manufacturing so that groups of agricultural workers were replaced and forced to move to cities to make a living.
When machines took away much of the manual work, people became less physically active and gained weight. The sedentary (久坐的) lifestyle contributed to a worldwide spreading of overweight and related metabolic disorders such as heart disease, secondary diabetes and kidney disease .
As our bodies rested, our brains were forced to work harder, however. It is much more difficult to drive through an overcrowded modern city than it is to move around in a small rural village, for instance. Modern jobs are also more complex and urgent and they require more education because employees need to process new information quickly. Even during our leisure time, our brains work harder due to greater availability of books and explosion of audiovisual media, for entertainment, study, music, news, and so forth.
Now in the Internet age, the amount of information grows fast along with the advance of electronic technologies. The number of people with whom we interact electronically grows by leaps and bounds thanks to the ease of use of social media like Facebook and Twitter.
All of this extra work for our brains makes us more intelligent. That helps explain why human intelligence increases steadily from generation to generation in all developed countries, a phenomenon named the Flynn Effect. Of course, there are other reasons, including improved nutrition, better medical practices that reduce brain damage, and improved sanitation and public health that reduce diseases of childhood.
In the P.G Wodehouse novels, Bertie Wooster got away with being a fool because Jeeves was there to back him up with superior brain power. Similarly, people of the future are at risk of being less intelligent because machines will do their thinking for them.
Artificial intelligence is taking over many human jobs. For instance, planes are
being flown much of the time by automatic pilots. Moreover, the complex problem of controlling air traffic around large modern airports is also achieved by artificial intelligence that operates well beyond the capability of mere human air traffic controllers.
Artificial intelligence exists in many fields of modern life for the simple reason that intelligent machines can already outperform humans, including some aptitudes (天资) which were once thought to be a human advantage, such as playing chess or recalling details in a game of Jeopardy.
Machine intelligence is increasing much faster than human intelligence. As machines get smarter, they will do more of our thinking for us and make life easier.
Instead of struggling to identify ourselves to some electronic system via passwords that are secure only if they are hard to remember, the system will work harder to identify us using biometrics (生物测定学) such as fingerprints or even the individual sound of our hearts. More technologies of the future may also be voice-activated so that we will talk with machines much as we would talk to a friend.
In the future, the electronic assistant will develop to the point where it serves similar functions as a real living chief male servant of a house, fulfilling requests such as: “Organize a dinner party for six on Thursday, Jeeves, and invite the usual guests .”
At that point, our long struggle with challenging technologies is at an end. Like Bertie Wooster, we can take it easy knowing that the hard work of planning and organizing is being done by a better brain—the electronic assistant. Starved of mental effort, our brains will return to an earlier or less advanced form.
The future is still in the fog.
65. According to the author, the Industrial Revolution led to ________. A. the development of education world
C. a lifestyle of being physically active mental problems
D. people’s physical and
B. the spread of diseases in the
66. The Flynn Effect refers to the phenomenon that ________.
A. extra work can stimulate our brain B. humans are becoming smarter and smarter
C. the change in human intelligence is steady
D. people in developed countries have higher intelligence
67. The writer gave the example of Bertie Wooster to tell us ________. A. the possibility of humans' becoming less intelligent B. the risk of machines ' destroying the world C. the end of challenges people face in life D. the powerful functions of technologies
68. Why is artificial intelligence popular in our life? A. It can improve and update itself. B. It can take advantage of humans. C. It can do much better than humans.
D. It can deal with abstract information.
69. We can infer from the passage that electronic systems ________. A. will make trouble in our daily life B. will function as the master of humans
C. will become more user-friendly in the future D. will be deserted because of their inconvenience 70. Which of the following is the best title for the passage? A. The future is bright due to artificial intelligence. B .Will machines replace manual workers?
C. Humans will develop electronic assistants. D. Can artificial intelligence make us stupid?
五、任务型阅读：
If You Get In, Make College Count
As tuition costs rise, with post-undergraduate (本科毕业后) jobs difficult to find, is higher education worth the cost?
Here is an unfortunate truth: For far too many incoming freshmen, college－any college－is not worth it. Year after year, students fail to get the full value of their tuition.
Many critics blame this cost/value problem on the universities, though each critic might point to a different reason: teachers always think of difficult research, the high costs of athletics, or the popularity of majors that are supposedly not suited to the new job market, to name some of their favorites.
But these are symptoms and not the illness itself. In our experience, the source of the wasted university experience begins with the student. Too often, students make bad choices or, frankly, just not enough great choices.
Too often we meet students who are so exhausted by the business of getting into college that they don’t work hard once they arrive－one of the most common wastes of time and tuition. A poorly constructed transcript (成绩单) can be destructive to a student’s education. Failure to engage and build professional working relationships with professors in office hours (which may lead to continued study, internships and more) also hurts the student’s experience.
Another mistake is failing to make use of the many support networks on today’ s college campuses. It’s almost embarrassing how many good offerings are rolled into each tuition dollar, but most students don’t know they exist.
Another common point of failure is filling the schedule with too many extracurricular activities as students once did in high school, rather than getting intensely involved in one or two at most. The same can be said of overburdened course loads.
The final great failure we frequently see is the approach students (and their parents) take to selecting a major and accurately seeing its impact on a future career. University systems are not vocational schools. While critics nowadays complain about
江苏省苏州市新草桥中学2020届高三英语12月月考试题
