There has been a collision ___ a number of cars on the main road to town.A) composing B) consisting C) involving D)engaging

__________ may be defined as any kind of engaging with the language on the part of the learners, usually under the teacher's supervision, whose primary objective is to consolidate learning.

A．Presentation
B．Practice
C．Production
D．Preparation

In the Communicative classrooms, the teacher might be a “ _____” ---engaging in communicative activities along with students.

A.co-communicator
B.co-instructor
C.co-learner
D.co-performer

__________may be defined as any kind of engaging with the language on the part of the learners, usually under the teacher's supervision, whose primary objective is to consolidate learning.

A．Presentation
B．Practice
C．Production
D．Preparation

Businesses have also been engaging in a type of electronic commerce, ______ occurs when one business transmits computer-readable data in a standard format to another business.

A.EFT
B.EDI
C.ERP
D.CRM

共用题干
第二篇

Students Learn Better with Touchscreen Desks

Observe the criticisms of nearly any major public education system in the world,and a few of the many
complaints are more or less universal.Technology moves faster than the education system.Teachers must
teach at the pace of the slowest student rather than the fastest. And一particularly in the United States一
school children as a group don't care much for,or excel（擅长）at,mathemnatics. So it's heartening to learn
that a new kind of"classroom of the future"shows promise at easing some of these problems,starting with
that fundamental piece of classroom furniture:the desk.
A UK study involving roughly 400 students,mostly aged 8一10 years,and a new generation of
multis-touch,multi-user,computerized desktop surfaces is showing that over the last three years the technology
has appreciably boosted students'math skills compared with peers learning the same material via the con-
ventional paper-and-pencil method.How?Through collaboration,mostly,as well as by giving teachers better
tools by which to micromanage individual students who need some extra instruction while allowing the rest of
the class to continue moving forward.
Traditional instruction still shows respectable efficacy（效力）at increasing students'fluency in mathe-
matics,essentially through memorization and practice一dull,repetitive practice.But the researchers have con-
cluded that these new touchscreen desks boost both fluency and flexibility一the critical thinking skills that al-
low students to solve complex problems not simply through knowing formulas and devices,but by being able
to figure out what the real problem is and the most effective means of stripping it down and solving it.
One reason for this,the researchers say,is the multi-touch aspect of the technology.Students working in
the next-gen classroom can work together at the same tabletop,each of them contributing and engaging with
the problem as part of a group.Known as SynergyNet,the software uses computer vision systems that see in
the infrared（红外线的）spectrum to distinguish between different touches on different parts of the surface,
allowing students to access and use tools on the screen,move objects and visual aids around on their desk-
tops,and otherwise physically interact with the numbers and information on their screens.By using these
screens collaboratively,the researchers say,the students are to some extent teaching themselves as those with
a stronger grasp on difficult concepts pull other students forward along with them.

What is the benefit students get from the new tech?
A:It makes them more fluent in public speech.
B:It enables them to develop critical thinking ability.
C:It offers them more flexibility in choosing courses.
D:It is effective in helping them solve physical problems.

Text 3 According to the old saw,anyone who wishes to maintain respect for sausages and laws should not see how either are made.Congress has just finished validating that saying by engaging in the sorry every-five-years exercise known as drafting a farm bill.This mess of subsidies and regulations claims to protect U.S.agriculture,not just from the vagaries of pests,crop diseases and weather but also from the ups and downs of the free market itself.Inevitably,the farm bill showers benefits on well-to-do business owners who don't need or deserve taxpayer help under the cover of deliberately obscure terms such as"federal milk marketing orders".It's true that farm income has dropped in each of the past four years because of falling commodity prices,but Congress showered agribusiness with taxpayer largesse when incomes reached all-time highs a half-decade ago,too.Clumsy manipulation by government probably exacerbates market swings.Where is it written that this one sector deserves federally guaranteed profitability'?You will hear a Iot about the need for food security,but it's mostly nonsense:A mere 6.3 percent of Americans'consumer expenditures were on food consumed at home in 2016,according to the Agriculture Department.This was easily the lowest percentage in the world,as it has been for many years.Even in the wildly unlikely event it doubled,we'd still be better off than developed countries such as Sweden and France.If Congress really wanted to help farmers,it would do something to stop President Trump's trade war,which has provoked retaliatory tarif{s by many countries against U.S.farm exports.This year's process has introduced a new level of ugliness to this inherently unlovely law.The House version of the farm bill,passed with Republican votes only,would add a work requirement to the government's largest food aid program for the poor,the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program,or SNAP.Helping poor people buy groceries is the main way the farm bill actually enhances food security;for decades,linking SNAP to farm subsidies in a single bill has been the price of urban lawmakers'support for rural corporate welfare.Mr.Trump applauded the measure,which would make most adult SNAP recipients（up to 7 million people）spend 20 hours per week either working or participating in a state-run training program as a condition of receiving benefits,which at present average$125 per month to 42.3 million Americans.Democratic representatives,mostly from urban America,and several Republicans,too,recoiled.Correctly,they cited the bill's insufficient funding for training programs,as well as the added paperwork and administrative burden.They might also have noted the bill's juxtaposition of tougher eligibility criteria for the poor with continued sugar price supports for agribusinesses in the South and Midwest.A large bipartisan majority of the Senate rejected the work requirement,which may mean that it can't survive the conference committee.The mere fact that it has gotten this far,however,tells you something about farm-bill politics in general and the priorities of the Republican House in particular.The old saw is cited to introduce a bill that____.

A.can improve the free market
B.aims to reform farm subsidies
C.is made public too soon
D.has too many drawbacks

资料：Demystifying how social and human-like robots work is vital so that we can understand and shape how they will affect our future, Dr Hatice Gunes will tell the Hay Festival next week. (1)
　　Fear mongering and myth-making about human-like and social robots is stopping us from engaging with the technology behind them and having an input into how they—and we—evolve, says Hatice Gunes, Associate Professor at University of Cambridge's Computer Laboratory. (2)
　　Dr Gunes will be speaking about her research at the Hay Festival on 1st June and says we need to move beyond sensationalist portrayals of human-like robot. Her Hay talk will centre on human robot interaction [ HRI] and how it can be used for our benefit, for instance, for helping children with autism learn how to read expressions and to stimulate the senses of elderly people in care. (3)
　　Dr Gunes will outline how HRI works. She says it has to be believable in order to be effective. That means robots’ appearance is very important. This is what has driven the development of humanoid robots with arms and aspects of a human face which can behave in a human-like way, for instance, moving their arms, legs and eyes. However, more important than appearance is their behaviour and emotional expressivity. Dr Gunes refers to the way we relate to Disney’s animated characters. “People believe in them because they can portray emotion,” she says. (4)
　　To achieve expressivity requires an understanding of how human emotions are portrayed and triggered. Scientists have been working on artificial emotional intelligence which enables new technology such as embodied agents and robots to both express and detect emotions, understanding non-verbal cues. Dr Gunes cites the work of Charles Darwin on the visual nature of emotions and how they can be mapped to various changes in facial expressions. (5)
　　Her research investigates how humanoids can be programmed not only to extract and respond to facial clues to emotions, but also to understand the context in which those emotions are expressed. That means they will be able to offer a response that is sensitive to specific contexts. (6)
　　Will robots ever be able to have emotions themselves though? Dr Gunes says there is no reason why not and questions what emotions are. The process of working with robots on artificial emotional intelligence unpicks the nature of our emotions, showing them to be a layering of different goals, experiences and stimuli. (7)
　　 Another area which scientists are looking at in their quest to improve humanoids’ believability is personality. Dr Gunes has done a lot of work on personality in telepresence robotics, robots controlled remotely by a human—a kind of 3D avatar. These can be used in many ways, for instance, by medical staff to offer remote home care. The medical person can be based anywhere and operate the robot through a virtual headset. Dr Gunes is interested in how people react to the teleoperator (the human controlling the robot remotely) who is present in robot form. Once again, both the robot’s physical appearance and behaviour are important and research shows that their personality needs to be task dependent. (8)
　　Dr Gunes says there remain some big challenges for scientists working on HRI, including how to process and combine all the different data they are gathering, how to modify their appearance and behaviour dynamically, and how to keep their power going 24/7. The major challenges, however, are to do with breaking down some of the myths and fears people have about humanoids. (9)
　　 Part of this is because they don’t understand the benefits humanoid robots can bring and why, for instance, they need to take on a human form and understand emotions. She says humanoids can be positive in terms of increasing trust and engagement among certain groups, such as the elderly; that humans tends to anthropomorphise technology in any event; and that robots can be programmed to be limited to positive emotions that promote altruism. (10)
　　“People tend to love or hate robots, but they don’t really know a lot abou

A.To enable robots to serve humans.
B.To decrease humans fear about robots.
C.To make robots more human-like.
D.To equip robots with human emotions.

资料：From: Peter Manx pmanx@bettertraining.co.au
To: John Morgan jmorgan@ISB.co.au
Date: March 23
Subject: Better Training Ltd.

Dear Mr. Morgan,

As a leading human resource specialist, Better Training Ltd. is uniquely able to respond to your current training needs. Please take the time to review the attached brochure. I am confident that you will find courses of immediate relevance to ISB International Ltd.

Our standard curriculum covers topics such as managerial development, technical training, sales, marketing, and more. Our instructors-professionals and leaders in their fields-conduct engaging seminars while maintaining the quality for which we are known. In addition to our regular courses, we can deliver individually tailored programs at the location of your choice.

I am certain that your organization will benefit from our services Contact us today to see how we can help your employees increase their technical and professional expertise.

Sincerely,

Peter Manx
President

What does Peter Manx hope to arrange?

A.business relationship with ISB International.
B.Assistance with an advertising campaign.
C.Revisions of a company brochure.
D.Technical support for Better Training staff.

请阅读Passaqe l，完成第小题。
Passage 1
Among the throngs of Americans prowling the malls and trawling e-commerce sites, many are looking out for themselves. Retail-research firm NPD Group said, thus far, about one third of consumers have engaged in what is called self-gifting. That's up from 12 percent in a typical pre-recession year, and up from the 19 percent who said they planned to do so last year. The National Retail Federation, the dispenser of all holiday-related data, said in 2012, nearly 60 percent of shoppers would do so.
The latest step in the evolution of our burgeoning culture of narcissism? Yes. Self-gifting makes psychological and economic sense given what Americans have endured these years.
THE POST-BUST(破产) era has been a long, hard, heroic slog of balance-sheet improvement.
Americans have labored to save money and hack away at the huge mountain of debt they accumulated during the credit boom. According to the New York Federal Reserve, consumers have knocked down their aggregate debt load from $12.67 trillion in the third quarter of 2008 to $11.31 trillion in the third quarter of 2012; credit-card debt is off $192 billion from the peak. Americans have cut their load by spending more carefully and engaging in that most un-American of traits:
self-abnegation.
After living frugally for so much of the year and for so many years who can blame a parent at an Apple Store for buying herself a new iPad? Indeed, self-gifting may actually be a function of the new abstemiousness. Let's say you've been holding off on replacing your old television. Why not buy it around November or December when insane promotions and free shipping are available?
Besides, it's not like self-gifters are solely interested in self-pleasure. An NRF survey said that the typical self-gifter would spend about $140 on himself this year. For comparison's sake, the survey said the typical shopper would spent about $750 in all.
After a long period of economic madness(remember the housing bubble and the dotcom mess),self-gifting is a sign of much-needed economic rationality. Shopping for others involves a certain amount of wrong guesswork with negative financial consequence. This year, for example, CEB TowerGroup claims that Americans will load $110 billion onto gift cards and give them as presents.
But the market-research firm says that about 1.6 percent of that total, about $1.7 billion, will go unused. Meanwhile, a large percentage of gifts wind up getting returned. Adults surveyed by BIG insight in November 2012 found that 35 percent of people reported returning at least some of their gifts. Returns induce guilt and raise the specter of uncomfortable conversations about what happened to that giant striped sweater. But more significant, returns are bad for the environment.
They lead to more trips to the mall, higher shipping costs, and the unnecessary use of packaging materials.
These days, the rise of e-commerce means shopping is now antiseptic: sit and click. With the charm gone, we have to come up with other ways to make the experience pleasurable.
As the song goes, "Have yourself a merry little Christmas".

What does the underlined word "aggregate" in PARAGRAPH 3 most probably
mean?
查看材料

A．Gigantic.
B．Heavy.
C．Total.
D．Maximum.

_______may be defined as any kind of engaging with the language on the part of the learners, usually under the teacher supervision, whose primary objective is to consolidate learning.

A．Presentation
B．Practice
C．Production
D．Preparation

__________ may be defined as any kind of engaging with the language on the part of the learners. usually under the teacher's supervision, whose primary objective is to consolidate learning.

A．Presentation
B．Practice
C．Production
D．Preparation

根据下面资料，回答题
One of my children is spinning in a circle, creating a narrative about a princess as she twirls.?The other is building a rocket ship out of a discarded box, attaching propellers made of cardboard?and jumping in and out of her makeshift launcher. It is a snow day, and I've decided to let them?design their own activities as I dean up and prepare a meal. My toddler becomes the spinning?princess, imagining her character's feelings and reactions. What seems like a simple story involves?sequencing, character development, and empathy for the brave princess stuck in her tower. The?rocket ship my first grader is working on needs a pilot and someone to devise the dimensions and?scale of its frame; it also needs a story to go with it. She switches between roles and perspectives,?between modes of thinking and tinkering.?
This kind of experiential learning, in which children acquire knowledge by doing and via?reflection on their experiences, is full of movement, imagination, and self-directed play. Yet such?learning is increasingly rare in early-childhood classrooms in the U.S, where many young children?spend their days sitting at tables and completing worksheets. Kindergarten and preschool in the U.S.?have become more and more academic, rigorously structuring kids' time, emphasizing assessment,?drawing a firm line between "work" and "play"--and restricting kids' physical movement. A study?from the University of Virginia released earlier this year found that, compared to 1998, children?today are spending far less time on self-directed learning--moving freely and doing activities that?they themselves chose--and measurably more time in a passive learning environment.?
With so few years under their belts, my 3- and 6-year-old daughters are still learning to inhabit?their bodies. They are learning how to maneuver themselves physically, how to orient themselves in?space. As Vanessa Durand, a pediatrician at St. Christopher' s Hospital for Children in Philadelphia,?says, freedom of movement is necessary for children to meet their developmental milestones:?"Children learn by experiencing their world using all of their senses. The restriction of movement,?especially at a young age, impedes the experiential learning process."?
Movement allows children to connect concepts to action and to learn through trial and error. "If?you walk into a good kindergarten class, everyone is moving. The teacher is moving. There are?structured activities, but generally it is about" purposeful movement," comments Nancy?Carlsson-Paige, a professor emerita of early-childhood education at Lesley University and the author?of Taking Back Childhood, describing the ideal classroom setup. In the classroom culture she?advocates for,"[Kids] are getting materials for an activity, they are going back and deciding what?else they need for what they want to create, seeing how the shape of a block in relation to another?block works, whether they need more, does it balance, does it need to be higher, is it symmetrical.?All of these math concepts are unfolding while kids are actively building and moving."?
Research has shown time and again that children need opportunities-to move in class. Memory?and movement are linked, and the body is a tool of learning, not a roadblock to or a detour away?from it. Any parent who has brought home a kindergartener after school, bursting with untapped?energy yet often carrying homework to complete after a seven-hour day, can reasonably deduce why?children today have trouble keeping still in their seats. Many children are getting 20-minute breaks,?or none at all On Florida, parents whose children have no recess have been campaigning to legislate?recess into the curriculum.) Recess, now a more frequent topic of research studies, has been found to?have "important educational and developmental implications." Schools that have sought to integrate?more movement and free play, such as short 15-minute recess periods throughout the day, have seen?gains in student attention span and instructional time. As Carlsson-Paige points out, "Recess is not a?separate thing in early-childhood education."?
Ben Mardell, a professor of early-childhood education at Lesley University and the project?director of the Pedagogy of Play initiative at Harvard's Project Zero observes that even when adults?do incorporate play into learning, they often do so in a way that restricts free movement and agency.?"The idea that there should be formal instruction makes it no longer play," says Mardell. ?"In play?the player is choosing to participate, choosing a goal, and directing and formulating the rules. When?there is an adult telling the kids, ?'This is what we are supposed to do,' many of the important?developmental benefits of play get lost."?
The role of play has been established not just as a part of learning, but as a foundation for?healthy social and emotional function. The National Association for the Education of Young?Children has published widely circulated position papers on the need for developmentally?appropriate teaching practices and for reversing the "unacceptable trends in kindergarten entry and?placement" that have been prompted largely by policy makers' demand for more stringent?educational standards and more testing. Some teachers are enacting changes, seeking ways to bring?movement back into the classroom. Lani Rosen-Gallagher, a former first-grade teacher for New?York City public schools and now a children's yoga instructor, explains the shift in thinking: "I?would have [my students] get out of their seats every 15 minutes and take a Warrior Pose or Lion' s?Breath, and then I could get 15 more minutes of work out of them." This kind of movement, she?said, also gives children space to develop self-awareness and self-regulation, to get to know?themselves as thinking individuals by connecting with the body.?
Play-based preschools and progressive schools (often with open room plans, mixed-age groups,?and an emphasis on creativity and independence) are seeing increased popularity. Enrichment programs engaging children in movement with intention (yoga, meditation, martial arts) are also gaining traction.?
These kinds of methods seek to give children back some of the agency their young minds and bodies crave, as less play and mobility lead to an uptick in anxiety in ever-younger students and even, according to Durand, a growing number of cases of children who need to see occupational therapists. Mindfulness practices such as guided breath and yoga can help mitigate the core symptoms of ADHD in children, ?(an increasingly common diagnosis), while the arts encourage?self-expression and motor-skill development.?
Emily Cross, a professor in the School of Psychology at the United Kingdom's Bangor?University, explains the impact of movement on memory and learning: New neuroscience research,?she said in an email, shows that active leaming--"where the learner is doing, moving, acting, and?interacting"--can change the way the brain works and can accelerate kids' learning process. While?passive learning may be easier to administer, she added, it doesn't favor brain activity. Cross, whose?research focuses on pre-teens and young adults, said she's found ?"very clear evidence that when?learners are actively engaged with moving their own bodies to music, in time with avatars on the?screen, their performance is vastly superior to when they're asked to engage in passive learning ...?[There are] striking changes in brain activity when we combine dance and music in the learning?context." In other words, people absorb a newly acquired skill-set better while doing, engaging their?bodies rather than simply observing.?
These research findings echo the observations and methodologies of educators who promote?active learning. As Sara Gannon, the director and teacher at Bethesda Nursery School, a highly?regarded play-based preschool in New Haven, Connecticut, that favors experiential learning over?direct instruction, in an email notes: ?"Unfortunately, there has been so much focus on forcing the?academics, and young children are being asked to do what they are just not ready to do ... of course,?we do teach letters and sounds, numbers and quantities--but through experiences and within a?context. That means, hands-on: counting the number of acorns a child found on the playground,?building with unit blocks, sounding out a child's name as they learn to write it, looking at traffic?signs on a walk." Yet while such developmentally oriented programs may benefit children, for now?they're unlikely to become widespread given the current focus on assessment and school readiness,?particularly in underserved communities.?
As my girls continued creating their own activity stations and imaginary worlds, the contrast?between how children operate versus what is often expected of them was apparent. It would be?unwise and impractical to pretend that children do not need any structure, or that academic skills are?unimportant in school. Yet it is necessary to recognize that the early-childhood classroom has been?significantly altered by increasingly rigorous academic standards in ways that rarely align with how?young children learn.?
?
??What′ s the author′ s altitude towards the importance of academic skills?查看材料

A.Unconcerned.
B..Objective.
C.Critical.
D.Tolerant

The journalist was probing into several financial scandals.

A:exploring
B:disputing
C:involving
D:solving

The year 2000 will bring big changes in communication．Cell phones will be small enough to carry in your pocket．Videophones will let you see the person you are talking to on the phone．Tiny hand size computers will know your favorite subjects．The Internet and email will be everywhere．Technologists believe 2000 will be the year of video messaging．You will be able to see whom you're talking to.
Also in the near future small wireless boxes will pick up information from satellites．In 5 years,computers won't need to be connected through wires.
All of this will be good for rural areas and countries that don't have cable or telephone now．
In 20 years you may only need to think about something and the computer will do it.
Constance Hale is the author of Sin and Syntax,"I believe that email has been an incredible boon to communication．People are writing today where they would have been telephoning yesterday．So people are engaging with words more than they have for the last couple generations."
If people use email and the Internet more,it could make people better readers and writers．Some people think the most important part of communication is to make people understand each other better．Will technology make that easier?
The translator also comes in handy in medical emergencies．Tam Dinh says,"Where people are injured it's always important to get as much information as quickly as possible."
Bob Parks is an Associate Editor of Wired Magazine,"Bob's morning begins at about 6:45 am．and Bob is kind of mad,because Bob usually gets up at around 7:15 and likes to cut it close with his morning commute,but I look at my radio and it says that there's a traffic jam on 101 South and I'm gonna need an extra 1/2 hour．And so my radio has got a net connection,wireless net connection as well as a good old power cord to the wall and it has received notice that there's a traffic jam and it has calculated an extra 1/2 hour commute time."
Some day everything may be connected to the Internet．Your refrigerator will add milk to your Internet grocery list when the date on the carton has passed．Light bulbs will be ordered before they burn out.
It's fun to try to guess the future．Usually the predictions are wrong．The one thing we know for sure is that we can't imagine how technology will change.

What is the best title for the passage?

A.The Best Way to Get News
B.The Changes of Media
C.Make Your Own Newspaper
D.The Future of Newspaper

Unlike so-called basic emotions such as sadness,fear,and anger,guilt emerges a little later,in conjunction with a child’s growing grasp of social and moral norms.Children aren’t born knowing how to say“I’m sorry”;rather,they learn over time that such statements appease parents and friends-and their own consciences.This is why researchers generally regard so-called moral guilt,in the right amount,to be a good thing:A child who claims responsibility for knocking over a tower and tries to rebuild it is engaging in behavior that’s not only reparative but also prosocial.In the popular imagination,of course,guilt still gets a bad rap.It evokes Freud’s ideas and religious hang-ups.More important,guilt is deeply uncomfortable-it’s the emotional equivalent of wearing a jacket weighted with stones.Who would inflict it upon a child?Yet this understanding is outdated.“There has been a kind of revival or a rethinking about what guilt is and what role guilt can serve,”Vaish says,adding that this revival is part of a larger recognition that emotions aren’t binary-feelings that may be advantageous in one context may be harmful in another.Jealousy and anger,for example,may have evolved to alert us to important inequalities.Too much happiness（think mania）can be destructive.And guilt,by prompting us to think more deeply about our goodness,can encourage humans to atone for errors and fix relationships.Guilt,in other words,can help hold a cooperative species together.It is a kind of social glue.Viewed in this light,guilt is an opportunity.Work by Tina Malti,a psychology professor at the University of Toronto,suggests that guilt may compensate for an emotional deficiency.In a number of studies,Malti and others have shown that guilt and sympathy（and its close cousin empathy）may represent different pathways to cooperation and sharing.Some kids who are low in sympathy may make up for that shortfall by experiencing more guilt,which can rein in their nastier impulses.And vice versa:High sympathy can substitute for low guilt.In a 2014 study,for example,Malti and a colleague looked at 244 children,ages 4,8,and 12.Using caregiver assessments and the children’s self-observations,they rated each child’s overall sympathy level and his or her tendency to feel negative emotions（like guilt and sadness）after moral transgressions.Then the kids were handed stickers and chocolate coins,and given a chance to share them with an anonymous child.For the low-sympathy kids,how much they shared appeared to turn on how inclined they were to feel guilty.The guilt-prone ones shared more,even though they hadn’t magically become more sympathetic to the other child’s deprivation.“That’s good news,”Malti says.“We can be prosocial because of our empathetic proclivity,or because we caused harm and we feel regret.”
Researchers think that guilt can be a good thing because it may help__________.

A.regulate a child’s basic emotions
B.improve a child’s intellectual ability
C.intensify a child’s positive feelings
D.foster a child’s moral development

资料：Demystifying how social and human-like robots work is vital so that we can understand and shape how they will affect our future, Dr Hatice Gunes will tell the Hay Festival next week. (1)
　　Fear mongering and myth-making about human-like and social robots is stopping us from engaging with the technology behind them and having an input into how they—and we—evolve, says Hatice Gunes, Associate Professor at University of Cambridge's Computer Laboratory. (2)
　　Dr Gunes will be speaking about her research at the Hay Festival on 1st June and says we need to move beyond sensationalist portrayals of human-like robot. Her Hay talk will centre on human robot interaction [ HRI] and how it can be used for our benefit, for instance, for helping children with autism learn how to read expressions and to stimulate the senses of elderly people in care. (3)
　　Dr Gunes will outline how HRI works. She says it has to be believable in order to be effective. That means robots’ appearance is very important. This is what has driven the development of humanoid robots with arms and aspects of a human face which can behave in a human-like way, for instance, moving their arms, legs and eyes. However, more important than appearance is their behaviour and emotional expressivity. Dr Gunes refers to the way we relate to Disney’s animated characters. “People believe in them because they can portray emotion,” she says. (4)
　　To achieve expressivity requires an understanding of how human emotions are portrayed and triggered. Scientists have been working on artificial emotional intelligence which enables new technology such as embodied agents and robots to both express and detect emotions, understanding non-verbal cues. Dr Gunes cites the work of Charles Darwin on the visual nature of emotions and how they can be mapped to various changes in facial expressions. (5)
　　Her research investigates how humanoids can be programmed not only to extract and respond to facial clues to emotions, but also to understand the context in which those emotions are expressed. That means they will be able to offer a response that is sensitive to specific contexts. (6)
　　Will robots ever be able to have emotions themselves though? Dr Gunes says there is no reason why not and questions what emotions are. The process of working with robots on artificial emotional intelligence unpicks the nature of our emotions, showing them to be a layering of different goals, experiences and stimuli. (7)
　　 Another area which scientists are looking at in their quest to improve humanoids’ believability is personality. Dr Gunes has done a lot of work on personality in telepresence robotics, robots controlled remotely by a human—a kind of 3D avatar. These can be used in many ways, for instance, by medical staff to offer remote home care. The medical person can be based anywhere and operate the robot through a virtual headset. Dr Gunes is interested in how people react to the teleoperator (the human controlling the robot remotely) who is present in robot form. Once again, both the robot’s physical appearance and behaviour are important and research shows that their personality needs to be task dependent. (8)
　　Dr Gunes says there remain some big challenges for scientists working on HRI, including how to process and combine all the different data they are gathering, how to modify their appearance and behaviour dynamically, and how to keep their power going 24/7. The major challenges, however, are to do with breaking down some of the myths and fears people have about humanoids. (9)
　　 Part of this is because they don’t understand the benefits humanoid robots can bring and why, for instance, they need to take on a human form and understand emotions. She says humanoids can be positive in terms of increasing trust and engagement among certain groups, such as the elderly; that humans tends to anthropomorphise technology in any event; and that robots can be programmed to be limited to positive emotions that promote altruism. (10)
　　“People tend to love or hate robots, but they don’t really know a lot abou

A.Neutral
B.Positive
C.Negative
D.Critical