1 . As a child, I used to visit my grandfather’s shirt shop in Milan. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized how
I remember the shop being filled with
Our afternoon play was to choose the fabric and the tie that would
As I grew older, I began to appreciate the value of the matching game, and I found myself
Now, as I walk through the streets or
Looking back on those
He will always be a(n)
| A．troubled | B．cozy | C．popular | D．comfortable |
| A．papers | B．fabrics | C．instruments | D．machines |
| A．previously | B．casually | C．carelessly | D．freshly |
| A．waste | B．result | C．sense | D．limitation |
| A．fight against | B．go with | C．cope with | D．draw on |
| A．taste | B．touch | C．sound | D．smell |
| A．drawn | B．deserted | C．forced | D．urged |
| A．education | B．advertisement | C．entertainment | D．design |
| A．surf | B．establish | C．purchase | D．decorate |
| A．impressed | B．left | C．impacted | D．attracted |
| A．mornings | B．decades | C．afternoons | D．seconds |
| A．sportsmanship | B．craftsmanship | C．membership | D．friendship |
| A．grateful | B．responsible | C．eager | D．prepared |
| A．performer | B．cheat | C．inventor | D．inspiration |
| A．lose | B．search | C．cherish | D．decline |
2 . Facial recognition technology is mostly associated with uses such as the authentication of human faces, but scientists believe they’ve found a new use for it—saving seals.
Researchers have developed SealNet. The system is a database of seal faces created by taking pictures of many harbor seals in Maine’s Casco Bay. The research team found the tool’s accuracy in identifying the mammals was close to 100 percent.
The researchers are working on increasing the size of their database to make it available to other scientists. Increasing the database to include rare species could help efforts to save them. The Mediterranean monk seal is thought to be the world’s most at-risk seal with only a few hundred animals remaining.
Creating a list of seal faces and using machine learning to identify them can also help scientists know where in the ocean seals are. Marine mammals move around a lot and are hard to photograph in the water. Scıentists need to be able to identify individuals.
SealNet is designed to identify the face in a picture. It recognizes the seal’s face based on information related to the eyes and nose shape, as it would a human. A similar tool called PrimNet, which is for use on primates, had been used on seals earlier, but SealNet performed better.
Seals and other ocean mammals have long been studied using satellite technology. Using artificial intelligence to study them is a way to bring conservation into the 21st century. Facial recognition technology could provide valuable data.
“Once the system is perfected I can picture lots of interesting environmental uses for it,” said Michelle Berger, a scientist. “If they could recognize seals, and recognize them from year to year, that would give us lots of information about movement, how much they move from site to site.” He added that harbor seals give important information about the environment around them.
1. What can we learn about SealNet from the passage?| A．It increases the size of the database. |
| B．It identifies the mammals accurately. |
| C．It performs more poorly than PrimNet. |
| D．It includes rare species movement. |
| A．It identines which seal is at risk in the ocean. |
| B．It recognizes the shape of a seal in a picture. |
| C．It helps scientists know the location of the seals. |
| D．It gives information about the animals around seals. |
| A．It can provide information of the surroundings. |
| B．It can recognize the seals for a year. |
| C．It can increase the number of seals. |
| D．It can provide information about migration. |
| A．To present a high-tech method to protect seals |
| B．To introduce the species of seals |
| C．To explain why seals are in danger |
| D．To propose new methods to recognize seals |
3 . Here is the list of people with disabilities, who are living life to the fullest!
Frida Kahlo
During her childhood, Frida Kahlo suffered from polio(小儿麻痹症). When she became a young lady, she was also involved in an accident that worsened her problems. Throughout her entire life, she was facing serious physical issues and was in bed because of severe pain. However, she didn’t let that defeat her, and she became one of the famous artists of the 20th century.
John Nash
John Nash had mental disease. He mixed the line between what is real and what isn’t. His life story was given light due to the movie A Beautiful Mind. John Nash was aware of his illness but fought against it, not letting it tear him, and developed a successful academic career. He won a Nobel Prize in Economics in 1994.
Andrea Bocelli
Andrea Bocelli was partially blind but that didn’t stop him from taking piano lessons until he was 6 years old. Unfortunately, when he was 12 years old, he suffered a blow during a football game that completely blinded him. His blindness didn’t stop him from pursuing and focusing on singing.
Bethany Hamilton
Bethany Hamilton, at the age of 13, was a rising star surfer. However, after an attack with a 14-foot tiger shark, she, unfortunately, lost her left arm. One month after the attack, she was back on the seas and surfing to her dreams once again. After 2 years, she won her first national surfing title. She is still an active surf competitor to this day.
1. Whose story was adapted for film?| A．John Nash’s | B．Frida Kahlo’s. |
| C．Andrea Bocelli’s. | D．Bethany Hamilton’s. |
| A．He was fond of music. |
| B．He was totally blind at 6. |
| C．He was once a famous football player. |
| D．He had to stay in bed because of his illness. |
| A．They were good at sports. |
| B．They were born with disabilities. |
| C．They met with a serious accident. |
| D．They won some kind of national prizes. |
4 . The idea that we can have it all and do it all is not new. This myth has been spread for so long, I believe virtually everyone alive today is infected with it. It is sold in advertising. It is included in university applications that require dozens of extracurricular activities.
What is new is how especially damaging this myth is today, in a time when choice and expectations have increased exponentially (以指数方式). It results in stressed people trying to stuff more activities into their already over-scheduled lives.
The word priority came into the English language in the 1400s. It was singular. It meant the very first or prior thing. It stayed singular for the next five hundred years. Only in the 1900s did we pluralize the term and start talking about priorities. Illogically, we reasoned that by changing the word we could bend reality. Somehow we would now be able to have multiple “first” things. People routinely try to do just that. This gave the impression of many things being the priority but actually meant nothing was.
When we don’t purposefully and deliberately choose where to focus our energies and time, other people will choose for us, and before long we’ll have lost sight of everything that is meaningful and important.
Once an Australian nurse named Bronnie Ware, who cared for people in the last twelve weeks of their lives, recorded their most often discussed regrets. At the top of the list: “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” Instead of reacting to the social pressure s pulling you to go in a million directions, you will learn a way to focus on what is absolutely essential by getting rid of everything else completely.
1. What does Paragraph 1 mainly talk about?| A．The misconception that people can achieve unlimited goals. |
| B．The tolerance for imperfection in all aspects of life. |
| C．The decline in individuals’ ability to make decisions. |
| D．The lack of motivation to pursue personal goals. |
| A．It provides individuals with more choices. |
| B．It cultivates a culture of over-consumption. |
| C．It leads to over-scheduling due to social stress. |
| D．It lowers individuals’ expectations towards life. |
| A．Make the best of their talents. |
| B．Listen to their inner voices. |
| C．Tell the truth instead of lies. |
| D．Extend helping hands to others. |
| A．Entertainment. | B．Fashion. | C．Humanity. | D．Anecdote. |
| Peter E 1:00 PM. | Thanks for meeting today. I wanted to touch base with all of you regarding the new ad campaign we just launched. Can you give me an update on the statistics? |
| Bob 1:02 PM | Sure. The audience out here in the East is responding very well to the commercials. Our sales have increased by about 40% since the launch. I think the emotional aspect of the ad is working. |
| Peter E 1:04 PM. | That’s really good to her. Is there anything we should be concerned about? |
| Bob 1:05 PM | I’m just worried about the cost. I looked over the budget for the campaign, and it seems extraordinarily high. I’m not sure if the increased sales will cover the costs. |
| Camilla 1:07 PM | That’s what 1 was thinking too. My territory isn’t seeing the same increase in sales a5 Bob’s. And the costs are similar here as they are out East. |
| Bob 1:09 PM | We should rethink when and where we play the commercials. The sales increases are coming mainly from younger people. Maybe we should focus more on social media outlets rather than the traditional and more expensive methods like television. |
| Camilla 1:10PM | I completely agree. |
| Peter E 1:11 PM. | Thar’s certainly something to consider. I’ll bring this up to my team here. Camilla, can you give me an idea of your figures? |
| Camilla 1:12PM | Sure. Our sales saw a slight increase of 5% this last month. |
| Peter E 1:13 PM. | OK. Thanks. Can you send me the detailed reports by the end of tomorrow? |
| Typo a message |
1. What does Camilla have to say about sales in her region?
| A．They’ve stayed the same. | B．They’ve gone down. | C．They’ve improved. | D．They’ve exploded. |
| A．Because it doesn’t take as much effort to use. | B．Because fewer people are used to social media. |
| C．Because of how coo the company will appear. | D．Because of their target audience’s preference. |
| A．It shows lots of different advantages. | B．It appeals to people’ S emotions, |
| C．It meets people ‘S various needs. | D．It conveys some subtle ideas. |
6 . It wasn’t easy to practice gratitude (感激) every day. After I
One day, I heard a discussion about gratitude by Dr Tony Evans. It
I made a decision to start practicing gratitude daily. Once I decided that, my
This led me to practice the concept of sowing and reaping (收获), which I learned from my parents. They didn’t just talk the talk, but rather they
Let me explain. When I was
My advice is starting practicing gratitude until it becomes a part of your daily
| A．treated | B．caught | C．affected | D．diagnosed |
| A．assumption | B．description | C．suggestion | D．solution |
| A．referring | B．abandoning | C．adjusting | D．releasing |
| A．reasonable | B．considerate | C．generous | D．hateful |
| A．annoyed | B．challenged | C．fooled | D．ignored |
| A．active | B．creative | C．sensitive | D．supportive |
| A．turn to | B．turn in | C．turn up | D．turn down |
| A．image | B．taste | C．mood | D．character |
| A．obviously | B．differently | C．greedily | D．frequently |
| A．opportunities | B．responsibilities | C．abilities | D．difficulties |
| A．reported | B．explained | C．performed | D．demonstrated |
| A．Instead | B．Besides | C．However | D．Therefore |
| A．relieved | B．addicted | C．defended | D．consumed |
| A．raising | B．sowing | C．meeting | D．learning |
| A．burden | B．supply | C．routine | D．struggle |
7 . I ask every student I interview for admission to my institution, Pitzer College, the same question, “What do you look forward to the most in college?” I was stunned and delighted recently when a student sat across from me and replied, “I look forward to the possibility of failure.” Of course, this is not how most students respond to the question when sitting before the person who can make decisions about their academic futures, but this young man took a risk. “You see, my parents have never let me fail,” he said. “When I want to take a chance at something, they remind me it’s not a safe route to take. Taking a more rigorous course or trying an activity I may not succeed in, they tell me, will ruin my chances at college admission. Even the sacrifice of staying up late to do something unrelated to school, they see it as a risk to my academic work and college success.”
Kids all over the world admit they are under tremendous pressure to be perfect. So students are usually in shock when I chuckle and tell them I never expect perfection. How could a dean of admission at one of America’s most selective institutions not want the best and the brightest? The reality is (that) perfection doesn’t exist.
I’ve spent enough time in high schools to know teenagers will never be perfect. They do silly things, mess up, fall down, and lack confidence. The ability to bounce back is a fundamental life skill students have to learn on their own. The lessons of failure can’t be taught in a classroom; they are experienced and reflected upon. During my weekend of interviews, another student told me, “I’m ashamed to admit I failed precalculus, but I decided to take it again and got a B-plus. I’m now taking calculus, and even though I don’t love it, I’m glad I pushed through!” I asked him what he learned from the experience. “I learned to let go of shame,” he said. “I realized that I can’t let a grade define my success. I also learned that if you want anything bad enough, you can achieve it.”
I smiled as I wrote his words down on the application-review form. This kid will thrive on my campus. Not only will the faculty love him, but he has the coping skills he needs to adjust to the rigors of life in a residential college setting. Failure is about growth, learning, overcoming, and moving on. Let’s allow young people to fail. Not only will they learn something, it might even get them into college.
1. What does the underlined word “rigorous” in the first paragraph mean?| A．fun | B．lively | C．strict | D．special |
| A．Teachers can help students to admit failure. |
| B．Parents define their children’s success by grades. |
| C．Teenagers get lessons of failure through experiences. |
| D．Young people spend enough time letting go of shame. |
| A．Because the college teachers would love the student for his perfection. |
| B．Because he succeeded in persuading the student into the college. |
| C．Because the student realized his dream of being a perfect person. |
| D．Because he thought the student would have a promising future. |
| A．Learn to Fail | B．Live to Learn |
| C．Try to Succeed | D．Decide to Experience |
8 . When Belquer first joined a team to make a better live music experience for deaf and hard-of-hearing people, he was struck by how they had developed workarounds to enjoy concerts. “What they were doing at the time was holding balloons to feel the vibrations (震动) through their fingers,” Belquer said. He thought the team could make something to help hard-of- hearing people enjoy live music even more with the technology now available.
Belquer, who is also a musician and theater artist, is now the “Chief Vibrational Officer” of Music: Not Impossible, which uses new technology to address social issues like poverty and disability access. His team started by tying vibrating different cell phone motors to bodies, but that didn’t quite work. The vibrations were all the same. Eventually, they worked with engineers to develop a light haptic (触觉的) suit with a total of 24 vibrating plates. There are 20 of them tied to a vest that fits tightly around the body like a hiking backpack, plus one that ties to each wrist and ankle. When you wear the suit, it’s surprising how it feels.
The vibrations are mixed by a haptic DJ who controls the location, frequency and intensity of feeling across the suits, just as a music DJ mixes sounds in an artful way. “What we’re doing is selecting and mixing what we want and send it to different parts of the body,” said the DJ. The haptic suits were just one component of the event. There were American Sign Language interpreters; the music was captioned on a screen on the stage.
The suits are the star attraction. Lily Lipman, who has auditory processing disorder, lit up when asked about her experience. “It’s cool, because I’m never quite sure if I’m hearing what other people are hearing, so it’s amazing to get the music in my body.”
1. What surprised Belquer about people with hearing problems?| A．The way they enjoyed music. |
| B．The attitude they held to life. |
| C．The love they had for balloons. |
| D．The frequency they vibrated fingers. |
| A．The motors were the same. |
| B．The vibrations lacked variety. |
| C．The motors hardly worked. |
| D．The vibrations were irregular. |
| A．He interpreted the sign language. |
| B．He captioned the music on stage. |
| C．He selected suits for the attendees. |
| D．He helped people feel the music. |
| A．Comforting. | B．Challenging. | C．Satisfying. | D．Encouraging. |
9 . It seems like just another group of non-player characters (NPCs) in a video game. But unlike traditional NPCs, these characters’ behavior isn’t programmed by a coder (程序员). Instead, they generate their behavior according to a short biography given to them consisting of a name, age, job, family, interests, and a few habits. What is surprising? They behave in ways that are believably humanlike.
In the experiment, a team of Stanford researchers led by Joon Sung Park placed 25 generative agents within a virtual world. Each agent was assigned a unique background and participated in a two-day simulation (模拟). Various remarkable behaviors were then observed. For example, one agent planned a party and informed friends and relatives, many of whom showed up at the correct time and place; another agent who decided to run for president set off heated discussions among the community, with different agents holding varying opinions on this candidate.
The researchers used a control group of human participants, each role-playing one of the 25 agents, and were astonished by the result: actual humans generated responses that an evaluation group of 100 individuals rated as less human-like than the generative agents.
The study has inspired interest among game designers who hope generative agents will make game play more engaging. But Park is most interested in other downstream applications, including generative agents’ potential usefulness for social science studies. “For example, researchers could explore how people in an online forum are likely to respond to a particular measure aimed at countering false information,” Park envisions.
However, Park acknowledges that generative agents also raise some potential ethical (伦理的) problems. One highlighted risk is that people will develop one-sided “fake friendships” with humanlike generative agents at the expense of relationships in real life. The researchers described the ethical concerns with some proposed solutions. “It’s always better to over-worry about ethical problems at the beginning rather than underestimate their significance and regret it later,” Park says.
1. How do the generative agents in the study differ from traditional NPCs in video games?| A．They can write biographies. | B．They are controlled by coders. |
| C．They behave in humanlike ways. | D．They have unique cultural backgrounds. |
| A．Having people rate the generated behavior. |
| B．Managing the human role-players’ response. |
| C．Evaluating the 100 individuals’ generated response. |
| D．Making the characters imitate the human participants. |
| A．Enhancing online forum engagement. |
| B．Making technological breakthroughs. |
| C．Designing more absorbing video games. |
| D．Predicting human actions in a social context. |
| A．Discount their significance. | B．Address concerns instantly. |
| C．Be deeply worried throughout. | D．Postpone solutions to a later time. |
10 . For some climate challenges, there are relatively straightforward fixes. For example, renewable energy sources can already replace much of the energy needed to power buildings, cars and more.
There’s no substitute for food, but shifting what we eat is possible. If everyone on the planet ate vegetables, greenhouse gas emissions from the food system could be cut by more than half; a planet of vegetarians would reduce food emissions by two thirds. If we stopped consuming conventional food and relied on a lab-grown nutritional food instead of soil or water-produced food, we could prevent about 1 degree centigrade of future warming, according to a recent paper that considered the unique thought experiment.
“What this work says is: Hey, look, we can still get pretty big wins even if we’re not making these really big changes in dietary composition, says Clark. “I think that’s really powerful, because a lot of people just don’t want to make those really big dietary changes, for many reasons. While vegetarian diets are becoming more common in the US and Europe, it’s absolutely ridiculous to assume that everyone will be eating a vegetarian diet 30 years from now,” he says.
Food choices are personal, deeply connected to culture, religion, emotion, economic concerns and so much more. “Rather than dictate how to do, it’s much better to try to give choice,” says Naglaa, a food, nutrition and environment researcher at Tufts University. This approach aims to inform people so that they can make choices that correspond with their needs and values. As a whole, those choices can benefit both human health and the planet. For that to happen would require working alongside large-scale efforts to reshape industrial food production.
“But what people choose to eat daily is far from insignificant,” says Clark. “We don’t all have to become vegetarians overnight. Small changes can make big impacts.”
1. How does the author show the effects of dietary changes?| A．By answering questions. | B．By listing figures. |
| C．By analyzing the reasons. | D．By using a quotation. |
| A．Indifferent. | B．Skeptical. | C．Negative. | D．Favorable. |
| A．Perceive. | B．Refuse. | C．Command. | D．Describe. |
| A．How small changes to our diet can benefit the planet |
| B．Renewable energy sources can reduce gas emissions |
| C．Small changes in life choices can make big impacts |
| D．Lab-grown nutritional food could prevent future warming |
