1 . Just being smart doesn’t mean someone will be successful. And just because someone is less smart doesn’t mean that person will fail. That’s one take-home message from the work of people like Angela Duckworth.
She works at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Like many other researchers, Duckworth wondered what makes one person more successful than another. When digging deeper, Duckworth found that the people who performed best shared a quality (品质) independent of smarts. They had what she now calls grit (毅力). Duckworth developed a set of questions to test it.
In one study of people 25 and older, she found that as people age, they become more likely to stick with a project. She also found that grit increases with education. People who had finished college scored higher in the grit test than people who quit before graduation did. People who went to graduate school after college scored even higher.
She then did another study with college students. Duckworth wanted to see how smarts and grit influenced performance in school. So she compared scores on college-entrance exams, which test IQ, to school grades and someone’s score in the grit test. Students with higher grades seem to have more grit. That’s not surprising. Getting good grades takes both smarts and hard work.
But some people counter that this grit means success. Among those people is Marcus Credé, a teacher at Iowa State University in Ames. He recently showed the results of 88 studies on grit. Together, nearly 67,000 people took part in these studies. And grit did not predict success, Credé found.
However, he thinks grit is very similar to someone’s ability to set goals, work toward them and think things through before acting. It’s a basic personality quality, Credé notes — not something that can be changed.
“Study habits and skills, test anxiety and class attendance are far more strongly connected to school grades than grit,” Credé says. “We can teach students how to study well. We can help them with their test anxiety,” he adds. “I’m not sure we can do that with grit.”
1. What can we know from the first two paragraphs?| A．Grit decides how smart one might be. |
| B．Grit is a quality dependent (依赖的) on smarts. |
| C．Success has nothing to do with smarts. |
| D．Smart people may not succeed. |
| A．Lifestyles. | B．Family tradition. | C．Education. | D．Personality types. |
| A．Doubt. | B．Reply. | C．Accept. | D．Warn. |
| A．It is strongly related to test anxiety. |
| B．It can hardly be taught in school. |
| C．It should be paid no attention to in teaching. |
| D．It can’t influence students’ school grades. |
2 . Perseverance: The Key to Success
Perseverance is a vital quality to possess in order to achieve success in any aspect of life.
One perspective on perseverance is that it is the ability to maintain focus and determination in the face of frustrations.
Another perspective on perseverance is that it involves having a growth mindset. This means that individuals who possess perseverance are open to new challenges and are not afraid to fail.
In conclusion, perseverance is an essential quality to possess in order to achieve the goals we set for ourselves. It involves the ability to persist in the face of adversity, maintain focus and determination, have a growth mindset, and possess the discipline necessary to put inconsistent hard work overtime.
| A．With perseverance, anything is possible. |
| B．Write down your goals to keep them in front of you at all times. |
| C．It is the quality that drives us to keep going even when it is tough. |
| D．They view failure as an opportunity to learn rather than a reason to give up. |
| E．One way to build perseverance is to have a vision of what you want to achieve. |
| F．Furthermore, perseverance is not just about having the motivation to keep going. |
| G．In other words, perseverance is about not giving up even when things don’t go well. |
3 . Having faith in something means you trust it completely. People with strong faith are so confident in themselves that they can do anything they set their minds to and get through the toughest times.
Faith improves your daily work. Being faithful in your day-to-day life can help lift your mood.
Faith gives you courage.
Faith helps you in difficult times. Sometimes you may find yourself drowning in despair. Even when you lose your job, suffer the pain of losing a beloved or face any other challenges, remember to have faith.
| A．It helps you do the things that scare you. |
| B．Faith helps overcome anxiety and stress. |
| C．Faith is the key to living a better and fuller life. |
| D．It helps you see the positive aspects of all these things. |
| E．The power of faith can enrich life in the following ways. |
| F．It can help you complete your work with a big smile on your face. |
| G．Having faith in yourself and your abilities helps you be more productive. |
4 . New York’s Central Park has a statue dedicated to him, and there’s even been a movie about him: a sled dog named Balto. Now he is the focus of a DNA study, 90 years after he died, to see what made the dog so famously tough (坚韧).
In 1925, this Siberian husky was part of an expedition in Alaska called the serum run, the goal of which was to bring life-saving medicine to young people that were threatened by a deadly disease in the remote town of Nome, over 600 miles away. Balto led the long-distance stretch, and wound up getting most of the honor.
After Balto’s death in 1933, his remains were preserved and put on display at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.
“Balto’s fame and the fact that he was taxidermized gave us this cool opportunity 100 years later to see what that population of sled dogs would have looked like genetically and to compare him to modern dogs,” said Katherine Moon, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California.
Her team took skin samples from the dog’s belly and reconstructed its genome — the complete set of genes in an organism. They compared this genetic material with that of 680 contemporary dogs from 135 breeds.
Contrary to a legend that thought that Balto was half wolf — as suggested in an animated Universal Pictures film that came out in 1995 — this analysis found no evidence he had wolf blood. It turned out Balto shared ancestors with modern day Siberian Huskies and the sled dogs of Alaska and Greenland.
Moon’s team also compared Balto’s genes with the genomes of 240 other species of mammals.
This allowed researchers to determine which DNA fragments (片段) were common across all those species and have not therefore changed over the course of millions of years of evolution. This stability suggests that these fragments of DNA are associated with important functions in the animal, and that mutations (基因突变) there could be dangerous.
The bottom line from the research was that Balto had fewer potentially dangerous mutations than modern breeds of dogs did, suggesting he was healthier.
1. Why did Moon and her team study the DNA of Balto?| A．Balto saved the lives of many people. | B．Balto achieved a long-distance transport. |
| C．Balto was a focus of the Central Park. | D．Balto was amazingly tougher than others. |
| A．Gene. | B．Evolution. | C．Toughness. | D．Changelessness. |
| A．Balto had blood of wolves. | B．Balto had fewer harmful mutations. |
| C．Balto was a modern husky. | D．Balto was a special mammal species. |
| A．A dog’s heroic act. | B．A great honor to a dog. |
| C．A DNA study of a tough dog. | D．A new research into DNA. |
5 . Tina was a seventeen-year-old girl who always wore a bright smile. She suffered from a disease and had to use a walker most of the time. People didn’t speak to her very often. Maybe it was because she looked
In one class, I gave the students an assignment (作业) to
When she finished, a student asked, “Tina, why did you do that? It’s not an important assignment!”
“Because I want to be like you guys! To be
Silence fell on the whole room when another student cried out, “Tina, we’re not normal! We are teenagers! We get in
“I know.” Tina said as a big smile spread across her face. The rest of the students laughed, too. Tina got only a few
| A．different | B．strong | C．short | D．young |
| A．please | B．introduce | C．approach | D．judge |
| A．Sorry | B．Bye | C．Hi | D．Thanks |
| A．recite | B．copy | C．find | D．read |
| A．friends | B．students | C．teachers | D．parents |
| A．started | B．planned | C．continued | D．failed |
| A．shouldn’t | B．couldn’t | C．needn’t | D．wouldn’t |
| A．surprise | B．joy | C．excitement | D．satisfaction |
| A．Because | B．When | C．After | D．Though |
| A．raised | B．changed | C．threw | D．checked |
| A．wondering | B．cheating | C．apologizing | D．kidding |
| A．happy | B．social | C．normal | D．fair |
| A．attention | B．thought | C．touch | D．trouble |
| A．points | B．chances | C．mistakes | D．comments |
| A．me | B．her | C．us | D．them |
1. What do we know about these climbers?
| A．They are very young. | B．They are all disabled. | C．That are very tall. |
| A．To take a risk. |
| B．To become well-known. |
| C．To show the power of spirit. |
| A．By taking photos. |
| B．By keeping an online journal. |
| C．By making a video and posting it online. |
7 . The annual marathon in my town usually occurs during a heat wave. My job was to
As the athletes began to
I watched in
I do not know this woman’s
| A．follow | B．run | C．walk | D．drive |
| A．march | B．wander | C．pace | D．walk |
| A．last | B．front | C．back | D．disabled |
| A．occurred to | B．held to | C．drawn to | D．taken to |
| A．eye | B．knee | C．hand | D．arm |
| A．likely | B．probable | C．impossible | D．unfair |
| A．silence | B．practice | C．theory | D．public |
| A．manage | B．struggle | C．mean | D．tend |
| A．urging | B．shouting | C．discouraging | D．pushing |
| A．Immediately | B．Instantly | C．Firstly | D．Finally |
| A．flood | B．pour | C．put | D．stream |
| A．seat | B．desk | C．stand | D．stadium |
| A．weak | B．firm | C．tender | D．fixed |
| A．finish | B．bottom | C．starting | D．dead |
| A．runners | B．judges | C．coaches | D．crowds |
| A．age | B．height | C．name | D．hobby |
| A．defending | B．beating | C．winning | D．awarding |
| A．set in | B．set off | C．set out | D．set about |
| A．different | B．simple | C．painless | D．difficult |
| A．realize | B．occur | C．imagine | D．reflect |
8 . There are times when we feel as if our bad circumstances will never change. When we meet troubles or problems in our lives,we are
When in this mindset(心态), I think back to a
When
In life we need to
| A．ready | B．grateful | C．responsible | D．desperate |
| A．settled | B．hidden | C．defeated | D．gone |
| A．message | B．story | C．problem | D．case |
| A．ate | B．tasted | C．touched | D．opened |
| A．Anyhow | B．However | C．Otherwise | D．Therefore |
| A．changed | B．ran | C．happened | D．showed |
| A．protected | B．kept | C．stopped | D．forbade |
| A．little | B．foolish | C．anxious | D．shy |
| A．good | B．bad | C．wrong | D．right |
| A．doubt | B．guess | C．know | D．hope |
| A．memories | B．things | C．questions | D．chances |
| A．search for | B．make up | C．take out | D．wrestle with |
| A．family | B．work | C．business | D．future |
| A．spirit | B．heart | C．will | D．mind |
| A．easy | B．difficult | C．common | D．special |
| A．adjusted | B．turned | C．stuck | D．agreed |
| A．left | B．expected | C．talked | D．remembered |
| A．fetch | B．catch | C．bring | D．take |
| A．something | B．everything | C．nothing | D．anything |
| A．prove | B．tell | C．consider | D．understand |
9 . When my teenaged son became seriously ill, terrible times for my family began. Our once-happy home became tense and
One evening, my son and I were talking about
“You couldn’t get a sound? What’s so
Seeing his face light up, we felt as if the gloom(黑暗) had
| A．content | B．depressed | C．puzzled | D．excited |
| A．looking for | B．suffering from | C．caring for | D．moving off |
| A．conversation | B．meal | C．vacation | D．party |
| A．diseases | B．relationships | C．festivals | D．gifts |
| A．moved | B．satisfied | C．disappointed | D．embarrassed |
| A．although | B．if | C．so | D．but |
| A．made | B．worked | C．mattered | D．served |
| A．picked out | B．cut of | C．packed away | D．thrown away |
| A．argument | B．research | C．treatment | D．trouble |
| A．happy | B．useful | C．hard | D．funny |
| A．blew | B．observed | C．cleaned | D．shook |
| A．never | B．only | C．hardly | D．even |
| A．chewed | B．lost | C．rooted | D．trapped |
| A．risk | B．seat | C．turn | D．rest |
| A．laughing | B．damaging | C．complaining | D．fighting |
| A．fallen | B．filled | C．lifted | D．approached |
| A．minutes | B．days | C．weeks | D．months |
| A．calm | B．light | C．bad | D．confident |
| A．connection | B．experiment | C．share | D．experience |
| A．recommend | B．reminds | C．warms | D．promises |
10 . Fei-Fei Li arrived in the U. S. from China at age 16 with many big dreams. And it took many unusual jobs to help her achieve them. Luckily, she was smart and extremely driven. And today, she’s the director of Stanford University’s artificial intelligence lab.
“As one of the leaders in the world for A. L., I feel much excitement and responsibility to create the most awesome and excellent technology for society and to educate the most awesome and excellent technologists—that’s my calling.” Li said.
She is also a loyal advocate for diversity in the tech industry.
“I see extremely talented Stanford PhD students struggling with their visas and I find it unthinkable that we create so many barriers for the talents of the world”, Li said. While Li was in college at Princeton, she borrowed money from friends and even her high school math teacher to run a dry-cleaning business for her parents in order to help them get by. Li attended classes during the week and worked at the business on the weekends. Then, when Li was in graduate school, her mom developed cancer and had a stroke (中风). “It was difficult to keep moving ahead while all of this was happening. The real existential challenge is to live up to your fullest potential, live up to your sense of responsibility and to be honest to yourself about your dreams while doing it,” she said.
Li was named a Great Immigrant of 2016 by the Carnegie Corporation, the nation’s oldest grant making foundation which honors roughly 40 naturalized U. S. citizens each year. Her graduate studies were supported by the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans.
1. What do we know about Fei-Fei Li according to Paragraph 1?| A．She was born in the United States of America. |
| B．She has made many of her dreams come true. |
| C．She worked very hard because she’s not gifted. |
| D．She’s now doing researches on AI in China. |
| A．Interest in technology. | B．Desire to help. |
| C．Creativity in science. | D．Sense of duty. |
| A．She had been struggling with her visa. |
| B．Both her parents suffered from illness. |
| C．Her family was faced with a tight budget. |
| D．It was difficult for her to attend classes. |
| A．her awareness of her duty and goals made a difference |
| B．an American foundation gave her support |
| C．the Carnegie Corporation named her a Great Immigrant |
| D．she was lucky enough to borrow money from others |
