任务型阅读(九) 事物介绍+现代科技
A [2020·原创]
You may think you cannot live through summer without air conditioners. But in ancient China, hand fans were almost the only ones to help people keep cool. There are many types of hand fans with different uses.
Chinese people started to use hand fans over 2,000 years ago. The fans came in different shapes, such as round and square. They were also made from all kinds of materials. Palm leaf fans were cheap and easy to make. Feather fans(羽毛扇) showed the owner's high status. Sandalwood(檀香) fans could send out a sweet smell.
Later, hand fans became far more than just something that could cool you down. They developed into artworks, in which tuanshan(round fans) and zheshan (folded fans) were the most common.
In the shape of a full moon, tuanshan were usually made of silk. They had beautiful birds and flowers on them. Women, especially those in the imperial palace(皇宫), liked to use them. Meanwhile, men, especially the literati(文人学士), used zheshan. The literati liked them because zheshan were usually made of paper and they could paint and write poems on them. It was a way for them to show off their ability in literature, painting and handwriting. Almost anything can be painted on zheshan.
Today, Chinese people still use these fans, only not many people write or paint on them any more. When you are waving a fan, you may think of the stories behind it.
1、2题完成句子;3题简略回答问题;4题找出并写下全文的主题句;5题将文中画线句子译成汉语。
1.The fans came in different shapes and they were also made from .
2.Tuanshan had beautiful birds and flowers on them, so liked to use them.
3.Why did the literati like zheshan best?
4.
5.
B
A new computer program has been developed by a British scientist. It could help catch and even translate messages from aliens(外星人) in outer space.
If aliens are discovered one day, scientists fear their language may make it impossible to understand them. But John Elliott of Leeds Metropolitan University in Britain has come up with a program that can figure out the structure(结构) of their language. He thinks that's the first step in understanding what they are saying.
Dr. Elliott's program would compare an alien language to a database(数据库) of 60 different languages in the world to look for a similar structure. He believes that even an alien language will have its own structure. “Language has to be structured in a certain way, or it will be hard to use,” he told New Scientist magazine.
Research has shown that it's possible to know if a signal carries a language rather than a picture or music. Dr. Elliott has gone a step further by finding a way to pick out what might be words and sentences. Because languages have different word orders, Dr. Elliott has set up a library of the sentence structures of 60 human languages.
If a message is received from outer space, it could be compared against this database. Scientists would then be able to see if it's similar to any human language, or a mix of the languages.
However, Dr. Elliott also said that in order to translate what the aliens are actually saying, it may still be necessary to have a code book.
1、2题完成句子;3题简略回答问题;4题找出并写下全文的主题句;5题将文中画线句子译成汉语。
1.Dr. Elliott believes that even an alien language will have .
2.Languages have , so Dr. Elliott has set up a library of the sentence structures.
3.How does the program work when it receives a message from aliens?
4.
5.
