1 . One day, I had a serious quarrel with my father. I felt he was always trying to
All that day, my mind was racing with
Suddenly, I realized that I didn’t do the assignment that was
“I am the son of an idiot!” I wrote and then
I felt like someone had
Slowly, my attitude
| A．prevent | B．trouble | C．criticize | D．control |
| A．details | B．shouts | C．tears | D．laughs |
| A．happy | B．regretful | C．angry | D．strange |
| A．lecture | B．overcome | C．tell | D．compete |
| A．near | B．easy | C．close | D．due |
| A．forced | B．encouraged | C．confused | D．forbade |
| A．Hopeful | B．Desperate | C．Excited | D．Curious |
| A．quarrel | B．love | C．talk | D．feeling |
| A．put away | B．calmed down | C．signed up | D．handed in |
| A．down | B．up | C．over | D．around |
| A．do | B．agree | C．give | D．leave |
| A．listened | B．struck | C．looked | D．learned |
| A．blamed | B．praised | C．blessed | D．pardoned |
| A．faded | B．struggled | C．shifted | D．disappeared |
| A．report | B．answer | C．reply | D．question |
2 . Going through social media can quickly convince you that everyone’s life is more interesting than yours. During a particularly adventurous week on Instagram some months ago, I saw waterskiing in Maui, and swimming with wild pigs in the Bahamas. Wild pigs! I started googling flights to new places, imagining adventures. Then I ordered food from the place I eat at every week and … felt bad about not trying somewhere new.
Recent research about repeat and novel experiences suggests that we ought to reconsider those negative feelings associated with repetition. Ed O’Brien, a professor at the University of Chicago, launched a series of studies on this topic, “There’s a general belief that if you want to seem like an interesting, cultured person, the best thing you can do is to showcase that you’re open to new experiences,” he says. “That may be true, but I think we take for granted the value of really digging deep into one field.”
To test this hypothesis (假设), O’Brien and his team exposed all participants to the same stimulus (刺激), including museum visits, movies, and video games. Next, some people were asked to imagine repeating the experience, while others actually did repeat what they had done. The researchers found that on the whole, participants said that repeating experiences was often far more enjoyable than they had predicted.
There is joy in repetition partly because every human mind wanders. Consequently, we miss a good part of every experience. Repeating things can really be seen as another opportunity to actually experience something fully. O’Brien’s studies show that people are too quick to assume that they’ve seen all the layers even in those cases where they haven’t. It’s safe to assume there are more explorable layers in any experience. When we’re noticing new things in any experience, our brain becomes engaged. All we need to do is approach whatever task is at hand by searching for the things that we didn’t see in it the first time around.
1. Why does the author mention his experiences in Paragraph. 1?| A．To introduce the bad feelings linked to repetition. |
| B．To show novel experiences are more interesting. |
| C．To tell us a common belief about social media. |
| D．To present to us his new imagined adventures. |
| A．People were open to new experiences. |
| B．Imagination was exciting on the whole. |
| C．Repeating experiences made one bored. |
| D．Digging deep into one field was enjoyable. |
| A．By searching for the ignored elements. |
| B．By assuming we didn’t see all at first. |
| C．By approaching whatever task is at hand. |
| D．By keeping focused on every experience. |
| A．The joy of social media adventures. | B．The value of repetition in experiences. |
| C．The importance of trying new things. | D．The benefits of travel and exploration. |
3 . I tried not to look down. My palms (手掌) were sweating. All I could concentrate on was the man below who was keeping the ladder steady. The tiny people waved up at me, but I couldn’t see them clearly.
When I got to the top, some sort of supernatural force brought my feet to the edge of the platform. I was going to slip off the board. The line holding me was going to break, and I was once again going to be thrown to death. Down was the only direction my eyes would go.
I begged to go back down the ladder, but the stupid man tried to convince me. The tiny dots below shouted encouragingly, saying they would run with me as I flew. I was going to slide off that platform. I couldn’t think; the tears stopped my brain. Why wouldn’t he let me go back? The message replayed in my mind, “You’re going to die…”
Like a blown-up balloon, I was let go just before it could be knotted at the bottom. I went in every direction, tension escaping from my body as I fell. The breeze hit my face and cooled my sweaty body. I could see clearly now, and I was flying.
Today, I am still terrified of heights. It would be nice to say that I conquered my fear and found something I loved. I owe my zip line (飞索) experience to the Englishman who pushed me off the platform. I am grateful for the experience because I love adventure. Trying new things has always appealed to me. Some of the most rewarding experiences I have had, like flying, have come out of conquering what at first appears to be frightening and impossible. While my days of aerial escapades are over, I look forward to the future and the question of fear of flying and will continue to create questions wherever I go.
1. How did the author feel when he was on the ladders?| A．Exhausted. | B．Frightened. | C．Annoyed. | D．Excited. |
| A．To teach him to fly. | B．To push him to death. |
| C．To develop his courage. | D．To test his ability to climb. |
| A．everyone can enjoy flying well |
| B．trying difficult things is his favorite |
| C．looking back on the old days is awful for him |
| D．something that seems impossible can be conquered |
| A．The author’s zip line experience. | B．The author’s difficulty in life. |
| C．The author’s failure in adventure. | D．The author’s dreams about his future. |
4 . Anytime I travel on my bicycle across the country, I’m always amazed by how kind people can be to strangers.
One night, my friends and I were camping in a town in Missouri. There was a severe storm and we were getting
Fortunately, we spent the night in a nice dry home. We were
The kindness of a stranger always
That family
| A．annoyed | B．impatient | C．excited | D．nervous |
| A．warn | B．show | C．convince | D．guarantee |
| A．demand | B．concern | C．desire | D．responsibility |
| A．drowned | B．deserted | C．killed | D．trapped |
| A．even | B．merely | C．often | D．simply |
| A．submitted | B．exchanged | C．checked | D．updated |
| A．experiences | B．messages | C．traditions | D．comments |
| A．fear | B．order | C．gain | D．offer |
| A．especially | B．officially | C．occasionally | D．definitely |
| A．ask about | B．complain about | C．agree with | D．associate with |
| A．reveals | B．shakes | C．strengthens | D．shapes |
| A．states | B．wishes | C．saves | D．gives |
| A．impressive | B．practical | C．satisfactory | D．evident |
| A．funded | B．inspired | C．owed | D．delighted |
| A．drove | B．sought | C．helped | D．pointed |
5 . In our family, the presents we gave one another were almost always homemade. I thought that was the definition of a gift: something you made for someone else. We made all our Christmas gifts: piggy banks from old bottles, and puppets from retired socks. It didn’t seem like a hardship to me; it was something special.
My father loves wild strawberries, so for Father’s Day my mother would almost always make him strawberry cakes. While we kids were responsible for the berries, we each got an old jar and spent the Saturday before the celebration in the fields, filling it as more ended up in our mouths. Finally, we returned home and poured them out on the kitchen table to sort out the bugs. I’m sure we missed some, but Dad never mentioned the extra protein.
In fact, he thought that was the best possible present, or so he had us convinced. It was a gift that could never be bought. As children raised by strawberries, we were probably unaware that the gift of berries was from the fields themselves, not from us. Our gift was time, attention, care and “red” fingers.
Gifts from the earth or from each other establish a particular relationship, a duty of sorts to give, to receive, and to exchange. The field gave to us, we gave to my dad, and we tried to give back to the strawberries. When the berry season was done, the plants would send out its red runners to make new plants. So I would weed out little fields of ground where the runners touched down. Sure enough, tiny little roots would emerge from the runner and by the end of the season there were even more plants, ready to bloom under the next strawberry season. No person taught us this — the strawberries showed us. Because they had given us a gift, an ongoing relationship opened between us.
1. What is the author’s belief about a gift?| A．It should be practical and valuable. | B．It should be luxurious and special. |
| C．It should be purchased from a store. | D．It should be made with personal effort. |
| A．Making strawberry cakes. | B．Finding the sweetest strawberries. |
| C．Going strawberry picking. | D．Baking strawberry cookies. |
| A．Making homemade gifts for her father. |
| B．Devoting time and attention to the plant. |
| C．Waiting for the strawberries to get ripe again. |
| D．Searching for fields for the plants to take roots. |
| A．How to cook with strawberries. |
| B．The importance of giving and receiving. |
| C．How to cherish homemade gifts. |
| D．The procedure of growing strawberries. |
6 . For Caribbean box jellyfish (水母), learning is literally a no-brainer.
In a new experiment, these animals learned to spot and avoid obstacles (障碍物) despite having no central brain, researchers report in Current Biology. This is the first evidence that jellyfish can make mental connections between events and change their behavior accordingly. “Maybe learning doesn’t need a very complex nervous system, but rather, learning is an essential part of nerve cells,” says Jan Bielecki, a neuroethologist at Kiel University in Germany. If so, the new finding could help trace how learning evolved in animals.
Bielecki and his colleagues wondered if Caribbean box jellyfish could learn that low-contrast objects, which might at first seem distant, were actually close by. The team put 12 jellyfish into a round tank surrounded by low-contrast, gray and white stripes. A camera filmed the animals’ behavior for about seven minutes.
At first, the jellyfish seemed to interpret the gray stripes as distant roots and swam into the tank wall. But those collisions (碰撞) seemed to lead the jellyfish to treat the gray stripes more like close roots in dirty water, and the animals started avoiding them. The jellies’ average distance from the tank wall increased from about 2.5 centimeters in the first couple of minutes to about 3.6 centimeters in the final couple of minutes. Their average collisions into the wall dropped from 1.8 per minute to 0.78 per minute.
“I found that really amazing,” says Nagayasu Nakanishi, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, who has studied jellyfish nervous systems but was not involved in the new work. “I never thought jellyfish could really learn.”
Neurobiologist Björn Brembs views the results more cautiously, noting the small number of jellyfish tested and the variability in their performance. “I want this to be true, as it would be very cool,” says Brembs. Experiments with more jellyfish could convince him that the animals really do learn.
1. What can we know about the jellyfish in paragraph 2?| A．They can avoid obstacles with a central brain. |
| B．They can change their behaviour after evolution. |
| C．They may have learning abilities with nerve cells. |
| D．They may develop a very complex nervous system. |
| A．They completely ignored the gray stripes. |
| B．They gradually started avoiding the gray stripes. |
| C．They could avoid collisions if given enough time. |
| D．They increased their collisions with the tank wall. |
| A．Jellyfish preferred the gray stripes over other things. |
| B．Jellyfish were unable to learn from their environment. |
| C．Jellyfish relied on the distant objects to change their behavior. |
| D．Jellyfish showed a learning process and adjusted their behavior. |
| A．He believes more testing is needed to confirm the results. |
| B．He is excited by the potential implications of the findings. |
| C．He dismisses the findings as irrelevant to jellyfish behavior. |
| D．He is doubtful due to the consistent performance of the jellyfish. |
7 . A study has found that smiling at London bus drivers increases their happiness. The finding feels obvious and unexpected at the same time. For decades, passengers and drivers in London greet each other in an unfriendly mood; any affection feels disgust. While, the authors of the research, which was conducted by the University of Sussex and others, hope it will lead to “more interaction and kindness on buses”. However, Londoners are sceptical.
It might seem impossible that a report on London’s buses could change behaviour. But it has happened before. London’s buses have an underappreciated role in the history of medical science. In the 1940s, a single study of London’s transport workers transformed epidemiology(流行病学), medicine and the way we live now. Every time you go on a run, check your steps, or take the stairs instead of the lift, you are following a path established by the feet of the workers on London’s buses.
In the late 1940s, Britain, like many rich countries, was suffering from an “epidemic” of heart disease and no one knew why. Various hypotheses (猜想), such as stress, were suggested; but no one noticed exercise. The idea that health and exercise were linked “wasn’t the accepted fact that we know today”: Some even felt that “too much physical activity was a bad thing for your health”.
At this time, Jerry Morris started to suspect that the too many deaths from heart disease might be linked to occupation. He began studying the medical records of 31,000 London transport workers. His findings were breathtaking: conductors, who spent their time running up and down stairs, had an approximately 30% lower incidence of disease than drivers. He also looked at postal workers, and found a similar pattern: postmen had far lower rates of disease than telephonists.
Morris’s research was eventually published in 1953, and his work had consequences both big and small. Morris now took up exercise, handing his jacket to his daughter and just running. “People initially thought I went bananas.” But slowly, the rest of the world took off its jacket and followed.
1. What impact did the study of London’s transport workers in the 1940s have on the field of medicine?| A．It led to the discovery of a new virus. |
| B．It proved the main cause of heart disease. |
| C．It showed the relationship between exercise and health. |
| D．It corrected the misunderstanding of London bus drivers. |
| A．By carrying out a survey. | B．By study their occupation. |
| C．By analyzing the medical data. | D．By doing medical examination. |
| A．Falling ill. | B．Saving energy. |
| C．Starting running. | D．Becoming crazy. |
| A．How to Increase Drivers’ Happiness |
| B．How to Transform the Way We Live |
| C．How Exercise Influenced Heart Health |
| D．How London Bus Drivers Led the World to Exercise |
8 . Automation certainly has its advantages. I am grateful for my cellphone that
I recently decided to spend a day
That evening I told my
| A．surprisingly | B．firmly | C．reliably | D．carefully |
| A．simplified | B．enhanced | C．connected | D．replaced |
| A．erupted | B．helped | C．counted | D．increased |
| A．considering | B．chasing | C．setting | D．accomplishing |
| A．settled down | B．set out | C．hung out | D．took off |
| A．world | B．money | C．seat | D．corner |
| A．reach | B．command | C．side | D．service |
| A．gathering | B．learning | C．exchange | D．atmosphere |
| A．exciting | B．humorous | C．doubtful | D．critical |
| A．supermarket | B．theater | C．field | D．restaurant |
| A．advocated | B．suggested | C．insisted | D．begged |
| A．secret | B．problem | C．experiment | D．opinion |
| A．interrupted | B．remarked | C．admitted | D．understood |
| A．instruction | B．cellphone | C．assistance | D．effort |
| A．valued | B．enjoyed | C．missed | D．admired |
9 . Popular Academic Majors
Choosing a major is important for all students. An academic major stands for a student’s study and career interests. Below is a list of some popular majors and their descriptions.
PsychologyOur Psychology Program mainly focuses on how people think, feel and behave. Psychology courses look at the complexities of the human mind and human behavior, including thought, language, and communication. This program joins classroom-based learning and work opportunity to put your knowledge into practice. Psychology students may have many opportunities to be involved in leading researches.
Computer ScienceComputer Science is the study of computers and computer systems. Computer Science majors study a wide range of courses. During their first two years, students usually take basic courses, including programming languages and web development. This is to prepare them for more advanced classes like artificial intelligence. Many students become software or websites developers. Others choose to use their knowledge in a different field, like business or medicine.
Graphic DesignGraphic Design teaches students how to create images for advertisements, books and websites. This major combines images and text. Courses might include 2D design, drawing and computer graphics. To apply for a graphic design program, you need experience in visual art. You also need to present a small body of art work. Graduates of this major can get jobs in various fields, such as brand design and mobile app development.
AccountingA Bachelor in Accounting provides students with a foundation in accounting and business. This major teaches students how to study, measure and evaluate information effectively. Our program offers different courses that help students understand the basic rule of accounting. There are a lot of career choices in accounting, such as investment banking and management consulting.
1. What do we know about Computer Science?| A．It takes two years to learn basic courses. |
| B．It focuses on how people think, feel and behave. |
| C．It ensures students to become websites developers. |
| D．It teaches students how to create images for advertisements. |
| A．Psychology. | B．Computer Science. |
| C．Graphic Design. | D．Accounting. |
| A．To promote some university’s academic majors. |
| B．To provide an overview of some popular academic majors. |
| C．To explain the requirements for popular academic majors. |
| D．To compare different career opportunities in different majors. |
10 . “I don’t want to see that cat in our yard again,” my husband said as he shooed the beautiful cat back into the neighbor’s yard. “I don’t appreciate her cat
The following morning, John stood at the window in our bedroom. “You aren’t going to
That evening, we spotted the sweet yellow cat in our yard searching mice. The groundhogs were nowhere to be
| A．hunting | B．appearing | C．dashing | D．rolling |
| A．note | B．letter | C．mail | D．text |
| A．affection | B．dislike | C．fancy | D．choice |
| A．controlling | B．telling | C．ordering | D．persuading |
| A．forget | B．miss | C．believe | D．catch |
| A．in anger | B．in mess | C．in surprise | D．in caution |
| A．enormous | B．cute | C．fierce | D．elegant |
| A．curtain | B．glass | C．window | D．flag |
| A．leisurely | B．quietly | C．proudly | D．directly |
| A．damage | B．worry | C．disease | D．fault |
| A．died off | B．taken off | C．laid off | D．driven off |
| A．confusing | B．interesting | C．encouraging | D．disgusting |
| A．feel | B．taste | C．smell | D．sound |
| A．polished | B．removed | C．eased | D．resolved |
| A．caught | B．seen | C．held | D．touched |
