材料1
Crypto
Technology is a beauty. We eagerly adopt its pleasure, preferring to cope with the drawbacks on the morning after. Who can resist innovations like mobile phones and networked computers? They put anyone, anywhere, within earshot, and zip information -- whether an expression of love, a medical chart or a plan for a product rollout - around the world in a heartbeat2, Unfortunately, it's all too easy for eavesdroppers to snap up3 those messages and conversations en route to their intended receiver. We think we're whispering, but we're broadcasting. In this case, there's an antidote4: cryptography, the use of codes and ciphers to protectinformation.
If you scramble information before it's sent, eavesdroppers can't hear what you say or read what you've written. The good news is that, after decades of struggle against a government opposed to its widespread use, we've finally got access to crypto -- software that does the scrambling, as well as other functions like "digital signatures" that will authenticate that we are who we say we are in cyberspace5. You might not see the crypto, but it's there, going into action every time your computer tells you it's going into the secret "secure mode." What should alarm you is that crypto still isn't there -- in the millions of medical records, credit-card databases. We can attribute that failure to the government's active opposition6.
Nowadays, more and'more of the activities once associated with that good old physical world will be performed at our keyboards, phone devices and paimtops and over digital televisions.
Crypto lies at the center of this transition, and we're going to ask a lot of it over the next few years.
Will our e-mail and phone systems ever have strong encryption and digital signatures built in? WH1 feats of crypto really send "digital cash" to replace the paper money, and enable us to spend it in stores?
The issues in the crypto-battle, the first great war of the digital age, were more straightforward. As people cozied up to7 digital communications, and e-commerce became a force in the economy, the need for crypto's near-magical power of encryption and authentication became red hot8. But those at the helm of the government9 focused not on the benefits, but the dangers -- the fear that terrorists or drug dealers would use this digital shield. Ultimately, the question boiled down to this: in an attempt to deny those dangerous few, were we all to be deprived of the tools of privacy?
练习：
1 Technology is like an art, which everybody including scientists loves.
A. Right B. Wrong C. Not mentioned
2. In the passage, drawbacks means the messages we send may be intercepted or overheard by non-intended receivers.
A. Right B. WrongC. Not mentioned
3. With the widespread use of digital communications and e-commerce, encryption will become very urgent.
A. Right B. Wrong C. Not mentioned
4. We have finally got the crypto in our computer but not in medical records and credit-card databases.
A. Right B. WrongC. Not mentioned
5. More and more activities performed in the physical world will be replaced by activities in the electronic world.
A. RightB. WrongC. Not mentioned
6. The passage clearly concludes that we need a new organization to popularize encryption and authentication.
A. Right B. Wrong C. Not mentioned
7. Encryption can protect privacy, but can stop terrorism and drug dealing as well.
A. Right B. WrongC. Not mentioned
练习答案
1C 2A 3A 4A 5A 6C 7B
材料2
概括大意与完成句子
Intelligence: a Changed View
1. Intelligence was believed to be a fixed entity, some faculty of the mind that we allpossess and which determines in some way the extent of our achievements. Its value therefore,was as a predictor of children's future learning. If they differed markedly in their ability tolearn'complex tasks, then it was clearly necessary to educate them differently and the need fordifferent types of school and even different ability groups within school was obvious.
Intelligence tests could be used for streaming children according to ability at an early age; andat 11 these tests were superior to measures of attainment for selecting children for differenttypes of secondary education.
2. Today, we are. beginning to think differently. In the last few years, research has throwndoubt on the view that innate intelligence can ever be measured and on the very nature ofintelligence itself. There is considerable evidence now which shows the great influence ofenvironment both on achievement and intelligence. Children with poor home backgroundsnot only do less well in their school work and intelligence tests but their performance tends todeteriorate gradually compared with that of their more fortunate classmates.
3. There are evidences that support the view that we have to distinguish between geneticintelligence and observed intelligence2. Any deficiency in the appropriate genes will restrictdevelopment no matter how stimulating the environment. We cannot observe and measureinnate intelligence, whereas we can observe and measure the effects of the interaction ofwhatever is inherited with whatever stimulation has been received from the environment3.
Researches have been investigating what happens in this interaction.
4. Two major findings have emerged from these researches. Firstly, the greater part of thedevelopment of observed intelligence occurs in the earliest years of life. It is estimated that 50percent of measurable intelligence at age 17 is already predictable by the age of four. Secondly, he most important factors in the environment are language and psychological aspects of the parent-child relationship. Much of the difference in measured intelligence between "privileged" and "disadvantaged" children4 may be due to the latter's lack of appropriate verbal stimulation and the poverty of their perceptual experiences5.
These research findings have led to a revision in our understanding of the nature of intelligence. Instead of it being some largely inherited fixed power of the mind, we now see it as a set of developed skills with which a person, copes with any environment. These skills have to be learned and, indeed, one of them is learning how to learn.
The modem ideas concerning the nature of intelligence are bound to have some effect on our school system. In one respect a change is already occurring. With the move toward comprehensive education and the development of unstreamed classes6, fewer children will be given the label "low IQ7'' which must inevitably condemn a child in his own, if not society's eyess. The idea that we can teach children to be intelligent in the same way that we can teach them reading or arithmetic is accepted by more and more people.
词汇：
entity/n．存在，实体 interaction/n．相互作用
stream/v．(根据能力把学生)分组 stimulation/n．激发，促进
innate/adj．内在的
练习
A Main Results of Recent Researches
B Popular Doubt about the New ViewC Effect of Environment on Intelligence
D Intelligence and Achievement
E Impact on School Education
F A Changed View of Intelligence
1. ParagraPh 2______
2. Paragraph 4______
3. Paragraph 5______
4. Paragraph 6______
5. It was once believed ______, and thus we can tell how successful he/she will be in the future according to his/her intelligence.
6. More recent researches has shown that intelligence is only partly inherited
7. It can be inferred from the passage that a child will ______if he has more opportunities to communicate with others by means of language.
8. Children were not just _______ , but they can be taught to be more intelligent at school.
A born to be more intelligent or less intelligent
B have a better chance to develop his intelligence
C taught to be more intelligent
D that intelligence was something a baby was born with
E and because of the lack of communication with his classmates
P and nartlv has to do with a child's living environment
练习答案
1C 2A 3F 4E 5D 6F 7B 8A