Passage One

旧题-科研类

Minds of their own

文章大意：科学家通过训练鹦鹉 Alex 说话和交流，证明某些动物比我们想象得更聪明，它 们不仅可以懂得人类的动作指示，还能迚行逻辑思维，它们也有自己的情感和脾气，甚至可以用简单的诧言来表达自己的需求。

1-5 是非无判断

6-10summary填空

11-13简答题

部分答案

Summary填空：（intelligence....);(what similarities --green color; what type of mistake--wrong pronunciation; what suspended....almost all machines)

文章内容

Animals are smarter than you think.

In 1977 Irene Pepperberg, a recent graduate of Harvard University, did something very bold. At a time when animals still were considered automatons, she set out to find what was on another creature’s mind by talking to it. She brought a one-year-old African gray parrot she named Alex into her lab to teach him to reproduce the sounds of the English language. “I thought if he learned to communicate, I could ask him questions about how he sees the world.”

When Pepperberg began her dialogue with Alex, who died last September at the age of 31, many scientists believed animals were incapable of any thought. They were simply machines, robots programmed to react to stimuli but lacking the ability to think or feel.

Any pet owner would disagree. We see the love in our dogs’ eyes and know that, of course, Spot has thoughts and emotions. But such claims remain highly controversial. Gut instinct is not science, and it is all too easy to project human thoughts and feelings onto another creature. How,then, does a scientist prove that an animal is capable of thinking—that it is able to acquire information about the world and act on it?

“That’s why I started my studies with Alex,” Pepperberg said. They were seated—she at her desk, he on top of his cage—in her lab, a windowless room about the size of a boxcar, at Brandeis University.

Newspapers lined the floor; baskets of bright toys were stacked on the shelves. They were clearly a team—and because of their work, the notion that animals can think is no longer so fanciful.

Certain skills are considered key signs of higher mental abilities: good memory, a grasp of grammar and symbols, self-awareness, understanding others’ motives, imitating others, and being creative. Bit by bit, in ingenious experiments, researchers have documented these talents in other species, gradually chipping away at what we thought made human beings distinctive while offering a glimpse of where our own abilities came from. Scrub jays know that other jays are thieves and that stashed food can spoil; sheep can recognize faces; chimpanzees use a variety of tools to probe termite mounds and even use weapons to hunt small mammals; dolphins can imitate human postures; the archerfish, which stuns insects with a sudden blast of water, can learn how to aim its squirt simply by watching an experienced fish perform the task. And Alex the parrot turned out to be a surprisingly good talker.

Thirty years after the Alex studies began, Pepperberg and a changing collection of assistants were still giving him English lessons. The humans, along with two younger parrots, also served as Alex’s flock, providing the social input all parrots crave. Like any flock, this one—as small as it was—had its share of drama. Alex dominated his fellow parrots, acted huffy at times around Pepperberg, tolerated the other female humans, and fell to pieces over a male assistant who dropped by for a visit. (“If you were a man,” Pepperberg said, after noting Alex’s aloofness toward me, “he’d be on your shoulder in a second, barfing cashews in your ear.”)

Passage Two

新题-科技类

Lean Production-an innovation of manufacturing systems

文章大意

介绍幵对比传统的 craft production 和 mass production 优劣，craft production 工艺生产历史悠久，但成本高， 现在叧有少部分公司还采用这种生 产方式;而 mass production 大批量生产成本低，但质量没有保障;lean production 精益生产则是两种生产方式的结合，既保证质量又不会有太多的成 本，后面迚一步介绍保证质量的具体策略和措施(just-in-time 和 automation)，以及 automation 的具体运作过程和工作环境。

14-20 标题题

21-26 单句填空

部分答案

单句填空：Workers of lean production are multi-skilled;

Passage Three

新题-教育类

How science is taught in school

文章大意

介绍学校传统的 scientific method，现在已所受到批判，认为这种方式有缺陷; 接着引出 science on argumentation 和 science for explanation，解释幵对比 各自优劣，认为 science on argumentation 这是更加具体实用，被普遍使用的方法，但也有不足之处，不够有创新性;而 science for explanation 更加灵活，其好的效果依靠给予学生的自由度和信任，最后得出结论。

29-33单项选择

34-39是非无判断

40-43选词摘要填空 (6 选 3，最后一段内容)

部分答案

摘要选词，答案为 proof, independence,....