【推荐1】Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in each blank with a proper word given in the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one more word than you need.

A. conserve             B. wrinkly             C. stationary             D. exceptional             E. oddities             F. nursing       G. timely             H. sounding             I. generalize             J. comprise             K. rules

The Curious World of Bats

Not all bats are unbelievably adorable, like the one below. Many of them have     1     faces and large ears that help them “see” in the dark, using echo location (回声定位). But all bats are, without a doubt,     2     creatures.

Scientists are typically reluctant to     3     about bats because they make up such a large and diverse group of winged animals. With nearly 1, 500 species, bats     4     about one-fifth of all mammal (哺乳动物) species on Earth. But one thing that can be said about them as a group is that they are, in not- so-scientific terms, very odd. “They break all the     5    ,” said Cori Lausen, a bat expert at the environmental group Wildlife Conservation Society Canada.

Being able to fly is just one of their     6    , since mammals rarely fly. Apart from that, bats can also push their heart rate to extreme highs and lows-as slow as one beat per minute. Many bat species can go into a period of deep sleep, known as “torpor”, for a few hours a day or even for weeks to     7     energy when it’s cold or food is unavailable. And while most small mammals have short lives and lots of babies, some bats can live for two decades or more and typically have just one baby per year.

For how much energy they need, it’s also surprising that many bat species, including most of those in the US, rely on insects alone for food. They have to eat ridiculous quantities of them. A mom that is     8     a baby can catch more than 4,000 insects in one night.

Oddly, although bats can fly, they can’t easily take off from a(n)     9     position, like most birds and insects do. That’s one reason why they hang upside down-bats have to gain the momentum they need by falling. “For them, it’s not upside down,” Frick said. “It’s flight-side ready!”

While bats remain highly understudied relative to birds and other mammals, scientists are     10     the alarm. In North America, more than half of all bat species are at risk of severe population decline. Climate change, they say, threatens to only speed up their extinction.

【推荐3】Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. based       B. genuinely       C. irrelevant       D. outsized       E. persist       F. previously G. profile       H. reasoning       I. shaped       J. similar       K. subsequent

It happens just about every time I go to a restaurant with my daughter. I open the menu and scan the options. Then I glance at the children’s menu. Oftentimes, the menu is pretty    1    , with the same pasta and tomato sauce. But the items on the children’s menu are usually less expensive, and I’ll think to myself: Wow, good deal.

If I think again for a moment, though, the deal isn’t really a deal. After all, I estimated the cost of the pasta    2    on the adult menu, not on the actual cost of making some bow-tie noodles and serving them with a red sauce.

My faulty    3    is the product of anchoring, a cognitive bias (认知偏差) that can weaken our critical thinking.

According to researchers, anchoring is when people rely on    4    but easily accessible facts to make judgments. Our minds give too much weight to initial impressions or numbers that influence our    5    thoughts. In my case, the prices on the adult menu    6    or anchored my judgment about the value of the items on the children’s menu.

Studies show that anchoring effects    7    no matter how weak the connection between the anchor and the actual decision. One study found that “estimates of an athlete’s performance were influenced by the number on his jersey ( 运 动 衫 ).” In other words, people thought that an athlete with a higher jersey number was better than an athlete with a lower number, all else being equal.

Anchoring affects all kinds of decisions, even those made by experts who should know better. In particular, a recent study shows that anchoring is far more common in the financial world than    8     believed, with substantial anchoring effects influencing performance in the stock market. A study showed that investors valued firms more highly if the firms had higher stock prices. So, if two companies have the same financial    9    except that Company X has fewer shares at a higher price than Company Y, then Company X’s shares will sell better over the long run than Company Y’s. Why? Because the stock price — the anchor — enhances the company’s perceived value.

The phenomenon of anchoring shows that while we think of ourselves as rational and logical beings, unrelated details can have a(n)     10    influence on our reasoning. The best solution is to improve critical thinking skills. Otherwise, you might be a victim of anchoring, dragged down by your bias, whether you notice it or not.