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in a childish culture.

This is backed up by research in the UK that says girls are out-performing boys at the age of five. So what is the answer? Should girls and boys be educated separately? Or do exams and school curricula need to be changed to better reflect boys’ skills? These are the questions facing educators in many countries.

20. What are the two things that made little or no difference to the results? A. Gender equality and intelligence. B. Gender equality and income level. C. Income level and feelings. D. Income level and intelligence.

21. According to Ian Toone, girls do better at school than boys because girls ______. A. study harder C. can sit still longer

B. are cleverer

D. are more restless

22. What does Ian Toone say can influence boys? A. Gang mentality. C. Peer pressure.

B. Personal work. D. Childish culture.

23. What could be changed to include the skills boys have? A. Exams and school curricula.

B. Ways of education and evaluation. C. Outdoor activities and performances.

D. Separate education and different curricula.

C

What will the future be like? Good or bad? A lot of science-fiction writing imagines a world which is dark and scary. In Blade Runner, Harrison Ford hunts robots in a chaotic (混乱的) Los Angeles. Planet of the Apes shows a hopeless future for humankind.

There's a word to describe the kind of future world which often appears in science fiction: dystopia. It means an imagined place where things are unpleasant or bad. The opposite is utopia. But does tomorrow's world have to be so disappointing?

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No. A new project wants to use the power of science fiction to inspire people to create a better future. Project Hieroglyph brings together writers, scientists, engineers and artists to create optimistic stories about things which really could happen in the next 50 years. It's just a matter of making an effort. Experts say it's easier to create a dystopia than write a feel-good story. There's more conflict in a world full of problems, and stories are interesting when there are a lot of problems to solve. No challenge, no story!

But the project produced a book with some promising plots. One of them is about environmentalists who fight to stop entrepreneurs (创业者) from building the first hotel in Antarctica. Well, there's conflict there and it seems reasonable, so it could be a good story. But will these stories actually change anything or just keep us entertained? Ed Finn, the book's editor, thinks the former. He says: \good science-fiction story can be very powerful. It can inspire hundreds, thousands, millions of people to do something that they want to do.\ The influence of science fiction can already be seen in modern research, says Professor Braden Allenby. He asks: \斗篷)? Well, it's Harry Potter, right?\

Time will tell how far we can go. Let's dream big and think outside the box. Who knows the wonderful things we can come up with?

24. The underlined word “utopia” in paragraph 2 most probably means “______’. A. a real world where people can do anything they like B. an imagined place where things are unpleasant or bad C. an imaginary perfect world where everyone is happy D. a wild and terrible place where no one can live happily

25. Experts say it’s easier to create a dystopia than a feel-good story because ______.

A. a dystopia needs less imagination B. a feel-good story is more interesting C. there is no conflict in a feel-good story D. there are more problems to solve in a dystopia

26. Professor Braden Allenby takes “invisibility cloaks” as an example ______. A. to cause readers’ attention

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B. to amuse science fiction readers C. to introduce a science fiction story D. to show the influence of science fiction 27. What is the best title for the passage? A. What is science fiction? B. Can science fiction help us? C. What will man do in the future?

D. Shall we live a better life in the future?

D

Four out of the 48 self-driving cars on public roads in California have been involved in accidents in the last eight months, according to the state's Department of Motor Vehicles.

The agency began issuing permits for the testing of self-driving vehicles in September 2014.

Three of the four cars belonged to Google, the fourth to parts supplier Delphi. Both firms denied their vehicles had been at fault.

Under Californian law, details of car accidents remain secret.

However, Google said its driverless cars had never been the cause of an accident and that the majority of \fender-benders(擦撞)\had been in the form of rear-end(后尾) collisions from other drivers.

\driven nearly a million miles automatically, on both freeways and city streets, without causing a single accident,\

Delphi told the BBC its vehicle was hit while still at a crossroads and was in human driving mode at the time.

\police report indicates the fault of the accident is with the second vehicle, not Delphi. No-one was hurt in the incident,\

An unknown source told the Associated Press that two of the accidents occurred while the vehicles were occupied by human drivers, and all four vehicles were going very slowly at the time of the collisions.

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Chris Urmson, director of Google's self-driving car programme, wrote in a blog post that there have been 11 accidents involving Google cars since the project began six years ago but not one has been caused by one of its vehicles.

\the driver in front can do to avoid getting hit,\

28. What is the passage mainly about? A. Self-driving car accidents. C. Self-driving vehicle problems.

B. Motor vehicle problems.

D. Traffic accidents in California.

29. We can learn from the passage that the self-driving cars ______. A. caused the accidents when driven by human drivers B. hit other cars and caused the accidents C. were responsible for the accidents D. were knocked into from behind

30. The passage intends to tell us that the self-driving cars ______. A. are just road killers C. are in good quality

第二节（共5小题；每小题2分，满分10分）

根据短文内容，从短文后的选项中选出能填入空白处的最佳选项。选项中有两项为多余选项。 Create Beauty Yourself

In itself life is neutral (中立的). We make it beautiful, we make it ugly; life is what energy we bring to it.

31 If you simply sit there and you want it to be beautiful, then it will not be --- you have to create beauty. Beauty is not there like an object or a rock. Beauty has to be created. You have to give a sight to reality, you have to give color to reality, you have to give a song to reality --- then it is beautiful.

So whenever you participate in creating beauty, it is there; whenever you stop creating, it is not. 32 Happiness is a creation; so is misery. You get only that which you create, and you never get anything else. That is the whole philosophy of karma: 33

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B. need to be improved D. shouldn’t be produced