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 . If you’ve scrolled through your Facebook feed recently, you may have noticed something surprising: lots and lots of short videos.
What makes this “Reels” feature strange is that it is hugely addictive, which I know quite well from my own personal experience. Last Friday, I took a break and hit on one short clip of someone making dinner and, well, the next time I looked up it was 20 minutes later and the blank document on my computer monitor was confirming to me that my work was still not done.
However, as silly as it seems, Reels-is actually super important, and is at the centre of a major battle between the world’s largest tech firms. The format (格式) was first pioneered by TikTok-the Chinese-owned video app that has taken the world by storm since it launched in 2016. Today, TikTok has around 23 million UK users every month-including basically every person you know under the age of 25. And that fact has made Facebook and its parent company, Meta, very nervous indeed. As TikTok has continued to boom, Facebook has actually fallen in popularity among “Gen Z”. The reason Tik Tok has proven such a powerful challenger to Facebook’s social media dominance is almost entirely down to these sorts of short-form videos.
The format is almost perfectly optimised to be as addictive as possible: Tik Tok’s app shows you a short-form video, and if you don’t like it, you can simply swipe it away and another one will start playing instantly. And because it is portrait, not landscape, videos look “right” when viewed on your phone. What’s also smart is that TikTok’s algorithm (算法) picks videos for you based on what you actually watch, and not what you say you want.
Facebook isn’t the only app trying to do what TikTok does so well. Instagram, which is owned by Facebook’s parent company Meta, has integrated Reels even more aggressively into its app. And even Google is nervous, launching its own TikTok-style video section of YouTube(which it owns)a couple of years ago. As things stand, though TikTok currently maintains a healthy lead in the category, both YouTube and Facebook have deep pockets-so expect to see even more Reels and Shorts popping up in your feed as this intense battle continues to rage. You won’t be able to take your eyes off them.
1. Why did the author mention his own experience in paragraph 2?| A．To illustrate the feature of short videos. |
| B．To stress the importance of short videos. |
| C．To prove his preference to short videos. |
| D．To introduce the functions of short videos. |
| A．It has shown the trend of the fall in popularity among “Gen Z”. |
| B．It is perceived as a potential threat to Facebook’s social media dominance. |
| C．Its number of registered UK users has reached 23 million since it launched in 2016. |
| D．It underestimates the essential role of short videos in competition with large tech firms. |
| A．The beautiful visual effects. |
| B．The high video quality. |
| C．The random recommendation. |
| D．The quick switch between videos. |
| A．The short videos have a profound impact on our daily life. |
| B．TikTok seems to be losing its advantage over short videos in the short run. |
| C．YouTube and Facebook may encounter financial difficulties in developing Shorts. |
| D．A growing number of tech firms have engaged in fierce competition for the short video market. |
3 . Fifty years after Liliana Cavani’s film The Night Porter was released to widespread critical disgust, how have views of it changed?
“To write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric,” wrote the German theorist Theodor Adorno, suggesting in his 1949 essay Cultural Criticism and Society that artistic expression had been rendered inadequate as a tool to understand reality after the Holocaust. In her 1974 film The Night Porter, Italian director Liliana Cavani challenged this theory, taking it to its logical extreme. She used a concentration camp as the setting to explore a crazed sexual bond between an adolescent prisoner and an SS commandant, and how, years later, this psychological poison has pervaded their souls.
Amid the furore after its release — which included intensely negative reviews and an at-tempted ban by the Italian ratings board—with typical nonchalance, Cavani told The New York Times: “This is nothing compared to the numberless couples who tear each other apart psychologically.”
Half a century on, however, does The Night Porter still seem like a provocation that plumbs the depths of bad taste? With the film’s recent restoration and re-releases, as well as renewed conversations around cinematic depictions of the Holocaust, many have revisited the film and remain unimpressed by its content. Others are perhaps seeing the film more as Lili-an a Cavani originally intended: as an artistic reflection of how sexual obsession can be fascistic in its tunnel-visioned ferocity. Cavani herself put it more simply: “love comes always with a price to pay.”
The Night Porter is set in Vienna in 1957, where a former Nazi commandant, Max (Dirk Bogarde), works in an upmarket hotel. There, he clashes with former SS colleagues who are determined to purge themselves of any shame about their roles in the Final Solution and eliminate any surviving witnesses. Max, however, would rather forget his past and move on, living his life quietly, he says, “as a church mouse.” His careful world is upended when Lucia (Charlotte Rampling), now married to an American composer, walks into his hotel lobby — the very woman he sexually abused while she was a prisoner in his camp, and with whom he entered into a sadomasochistic relationship. Reunited once more, their twisted folie a deux resumes and a fervent debasement begins — now, on both sides.
1. Which of the following statements best reflects the author’s perspective on the film’s portrayal of the Holocaust?| A．The film is a disrespectful and exploitative representation of the Holocaust. |
| B．The film is a complex and abstract exploration of Nazi ideology and sexual taboos. |
| C．The film is a straightforward historical account of the Holocaust. |
| D．The film is a romanticized depiction of love during the Holocaust. |
| A．A form of psychological therapy. |
| B．A type of artistic expression. |
| C．A relationship dynamic characterized by the exchange of pain and pleasure. |
| D．A historical account of events during World War II. |
| A．The film provides a realistic portrayal of the Holocaust. |
| B．The film’s controversial nature generates important discussions. |
| C．The film is a successful example of the “Nazisploitation” genre. |
| D．The film’s plot and character development are highly original. |
| A．“The Night Porter: A Cinematic Controversy” |
| B．“Liliana Cavani: The Director Who Challenged Art” |
| C．“Love and Evil: The Complex Themes of The Night Porter” |
| D．“The Holocaust on Film: A History of Cinematic Portrayals” |
4 . 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. |
5 . He is better at words. She is better at sentences. Games they like to play involve the former, and he wins the vast majority of them the vast majority of the time. Debates they find themselves in involve the latter, and there hasn’t been an occasion (on record) of him winning one for many, many years.
Crosswords, Scrabble, that new game with green and yellow squares, he excels at. Given six tries to guess a five-letter word, he is quicker to recall words without real vowels (she doesn’t support the idea that “Y” is a vowel), and he has the nerve to guess words with triple letters, like “fluff,” on the second try. Of course, she knows what fluff is. It’s either
In defense of “Y” ‘s vowelness, he asks, What about “lynx”?
Lynx? she replies, incredulous. When have you ever used that aloud? Oh, look, over there, that lynx is about to pounce and
What most infuriates her is the presumption that she must be a whiz at words given her
She often finds herself
One evening, she decides to challenge him to a game of
| A．nonsense | B．rubbish | C．fluff | D．trash |
| A．pull | B．rip | C．tear | D．drag |
| A．hobby | B．profession | C．occupation | D．job |
| A．guessing | B．calculating | C．estimating | D．evaluating |
| A．measure | B．metric | C．method | D．calculation |
| A．counts | B．scores | C．sums | D．adds |
| A．blocks | B．grids | C．squares | D．letters |
| A．wondering | B．doubting | C．guessing | D．knowing |
| A．expertise | B．confusion | C．frustration | D．anger |
| A．demoralizing | B．exciting | C．boring | D．enlightening |
| A．strategically | B．forcefully | C．literally | D．randomly |
| A．ignore | B．miss | C．grasp | D．avoid |
| A．Boggle | B．Scrabble | C．Chess | D．Checkers |
| A．taking | B．finding | C．losing | D．giving |
| A．letters | B．skills | C．resources | D．options |
6 . In the late nineteenth century, art critics regarded seventeenth-century Dutch paintings as direct reflections of reality. The paintings were discussed as an index of the democracy of a society that chose to represent its class, action, and occupations exactly as they were, wide-ranging realism was seen as the great accomplishment of Dutch art. However, the achievement of more recent study of Dutch art has been the recovery of the fact that such paintings are to be taken as symbolizing mortality, the renaissance of earthly life, and the power of God, and as message that range from the mildly moralizing to the firmly didactic. How explicit and consistent the symbolizing process was intended to be is a much thornier matter, but anyone who has more familiarity than a passing acquaintance with Dutch literature or with the kinds of images used in illustrated books (above all emblem books) will know how much less pervasive was the habit of investing ordinary objects than of investing scenes with meaning that go be-y ond their surface and outward appearance. In the mid-1960s, Eddy de Jongh published an extraordinary array of material — especially from the emblem books and vernacular literature — that confirmed the unreliability of taking Dutch pictures at surface value alone.
The major difficulty, however, with the findings of critics such as de Jongh is that it is not easy to assess the multiplicity of levels in which Dutch viewers interpreted these pictures. De Jongh’s followers typically regard the pictures as purely symbolic. Not every object within Dutch paintings need be interpreted in terms of the gloss given to its equivalent representation in the emblem books. Not every foot warmer is to be interpreted in terms of the foot warmer in Rowmer Visscher’s Sinnepoppen of 1614, not every bridle is an emblem of restraint (though many were indeed just that).
To maintain as Brown does, that the two children in Netscher’s painting A Lady Teaching a Child to Read stand for industry and idleness is to fail to understand that the painting has a variety of possible meanings, even though the picture undoubtedly carriers unmistakable symbolic meanings, too. Modern Art historians may well find the discovery of parallels be-tween a painting and a specific emblem exciting, they may, like seventeenth-century viewers, search for the double that lie behind many paintings. But seventeenth-century response can hardly be reduced to the level of formula. To suggest otherwise is to imply a laboriousness of mental process that may well characterize modern interpretations of seventeenth-century Dutch Art, but that was, for the most part, not characteristic in the seventeenth century.
1. The passage is primarily concerned with which of the following?| A．Reconciling two different points of view about how art reflects. |
| B．Criticizing a traditional method of interpretation. |
| C．Describing and evaluating a recent critical approach. |
| D．Describing a long-standing controversy and how it was resolved. |
| A．Suggest that restraint was only one of the many symbolic meanings attached to bridles |
| B．Provide an example of an everyday, physical object that was not endowed with symbolic meaning |
| C．Provide an example of an object that modern critics have endowed with symbolic meaning different from the meaning assigned it by seventeenth-century Dutch artists |
| D．Provide an example of an object with symbolic meaning that was not always used as a symbol |
| A．It provides specific applications of the critical approach introduced in the preceding paragraph. |
| B．It present a caveat about the critical approach discussed in the preceding paragraph. |
| C．It presents the research on which a theory presented in the preceding paragraph is based. |
| D．It refutes a theory presented in the preceding paragraph and advocates a return to a more traditional approach. |
| A．They confirm that seventeenth century Dutch painting depict some objects and scenes rarely found in daily life. |
| B．They are more useful than vernacular literature in providing information about the sym-bolic content of seventeenth-century Dutch painting. |
| C．They have been misinterpreted by art critics, such as de Jongh, who claim seventeenth-century Dutch paintings contain symbolic meaning. |
| D．They contain material that challenges the assumptions of the nineteenth-century critics about seventeenth-century Dutch painting. |
7 . 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. |
8 . 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 |
9 . 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 |
10 . 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 |
