A Guide to the University
Food
The TWU Cafeteria is open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. It serves snacks, drinks, ice cream bars and meals. You can pay with cash or your ID cards. You can add meal money to your ID cards at the Front Desk. Even if you do not buy your food in the cafeteria, you can use the tables to eat your lunch, to have meetings with your friends and to study.
If you are on campus in the evening or late at night, you can buy snacks, fast food, and drinks in the Lower Cafe located in the bottom level of the Douglas Center. This area is often used for entertainment such as concerts, games or TV watching.
RelaxationThe Globe, located in the bottom level of McMillan Hall, is available for relaxing, studying, cooking and eating.
Monthly activities are held here for all international students. Hours are from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., closed on Sundays.
Academic SupportAll students have access to the Writing Center on the upper floor of Douglas Hall. Here, qualified volunteers will work with you on written work, grammar, vocabulary and other academic skills. If you need help, you can sign up for an appointment by finishing the sign-up sheet outside the door, two 30-minute appointments per week maximum. This service is free.
TransportationThe TWU Express is a shuttle(班车) service. The shuttle transports students between campus and the shopping center, leaving from the Mattson Centre. Operation hours are between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. Saturdays only. Round trip fare is $1.
My greatest regret in life is that I failed to tell my superb teachers how much they contributed to my early education.
Ruth Hammerman taught English to the eighth-graders. She was the first to show me the rules of what Evelyn Waugh called our "rich and delicate language." She was a no-nonsense instructor. Unlike common teachers, she diagramed (用图表展示) sentences so we could know the grammar rules. She never seemed to be tired of the simple pleasures of sharing her learning.
Under her influence, I had the strong belief that language needs to be well-spoken and properly written. Yet over the years I never made the effort to find her and to express my thankfulness for what she did for me. Two years after being in her class, I began the study of Latin and French, and the foundation (基础) she provided in English grammar served me well. Sadly, I never looked back.
In high school I took advanced French in a class taught by Richard Miller, the finest teacher I have ever experienced at any level. Mr. Miller brought to his subject a surprisingly deep understanding and new analysis (分析). Reading "Phèdre", Racine's classic play, he asked us to note there were 1,654 lines in it, and then pointed out the care Racine devoted to structure. Years later I made the same point — giving Mr. Miller credit — in a college French class, and my professor was surprised by my understanding of the play. Mr. Miller taught us to enjoy literature with particular points of view. Yet I never made the effort in later years to tell him what he meant to me.
Mr. Miller is certainly long dead. If she is alive, Miss Hammerman would likely be in her 90s. In preparing this article, I tried to find her but was unsuccessful.
I am certain my act is common. People often forget to express love and thankfulness to their teachers. I ought to have told Miss Hammerman and Mr. Miller how much they did for me. I suppose they knew their work was effective because they believed in what they were doing. Now I appreciate how special they were.
At the start of every working week, millions of people around the world get ready for something they do endlessly, joylessly and badly: a meeting.
The root of the rotten meeting is simple, says Madeleine de Hauke, a meeting coach and teacher in an Antwerp Management School. "We spend our lives and huge sums of money in meetings, but there's very little investment (投入) into helping people run them effectively."
Madeleine is correct. Running a meeting well takes skill. People need to know ahead why they are meeting, what they are supposed to achieve, who really needs to be there and how they should contribute. That sounds obvious but it is not, as anyone who has been to a pointless meeting knows. Yet meeting leaders are expected to learn all this on the job. I cannot remember ever being taught how to organize a meeting, and I have rarely had a job requiring me to do it.
I also like Madeleine's descriptions of what she calls the Meeting Monsters: people who destroy meetings with all sorts of annoying behaviors. There is the cruel off-topic speaker. The non-stop noise in the background. The confusing rambler (夸夸其谈者). The rude multi-tasker. The mute who says nothing but emails later to say what was decided will never work.
The trouble is, we are all meeting monsters sometimes, says Madeleine. A good meeting leader knows how to stop this behavior, or make sure it never starts by making it clear what will and won't be allowed.
A bad meeting is like a virus. By failing to produce good decisions it often requires another meeting to be held, then another and another. Luckily there is no need for a vaccine, just a bit more care and preparation, and an understanding that there is no shame in being taught how to lead a meeting well.
Masks that helped save lives are proving a deadly danger for wildlife, with birds and sea creatures trapped in the shocking number of thrown-away facial coverings. Single-use masks have been found around pavements, waterways and beaches worldwide. Worn once, the thin protective materials can take hundreds of years to decompose. "Face masks aren't going away any time soon — but when we throw them away, these items can harm the environment and the animals," Ashley Fruno of animal rights group PETA said.
In Britain, a gull was rescued by the RSPCA after its legs became tangled in the straps (带子) of a mask for up to a week. The animal welfare charity took it to a wildlife hospital for treatment before its release.
The biggest impact may be in the water. More than 1.5 billion masks made their way into the world's oceans last year, accounting for around 6,200 extra tonnes of ocean plastic pollution, according to environmental group Oceans Asia.
Conservationists in Brazil found one mask inside the stomach of a penguin after its body was washed up on a beach, while a dead pufferfish was discovered caught inside another off the coast of Miami. French campaigners found a dead crab trapped in a mask near the Mediterranean. Masks and gloves are "particularly problematic" for sea creatures, says George Leonard, chief scientist from NGO Ocean Conservancy. "When those plastics break down in the environment, they then enter the food chain and impact entire ecosystems." he added.
There has been a shift towards greater use of reusable cloth masks as the pandemic has worn on, but many are still using the lighter single-use varieties. Campaigners have urged people to bin them properly and cut the straps to reduce the risk of animals becoming trapped. Oceans Asia has also called on governments to increase fines for littering and encourage the use of washable masks.
Artificial intelligence (AI) still can't see the future, but a new algorithm (算法) may come close: using nothing but written movie summaries, the AI can consistently tell which films will play well — or awfully — to critics and audiences. If the model can be further improved, it could one day help producers predict whether a movie will be a failure at the box office, before it's even made.
To test several models, researchers used plot summaries of 42,306 movies from all over the world, many collected from Wikipedia. The models broke the summaries by sentence and used something called sentiment (情感) analysis to analyze each one. Sentences considered "positive", such as "Thor loves his hammer", would receive a rating closer to positive one. And sentences that were considered "negative", like "Thor gets in a fight" would be rated closer to negative one.
Generally, successful movies such as 1951's Alice in Wonderland — which scored 80% on the movie-rating website Rotten Tomatoes — have frequent waves in sentiment; unsuccessful ones, such as 2009's The Limits of Control, vary less. It's not important whether the films begin or end happily, the researchers say. What's important is that the sentiments change frequently.
The sentiment ratings in each summary were then simplified into a single score to reflect how often the sentiment changed. The researchers tested three different methods of arriving at a final score. All three could predict fairly accurately whether a movie would be unpopular, and one method worked especially well for guessing which thrillers and comedies reviewers would hate.
The methods were not as efficient at guessing which movies would succeed, but they still predicted the results more accurately than random chance. In the future, the researchers say their methods could be bettered to predict the amount a movie could earn at the box office and help producers decide which movies to invest in. The system's fair judgment might give an advantage to less well-known writers, the researchers add. It could also potentially save the public from having to sit through films like Jaws: The Revenge, which online critics and audience alike rate as terrible.
Imagine life without electricity. It may sound like a bad dream to you. But it's a fact of life for nearly one billion people around the world.
Those left in the dark generally live in developing countries. Often, they live in poor, rural areas, far from big cities. They could use oil generators (发电机) to make electricity, but most of these villagers can't afford them.
Without electricity, common things in your life are just a distant dream there. People can never watch TV or play with mobile phones. Without power, people can't even keep food from going bad. Farming requires power in all kinds of different ways. Also, people without electricity can't get clean water from the deep wells.
Many companies that make environmentally friendly products seem to have found a solution. They have developed ways to bring renewable energy to places that are "in the dark." It's very different from energy sources such as gas and oil, which are burned to create electricity. Unlike gas and oil, renewable energy never runs out. And there's no costly fuel to keep buying!
Instead, power is generated locally, through windmills, solar panels, and batteries. It is believed that renewable energy use will grow more rapidly in developing countries.
Children in Timor, Indonesia, once spent several hours a day getting water from the village well so that their families could farm, wash and cook. Now, pumps do the work — all powered by windmills. The windmills also provide electricity to nearby farms and homes.
With the help of low-cost renewable energy sources, some of the world's poorest villages now have a renewed sense of hope.
A. Farming there gets very easy.
B. Growing food is a problem, too.
C. People there are looking forward to a bright future.
D. Renewable energy comes from the sun, wind, and water.
E. Running power lines to these distant villages is too expensive.
F. The villagers believe that renewable energy can help fight air pollution.
G. This energy solution doesn't require expensive power lines or power factories.
In the Drum Tower West Theater in Beijing, Ding Yiteng was watching his new play, The New Romance of the West Chamber. The play brought his unique1, shaped by his experiences, to the audience. Ding understands the Western view of art, and he loves Chinese culture, so he wishes to2 them.
During his early education in the U.S., Ding3 a lot for not being able to understand people around him.
4 , when he returned to China after the sixth grade, he went through a second5 experience since he was not accepted by his classmates in his own culture.
The6 motivated his desire for self-expression. He found his place on the stage and devoted himself to 7 ever since. His hard work8. He became the only Asian actor in a famous international theater group in Denmark.
His deep love for Beijing Opera 9 as he saw a picture of Mei Lanfang, the most famous Peking Opera star, in the Danish theater. "I felt this urgent need for the10 of my country," Ding said. After that, Ding dedicated himself to studying Chinese dramas and reinterpreting(重新诠释)11 plays as a director.
In The New Romance Of The West Chamber, Ding rewrote the story to give each12 a modern identity. He explored the topic of13 and left a question-whether the couple can free themselves from the limits of family and society. The play doesn't give any14.
"As a director, I need to find15 from the traditional stories but keep a contemporary view as well," Ding said.
Ballet is a formal kind of dance performance with a rich and interesting history. The word "ballet" comes from the French language. Ballet's early roots began in Italy in the late 1400s. But it was in France ballet developed into the form we know today.
The French ruler Louis the Fourteenth had a big influence the direction of ballet in its early history. He ruled France for seventy-two years, (start) in 1643. He started dancing as a boy and worked hard daily.
Louis the Fourteenth turned ballet into a form of dance that reflected(he) power and influence. Ballet's many rules and (extreme) detailed movements expressed a person's power and social relations. The king made sure that ballet became requirement for the people of his court. He was also the (found) of the Royal Academy of Dance, an institution important people could learn this art. The aim of this dance was self-control, order and perfection.
Ballet slowly changed from a dance at the king's court to one (perform) by professional dancers. When Louis the Fourteenth died in 1715, ballet (bring) to other parts of Europe and was developing in other ways.
| A. to come into one's mind B. the act of allowing sb. to do sth. C. to give sb a particular impression D. showing happiness or satisfaction E. interesting and unusual enough to attract attention F. to state or show that sth. is true or correct, especially by providing evidence G. a person who stands in front of an orchestra, a group of singers etc. and directs their performance |
| A. be able to identify B. in an unusual or surprising way C. to make something stay the same D. something that you want to do or get very much E. in a way that is clear for almost anyone to see or understand F. to combine sth. in such a way that it becomes fully a part of sth. else G. a thing of which the cause or origin is hidden or impossible to explain |
注意：
1、词数 100 词左右；
2、可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯；
3、信的开头结尾已给出，不计入总词数。
