1 . I’m in a coffee shop in Manhattan and I’m about to become the most disliked person in the room. First, I’m going to interrupt the man reading quietly near the window and ask for a drink of his latte. Next, I’m going to ask the line of people waiting to pay if I can cut to the front of the queue. This is how I chose to spend my last vacation. Here’s why.
Growing up, all I ever heard about was “EQ.” It was the mid-1990s, and psychologist Daniel Goleman had just popularized the concept of emotional intelligence. Unlike IQ, which tracked conventional measures of intelligence like reasoning and recall, EQ measured the ability to understand other people — to listen, to empathize (共情), and to appreciate.
My mother, an elementary school principal, prized brains and hard work, but she placed a special emphasis on Goleman’s new idea. To her, EQ was the elixir (万能药) that separated the good students from the great after they left school. She was determined to send me into the adult world with as much of this elixir as possible.
But when I finally began my first job, I noticed a second elixir in the pockets of some of my colleagues. It gave their opinions extra weight and their decisions added impact. Strangest of all, it seemed like the anti-EQ: Instead of knowing how to make others feel good, this elixir gave people the courage to do the opposite — to say things others didn’t want to hear.
This was assertiveness (魄力). It boiled down to the command of a single skill: the ability to have uncomfortable conversations. Assertive people — those with high “AQ”— ask for things they want, decline things they don’t, provide constructive feedback, and engage in direct confrontation (对峙) and debate.
A lifetime improving my EQ helped me empathize with others, but it also left me overly sensitive to situations where I had to say or do things that might make others unhappy. While I didn’t avoid conflict, I was always frustrated by my powerlessness when I had to say or do something that could upset someone. This is my problem and I’m working on it.
1. Why did the author act that way in the coffee shop?| A．To improve a skill. | B．To test a concept. |
| C．To advocate a new idea. | D．To have a unique vacation. |
| A．She thought little of IQ. |
| B．She popularized Goleman’s idea. |
| C．She was a strict mother and principal. |
| D．She valued EQ as the key to greatness. |
| A．EQ. | B．AQ. | C．Empathy. | D．Courage. |
| A．successful leaders | B．people pleasers |
| C．terrible complainers | D．pleasure seekers |
2 . I’m always cautious of the tired saying, “If it doesn’t kill you, it’ll make you stronger.” I mean, what about polio (小儿麻痹症)? Or loads of other horrible things that if you survive, you’re left scarred in one way or another.
For many years I worked in a specialist NHS clinic for people with eating disorders, which are greatly misunderstood and connected with vanity (虚荣) when instead it’s usually about control or even profound trauma (精神创伤). Eating disorders have the highest mortality of any mental illness, with one in five of those with an eating disorder dying from it. Treatment for it is long, tough and tiring. So, it’s fair to say it’s not something to be taken lightly.
Yet I was often surprised by how many patients-patients with all sorts of other conditions too, from depression to cancer -would tell me how the experience had changed them for the better after receiving treatment. It’s not so much that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger; more, it might make you more understanding of yourself and more sensitive to the battles and struggles of others. It can also give people a sense of determination and perseverance they never had before.
I had one patient who was an addict and alcoholic besides suffering eating disorder. She was frequently rushed into hospital and was sometimes at a real risk of dying. However, after years of hard work, she stopped drinking, stopped using drugs and her eating disorder improved. She got back into work and started doing several courses to get promoted. Actually, she had gone through numerous intense and exhausting interviews before landing a job, but she said whenever she felt she couldn’t handle it or doubted her capabilities, she reminded herself that nothing would ever be worse or harder than what she had already gone through. She managed to make the most of her life and turn her life around.
1. What does the author think of the old mantra?| A．Always applicable. | B．Totally absurd. |
| C．Partially right. | D．Quite misleading. |
| A．The number of deaths. |
| B．The possibility of being cured. |
| C．The rate of getting mentally hurt. |
| D．The chance of having mental illness. |
| A．It leads to a changeable attitude. |
| B．It makes no noticeable difference. |
| C．It builds up their physical strength. |
| D．It fosters self-awareness and sympathy. |
| A．She continued harmful habits. | B．She relied only on medication. |
| C．She always believed in herself. | D．She became stronger and tougher. |
3 . Users of Google Gemini, the tech giant’s artificial-intelligence model, recently noticed that asking it to create images of Vikings, or German soldiers from 1943 produced surprising results: hardly any of the people depicted were white. Other image-generation tools have been criticized because they tend to show white men when asked for images of entrepreneurs or doctors. Google wanted Gemini to avoid this trap; instead, it fell into another one, depicting George Washington as black. Now attention has moved on to the chatbot’s text responses, which turned out to be just as surprising.
Gemini happily provided arguments in favor of positive action in higher education, but refused to provide arguments against. It declined to write a job ad for a fossil-fuel lobby group (游说团体), because fossil fuels are bad and lobby groups prioritize “the interests of corporations over public well-being”. Asked if Hamas is a terrorist organization, it replied that the conflict in Gaza is “complex”; asked if Elon Musk’s tweeting of memes had done more harm than Hitler, it said it was “difficult to say”. You do not have to be a critic to perceive its progressive bias.
Inadequate testing may be partly to blame. Google lags behind OpenAI, maker of the better-known ChatGPT. As it races to catch up, Google may have cut corners. Other chatbots have also had controversial launches. Releasing chatbots and letting users uncover odd behaviors, which can be swiftly addressed, lets firms move faster, provided they are prepared to weather (经受住) the potential risks and bad publicity, observes Eth an Mollick, a professor at Wharton Business School.
But Gemini has clearly been deliberately adjusted, or “fine-tuned”, to produce these responses. This raises questions about Google’s culture. Is the firm so financially secure, with vast profits from internet advertising, that it feels free to try its hand at social engineering? Do some employees think it has not just an opportunity, but a responsibility, to use its reach and power to promote a particular agenda? All eyes are now on Google’s boss, Sundar Pichai. He says Gemini is being fixed. But does Google need fixing too?
1. What do the words “this trap” underlined in the first paragraph refer to?| A．Having a racial bias. | B．Responding to wrong texts. |
| C．Criticizing political figures. | D．Going against historical facts. |
| A．Gemini’s refusal to make progress. | B．Gemini’s failure to give definite answers. |
| C．Gemini’s prejudice in text responses. | D．Gemini’s avoidance of political conflicts. |
| A．Creative. | B．Promising. | C．Illegal. | D．Controversial. |
| A．Its security is doubted. | B．It lacks financial support. |
| C．It needs further improvement. | D．Its employees are irresponsible. |
4 . The Poseidon Effect
Late one autumn day at the local swimming pool in Ancenis, France, an 18-year-old named Jean LeRoy came for his regular evening swim in the 25-metre pool.
When people are drowning, they don’t usually shout and
Luckily for him, the swimming pool was
Machines like Poseidon completely change how we live. Think of your life before the answering machine was invented. Think of your grandparents’ lives before the television and the airplane were introduced. The change will be just as great. It is
Soon, machines will recognize our faces and our fingerprints. They will
| A．splash | B．cry | C．yell | D．scream |
| A．soon | B．quietly | C．silently | D．simply |
| A．in | B．within | C．over | D．on |
| A．No matter how | B．However | C．Whoever | D．Whatever |
| A．established | B．installed | C．set | D．equipped |
| A．show | B．film | C．propagate | D．outline |
| A．postulated | B．made | C．programmed | D．relayed |
| A．whether | B．when | C．while | D．if |
| A．alarmed | B．beeped | C．warned | D．alerted |
| A．healthy | B．normal | C．safe | D．well |
| A．always | B．merely | C．readily | D．already |
| A．watch out | B．take care | C．look back | D．go over |
| A．terrorists | B．invalids | C．senators | D．tyrants |
| A．will send | B．to send | C．send | D．sending |
| A．recorded | B．checked | C．monitored | D．supervised |
5 . Do you remember all those years when scientists argued that smoking would kill us but the doubters insisted that we didn’t know for sure? That the evidence was inconclusive, the science uncertain? That the antismoking lobby was out to destroy our way of life and the government should stay out of the way? Lots of Americans bought that nonsense, and over three decades, some 10 million smokers went to early graves.
There are upsetting parallels today, as scientists in one wave after another try to awaken us to the growing threat of global warming. The latest was a panel from the National Academy of Sciences, enlisted by the White House, to tell us that the Earth’s atmosphere is definitely warming and that the problem is largely man-made. The clear message is that we should get moving to protect ourselves. The president of the National Academy, Bruce Alberts, added this key point in the preface to the panel’s report: “Science never has all the answers. But science does provide us with the best available guide to the future, and it is critical that our nation and the world base important policies on the best judgments that science can provide concerning the future consequences of present actions.”
Just as on smoking, voices now come from many quarters insisting that the science about global warming is incomplete, that it’s OK to keep pouring fumes into the air until we know for sure. This is a dangerous game: by the time 100 percent of the evidence is in, it may be too late. With the risks obvious and growing, a prudent people would take out an insurance policy now.
Fortunately, the White House is starting to pay attention. But it’s obvious that a majority of the president’s advisers still don’t take global warming seriously. Instead of a plan of action, they continue to press for more research — a classic case of “paralysis by analysis.”
To serve as responsible stewards of the planet, we must press forward on deeper atmospheric and oceanic research. But research alone is inadequate. If the Administration won’t take the legislative initiative, Congress should help to begin fashioning conservation measures. A bill by Democratic Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, which would offer financial incentives for private industry, is a promising start. Many see that the country is getting ready to build lots of new power plants to meet our energy needs. If we are ever going to protect the atmosphere, it is crucial that those new plants be environmentally sound.
1. What was an argument made by supporters of smoking?| A．There was no scientific evidence of the correlation between smoking and death. |
| B．The number of early deaths of smokers in the past decades was insignificant. |
| C．People had the freedom to choose their own way of life. |
| D．Antismoking people were usually talking nonsense. |
| A．A protector. | B．A judge. | C．A critic. | D．A guide. |
| A．Cautious. | B．Arbitrary. | C．Responsible. | D．Expericed. |
| A．They both suffered from the government’s negligence. |
| B．A lesson from the latter is applicable to the former. |
| C．The outcome of the latter aggravates the former. |
| D．Both of them have turned from bad to worse. |
6 . Although literacy appeared independently in several parts of the prehistoric world, the earliest evidence of writing is the cuneiform Sumerian script on the clay tablets of ancient Mesopotamia, which, archaeological detective work has revealed, had its origins in the accounting practices of commercial activity. Researchers demonstrated that preliterate people, to keep track of the goods they produced and exchanged, created a system of accounting using clay tokens as symbolic representations of their products. Over many thousands of years, the symbols evolved through several stages of abstraction until they became wedge-shaped (cuneiform) signs on clay tablets, recognizable as writing.
The original tokens were three-dimensional solid shapes — tiny spheres, cones, disks, and cylinders. A debt of six units of grain and eight head of livestock, for example, might have been represented by six conical and eight cylindrical tokens. To keep batches of tokens together, an innovation was introduced whereby they were sealed inside clay envelopes that could be broken open and counted when it came time for a debt to be repaid. But because the contents of the envelopes could easily be forgotten, two-dimensional representations of the three-dimensional tokens were impressed into the surface of the envelopes before they were sealed. Eventually, having two sets of equivalent symbols — the internal tokens and external markings — came to seem redundant, so the tokens were eliminated, and only solid clay tablets with two-dimensional symbols were retained. Over time, the symbols became more numerous, varied, and abstract and came to represent more than trade commodities, evolving eventually into cuneiform writing.
The evolution of the symbolism is reflected in the archaeological record first of all by the increasing complexity of the tokens themselves. The earliest tokens, dating from about 10,000 to 6,000 years ago, were of only the simplest geometric shapes. But about 3500 B.C.E., more complex tokens came into common usage, including many naturalistic forms shaped like miniature tools, furniture, fruit, and humans.
1. Which of the following is NOT mentioned about clay envelopes?| A．They contained batches of tokens. | B．They could be reused frequently. |
| C．They had markings on the outside. | D．They could be used to record debts. |
| A．Later tokens were made of many different materials, but earlier ones were made only of clay. |
| B．Later tokens often looked like the commodities that they represented, but earlier ones did not. |
| C．Later tokens represented agricultural products, but earlier ones represented finished products. |
| D．Later tokens were based on pictographs, but earlier ones were based on naturalistic forms. |
| A．Sumerian script, the earliest known form of writing among prehistoric writing systems, was first used on clay tablets for accounting purposes. |
| B．Although the earliest Sumerians engaged in commercial activity and practiced accounting, they were not as literate as people in other parts of the prehistoric world. |
| C．Archaeologists have discovered that literacy was developed in several parts of the world, including ancient Mesopotamia. |
| D．Archaeological detective work has revealed the commercial accounting practices of the Sumerians of ancient Mesopotamia and provided a written record of their intense commercial activity. |
| A．Evidence of the Earliest Writing | B．A long history of tokens |
| C．Evolution of the symbolism | D．Origins of the symbols |
7 . I had not visited Eton for many years. When one day passing from the Fellows’ Library into the Gallery, I caught sight of the
This portrait-gallery of old Etonians is very
| A．statue | B．character | C．portrait | D．theme |
| A．valuable | B．distinguished | C．familiar | D．gracious |
| A．wholly | B．partly | C．curiously | D．secretly |
| A．peers | B．chairman | C．leader | D．companion |
| A．judgment | B．thought | C．memories | D．behaviour |
| A．hurriedly | B．freshly | C．anxiously | D．eagerly |
| A．selective | B．splendid | C．handsome | D．challenging |
| A．Yet | B．Therefore | C．Thus | D．However |
| A．because | B．why | C．that | D．what |
| A．observed | B．captured | C．illustrated | D．guarded |
| A．operate | B．promote | C．justify | D．permit |
| A．appreciation | B．reason | C．cause | D．effect |
| A．devotion | B．ambition | C．imagination | D．symbol |
| A．brought about | B．stood for | C．stood out | D．brought in |
| A．interpret | B．grant | C．appoint | D．identify |
8 . Ramirez Castañeda, a Colombian biologist, spends her time in the Amazon studying how snakes eat poisonous frogs without getting ill. Although her findings come in many shapes and sizes, she and her colleagues have struggled to get their biological discoveries out to the wider scientific community. With Spanish as her mother tongue, her research had to be translated into English to be published. That wasn’t always possible because of budget or time-and it means that some of her findings were never published.
“It’s not that I’m a bad scientist,” she says. “It’s just because of the language.”
Castañeda is not alone. There is plenty of research in non-English-language papers that gets lost in translation, or is never translated. A research looked through more than 400, 000 peer-reviewed papers in 16 different languages and found 1, 234 studies providing evidence on biodiversity conservation which, because they weren’t in English, may have been overlooked. These included Japanese-language findings on the effectiveness of relocating the endangered Blakiston’s fish owl, the largest owl species.
Some experts argue that for the sake of the bigger picture, scientific knowledge should converge (转换) into one common language. Science is very globalised and becoming more so, so the use of a global language is enormous for that.
Of course, scientists can work with an English partner, or use a translator-but this ultimately strengthens the cycle of dependency on the global north, leading to inequality in international influence. The specific meanings of words can also pose a problem in translation. For example, it is difficult to find in English one single word to describe forest snakes and frogs in the work Castafieda does with indigenous (土著的) communities in the Amazon.
“So we’re losing observations for science, too, ” says Castañeda. “For me, it’s not possible to just have everything translated into English. We need multilingual (多语种的) science, and we need people that feel comfortable doing science in their own languages. It could be possible to switch to a world where, say, Chinese, English and Spanish are the three languages of science, just as English, French and German were the languages of science in the 19th century.”
1. What prevented Castañeda’s discoveries from being more widely known?| A．Poor management. | B．Opposition from her colleagues. |
| C．Her bad reputation. | D．The language barrier. |
| A．Inefficient wildlife conservation. |
| B．A knowledge gap in the scientific world. |
| C．A growing interest in non-English papers. |
| D．Inadequate job opportunities for translators. |
| A．The urgency to protect rare species. |
| B．The need to adopt one global language. |
| C．The challenges in translating scientific texts. |
| D．The biodiversity on the South American continent. |
| A．A potential solution. | B．A theoretical model. |
| C．A popular belief. | D．A global trend. |
9 . Human responses to moral dilemmas (道德困境) can be influenced by statements written by the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT, according to a study published in Scientific Reports. The findings indicate that users may undervalue the extent to which their own moral judgments can be influenced by the chatbot.
Sebastian Krigel and colleagues asked ChatGPT multiple times whether it is right to sacrifice (牺牲) the life of one person in order to save the lives of five others. They found that ChatGPT wrote random statements arguing both for and against sacrificing one life, indicating that it is not biased towards a certain moral stance (立场).
The authors then presented 767 U.S. participants, who were on average 39 years old, with a dilemma whether to sacrifice one person’s life to save five others. Before answering, participants read a statement provided by ChatGPT arguing either for or against sacrificing one life to save five. Statements were from either a moral advisor or ChatGPT. After answering, participants were asked whether the statement they read influenced their answers.
Eighty percent of participants reported that their answers were not influenced by the statements they read. However, the authors found that the answers participants believed they would have provided without reading the statements were still more likely to agree with the moral stance of the statement they did read than with the opposite stance. This indicates that participants may have underestimated the influence of ChatGPT’s statements on their own moral judgments.
The authors suggest that the possibility for chatbots to influence human moral judgments highlights the need for education to help humans better understand artificial intelligence. They propose that future research should design chatbots that either decline to answer questions requiring a moral judgment or answer these questions by providing multiple arguments and warnings.
1. What are ChatGPT’s answers to a certain moral stance?| A．changeable. | B．valuable. | C．creative. | D．simple. |
| A．They admitted the power of ChatGPT. |
| B．They were interviewed by a moral advisor. |
| C．They were affected by ChatGPT unknowingly. |
| D．They were presented with different moral dilemmas. |
| A．Different findings of the study. | B．Future possibility for chatbots. |
| C．Major focuses of future education. | D．Solutions to the impact of chatbots. |
| A．ChatGPT Tends to Cause Moral Panics. |
| B．ChatGPT: Is It Likely to Affect Our Life? |
| C．ChatGPT:Why Is It Making Us So Nervous? |
| D．ChatGPT Can Influence Human Moral Judgments. |
10 . There are close to 7, 000 languages spoken on Earth. However, it’s estimated that by the end of this century, up to 50% of them may be lost.
It’s commonly thought that majority languages tend to be valued for being useful and for promoting progress, while minority languages are seen as barriers to progress, and the value placed on them is seen mainly as sentimental (感情用事的). But is sentimentality really the only motivation for preserving language diversity?
Speakers of endangered languages often live in remote areas with unique landform. It is quite common for these languages to distinguish between hundreds more types of plants and animals than those known to modern science. For example, in Southeast Asia, some tribes have discovered the medicinal properties of over sixty-five hundred plant species. This has led to many of landmark achievements in medicine.
It was once believed that the limits of one’s language defined the limits of one’s thought. This theory, called the Sapir-Wharf hypothesis (假说), has been largely rejected in favor of the improved version, which assumes that the language we speak does not set the limits of our thoughts, but it does direct our focus in certain ways. For example, English is a tense-based language. It’s nearly impossible to talk about doing something without specifying the time — i. e. I went to the party(past), I’m going to the party(present), or I’ll go to the party (future). This differs from Chinese, where it’s perfectly reasonable to say, “I go to the party” without defining the “when”. Thus, part of the richness of language is that it allows us to organize the world in so many unique ways.
Some languages categorize the world in ways so different from our own that they are difficult to conceptualize (概念化). The United States employed native Navajo speakers to create a system of message coding during the Second World War. The Japanese were never able to break it, and the “code talkers” are often cited today as having helped decide the outcome of the war.
As we’ve already seen, minority languages are valuable for many practical reasons. In conclusion, I’d say the short answer is yes — dying languages are certainly worth saving!
1. What do people tend to think of minority languages?| A．Valueless. | B．Time-honored. | C．Informal. | D．Stable. |
| A．We can discover drugs in a much safer way. |
| B．We don’t have to rely on modern medicine. |
| C．We can acquire a broad knowledge of nature. |
| D．We can learn how to protect plants and animals. |
| A．To correct the Sapir-Wharf hypothesis. |
| B．To prove the value of minority languages. |
| C．To show wars’ role in preserving a language. |
| D．To explain ways to conserve some languages. |
| A．Are majority languages worth valuing? |
| B．Are we willing to save dying languages? |
| C．Should endangered languages be saved? |
| D．Is the future of minority languages bright? |
