1 . Forty-five minutes was considered an appropriate amount of time to supply 12-year-old me — and 20 other teenagers — with enough information about eating disorders to last us through high school. A documentary shown on a dusty VHS tape that had obviously been in use since the early 2000s, about two girls suffering from anorexia and bulimia, had been my only source for eating disorder awareness for five years. No reflection time followed, no discussion was started, and no questions were asked.
Flash forward five years I still know nothing. It wasn’t until I was 16 that I learned, via TikTok, that my daily diet of 1,000 calories is barely enough for a two-year-old, let alone a developing teenager. Despite being educated in America’s sixth best county in education, I only had a single image of what an eating disorder looked like: a skin-and-bones teenage girl with sunken eyes. Schools are clearly ill-equipped to educate students on eating disorders and how they can prevent them.
Teenagers have failed to learn about the most common eating disorder in the country because it isn’t taught in many school curriculum: binge eating disorder (暴食症). It is more common than anorexia, affecting 2.8 million Americans, including 1.2 percent of all adolescents. Additionally, it’s reported that males make up 40 percent of those with binge eating disorder, which contradicts the existing opinion that only women are affected by eating disorders.
Instead of learning about eating disorders, my junior health class taught me how to count my calories. According to registered dietitian Christy Harrison, “disordered eating patterns began with calorie counting.” Despite this, health classes across the country continue to require students to track their daily calorie intake.
We need a developed and well-informed eating disorder curriculum. After all, the damage of a seemingly harmless 45-minute video may last someone a lifetime.
1. Why is TikTok mentioned in paragraph 2?| A．To prove the author’s limited calorie intake. |
| B．To imply the author’s rich supply of information. |
| C．To stress the lack of education on eating disorders. |
| D．To highlight the influence of social media on kids. |
| A．Anorexia. | B．Bulimia. | C．Dieting. | D．Binge eating disorder. |
| A．Negative. | B．Positive. | C．Neutral. | D．Ambiguous. |
| A．A science report. | B．A documentary review. |
| C．An argumentative essay. | D．An autobiography excerpt. |
2 . Soft robots that have no batteries, motors or electronics and that are powered and controlled from a distance by light or magnets（磁铁）are a popular field of research. But there are barriers to overcome before they can be used in practical applications, including the need for a cheap manufacturing process.
Zhang Li at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and his colleagues discovered that a magnet-controlled robot can be created easily and at low cost.
In experiments, his team created sticky tape robots of various shapes around a centimetre across that change their geometry depending on the presence and direction of a magnetic field. Some of the robots were able to move through water or along flat surfaces and one device was able to crawl（爬）across the surface of pie stomach tissue in the lab and place a small therapeutic patch（补丁）onto a gastric ulcer（胃溃疡）before leaving the patch and moving away.
Zhang says that these devices could be used in the future to deliver drugs or carry out simple medical procedures in the stomach or intestines. “It can be used in this kind of folded, small scale, and when it reaches a large empty space it can open up,” he says. “It’s very much like a satellite, where after its launch into outer space the solar panels will open up. So when you swallow this device, it should have a very small size.”
There are hurdles to overcome prior to clinical trials, however. “The first thing is safety, because currently we’re using a very strong magnet called a neodymium-iron-boron magnet. It’s actually not that safe,” says Zhang. “It’s kind of toxic to the cells.”
1. What is paragraph 3 mainly about?| A．How the robots function. | B．What changes the robots’ geometry. |
| C．Whether the robots are marketable. | D．What inspired the creation of the robots. |
| A．By citing clinical trials. | B．By analyzing cause and effect. |
| C．By quoting wise sayings. | D．By comparing it to something similar. |
| A．Harmless. | B．Complicated. | C．Poisonous. | D．Flexible. |
| A．Soft Robots Make Your Life Convenient. |
| B．Soft Robots Can Crawl Inside Your Organs. |
| C．Soft Robots Are Ready for Cheap Production. |
| D．Soft Robots Can Perform Complex Operations. |
3 . If you’ re reaching for the last piece of pizza at a party, and meanwhile see another hand going for it, your next move probably depends on how you feel and whom the hand belongs to. Your little sister — you might just grab the pizza. Your boss — you probably will give up.
Now researchers have made progress in understanding how mammals’ brain encodes social rank and uses this information to shape behaviors — such as whether to fight for the last pizza slice. They discovered that an area of the brain called the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) was responsible for representing social rank in mammals; changes to a mouse’s mPFC affected its dominance behavior. But it was unknown how the mPFC represented this information and which neurons(神经元) were involved in changing dominance behaviour.
In the new study, Professor Kay Tye let groups of four mice share a cage. Some mice became more dominant and others more subordinate. As soon as the mice were paired up, he discovered, the activity of their mPFC neurons could predict — with 90 percent certainty — the rank of their opponent.
“We expected animals might only signal rank when they are in a competition,” says co-researcher Nancy. “But it turns out animals walk around with this representation of social rank all the time.”
When the researchers next asked whether the activity of the mPFC neurons was associated with behaviour, they found something surprising. The brain activity patterns were linked with slight changes in behaviour, such as how fast a mouse moved, and they also could predict — a full 30 seconds before the competition started — which mouse would win the food reward.
The winner was not always the more dominant, but the one engaged in a winning mindset. Just as you might sometimes be in a more competitive mood and be more likely to snatch that pizza slice before your boss, a subordinate mouse might be in a more winning mindset than a more dominant mouse and end up winning.
The areas of the mPFC associated with social rank and winning mindset are next to one another and highly connected. Signals on social rank impact the state of the brain involved in winning mindset. In other words, a subordinate mouse’s confidence and winning mindset may partially decrease when faced with a dominant one.
“This is further evidence to suggest that we are in different brain states when we are with others compared to when we’re alone,” says Tye.
1. What is the purpose of the first paragraph?| A．To provide background information. | B．To state the importance of social rank. |
| C．To give readers an example of social rank. | D．To introduce the topic of the reading passage. |
| A．The mPFC neurons. | B．The researchers. |
| C．The brain activity patterns. | D．The changes in behaviour. |
| A．Brain activities can influence social rank. |
| B．Dominant opponents boost winning mindset. |
| C．Social rank and winning mindset affect behaviour. |
| D．Animals only exhibit their rank in competition. |
| A．Winning mindset establishes dominance. |
| B．Social rank guides competitive behaviour. |
| C．A subordinate mouse can never been a winner. |
| D．Awareness of different people around you make your brain use different neurons. |
4 . All 50 states received final approval Tuesday to begin construction on a first nationwide network of EV charging stations (电车充电站) that places one roughly every 50 miles (80 kilometers) along interstate highways, part of the Biden administration’s plan to encourage widespread use of zero-emission cars.
The Transportation Department said it had OK’d EV charger plans from a last set of 17 states, causing the release of $1. 5 billion in federal funds to all jurisdictions (权限) nationwide — or $5 billion over five years — to build or upgrade chargers along 75, 000 miles (120, 000 kilometers) of highway from coast to coast, with a goal of 500, 000 EV chargers nationwide. Plans for the other 33 states and the District of Columbia were approved earlier this month.
By year’s end, drivers could start seeing expansions and upgrades to existing highway EV stations in states such as California, Colorado, Florida and Pennsylvania that now have at least four fast-charger ports, enabling EVs to fully recharge in about an hour.
“America led the original car revolution in the last century, and . . . we’re prepared to lead in the 21st century with electric vehicles,” said Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. He said the plans will “help ensure that Americans in every part of the country can be positioned to unlock the savings and benefits of electric vehicles.”
The approval is a major step toward building widespread acceptance and use of electric vehicles among consumers, who most often express unwillingness over EVs’ shorter range and limited use of public chargers. President Joe Biden has set a goal that 50% of new U. S. car sales be electric by 2030, and his administration touts (推销) new tax credits next year of up to $7, 500 as making electric vehicles accessible for everyday Americans. Still, the five-year plans suggest a potentially long and rough road ahead for a highway EV network, with states saying risks such as a lack of electricity grid capacity (电网容量), supply chain shortages and equal rights concerns.
1. What’s the real purpose of the EV network plan?| A．To unlock the advantages of EVs. |
| B．To enable the spread of EV chargers. |
| C．To make the government funds available to all states. |
| D．To encourage the spread of environment-friendly EVs. |
| A．the number of chargers to be built | B．the miles of EV chargers to cover |
| C．the approval of the charger plans | D．the introduction of the whole plans |
| A．examples of successful building | B．the bright future of EV market |
| C．possible problems in some states | D．the impressive progress of the plan. |
| A．All 50 states can use EV chargers now |
| B．States get final OK to highway EV chargers |
| C．Advantages and disadvantages of EVs. |
| D．A 5-year plan to promote EVs in the USA. |
5 . Have you heard of the save soil movement? It was
The efforts of Sadhguru have
The movement aims to
The main motive of the campaign was to bring together people from all around the world to protect the soil’s health. Sadhguru has become
Sadhguru is also the author of the New York Times bestseller Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy. He has been a(n)
| A．launched | B．sponsored | C．experienced | D．commanded |
| A．resulted in | B．originated from | C．paid back | D．reacted to |
| A．airports | B．companies | C．conferences | D．locations |
| A．abilities | B．struggles | C．characters | D．requests |
| A．transform | B．address | C．drag | D．confirm |
| A．messages | B．responses | C．proposals | D．positions |
| A．exhausted | B．ambitious | C．successful | D．confident |
| A．improvement | B．awareness | C．imagination | D．standard |
| A．locally | B．individually | C．nationally | D．globally |
| A．urging | B．requiring | C．cheering | D．permitting |
| A．stable | B．ongoing | C．favorable | D．temporary |
| A．However | B．Besides | C．Therefore | D．Meanwhile |
| A．ensure | B．bring | C．affect | D．define |
| A．strong | B．pleasant | C．determined | D．influential |
| A．circumstance | B．lifestyle | C．atmosphere | D．soil |
6 . I had gone from being a daughter in my parents’ home to marrying and being a wife. Within a year of marrying, I had a child and a new role— mother. It seemed that I was
In between having four more children,
And then I wrote a short story aimed at children. I typed it and sent it out. To my great surprise, it was accepted. I wrote more stories. Many of them were
“I didn’t know you
| A．sometimes | B．seldom | C．always | D．never |
| A．apparently | B．importantly | C．interestingly | D．strangely |
| A．urging | B．comforting | C．instructing | D．supporting |
| A．looked for | B．looked after | C．looked up to | D．looked down upon |
| A．wait | B．rank | C．exist | D．stand |
| A．replaced | B．received | C．rejected | D．resisted |
| A．status | B．chance | C．passion | D．voice |
| A．casual | B．tight | C．flexible | D．rough |
| A．honest | B．outgoing | C．independent | D．ambitious |
| A．difference | B．fortune | C．conclusion | D．promise |
| A．find | B．free | C．appreciate | D．obtain |
| A．benefited from | B．got rid of | C．gave in to | D．suffered from |
| A．argument | B．dialogue | C．friendship | D．bargain |
| A．deepened | B．adjusted | C．formed | D．worsened |
| A．justice | B．achievement | C．belonging | D．security |
7 . Ever fought with a problem? Picked up a new skill? Encountered a difficult concept? The language of learning is full of references to parts of the body outside the brain. Perhaps that’s because these phrases suggest something deeper. Researchers are detecting that learning is easier, quicker and more long-lasting if it involves the body.
“In the past, people have argued that as we grow, we become more able to think abstractly (抽象地),” says Andrew Manches, a psychologist at the University of Edinburgh in the UK. Conventional (传统的) thinking might suggest that teachers should help prevent children from using body gestures to prepare them for the adult world. But in truth, the physical world never really leaves our thinking. For example, when we process verbs such as lick, kick and pick, medical scanners show that the parts of our brain that control the muscles in our face, legs and hands, respectively, light up with activity.
Science is beginning to back up the idea that actions really might speak louder than words in the classroom. Spencer Kelly, a psychologist at Colgate University in New York, has found that people spend three times as much time gesturing when they think the message they get across is remarkably important, suggesting that even if only at the subconscious (潜意识的) level, we appreciate the communicative value of our body language. Kelly has also found evidence that a teacher is more appealing to students when he or she uses arm and hand movements to stress points.
Also, some studies indicate that young children obtain more if their teacher uses gestures when explaining a concept. Meanwhile, Sunsan Wagner Cook, a psychologist at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, has found that children pick up new concepts more effectively, if they are taught to mirror and repeat gestures their teacher uses.
1. How did people in the past understand learning?| A．The older a student grows, the less likely he will think abstractly. |
| B．Teachers are advised to encourage students to use body gestures. |
| C．Body gestures should be removed to promote adult-like thinking. |
| D．The physical world never really leaves our thinking. |
| A．By presenting different researches. |
| B．By explaining some rules. |
| C．By making some predictions. |
| D．By analyzing the theory. |
| A．People use gestures every time they convey the messages. |
| B．Body movements can increase a teacher’s popularity. |
| C．Young students like to mirror their teacher’s gestures. |
| D．Body language is more powerful than spoken language. |
| A．The Language of Learning: A Vital Approach |
| B．Body Gestures: A Sharp Tool for Fast Learning |
| C．Body Language: A Universal Language Signal |
| D．Thinking Abstractly: A Symbol of Adult World |
8 . The turn of the year is traditionally the time for reviewing one’s life, and perhaps for making some resolutions as to what to concentrate on in the coming year; and for many years past I have taken advantage of the holiday period to review my own goal and ambition.
One thing I do decide to do this year, with some unwillingness, is to give up writing the Grumpy Old Bookman column in this magazine. It’s not that I’ve lost interest in the book world, you understand. But Leonard Woolf, husband of writer Virginia Wool, used to say that a man should change his career every seven years. Though personally I would say that changing your whole career so often is going a bit far, I do find, during my own working life, that it acts as a great refresher if you can occasionally try a new job within the same organization or line of business.
It is in fact well over 15 years since our editor wrote to me and asked if I would be interested in writing a regular piece about what was, even then, a rapidly changing publishing scene. He approached me because since 2004 I had been writing a regular blog called, amazingly enough, Grumpy Old Bookman.
As my monthly survey of developments in both traditional and digital publishing continued, in this magazine, I began to realize that writers in this century, of both fiction and non-fiction, are living in something close to a paradise. Once, you struggled for years to find a publisher—or an agent if you wanted one—but now you can publish your own stuff, either digitally or in paperback, without it costing you a penny piece. Amazing.
After about five years of producing such columns, at just under a thousand words a time, it occurred to me that, rather than let these essays drift away on the seas of time, it might be of value to potential readers to publish my thoughts and comments in book form. Hence, in 2014, I published the first 69 GOB columns in paperback format, using Amazon’s Create space facilities. Title: Writers Rejoice! A monthly diary of the dawn of the digital age, which was my first trial. And now I sincerely wish a new 2022.
1. Why does the author want to give up writing the column?| A．He follows Leonard Woolf’s suggestion. |
| B．He is very keen on trying something new. |
| C．He is fed up with the career linked to books. |
| D．He’s used to changing his job every seven years. |
| A．It is a blessing to live in the present times. |
| B．Publishing industry is a profitable business. |
| C．It is rather hard to publish books nowadays. |
| D．Now it is amazing to find a publisher easily. |
| A．Purposeful and good at self-reflecting. |
| B．Dedicated but easy to doubt himself. |
| C．Emotional and good at controlling himself. |
| D．Ambitious but reluctant to change himself, |
| A．Giving up timely is another virtue. |
| B．The beginning of a year is a new start. |
| C．Reflection can drive us to push forward. |
| D．Changing the job means a new opportunity. |
9 . It’s recognized that people think that they pick what they like when making choices. However, research suggests that we like something because we have chosen it. In other words, we dislike things we don’t choose.
In an experiment, Lisa Feigenson’s team brought some 10 to 20 months’ old babies into a lab and gave them two same bright and colorful soft blocks to play with. They set each block far apart, so the babies had to crawl(爬)to one or the other—a random(随机的)choice. After the baby chose one of the toys, the researchers took it away and came back with a new choice. The babies could then pick either the toy they didn’t play with before, or a new toy. It turned out that the babies chose to play with the new toy instead of the one they had not chosen. “As if they say were saying, ‘Hmm, I didn’t choose that toy last time, I guess I didn’t like it very much’,” said Feigenson.
This is a common phenomenon(现象)in life. Adults will less like the thing they didn’t choose, even if they had no real preference in the first place. It looks like babies do just the same. It shows that the act of making choices changes how we feel about our choices. The random choices might become our preferences.” They are really not choosing based on their preference,” said Alex Silver, co-author of the study.
This new finding explains why adults build unconscious biases(无意识偏见)when they make choices between the same things. “I chose this, so I must like it. I didn’t choose this other thing, so it must not be so good. Adults make these inferences unconsciously,” Feigenson said.
This also makes sense for us as we live in a consumer(消费者)culture and must make so many choices every day, between everything from tooth-paste brands to styles of jeans.
1. What was most probably the aim of the experiment done by Lisa Feigenson’s team?| A．To check if babies like new toys instead of old ones. |
| B．To test if babies prefer the things they have chosen. |
| C．To explain how babies and adults make choices differently. |
| D．To study if too many choices could create problems for babies. |
| A．Babies preferred bright and colorful toys. |
| B．Babies’ choices influenced their preference. |
| C．Babies preferred adults to help them make choices. |
| D．Babies’ preference influenced how they make choices. |
| A．The value of the experiments. |
| B．The source of adults’ unconscious biases. |
| C．The problems with adults’ unconscious biases. |
| D．The wise ways of making choices in a consumer culture. |
| A．Random Choices Matter |
| B．Preference Affects the Choice |
| C．Babies Like What They Choose |
| D．Too many Choices Confused the Adults |
10 . The movie Moonfall follows the story of a mysterious force knocking the moon from its orbit. Although it’s just a Hollywood movie, is there any fact behind the fiction (虚构的事)? Would it be possible to change the moon’s orbit around Earth?
One way for the orbit of an object in space to change would be if it were hit by another object.
This risk is one area of focus for NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS). CNEOS identifies and tracks near-Earth objects (NEOs), such as asteroids (小行星) and comets (彗星). They then determine whether the object creates a threat to Earth, the moon, or other neighbors.
Size is a significant factor when determining the risk created by an object from space. If the impact of an asteroid could affect the moon’s orbit, the asteroid “would have to be at least as big as the moon itself”, Paul Chodas, manager of NASA’s NEO office, told Live Science.
Due to the size of the moon, “it would have to be a huge object that would have to hit it at high speed”, he added. Because of the incredibly low chance of an object the size of the moon wandering into our solar system, it can therefore be determined that the chance of the moon’s orbit changing enough for it to hit Earth is minuscule.
Viewers of the night sky are convinced that the moon isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. However, although it’s unlikely to ever hit our planet, the moon still has an impact on life on Earth. A study from NASA states that the moon’s orbit is likely to begin “wobbling (摇晃)” sometime in the 2030s. This is a natural event that occurs every 18 years.
This period will see tides (潮汐) around the world “amplified (放大): High tides get higher, and low tides get lower”, which creates a risk to coastal cities around the globe, according to NASA.
1. What do we know about NEOs from the text?| A．Some of them create the risk of impact. | B．They are objects in orbit around Earth. |
| C．They are at least as large as the moon. | D．They are asteroids in the solar system. |
| A．There is no chance of the moon hitting Earth. |
| B．many objects larger than the moon are wandering into our solar system. |
| C．High speed is vital factor determining the danger from an object from space. |
| D．Size plays a small role when judging the threat from an object from space. |
| A．Tiny. | B．Dangerous. | C．Difficult. | D．Unpredictable. |
| A．The moon’s impact on life on Earth. | B．The possibility of the moon hitting Earth. |
| C．Possible ways to change the moon’s orbit. | D．The potential dangers of near Earth objects. |
