2019-2020学年度第8期总第766期

Queen of evil (P4-5)
山东省烟台第二中学 赵娜娜

Lead-in
Do you know who this character is?

Maleficent became an instant hit with audiences around the world when she first appeared in cinemas five years ago, with her sculpted cheekbones and twisted devil horns.

Have you seen the 2014 Maleficent film? What’s it about?
A vengeful fairy curses an infant princess, only to discover that the child may be the one person who can restore peace to their troubled land.

Reading for main idea
What is the main idea of the article?
The movie’s memorable characters and powerful theme make it popular.

Reading for details
Read the article and answer the following questions.

1. Who are the main characters in the film?  
What are their personalities like?
 

2. What’s the theme of the film?
The film’s main theme is inclusiveness and cooperation between different people. Both fairies and humans must learn to understand each other if they want to protect the land where magical creatures live together.

3. What are some comments about the film?
Maleficent (2019) is a fierce fairy tale about the joy of being uniquely individual. These characters are so unique that you would remember even many years after you finished watching the movie.
                                                    --Carla Renata
The film is about kindness and acceptance and tolerance. We want people to be kind to one another ... to understand that it is wrong to exile people that are different.
                                                    --Fanning

Further thinking
Do you know other films with similar themes of acceptance and tolerance?

What is acceptance?
Acceptance is the ability to see that others have a right to be their own unique persons. That means having a right to their own feelings, thoughts and opinions. When you accept people for who they are, you let go of your desire to change them. You let them feel the way they want to feel, you let them be different and think differently from you. Everyone is different in one way or another.

Language study
1. 立刻风靡的人或物
2. ……的续集
3. 预计是
4. 在观众之间受欢迎
5. 激烈的童话
6. 与众不同的角色
7. 背叛
8. 拒绝做
9. 不遗余力做某事
10. 和……不同
11. 合作
12. 启迪观众

Understanding sentences
(1) … is an evil fairy witch who hates human beings for the betrayal of her human lover.
(2) Both fairies and humans must find a way to understand each other if they want to protect the peaceful land where magical creatures live together.
Attributive clause定语从句

Combine two sentences to create one new sentence:
①Lucy is my friend. She has a hearing problem.
Lucy is my friend who has a hearing problem.

②Eventually, it manages to reach these places. It will spend the winter in these places.
Eventually, it manages to reach the places where it will spend the winter.

Exercise
1. I was surprised at the number of people ____ visited the Forbidden city on Saturday.
2. The man_____ is talking with my father is a policeman.
3. China is a country ____ human civilizations prosper.
4.This is the farm ____ I spent my childhood.

Homework
Mary picks on others frequently. Write a letter to her to persuade her to accept others as who they are.

2019-2020学年度第8期总第766期
AI as smart as an eighth-grader (P6)

河北师大附中  赵乃平

I. Lead-in 
What is AI?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is an area of computer science that creates intelligent machines capable of working and reacting like humans.
It has become an essential(必不可少的) part of the technology industry.

Applications (应用) of AI
 
AI in Astronomy
solving complex physics problems
helping understand the universe such as how it works, its origin, etc.

AI in Data Security 
making your data more safe and secure
AEG bot, A12 Plateform, can determine software bug and cyber-attacks in a better way

AI in Automotive Industry
providing virtual assistants to drivers for better performance
developing self-driven cars which can make your journey more safe and secure

AI in Robotics
performing tasks after learning from their own experiences, without being pre-programmed

Humanoid robot 
talk and behave like humans

AI in education 
automated grading
communicating with students as a teaching assistant

AI in Gaming
Playing strategic games like chess, where the machine needs to think of a large number of possible moves

II. Skimming 
The article is mainly about how intelligent an AI system can be.

III. Scanning 
Give some examples to show how researchers improve AI.
Virtual (虚拟的) assistants can make simple conversations with humans.
AlphaGo learned to play Go by itself and did better than the best human players.

What task is assigned to an AI system?
It will pass a multiple-choice (多项选择) exam.

What is the purpose of doing that?
It is aimed at improving machines’ language understanding and logic (逻辑) with so-called computer vision (计算机视觉).

  How did Aristo perform in the exams?

It passed an eighth-grade science exam for US students, correctly answering more than 90 percent of the questions.
Then it also did well in a 12th-grade exam, scoring more than 80 percent.

Compared with Aristo, how did other AI systems do four years ago?
None of them answered more than 60% of the questions correctly.

Why was Aristo able to pass the exams?
It can understand language.
It can solve challenging problems with logical thinking.
     
What technology helped Aristo to answer the questions?
BERT.
It stores quite a few English articles.
With its help, after practicing many times, Aristo succeeded in finding logical patterns independently.
     
IV. Summary 
An AI system called Aristo recently passed an 8th-grade exam, ________ over 90%. Then with a 12th-grade exam, it answered over _____ questions.
Aristo could pass the exams because of its ________________ and ________.
The system used _____ to answer the questions, which helped Aristo to think l_________.

V. Language focus
 Translate the following into Chinese
• artificial intelligence
• virtual assistant
• be tasked with
• a multiple-choice exam
• on one's own
• in the early stage
• search engine
• database

Give the suitable forms.
• logic n.        ________ adj.  ________ adv.
• understand v. ________ n. ________ n. 误会            
• danger n.       _______ adj.       ________ v.
• reason n.       _______ adj.       ________ v.

过去分词短语作定语， 相当于定语从句
It recently passed an eighth-grade science exam taken by many US students ...
= which was taken by many US students

The system used BERT, a kind of neural (神经的) network technology developed by Google, to answer the questions.
= which was developed by Google

【小试牛刀】 
将下列作定语的过去分词（短语）改写为定语从句
Most of the people invited to the meeting are scientists.
Most of the people who/that were invited to the meeting are scientists.

3. The girl dressed in red is his daughter.
The girl who/that is dressed in red is his daughter.