湖北省市温德克英联盟2023-2024学年高二上学期8月开学综合性难度选拔考试英语试题

We've dug deep to find 4 of the most exciting documentary films coming to a screen near you in 2022.

Last Exit: Space

Last Exit:Space, narrated by Werner Herzog, explores the human potential for settling in space and sending people where they've never been before. Since planet Earth is possibly going to hell (地狱) in a handbasket, the film promises to ask the question: where else might we call home? Directed by his son Rudolph Herzog, Last Exit:Spacewill be available from March 10 on Discovery.

Gorbachev. Heaven

As leader of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev was once one of the most powerful people on the planet who governed a landmass so big that it covered 11 time zones. Gorbachev's legacy is a complex one — he oversaw the end of the Cold War but many Russians blame him for the Soviet Union's collapse. The BBC says this potentially fascinating look at one of the most significant figures from inside his own home will be airing in the very near future.

We Met InVirtual Reality

This film from director Joe Hunting beats fresh ground in that it is filmed entirely in virtual reality. Less about the technology itself, it is more an exploration of human connections and how these can develop in the 3D virtual world. Early reviews have been positive following its showing at Sundance. Expect a streaming release in late May this year. 

2nd Chance

Hold your popcorn tightly when watching this. If the trailer (预告片) is anything to go by, there are going to be lots of near-death moments. 2nd Chancefrom Oscar-nominated director RaminBahranitells the story of Richard Davis, the wild and odd inventor of the modern bullet-proof vest. "All will be revealed as soon as a release date is confirmed. "RaminBahranipromised on April 5^th.

The "reading wars," one of the most confusing and disabling conflicts in the history of education, went on heatedly in the 1980s and then peace came. Advocates of phonics (learning by being taught the sound of each letter group) seemed to defeat advocates of whole language (learning by using cues like context and being exposed to much good literature).

Recent events suggest the conflict of complicated concepts is far from over. Teachers, parents and experts appear to agree that phonics is crucial, but what is going on in classrooms is not in agreement with what research studies say is required, which has aroused a national debate over the meaning of the word "phonics. "

Lucy M. Calkins, a professor at Columbia University's Teachers College and a much-respected expert on how to teach reading, has drawn attention with an eight-page essay. Here is part of her argument: "The important thing is to teach kids that they needn't freeze when they come to a hard word, nor skip past it. The important thing is to teach them that they have resources to draw upon, and to use those resources to develop endurance. "

To Calkins'scritics, it is cruel and wasteful to encourage 6-year-olds to look for clues if they don't immediately know the correct sounds. They should work on decoding — knowing the pronunciation of every letter group — until they master it, say the critics, backed by much research.

Calkins'sapproach "is a slow, unreliable way to read words and an inefficient way to develop word recognition skill," Mark S. Seidenberg, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin, said in a blog post. "Dr. Calkins treats word recognition as a reasoning problem — like solving a puzzle. She is committed to the educational principle that children learn best by discovering how systems work rather than being told. "

Many others share his view. "Children should learn to decode — i. e. ,go from print on the page to words in the mind — not by clever guesswork and inference, but by learning to decode," Daniel Willingham, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, told me. He said the inferences Calkins applauds are "cognitively(认知地) demanding, and readers don't have much endurance for it. … It disturbs the flow of what you're reading, and doing a lot of it gets frustrating. "

Yet a recent survey found that only 22 percent of 670 early-reading teachers are using the approach of phonics and what they mean by phonics is often no more than marking up a worksheet. 

Both sides agree that children need to acquire the vocabulary and background information that gives meaning to words. But first, they have to pronounce them correctly to connect the words they have learned to speak. 

Calkins said in her essay: "Much of what the phonics people are saying is praiseworthy," but it would be a mistake to teach phonics "at the expense of reading and writing. "

The two sides appear to agree with her on that. 

On March 7, 1907, the English statistician Francis Galton published a paper which illustrated what has come to be known as the "wisdom of crowds" effect. The experiment of estimation he conducted showed that in some cases, the average of a large number of independent estimates could be quite accurate.

This effect capitalizes on the fact that when people make errors, those errors aren't always the same. Some people will tend to overestimate, and some to underestimate. When enough of these errors are averaged together, they cancel each other out, resulting in a more accurate estimate. If people are similar and tend to make the same errors, then their errors won't cancel each other out. In more technical terms, the wisdom of crowds requires that people's estimates be independent. If for whatever reasons, people's errors become correlated or dependent, the accuracy of the estimate will go down.

But a new study led by Joaquin Navajas offered an interesting twist (转折) on this classic phenomenon. The key finding of the study was that when crowds were further divided into smaller groups that were allowed to have a discussion, the averages from these groups were more accurate than those from an equal number of independent individuals. For instance, the average obtained from the estimates of four discussion groups of five was significantly more accurate than the average obtained from 20 independent individuals.

In a follow-up study with 100 university students, the researchers tried to get a better sense of what the group members actually did in their discussion. Did they tend to go with those most confident about their estimates? Did they follow those least willing to change their minds? This happened some of the time, but it wasn't the dominant response. Most frequently, the groups reported that they "shared arguments and reasoned together." Somehow, these arguments and reasoning resulted in a global reduction in error. Although the studies led by Navajas have limitations and many questions remain, the potential implications for group discussion and decision-making are enormous.

The environmental practices of big businesses are shaped by a fundamental fact that offends our sense of justice. A business may maximize the amount of money it makes by damaging the environment and hurting people. When government regulation is effective, and the public is environmentally aware, environmentally clean big businesses may out-compete dirty ones, but the reverse is likely to be true if government regulation is ineffective and the public doesn't care.

It is easy to blame a business for helping itself by hurting other people. But blaming alone is unlikely to produce change. It ignores the fact that businesses are not charities but profit-making companies, and they are under obligation to maximize profits for shareholders by legal means.

Our blaming of businesses also ignores the ultimate responsibility of the public for creating the conditions that let a business profit through destructive environmental policies. In the long run, it is the public, either directly or through its politicians, that has the power to make such destructive policies unprofitable and illegal, and to make sustainable environmental policies profitable.

The public can do that by accusing businesses of harming them. The public may also make their opinion felt by choosing to buy sustainably harvested products; by preferring their governments to award valuable contracts to businesses with a good environmental track record; and by pressing their governments to pass and enforce laws and regulations requiring good environmental practices.

In turn, big businesses can exert powerful pressure on any suppliers that might ignore public or government pressure. For instance, after the US public became concerned about the spread of a disease, transmitted to humans through infected meat, the US government introduced rules demanding that the meat industry abandon practices associated with the risk of the disease spreading. But the meat packers refused to follow these, claiming that they would be too expensive to obey. However, when a fast-food company made the same demands after customer purchases of its hamburgers dropped, the meat industry followed immediately. The public's task is therefore to identify which links in the supply chain are sensitive to public pressure.

Some readers may be disappointed or outraged that I place the ultimate responsibility for business practices harming the public on the public itself. I also believe that the public must accept the necessity for higher prices for products to cover the added costs of sound environmental practices. My views may seem to ignore the belief that businesses should act in accordance with moral principles even if this leads to a reduction in their profits. But I think we have to recognize that, throughout human history, government regulation has arisen precisely because it was found that not only did moral principles need to be made explicit, they also needed to be enforced.

My conclusion is not a moralistic one about who is right or wrong, admirable or selfish. I believe that changes in public attitudes are essential for changes in businesses' environmental practices.

Mental Health Crisis Among Teens Demands a New Approach

Since the CDC released its survey results last month showing alarmingly high rates of sadness and depressive thoughts among teens, fingers have been pointed from two sides at the causes of this crisis. . Others say that today's more secular(世俗的)culture has confused our most vulnerable young people. But neither side seems to grasp the true urgency of the issue.

According to the CDC's findings, more than one in five of the 17,000 high school students surveyed reported mental breakdown. Their rates of sadness and hopelessness are the highest in a decade, reflecting an increasing trend exacerbated by society's isolation(隔离)and stress. .

Parents as well as teachers and others who have direct contact with children must accept this preventive approach. It is crucial that they not be afraid to ask direct questions about depressive thoughts. . It is also especially important that parents understand what help is available to their children. 

. For example, we can demand equity equality, which means insurance coverage(保险范围)for behavioral illnesses health issues that is for physical , thus reducing the financial burden. We can also urge our congressmen to fund health programs and expand mental health professions. . Put the politics aside. There are lives in the balance. 

A. And they should resist the false idea that raising a question creates a risk that was not there before. 

B. This means that we must put aside our disagreements and approach this issue as a matter of life and death. 

C. Some have argued that the climate issue has created an existential threat and accompanying anxiety. 

D. Hospitalization may also be appropriate when the person in question shows an immediate danger to themselves. 

E. At the macro(宏观的)level, our country can do so much more to help people struggling with mental health problems and their families. 

F. It's time to stop blaming and turn our attention to this generation of struggling teenagers.

G. It's time for those who have the power to amplify(放大)their voices and drive change to focus on helping teenagers and families access the help they need.

‘Small Data' Are Also Crucial for Machine Learning

Many people relate "artificial intelligence" with "big data. "There's a reason for that: some of the most prominent AI breakthroughs in the past decade have relied on enormous data sets. Image 1 made great progress in the 2010s thanks to the development of ImageNet, a data set containing millions of images hand sorted into thousands of categories. More recently, GPT-3, a language model, was trained on 2 online texts to produce humanlike text in Jan,

2021.So it is not surprising to see AI being tightly connected with "big data" in the 3 imagination. But AI is not only about large data sets, and research in "small data" approaches has grown extensively over the past decade. The so-called transfer learning serves as an especially 4 example.

Also known as "fine-tuning," transfer learning is helpful in settings where you have 5 data on the task of interest but abundant data on a related problem. You need to first train a model using a big data set and then retrain slightly using a smaller one related to your 6 problem. A research team working on German-language speech recognition, 7 , showed that they could improve their results by starting with an English-language speech model trained on a larger data set. Then, they used transfer learning to 8 that model for a smaller data set of German-language audio.

Small data approaches such as transfer learning are more 9 than more data-intensive methods. They can promote progress in areas where little or no data exist, such as in forecasting natural hazards that occur relatively 10 .In this context, small data approaches will become increasingly important as more organizations look to diversify AI application areas and invest in previously 11 fields. 

Despite the progress in research, transfer learning has received relatively little 12 .While many machine learning experts are likely familiar with it at this point, the existence of techniques such as transfer learning does not seem to have reached the awareness of the broader space of policymakers in positions of making important decisions about AI funding and 13 .

As long as the success of small data technique like transfer learning is 14 ,resources can be allocated to support their widespread use. In that case, we can help correct the popular 15 regarding the role of data in AI and foster innovation in new directions. 

Stop Asian Hate

During the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, New York City saw a sharp increase in harassment and violence against Asian people and communities, especially Asian elders. Discrimination on the basis of race, national origin, age, and disability, including having or (perceive) to be exposed to COVID-19, is illegal under the Human Rights Law. the start of the pandemic, there has been a significant, troubling increase in anti-Asian hate crimes and bias incidents. These have been verbal attacks, physical and even things like the tragic shooting of eight Asian-American spa technicians in Atlanta, Georgia. Beginning in February of 2020, we received a sevenfold increase in reports of anti-Asian harassment, discrimination, and violence. It is crucial to note that hate crimes and bias incidents have been found to be vastly under-reported these numbers reflect just a fraction. 

We all want to live in a world that is free from prejudice andeveryone has the right to be proud of who they are. Unfortunately, this is a pretty tough ask. We've joined forces with other establishments to bring you some resources of the movement of Stop Asian Hate, the aim is to an end to the rising tide of racism against east and south east asian(ESEA) people.

Since the pandemic, something has been made nasty in the media by comments from Donald Trump calling it "the China virus", and ESEA people all over the world have found that their lives have been turned upside down. In the wake of the tragic deaths in the US and several studies (reveal) the real increase of racism against this minority, the Stop Asian Hate movement started a conversation about what is going on. You can find out all about it on this website, and get resources and support to help you if you are dealing with the impacts racism.

Working towards a world where no racism exists is always important to us, and will always be something need to strive towards. The thing is, a lot of conversations around racism fail to distinguish between the multiple groups of people who are affected, and the issues (face) by ESEA people will be completely different to other people of colour. 

the growth of attacks and hate crimes still on the rise, we want to give you the tools to be able to understand the value and necessity of our voice, and how to stand up and fight back. 

内容包括：1.野生动物灭绝的原因（栖息地的破坏；寻求其皮毛等）2.保护措施（严惩非法捕杀；建立自然保护区；唤醒人们的保护意识等）

注意：1.词数100左右；2.可适当增加细节，使行文连贯。

提示词：自然保护区natural reserves 捕猎者 hunter

Dear fellow students,

The Students Union

I neededto do something in my community (社区) in order to complete the community service hours required to graduate from high school. Some of my friends had signed up tospend time at a soup kitchen, so I did, too. It seemed like a good thing to do. 

I thought that we would just be passing out dinners to those in need, but I found out we would be doing everything from preparing to serving the dinner. We began preparing the food, from mixing salad dressing to separating frozen meat. Much still needed to be done before dinner was served, but already outside the building manyhomelesspeople were gathering. It wasn't until a couple of hours later that we opened the doors and began serving dinner.

As the line of people came toward me, I got a little scared. I'd come face to face with the homeless: How should I act? How would they treat me? Would they hate me for having more than they did? While some of the people looked very friendly, some of them looked so dangerous. I didn't have too much time to worry about it. I was assigned (分配) to serve the salad with the ladynext to me. She smiled at me and said if I needed help, she'd be right there, which I found quite comforting.

I had never seen so many people wanting food. They were of all ages and nationalities. Most of them woreclothesthat were torn and dirty. Some looked like they had tally given up onlife, while others seemed to be making the best of the situation, smiling and joking. Some were better off than others, but they all needed a good meal and a warm place toeat. It saddened me to think of how many people there were who didn't have a place to call home and the only food they got came from a soup kitchen.

注意：1.所续写短文的词数应为150左右；2.至少使用5个短文中标有下划线的关键词语；3.续写部分分为两段，每段的开头语已为你写好4.续写完成后，请用下划线标出你所使用的关键词语。

Paragraph 1: 

As they came in my direction, I put on my brightest and happiest smile. 

Paragraph 2: 

I was so happy that I had earned my service hours in this way.