1 . The Happiness Myth
Happiness is not natural. It is a mere human construct. A state of contentment (let alone happiness) is discouraged by our genetic design because it would lower our guard against possible threats to our survival.
Chasing happiness is like chasing an elusive (难寻踪迹的) ghost, but the positive thinking industry claims to know its secrets. Self-help was popularized by Norman Vincent Peale, a colorful American pastor (牧师). He invented “positive thinking”, a concept now deeply embedded in our culture and steadily growing in influence. The global personal development industry was valued at $38. 28 billion in 2019 and is expected to grow at a rate of 5. 1%.
Popular films and books are full of supposedly inspirational statements about how all you need to do is believe in yourself and then you’ll be able to achieve anything in life. This is simply, and obviously, not true. I don’t think there is a need to explain that many obstacles and misfortunes in life are inevitable, or unmanageable. Our ancestors knew this, and many philosophical and religious traditions are based on the acceptance that being alive is a very challenging task, which comes with significant amounts of suffering. It goes without saying that we should do all we can to maximize our sense of wellbeing and minimize our suffering (as the “utilitarian” philosophers explain), but the end result cannot be a state of sustained bliss (极乐). We are not designed that way.
The self-help genre is not a homogeneous (同种类的) beast, however. It is, in fact, ironic how self-help books on happiness and those on how to make it big in life are put together in the same bookshop shelves, given that many of the former tell us that caring too much about the latter is the main obstacle to happiness.
The inevitable clash between mandatory (强制的) optimism and the realities of our existence comes with a heavy psychological price. It could be argued that positive psychology blames those who are suffering for their suffering, as it is based on the false idea that unhappiness is entirely avoidable. It follows therefore that an unhappy person must be inadequate and incompetent. Positive psychology encourages people who are struggling with a particular goal to persevere in the face of unfavorable odds, which is much more punishing psychologically in the long run than accepting defeat. I believe that coming to terms with life as it is, and not as the happiness industry tells us it could be, will make us happier, and we will feel more at peace with ourselves and with the world. Unfortunately, the devil always has the best tunes.
1. What is author’s main purpose in writing the first three paragraphs?A.To analyze how personal development industry works. |
B.To explain how unrealistic it is to pursue happiness in life. |
C.To contrast modern people’s view of life with our ancestors’. |
D.To review how the concept of happiness has changed over years. |
A.they came from different publishers |
B.they offer completely opposite values |
C.their target readers belong to different age groups |
D.they are the best-selling and slowest-selling books on the market |
A.Happiness is a choice, and so is suffering. |
B.Happiness is ideal. It is the work of the imagination. |
C.Happiness is a by-product. You cannot pursue it by itself. |
D.The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness. |
A.The core idea of the happiness industry is a beautiful lie. |
B.The happiness industry has negative effects on the society. |
C.Suffering contributes more to a meaningful life than happiness. |
D.The one-sided interpretation of life proved more attractive to the public. |
2 . Food to Be Engineered to Be More Nutritious
“Natural” is a buzz term food marketeers love to use, but barely any of our current produce ever existed in the natural world. The fruit and vegetables that we enjoy today have been selectively bred over thousands of years, often transformed out of all
However, the selective breeding for big and tasty
By 2028, genetics and biomolecular science should have
Just last year, researchers from Australia showcased a banana with high levels of provitamin A, an important nutrient not normally
More controversially, DNA can be transplanted from completely different organisms to create varieties that would never otherwise
Over the next ten years, the number of nutritionally enhanced crops will probably
A.recognition | B.order | C.disadvantage | D.balance |
A.By contrast | B.In addition | C.On the contrary | D.For instance |
A.flavors | B.smells | C.traits | D.appearances |
A.revolutionary | B.financial | C.environmental | D.nutritional |
A.declined | B.restricted | C.readjusted | D.revised |
A.upset | B.restored | C.maintained | D.created |
A.rewarding | B.desirable | C.responsive | D.stable |
A.favorable | B.precise | C.feasible | D.present |
A.occur | B.originate | C.orient | D.overtake |
A.pattern | B.budget | C.polish | D.boost |
A.causes | B.dishes | C.examples | D.ranges |
A.explode | B.disappear | C.shrink | D.steady |
A.cancellation | B.alteration | C.addition | D.solution |
A.Come up with | B.Get ready for | C.Give priority to | D.Cut down on |
A.creating | B.devoting | C.consuming | D.tasting |
3 . The word paradigm comes from the Greek. It was originally a scientific term, and is more commonly used today to mean a model or theory. In the more general sense, it’s the way we “see” the world — not in terms of our visual sense of sight, but in terms of perceiving, understanding, and interpreting.
A simple way to understand paradigms is to see them as maps. We all know that “the map is not the territory.” A map is simply an explanation of certain aspects of the territory. That’s exactly what a paradigm is. It is a theory, an explanation, or model of something else. You can never arrive at a specific location in a new city with a wrong map.
Each of us has many maps in our head, which can be divided into two main categories: maps of the way things are, or realities, and maps of the way things should be, or values. We interpret everything we experience through these mental maps. We seldom question their accuracy; we’re usually even unaware that we have them. We simply assume that the way we see things is the way they really are or the way they should be. And our attitudes and behaviors grow out of those assumptions. The way we see things is the source of the way we think and the way we act.
We see the world, not as it is, but as we are or, as we are conditioned to see it. Clearheaded people see things differently, each looking through the unique lens of experience. But this does not mean that there are no facts. Instead, each person’s interpretation of these facts represents prior experiences.
The more aware we are of our basic paradigms, maps, or assumptions, and the extent to which we have been influenced by our experience, the more we can take responsibility for those paradigms, examine them, test them against reality, listen to others and be open to their perceptions, thereby getting a larger picture and a far more objective view.
1. How does the author illustrate the concept of “paradigm”?A.By comparing it to an everyday object. | B.By sorting it into different categories. |
C.By presenting personal examples. | D.By highlighting a sharp contrast. |
A.They fail to escape our attention. | B.They may be lacking in accuracy. |
C.They prove wrong and unreliable. | D.They have little influence on behavior. |
A.Great minds think alike. | B.All men have opinions, but few think. |
C.Where we stand depends on where we sit. | D.The fewer the facts, the stronger the opinions. |
A.A better understanding of our paradigms. | B.A stronger sense of responsibility for others. |
C.A more objective view of others’ perceptions. | D.A more positive attitude toward life experience. |
4 . Girls are better at reading and writing than boys as early as fourth grade, according to a study, and the gap continues to widen until senior year.
Scientists generally agree that boys and girls are psychologically more alike than they are different. But reading seems to be a(n)
David Reilly, lead author of the study, said the study
Factors explaining the results could include learning
To investigate how
A.distinction | B.exception | C.objection | D.limitation |
A.pattern | B.standard | C.circumstance | D.feature |
A.strategy | B.signal | C.sign | D.evidence |
A.confirmed | B.represented | C.questioned | D.introduced |
A.underestimated | B.overemphasized | C.underrepresented | D.justified |
A.increasing | B.promoting | C.accepting | D.reducing |
A.objectives | B.drills | C.difficulties | D.advantages |
A.contributions | B.differences | C.communications | D.similarities |
A.literacy | B.literary | C.academic | D.cognitive |
A.pulled down | B.settled down | C.turned down | D.broke down |
A.granted | B.measured | C.designed | D.engineered |
A.Likewise | B.Overall | C.However | D.Besides |
A.overtake | B.discourage | C.parallel | D.distinguish |
A.psychological | B.emotional | C.behavioral | D.mental |
A.in line with | B.at the mercy of | C.on account of | D.in favor of |
5 . Given the buzz it’s created, there’s a good chance you’ve heard about ChatGPT. It’s an interactive chatbot powered by machine learning. The technology has basically devoured the entire Internet, reading the collective works of humanity and learning patterns in language that it can recreate. All you have to do is give it a prompt (提示), and ChatGPT can do an endless array of things: write a story in a particular style, answer a question, explain a concept, compose an email—write a college essay-and it will spit out coherent, seemingly human—written text in seconds. The technology is both awesome and terrifying.
22-year-old Edward Tian is working feverishly on a new app to combat misuse of ChatGPT.
Over the last couple years, Tian has been studying an AI system called GPT-3, a predecessor to ChatGPT that was less user-friendly and largely inaccessible to the general public because it was behind a paywall. As part of his studies this fall semester, Tian researched how to detect text written by the AI system while working at Princeton’s Natural Language Processing Lab.
Then, as the semester was coming to a close, OpenAI, the company behind GPT-3 and other AI tools, released ChatGPT to the public for free. For the millions of people around the world who have used it since, interacting with the technology has been like getting a peek into the future; a future that not too long ago would have seemed like science fiction.
For many users of the new technology, wonderment quickly turned to alarm. How-many jobs will this kill? Will this empower nefarious (恶意的) actors and further corrupt our public discourse (公共话语)? How will this disrupt our education system? What is the point of learning to write essays at school when AI-which is expected to get exponentially better in the near future-can do that for us?
Tian had an idea. What if he applied what he had learned at school over the last couple years to help the public identify whether something has been written by a machine?
Tian already had the know-how and even the software on his laptop to create such a program. Ironically, this software, called GitHub Co-Pilot, is powered by GPT-3. With its assistance, Tian was able to create a new app within three days. It’s a testament to the power of this technology to make us more productive.
On January 2nd, Tian released his app GPTZero. It basically uses ChatGPT against itself, checking whether “there’s zero involvement or a lot of involvement” of the AI system in creating a given text.
When Tian went to bed that night, he didn’t expect much for his app. When he woke up, his phone had blown up. He saw countless texts and DMs from journalists, principals, teachers, you name it, from places as far away as France and Switzerland. His app, which is hosted by a free platform, became so popular it crashed. Excited by the popularity and purpose of his app, the hosting platform has since granted Tian the resources needed to scale the app’s services to a mass audience.
1. Which of the following statements is TRUE about GPT-3?A.It’s designed and researched by Edward Tian in Princeton University |
B.Not many ordinary people have used it because it is not free. |
C.It is in the same AI system series as ChatGPT and GPTZero. |
D.It used to be less user-friendly than ChatGPT but has outdone it now. |
A.AI may replace human beings in the future when it comes to writing essays. |
B.Actors may turn bad or even evil if the new technology is adopted in acting. |
C.The education system may be badly impacted by the misuse of the new technology. |
D.Many people may be out of employment because of the new technology. |
A.the app is hosted by a free platform which is very popular. |
B.they know many journalists are also very interested in it. |
C.they are eager to share the resources Edward Tian is granted. |
D.they are worried about the possibility of students cheating in writing. |
A.Harm set, harm get. | B.Birds of a feather flock together. |
C.Fight a man with his own weapon. | D.Great minds think alike. |
6 . Inconvenient Truths
If doctors lie, it is surely inexcusable. One of the basic
Mrs Walton was in her eighties and
Mrs Walton is one of the dementia (痴呆) sufferers, who lose their short-term memory and the memory of
They look at their adult children
Sometimes honesty is
A.expressions | B.expectations | C.reputations | D.regulations |
A.objected | B.contributed | C.admitted | D.appealed |
A.ashamed | B.delighted | C.nervous | D.desperate |
A.cruelty | B.kindness | C.pain | D.pleasure |
A.recent | B.popular | C.distant | D.major |
A.opposition | B.connection | C.attention | D.similarity |
A.attacked | B.isolated | C.surrounded | D.attracted |
A.puzzled | B.satisfied | C.amused | D.motivated |
A.cut off | B.thrown away | C.put down | D.left behind |
A.knowledge | B.control | C.imagination | D.record |
A.brief | B.constant | C.permanent | D.secret |
A.Competing | B.Plotting | C.Matching | D.Mixing |
A.unnecessarily | B.inaccurately | C.impatiently | D.impolitely |
A.ahead of time | B.in no time | C.for the last time | D.for the first time |
A.mostly | B.informally | C.simply | D.finally |
7 . We have no idea what the job market will look like in 2050. It is generally agreed that machine learning and robotics will
So, are we really facing a terrifying sudden change, or are such
Yet, there are good reasons to think that this time is different, and that machine learning will be a real
We don’t know of any third field of activity — beyond the physical and the cognitive — where humans will always have a secure
A.carve | B.change | C.replace | D.threaten |
A.Besides | B.However | C.Therefore | D.Likewise |
A.economically | B.psychologically | C.environmentally | D.socially |
A.urbanization | B.cooperation | C.competition | D.automation |
A.outcomes | B.forecasts | C.excuses | D.reflections |
A.damage | B.emergency | C.production | D.unemployment |
A.dumped | B.shelved | C.created | D.testified |
A.trouble-maker | B.time-saver | C.game-changer | D.truth-seeker |
A.physical | B.mental | C.social | D.mathematical |
A.By contrast | B.For example | C.As a result | D.In addition |
A.analyzing | B.copying | C.walking | D.measuring |
A.go in for | B.make do with | C.turn away from | D.catch up with |
A.environment | B.connection | C.estimation | D.advantage |
A.dampened | B.defined | C.fueled | D.doubted |
A.appealing | B.replacing | C.standardizing | D.diversifying |
8 . The latest bad but unsurprising news on education is that reading and writing scores on the SAT have once again declined. The language competence of our high schoolers fell steeply in the 1970s and has never recovered. This is very worrisome, because the best single measure of the overall quality of our primary and secondary schools is the average verbal(语言的) score of 17-year-olds. This score correlates with the ability to learn new things readily, to communicate with others and to secure a job. It also predicts future income.
The most credible analyses have shown that the chief causes are vast curricular changes, especially in the critical early grades. In the decades before the Great Verbal Decline, a content-rich elementary school experience evolved into a content-light, skills-based, test-centered approach. Cognitive psychologists agree that early childhood language learning (ages 2 to 10) is critical to later verbal competence, not just because of the remarkable linguistic plasticity of young minds, but also because of the so-called Matthew Effect.
The name comes from a passage in the Bible: “For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.” Those who are language-poor in early childhood get relatively poorer, and fall further behind, while the verbally rich get richer.
The origin of this cruel truth lies in the nature of word learning. The more words you already know, the faster you acquire new words. This sounds like an invitation to vocabulary study for babies, but that’s been tried and it’s not effective. Most of the word meanings we know are acquired indirectly, by intuitively(凭直觉的) guessing new meanings as we understand the main idea of what we are hearing or reading. The Matthew Effect in language can be restated this way: “To those who understand the main idea shall be given new word meanings, but to those who do not there shall follow boredom and frustration.”
Clearly the key is to make sure that from kindergarten on, every student, from the start, understands the main idea of what is heard or read. If preschoolers and kindergartners are offered substantial and coherent lessons concerning the human and natural worlds, then the results show up five years or so later in significantly improved verbal scores. By staying on a subject long enough to make all young children familiar with it (say, two weeks or so), the main idea becomes understood by all and word learning speeds up. This is especially important for low-income children, who come to school with smaller vocabularies and rely on school to pass on the knowledge base children from rich families take for granted.
Current reform strategies focus on testing, improving teacher quality, and other changes. Attention to these structural issues has led to improvements in the best public schools. But it is not enough.
1. The drop in verbal scores on the SAT is worrisome because ________.A.it will lead to a short supply of talents in the labor market |
B.it reveals young people’s negative attitude towards verbal study |
C.it shows the schools’ inability to meet the national requirements |
D.students’ reading and writing ability affects their future development |
A.Children’s lack of language learning ability. |
B.Fewer courses on reading and writing in school. |
C.The shift of curricular focus from content to skills. |
D.Heavy pressure that numerous tests have resulted in. |
A.children should be trained to understand the content |
B.teachers should focus on one topic in language teaching |
C.children’s family background determines their verbal ability |
D.teachers should make everything understandable for students |
A.Mathew Effect in Language Learning |
B.How to Stop the Drop in Verbal Scores |
C.Try to Understand the Main Idea |
D.Don’t Overestimate Your Verbal Scores |
9 . A few years ago, the City Council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved fishbowls. The sponsors of the measure explained that it is cruel to keep a fish in such a bowl because the curved sides give the fish a distorted view of reality. Aside from the measure’s significance to the poor goldfish, the story raises an interesting philosophical question: How do we know that the reality we perceive is true?
Physicists are finding themselves in a similar trouble to the goldfish’s. For decades they have been pursuing an ultimate theory of everything—one complete and consistent set of fundamental laws of nature that explain every aspect of reality. It now appears that this pursuit may generate not a single theory but a family of interconnected theories, each describing its own version of reality, as if it viewed the universe through its own fishbowl. This concept may be difficult for many people to accept. Most people believe that there is an objective reality out there and that our senses and our science directly convey (传达) information about the material world. In philosophy, that belief is called realism.
In physics, realism is becoming difficult to defend. Instead, the idea of alternative realities is a mainstay of today’s popular culture. For example, in the science-fiction film The Matrix the human race is unknowingly living in a simulated (模拟的) virtual reality created by intelligent computers. How do we know we are not just computer-generated characters living in a Matrix-like world? If—like us—the beings in the simulated world could not observe their universe from the outside, they would have no reason to doubt their own pictures of reality.
Similarly, the goldfish’s view is not the same as ours from outside their curved bowl. For instance, because light bends as it travels from air to water, a freely moving object that we would observe to move in a straight line would be observed by the goldfish to move along a curved path. The goldfish could form scientific laws from their frame (框架) of reference that would always hold true and that would enable them to make predictions about the future motion of objects outside the bowl. If the goldfish formed such a theory, we would have to admit the goldfish’s view as a reasonable picture of reality.
The goldfish example shows that the same physical situation can be modeled in different ways, each employing different fundamental elements and concepts. It might be that to describe the universe we have to employ different theories in different situations. It is not the physicist’s traditional expectation for a theory of nature, nor does it correspond to our everyday idea of reality. But it might be the way of the universe.
1. What does the underlined word “distorted” in Paragraph most probably mean?A.Original. | B.Accurate. | C.Distant. | D.False. |
A.The need for a complete theory. | B.The lasting conflict in physics. |
C.The existence of the material world. | D.The conventional insight of reality. |
A.Nature’s mysteries are best left undiscovered. |
B.An external world is independent of the observers. |
C.People’s theories are influenced by their viewpoints. |
D.It is essential to figure out which picture of reality is better. |
A.various interpretations of the universe are welcomed |
B.physicists have a favorite candidate for the final theory |
C.multiple realities can be pieced together to show the real world |
D.there is still possibility to unify different theories into a single one |
10 . Eventually, the changes that will strengthen stepfamilies will likely come from shifts in cultural prejudices. Such change is slow, but there are signs that some movement along this line is beginning to take place. For instance, Roger Coleman, a clergyman in Kansas City, Mo., performs marriage ceremonies specifically designed to include children when a parent remarries. In years of officiating second marriages, he says, he became keenly aware of the confusion and insecurities of the children, and the ceremony — which includes a special medal worn by the child — aims to celebrate the “new family” and move the church beyond mere criticism of divorce. This year, Coleman says, over 10,000 families across the country will use the medal in their remarriage ceremony.
Similar changes are occurring in public schools around the country. One of the difficulties for stepfamilies is that schools and other public institutions have typically not recognized the stepparent as a valid parent; school registration forms, field trip permission slips, health emergency information — none of these required or acknowledged the stepparent. The message, whether intended or not, has been that only biological parents count. It’s a message that the stepparent and stepchild internalize, worsening what’s often an already difficult relationship, and one which the larger community takes as another sign that stepfamilies are not legally recognized in American society. Through the efforts of the Step-family Association of America and other advocates, schools around the country have begun changing their policies to acknowledge the increasingly important role of stepparents.
Change is also evident in a marketplace eager to exploit this wide social trend. In a particularly American sign of the times, the Hallmark greeting card company, is about to launch a line of cards devoted entirely to non- traditional families. The cards never use the word “step”, but most of the “Ties That Bind” line is clearly aimed at people who have come together by remarriage rather than biology — or, as one card puts it, “Thrown together without being asked, no chance of escape.” Some are straightforward (“There are so many different types and ways to be a family today”), while others are more indirect (“It’s like at a puzzle where the pieces aren’t where they used to be”). But all are aimed at the vast and growing market of people who don’t identify with the old definitions of family, and who are finding ways to make their new families work. Who knows — soon there may even be a card Tori La Londe can send to her former husband’s former mother-in-law.
1. The marriage ceremonies performed by Roger Coleman _________.A.always make children feel confused and insecure |
B.are more romantic than any other marriage ceremony |
C.are designed to include some children to create an exciting atmosphere |
D.are arranged to let children attend their parent’s remarriage ceremonies |
A.biological parents are irreplaceable in the growth of a child |
B.stepparents are no substitute for the biological ones |
C.traditional views on the family structure still persist |
D.efforts are made to facilitate the present situation |
A.Businesses can benefit more from new patterns of families |
B.People begin to be open to different new definitions of family |
C.Sending cards is a good way to tie the bond of the family |
D.Ex-husband’s ex-mother-in-law plays an important role in the family |
A.The increasingly important role of stepparents. |
B.The practical ways to strengthen the stepfamilies. |
C.The difficulties that are facing the stepfamilies. |
D.People’s gradual recognition towards stepfamilies. |