Siri is the name of a new talking virtual(虛擬的) assistant feature on the latest iPhone that can tell you when you have an appointment, where to find a Thai restaurant and what the pollen count (花粉計數(shù))will be.
I have friends who have the phone and love to ask Siri, "What's the meaning of life?" She has an answer, which is impressive. Maybe it takes a circuit board to recognize the special quality of life. But frankly, her answer sounds a little robotic.
Siri, which is a name for the California company that developed her, speaks in an electronically warm, friendly, female voice. So do most on-board navigations systems, voicemail prompts(提示), directory assistance greetings and Julie, the voice of Amtrak's automated reservation system.
Why are the voices that come from our machines often female?
Professor Clifford Nass said that humans develop a preference for female voices that begins when we overhear our mothers speaking while we wait in their wombs(子宮).
We hear our mothers say in a soft voice, "I love you" over our heads, so a woman's voice conveys comfort and security. We might hear a man's voice somewhere in the background asking, "Have you seen my shoes? or “Hey, where are the spoons?"
Researchers say that while a man's voice can sound "authoritative", a woman's voice may be taken as more friendly and cooperative.
Rebecca Zorach, director of the Social Media Project at the University of Chicago's Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, says that companies are probably only choosing the voices that focus groups and market surveys like most. "It's casting," she says.
But I don't want to begin any campaigns for more male mechanical voices. I prefer to think that the increase of the application of female robotic voices reflects some of the progress women have won in the struggle for equality. Women have achieved so much in so many ways, you can hear it everywhere.
64. The author mentioned Siri to prove that ________.
A. it can tell you the meaning of life. B. most mechanical voices are female
C. it is a new application on the iPhone D. it can let out a robotic sound
65. What can’t a female voice usually suggest?
A. Love. B. Safety. C. Kindness. D. Authority.
66. By saying “It’s casting”, Rebecca means __________.
A. females play a key role in mechanical voices
B. females are cleverer than males in some aspects
C. females like talking with others more than males
D. females know more about what people need
67.In the last paragraph, the author thinks that _______.
A. women have much sweeter voices than men
B. women have made progress in robot designing
C. women have won more equal rights in society
D. women are still prejudiced in robotic field
閱讀快車系列答案科目：高中英語 來源： 題型：閱讀理解
Whatever our differences as human beings are we all think we’re more like the rest of the animal world than we realize. It is said that we share 40 per cent of our genetic（遺傳的）structure with the simple worm.
But that fact has helped Sir John Sulston win the 2002 Nobel Prize for Medicine. Sir John is the founder of the Sanger Institute in Cambridge, which was set up in 1992 to get further understanding of the human genome（染色體組）.
To help them do this, they turned to the worm. The nematode（線蟲類的）worm is one of the earliest creatures on planet earth. It is less than one millimeter long, completely transparent and spends its entire life digging holes through sand. But it still has lots to say about human life, and what can be done to make it better.
What the worm told Sir John and his colleagues was that each of the cells in the human body is programmed like a computer. They grow, develop and die according to a set of instructions that are coded in our genetic make-up.
Many of the diseases that humans suffer from happen when these instructions go wrong or are not obeyed. When the cell refuses to die but carries on growing instead, this leads to cancer. Heart attacks and diseases like AIDS cause more cell deaths than normal, increasing the damage they do to the body. Sir John was the first scientist to prove the existence of programmed cell death.
Sir John Sulston got a Nobel Prize for Medicine because he has .
A．found that human beings are similar to the worm
B．got the fact we share 40 per cent of our genetic structure with the simple worm
C．found the computer which controls each of the cells in the human body
D．proved that cell death is programmed
People might be seriously ill if the cells in their body .
A．grow without being instructed B．die regularly
C．fail to follow people’s instructions D．develop in the human body
The underlined word“they”（paragraph 5）refers to .
A．cell deaths B．diseases C．instructions D．cells
What is the subject discussed in the text?
A．The theory of programmed cell deaths. B．A great scientist—Sir John Sulston.
C．The programmed human life. D．Dangerous diseases.
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科目：高中英語 來源：2013屆山東省菏澤一中高三11月階段性測試英語試卷（帶解析） 題型：閱讀理解
IMAGINE if there was a device that could do everything for you – wake you up every morning, chat with you and type your e-mails.
The piece of technology in question would be smart, able to tell you about the weather and where the nearest restaurants are.
The good thing is you no longer need to wonder, because something like this already exists. And its name is Siri.
Siri is a voice recognition application designed for Apple products and the concept has been around for almost a year.
When Siri first came out it could only speak English, but now it has “l(fā)earned” lots of new languages, including Chinese, Cantonese and Taiwanese, reported The Wall Street Journal. So, you can give it orders in your mother tongue.
But how could a cell phone or a computer “hear” what you are saying and understand it? This is all because of voice recognition technology.
When you speak, your voice creates vibrations (振動) in the air – a bit like waves in the water when you throw a rock into the lake. The microphone receives the vibrations and the computer changes them into digital data that is then divided into many parts. They are analyzed one by one to see what pronunciations each part stands for. The computer then puts these pronunciations together into possible words according to its built-in dictionary.
But figuring out the words is far from enough; building words into meaningful sentences is the most difficult part. The computer has to compare what it hears to a large library of known phrases and sentences to determine what the user is saying.
However, people don’t always talk in the most standard way and sometimes make grammatical mistakes. This is why traditional voice recognition software always requires you to remember keywords and to speak in a certain way.
Fortunately, Siri isn’t like that. It’s not just “voice recognition”; it’s “natural language understanding (NLU)”. You can ask it things like “Do I need an umbrella today?” and it will know that you are asking about the weather, according to ABC News.
“The key thing is NLU – understanding what you mean and what you want,” Neil Grant from Nuance, a software company in the US, told The Guardian. “Historically, you had to learn a huge long list of commands . As NLU progresses, you can say what you want in a way that’s natural to you.”
【小題1】What is the function of the first two paragraphs?
| A．To show that invention usually results from need. |
| B．To clear doubts about voice recognition technology. |
| C．To introduce something that offers these helpful services. |
| D．To show how the voice recognition works. |
| A．Changing the received vibrations into digital data. |
| B．Analyzing the digital data to see what pronunciations it represents. |
| C．Putting the pronunciations together into possible words. |
| D．Figuring out meaningful sentences based on the words. |
| A．You can speak in a natural way as you would to a person. |
| B．You can only speak English and Chinese. |
| C．You have to say things in a certain way. |
| D．You have to remember keywords and speak specific commands. |
| A．Siri can record and save what you say frequently into a computer dictionary. |
| B．Siri will fail to understand what you say if you make grammatical mistakes. |
| C．The biggest advantage of Siri is that it’s NLU is rather than just voice recognition. |
| D．Since first applied to Apple products a year ago, Siri has made great improvements. |
| A．the convenience of future life. |
| B．a(chǎn)n introduction to the Apple products. |
| C．the working system of voice recognition |
| D．the introduction to Siri |
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科目：高中英語 來源：2012-2013學年山東省高三11月階段性測試英語試卷（解析版） 題型：閱讀理解
IMAGINE if there was a device that could do everything for you – wake you up every morning, chat with you and type your e-mails.
The piece of technology in question would be smart, able to tell you about the weather and where the nearest restaurants are.
The good thing is you no longer need to wonder, because something like this already exists. And its name is Siri.
Siri is a voice recognition application designed for Apple products and the concept has been around for almost a year.
When Siri first came out it could only speak English, but now it has “l(fā)earned” lots of new languages, including Chinese, Cantonese and Taiwanese, reported The Wall Street Journal. So, you can give it orders in your mother tongue.
But how could a cell phone or a computer “hear” what you are saying and understand it? This is all because of voice recognition technology.
When you speak, your voice creates vibrations (振動) in the air – a bit like waves in the water when you throw a rock into the lake. The microphone receives the vibrations and the computer changes them into digital data that is then divided into many parts. They are analyzed one by one to see what pronunciations each part stands for. The computer then puts these pronunciations together into possible words according to its built-in dictionary.
But figuring out the words is far from enough; building words into meaningful sentences is the most difficult part. The computer has to compare what it hears to a large library of known phrases and sentences to determine what the user is saying.
However, people don’t always talk in the most standard way and sometimes make grammatical mistakes. This is why traditional voice recognition software always requires you to remember keywords and to speak in a certain way.
Fortunately, Siri isn’t like that. It’s not just “voice recognition”; it’s “natural language understanding (NLU)”. You can ask it things like “Do I need an umbrella today?” and it will know that you are asking about the weather, according to ABC News.
“The key thing is NLU – understanding what you mean and what you want,” Neil Grant from Nuance, a software company in the US, told The Guardian. “Historically, you had to learn a huge long list of commands . As NLU progresses, you can say what you want in a way that’s natural to you.”
1.What is the function of the first two paragraphs?
A．To show that invention usually results from need.
B．To clear doubts about voice recognition technology.
C．To introduce something that offers these helpful services.
D．To show how the voice recognition works.
2.Which step is the most complicated in the process of voice recognition according to the article?
A．Changing the received vibrations into digital data.
B．Analyzing the digital data to see what pronunciations it represents.
C．Putting the pronunciations together into possible words.
D．Figuring out meaningful sentences based on the words.
3.How can you get Siri to respond according to the article?
A．You can speak in a natural way as you would to a person.
B．You can only speak English and Chinese.
C．You have to say things in a certain way.
D．You have to remember keywords and speak specific commands.
4.What can be concluded from the article?
A．Siri can record and save what you say frequently into a computer dictionary.
B．Siri will fail to understand what you say if you make grammatical mistakes.
C．The biggest advantage of Siri is that it’s NLU is rather than just voice recognition.
D．Since first applied to Apple products a year ago, Siri has made great improvements.
5.The text is mainly about ________.
A．the convenience of future life.
B．a(chǎn)n introduction to the Apple products.
C．the working system of voice recognition
D．the introduction to Siri
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科目：高中英語 來源： 題型：閱讀理解
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