广东省广州市2021-2022年八年级上学期英语期中测试卷

Can you imagine a circus（马戏团）without horses, elephants, monkeys, or lions? Recently, Circus Roncalli hit the headlines by1on shows without any animals. And the shows have attracted2 people.

Circus Roncalli is a German circus founded in 1976.3they fight against the abuse（虐待）that animals often face，they get a creative idea. One year ago, they 4hologram（全息图）animals.

Its shows still include tricks and actors,5none of the animals are real. The pictures

6 on a computer, and then people use a projector（投影仪）to show 7to the crowd. The animals are much like the animals that you usually see in a traditional circus.

8creative idea comes from increasing worldwide worries about the show animals.9, show animals live much of their lives under terrible conditions. They are trained violently and they 10follow what the trainers ask them to do, or they will be treated cruelly.

As a result, many people refuse 11 circus shows performed by animals. Now, 12 the modem technology of holograms, everyone can enjoy the exciting shows happily. Many people expressed 13 love of the technology. “Well, this is amazing!" someone said. "I even think the new Form of performances are14than the traditional one," another said.

It's a complete win-win situation: Visitors get to enjoy the sight of the animals, and the circus can live on，

15 ， The most important is that real animals can be left alone!

Love, joy and the warm feeling of getting together don't cost a thing. But gifts do cost money. So what's a poor family to do?

Before New Year, I told my mother that the only thing I 1 was a pogo stick (弹簧单高跷). However, my mother said they were so expensive that we couldn't 2 one.

On a Saturday before New Year, my family 3 together. While my mother and I were picking out the gifts, my dad said, “I'll be back soon — I need to see something in the tool area.” A little later, he came back with a long box. I remember wondering if there was a pogo stick in it.

When we arrived home, my dad put the box in the garage. While my parents were busy with their chores, I 4 walked out to the garage and found the box. I was so 5and I knew as soon as I opened that magical box, my bright, shiny pogo stick would appear. No such luck! Inside the box was a 6 old broom (扫帚).

That New Year morning, I got some nice gifts but I didn't get the present that I really wanted.

After cleaning up the room, my dad went to the garage. When he came back in, he was 7 a beautiful pogo stick. I couldn't 8 it! My parents probably got quite a laugh from the trick they played on me.

Although we didn't have much 9, my parents gave me the most important gift of all: lots of 10. That was over 60 years ago and I still think about those wonderful memories. I will never forget all the joy my parents brought into my life.

Henry Ford, a successful businessman(商人) and great engineer, was born on a farm in America on July 30th, 1863. He was the eldest child of his family and he had two brothers and two sisters. His father was a farmer and he always hoped that Ford would become a farmer too.

However, Ford didn't like farm work at all. Instead, he was interested in machines. He fixed his first watch when he was thirteen years old. At the age of 16, Ford left the family farm and went to Detroit to learn more about machines. He used what he learned from work to develop engines(引擎). In 1896, he built his first car. Seven years later, Henry Ford helped start the Ford Motor Company. By the end of March, 1904, the company had sold almost 600 Ford cars and at the start of 1905, the Ford Motor Company was producing 25 cars each day. Ford became President of the Ford Motor Company in 1906. In 1908, Ford's company began making the Ford Model T cars and each cost $825. It was very cheap for a car at that time and many people wanted to buy one. Henry Ford didn't invent the car but he was the first one to build cars which were fast, reliable(可靠的) and cheap.

Ever wondered why your virtual（虚拟的）home helper doesn't understand your questions? Or why your navigation app took you on the side street instead of the highway? In a study published April 21st in the journal iScience, Italian researchers, Arianna Pipitone and Antonio Chella, designed a robot that “thinks out loud”.

To explore how inner speech might influence a robot's actions, the researchers built a robot called Pepper that speaks to itself. It has the ability to reason and think. They then asked people to set the dinner table with Pepper according to etiquette（礼仪）rules. In one experiment, the user asked Pepper to lay the napkin at the wrong place, going against the rules. Pepper started asking itself a series of self-directed questions and concluded that the user might be mistaken. To be sure, Pepper confirmed the user's order, which led to further inner speech.

“Ehm, this situation troubles me. I would never break the rules, but I can't make the user unhappy, so I'm doing what he wants,” Pepper said to itself, laying the napkin where it was required to be. Through Pepper's inner voice, the user can learn Pepper was facing a difficult situation and solved it by prioritizing the user's order.

Comparing Pepper's actions with and without inner speech, Pipitone and Chella discovered the robot had a higher task-completion rate when having self-dialogue.

However, some people find the robot spends more time completing tasks when it talks to itself. The robot's inner speech is also limited to the knowledge that researchers gave it. Pepper's designers still say their work provides a framework（构架）to further explore how self-dialogue can help robots focus, plan, and learn. “In some ways, we are creating a generational（世代的）robot that likes to chat. From navigation apps and the camera on your phone to medical robots in the operation rooms, machines and computers alike can take advantage of this chatty feature,” says Chella.

Do you have a lucky number? What is it? Many people have a special number and they hope that it will bring them good luck. In China, people think that, some numbers are lucky or unlucky because those number sound similar to some Chinese words that mean something good or bad.

For example, the word for number 8 sounds like "making lots of money" in Chinese. So, people think it a very lucky number. Some people will even spend much more money to have 8s in their phone numbers. Do you remember the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing? It opened at 8:08 p.m. on August 8,2008.

The number 9 is also a lucky number because of its connection to the emperors of China. There were nine dragons on emperors' robes and it's told in many Chinese ancient stories that the dragon has nine children. The number of 9 also means "long lasting". In China, a man would send 99 or 999 roses to his lover with the wishes that the love between them will be long lasting.

What's more, Chinese think that the number 2 is lucky as it's said that “all good things come in pairs”. For example, during wedding celebrations, you usually find pairs of red candles, double pillows and many other things in pairs. and people often give gifts in pairs for someone's birthday, wedding or other celebrations.

So what's an unlucky number in China? It might be 4. Many Chinese people see 4 as an unlucky number because it sounds similar to the Chinese word c "death". Because of this, many buildings don't have the fourth floor, and just call it the fifth floor. In Hong Kong, some buildings even skip all floors with the numbered 4, such as,4,14,24,34 and all 40-49 floors. So, a building whose highest floor is 50 may have only 36 floors actually.

Teenagers are known for being creative and full of new ideas. Let's have a look at these teenagers' inventions that might change the world.

Imagine the situation. You are an exchange student from China and now you are learning French in a university in Paris, the capital city of France. One day, you come into the kitchen of your flat. Twenty minutes later, you cook several delicious French dishes.  We call this kind of wonderful kitchen a French Digital(数字) Kitchen or a “talking kitchen”.

The first French Digital Kitchen appeared at Newcastle University in the UK.  The inventors choose the grammar and words carefully to make sure the users can understand French well. For the first time, students can learn the language by following cooking steps. .

How does the kitchen work? There is a computer in the kitchen. With information in the computer, the kitchen starts to teach the users to make a French dish. If you follow the instructions on the computer, it moves on the next. .

The French Digital Kitchen makes learning a language more interesting and more educational. People can use th new kitchen in schools, universities and even their homes.
 

A lot of students are having all kinds of sports on the playground. A football game is going on right now b Class 3 and Class 4.We don't know which team will w．Look at those people over there！

Some students of Class 1 are practising the high jump. One of them is the best high jumper in the school. He practises hard every day. Many people think he will break the school record(纪录)in the sports meeting next spring.

Not far away from them，some girls are preparing for a race. They will have a 600­metre race soon. Now on the corner of the field，you can see another group of students. Their teacher is telling them how to t discus(铁饼)．

In schools，more and more students love sports now. Sports help people to keep h ．They also help people to live happily. And after d sports on the field，people will become good friends with each other，too. Do you think so?

If you work , you can do it .

We must the factory     .