1 . As a writer, I miss rejection slips. Not that I enjoyed receiving those pre-printed slips of paper, but at least when I got one, I was pretty sure that a flesh-and-blood _______ had put it in the envelope. And there was always the chance I might see a handwritten sentence on the bottom, _______ the piece almost made it. When an editor at McCall’s wrote, “I’m afraid I have to say no on this _______ piece, but try me again on another, would you?” It was almost as _______ to me as if she had said, “We’ll _______ it and here is an advance for you”.

Nowadays, rejection slips seem to have disappeared with the use of online submissions. Most editors don’t feel it a must to _______ they have received, read, or considered your work because they receive so many _______ each day.

For me, there are three _______ of rejection slip pain. The first is _______ brought on by finding a flat “no” on a ________ piece of paper, then followed by anger (how could they ________ a piece that is obviously so much ________ than most of the stuff they print), and, finally, rebirth: I will live to ________ a new piece another day.

Learning to ________ rejection seems like part of growing up as a writer. Despite the many letters of acceptance I have received, my folder of “Noteworthy Rejection Slips” is far ________ than that of “Noteworthy Acceptances”, which indicates to me the fact: I still have some growing up to do.

1.

A．writer

B．reader

C．mailman

D．editor

2.

A．demanding

B．indicating

C．suspecting

D．arguing

3.

A．boring

B．novel

C．lengthy

D．particular

4.

A．thrilling

B．upsetting

C．embarrassing

D．amusing

5.

A．buy

B．reject

C．check

D．substitute

6.

A．prove

B．determine

C．explain

D．acknowledge

7.

A．proposals

B．drafts

C．contributions

D．instructions

8.

A．meanings

B．stages

C．wonders

D．rewards

9.

A．relief

B．frustration

C．anger

D．hesitation

10.

A．valueless

B．expensive

C．characterless

D．shiny

11.

A．make up

B．put away

C．turn down

D．insist on

12.

A．easier

B．better

C．shorter

D．longer

13.

A．print

B．revise

C．download

D．submit

14.

A．accept

B．criticize

C．judge

D．evaluate

15.

A．thinner

B．fatter

C．older

D．newer

3 . As a worrying number of youngsters take up vaping (电子烟), the Government has announced a crackdown on laws to stop kids from becoming addicted to the dangerous habit.

Disposable (一次性的) vapes are now set to be banned in the UK as part of the Prime Minister’s new legislation (立法) to “stop youth vaping in its tracks”. Recent research shows that one in five teens has now tried vaping, despite it being illegal for under-18s, and half of those who vape between 18 and 24 do so despite having no history of smoking.

Last year, figures showed the number of adults using e-cigarettes in the UK had risen to the highest rate on record at roughly 4.3 million Brits. According to the charity Action on Smoking and Health, almost 1,000 serious adverse reactions to vapes were logged, including five deaths linked to e-cigarettes in the last decade.

And it’s not just over-the-count er vapes at the center of the country’s vaping crisis — fake e-cigarettes with deadly chemicals have sparked concerns. An investigation by the Mirror in 2023revealed one man’s fears for his life after he suffered a collapsed lung as a result of a fake, unlicensed pack of vapes purchased from a corner shop in County Durham.

Alex Gittins,31, thought he bagged himself a bargain but ended up in hospital just hours later. He said: “I noticed an awful chemical taste in the back of my throat, then five to 10minutes later I felt what was like a stitch. I’m lying in A&E thinking I was going to die.”

A regular vaper was told he had just a one percent chance of survival after being left in need of a double lung transplant. Jackson Allard, 22, underwent the life-saving operation on January 1, putting an end to a series of serious health issues.

Medical expert Stephanie Hansen has voice d concerns about the unknown long-term effects of e-cigarettes. She said: “Vaping or e-cigarette use is relatively new, so we don’t necessarily know a lot of the long-term effects of vaping and that’s honestly one of the scariest things about it.”

1. What has the recent research found?

A．20 percent of UK teenagers have once vaped.	B．It’s against the law for teens to buy vapes.
C．Vaping is commoner than smoking in the UK.	D．5 people died because of vaping last year.

2. Why are two examples given in Paragraphs 5 and 6?

A．To suggest it’s easy to be addicted to vaping.	B．To state vaping ruins people’s health seriously.
C．To indicate it’s illegal to buy fake e-cigarettes.	D．To show the number of people vaping is on the rise.

3. Which of the following might Stephanie Hansen agree with?

A．It remains to be seen in what way vaping affects people.

B．It will be long before people know the bad effects of vaping.

C．It matters to inform people of the potential danger of vaping.

D．It is difficult to prohibit adults from buying e-cigarettes.

4. What is the text mainly about?

A．Research into the habits of smokers in Britain.	B．Causes of teens’ addiction to vaping in Britain.
C．British health issues drawing public attention.	D．British government prohibiting disposable vapes.

4 . Spring breakers don’t need to spend a fortune to enjoy life in the sunshine for a week. U. S. News carefully considered everything to bring you the best inexpensive spring break destinations.

Key West

This small island in the Florida Keys is known for its odd residents and best snorkeling (浮潜) opportunities. While you’ll find plenty of spots for partying along rowdy Duval Street, you can also soak up some culture at the Ernest Hemingway Home & Museum. Plus, Key West offers several budget-friendly vacation rentals, so you can save your cash for bars and boat tours.

Panama City Beach

Panama City Beach is a tried-and-true Florida spring break location that is sure to please the masses. Scope out a spot across the town’s 27 miles of white sand beaches to sunbathe, play volleyball or scan the horizon for bottlenose dolphins. Hotel prices are reasonable if you book your accommodations in advance. Just note: This town bans alcohol consumption on the beach during March, so you’ll have to enjoy your adult beverages elsewhere.

South Padre Island

With hotels offering nightly rates around $200 or less and DJs and celebrities holding court at nightclubs, South Padre Island, Texas, is a hot spring break destination for college students. This South Texas local e is only about 30 miles north of the U. S.-Mexico border, meaning you’ll get to enjoy warm weather without having to leave the country. As an added bonus, the island offers a free public shuttle system, so budget-conscious travelers won’t have to worry about spending money on a rental car.

1. What can tourists do in Key West?

A．Have a good surfing.

B．Bath e in the sun on the beach.

C．Throw a party anywhere on the island.

D．Visit the Ernest Hemingway Home & Museum.

2. What is special about Panama City Beach?

A．The hotel prices are low whenever you go.

B．It is a perfect destination for spring vacation.

C．You can drink some wine on the beach in March.

D．You can see the bottlenose dolphins in person.

3. What do the three travel destinations have in common?

A．They are budget-friendly.	B．They are alive with wildlife.
C．They offer a taste of culture.	D．They offer free public shuttle system.

5 . Two Georgian twins, separated at birth when they were sold to different adoptive families, have been reunited and have TikTok to thank for bringing them back together.

The astonishing story began 10 years ago when one of the twins, Amy Khvitia, sat watching Georgia’s Got Talent in her godmother’s house near the Black Sea. A young girl, who looked exactly like her, climbed up on stage and began to dance in front of the reality show’s judges. Another seven years went by when Ano Sartania, the young girl that had danced on television, was sent a TikTok video of a young woman with blue hair getting her eyebrow pierced. Determined, Ano took to a WhatsApp university group with her plea. asking for help finding the woman with the blue hair. Against all odds, someone in the group knew Amy and the pair was connected through Facebook. Amy and Ano agreed to meet in-person at a local train station.

“It was awkward, it was awesome, it was everything,” Ano told The Sun of that first meeting, adding, “It was weird for me like I was looking in a mirror.” As they grew to know each other more, the two women began to list the similarities they shared and admit to being a bit unsettled by it all. Both were born in the same hospital, but their birth certificates said they were born a couple of weeks apart. Wanting answers, they turned to their families to ask some hard questions and soon had an explanation — both families admitted to adopting the girls as newborns.

It turns out both of their mothers had been unable to have children and were told they could pay to adopt unwanted babies at the hospital. DNA tests ‘eventually confirmed that that Amy and Ano were twins. However, they wanted to know why their biological parents have given them up and if they had been sold for profit. The twins have since been reunited with their birth mother, Aza, who claimed she fell into a coma after delivering her identical daughters and when she woke up hospital staff told her that her babies were dead.

“While Ano and Amy’s story contains a lot of coincidence on their path to reunion, their adoption circumstances aren’t that unique in Georgia — as many as 100,000 Georgian babies have been put up for illegal adoption since the 1950s on the black baby market,” says Georgian journalist Tamuna Museridze, who has been working to reunite families.

1. Which of the following properly describes the twins?

A．Their foster parents paid to adopt them legally.

B．Their first in-person meeting was full of mixed feelings.

C．It took them a smooth decade to get connected with each other.

D．Their biological parents sold them at birth for profit through hospital staff.

2. What does the underlined word “unsettled” in paragraph 3 mean?

A．Changed.

B．Shaped.

C．Upset.

D．Unsolved.

3. What is Tamuna Museridze’s attitude to baby adoption?

A．Tolerant.

B．Supportive.

C．Unclear.

D．Disapproving.

4. What can be a suitable title for the text?

A．Black baby market gains popularity in Georgia

B．Twin sisters, abandoned by birth mother, reunited

C．Twin sisters, sold illegally at birth, reunited thanks to TikTok

D．Lots of coincidence brought adopted twin sisters a family reunion

7 . “Assume you are wrong.” The advice came from Brian Nosek, a psychology professor, who was offering a strategy for pursuing better science.

To understand the context for Nosek’s advice, we need to take a step back to the nature of science itself. You see despite what many of us learned in elementary school, there is no single scientific method. Just as scientific theories become elaborated and change, so do scientific methods.

But methodological reform hasn’t come without some fretting and friction. Nasty things have been said by and about methodological reformers. Few people like having the value of their life’s work called into question. On the other side, few people are good at voicing criticisms in kind and constructive ways. So, part of the challenge is figuring out how to bake critical self-reflection into the culture of science itself, so it unfolds as a welcome and integrated part of the process, and not an embarrassing sideshow.

What Nosek recommended was a strategy for changing the way we offer and respond to critique. Assuming you are right might be a motivating force, sustaining the enormous effort that conducting scientific work requires. But it also makes it easy to interpret criticisms as personal attacks. Beginning, instead, from the assumption you are wrong, a criticism is easier to interpret as a constructive suggestion for how to be less wrong — a goal that your critic presumably shares.

One worry about this approach is that it could be demoralizing for scientists. Striving to be less wrong might be a less effective motivation than the promise of being right. Another concern is that a strategy that works well within science could backfire when it comes to communicating science with the public. Without an appreciation for how science works, it’s easy to take uncertainty or disagreements as marks against science, when in fact they reflect some of the very features of science that make it our best approach to reaching reliable conclusions about the world. Science is reliable because it responds to evidence: as the quantity and quality of our evidence improves, our theories can and should change, too.

Despite these worries, I like Nosek’s suggestion because it builds in cognitive humility along with a sense that we can do better. It also builds in a sense of community — we’re all in the same boat when it comes to falling short of getting things right.

Unfortunately, this still leaves us with an untested hypothesis (假说): that assuming one is wrong can change community norms for the better, and ultimately support better science and even, perhaps, better decisions in life. I don’t know if that’s true. In fact, I should probably assume that it’s wrong. But with the benefit of the scientific community and our best methodological tools, I hope we can get it less wrong, together.

1. What can we learn from Paragraph 3?

A．Reformers tend to devalue researchers’ work.

B．Scientists are unwilling to express kind criticisms.

C．People hold wrong assumptions about the culture of science.

D．The scientific community should practice critical self-reflection.

2. The strategy of “assuming you are wrong” may contribute to ______.

A．the enormous efforts of scientists at work	B．the reliability of potential research results
C．the public’s passion for scientific findings	D．the improvement in the quality of evidence

3. The underlined word “demoralizing” in Paragraph 5 means ______.

A．discouraging

B．ineffective

C．unfair

D．misleading

4. The tone the author uses in talking about the untested hypothesis is ______.

A．doubtful but sincere	B．disapproving but soft
C．authoritative and direct	D．reflective and humorous

8 . Researchers hope brain implants will one day help people with aphasia(失语症) to get their voice back—and maybe even to sing. Now, for the first time, scientists have demonstrated that the brain’s electrical activity can be decoded and used to reconstruct music.

A new study analyzed data from 29 people monitored for epileptic seizures(癫痫发作), using electrodes(电极) on the surface of their brain. As participants listened to a selected song, electrodes captured brain activity related to musical elements, such as tone, rhythm, and lyrics. Employing machine learning, Robert Knight from UC Berkeley and his colleagues reconstructed what the participants were hearing and published their study results. The paper is the first to suggest that scientists can “listen secretly to” the brain to synthesize(合成) music.

To turn brain activity data into musical sound, researchers trained an artificial intelligence (AI)model to decode data captured from thousands of electrodes that were attached to the participants as they listened to the song while undergoing surgery. Once the brain data were fed through the model, the music returned. The model also revealed some brain parts responding to different musical features of the song.

Although the findings focused on music, the researchers expect their results to be most useful for translating brain waves into human speech. Ludovic Bellier, the study’s lead author, explains that speech, regardless of language, has small melodic differences—tempo, stress, accents, and intonation—known as prosody(韵律). These elements carry meaning that we can’t communicate with words alone. He hopes the model will improve brain-computer interfaces (BCI), assistive devices that record speech-associated brain waves and use algorithms to reconstruct intended messages. This technology, still in its infancy, could help people who have lost the ability to speak because of aphasia.

Future research should investigate whether these models can be expanded from music that participants have heard to imagined internal speech. If a brain-computer interface could recreate someone’s speech with the prosody and emotional weight found in music, it could offer a richer communication experience beyond mere words.

Several barriers remain before we can put this technology in the hands—or brains— of patients. The current model relies on surgical implants. As recording techniques improve, the hope is to gather data non-invasively, possibly using ultrasensitive electrodes. However, under current technologies, this approach might result in a lower speed of decoding into natural speech. The researchers also hope to improve the playback clarity by packing the electrodes closer together on the brain’s surface, enabling an even more detailed look at the electrical symphony the brain produces.

1. What can we learn from the study?

A．Electrodes can analyze musical elements.

B．The decoding of brain data helps recreate music.

C．Machine learning greatly enhances brain activity.

D．The AI model monitors music-responsive brain regions.

2. What hopefully makes it possible to expand the model to speech?

A．The prosody of speech.	B．The collection of brain waves.
C．The emotional weight of music.	D．The reconstruction of information.

3. Which of the following would be the best title for the passage?

A．Unlocking the Secrets of Melodic Mind	B．Brain Symphony: Synthesized Human Speech
C．BCI Brings Hope to People with Aphasia	D．Remarkable Journey: Decoding Brain with AI

9 . Adam Wolfers believes that his son’s autism (自闭症) has a positive impact on his hobby of photography. 10-­year­-old Morgan has always possessed a _________ eye for capturing the world around him through his camera. Diagnosed (被诊断) with autism at the age of 3, Morgan has had a hard time _________ with others.

_________ these difficulties, he has shown an exceptional talent for noticing details that _________ others. Morgan has found clarity and focus in nature, particularly in the vivid colors and shapes of plants, leading him to _________ the art of nature photography.

Not _________ with merely capturing pictures, Morgan has even established his own photography business, becoming one of the top sellers in a local shop. _________, he donates ten percent of his _________ to support autistic artists through the Blue Ribbon Arts Initiative.

However, his motivation for photography _________ financial gain, as he simply wants to share the beauty he __________ with others. His work has gained __________, with one of his photos picked by National Geographic for __________ in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

His parents teared up as they told what his photography means. Morgan’s photography has become his saving grace (体面) because it gets people to look __________ his issues. “He’s going to make his __________,” his mother said.

Morgan advises all of us to try new things and explore our __________ and what we want to do. In other words, don’t be afraid to see things differently.

1.

A．strange

B．typical

C．unique

D．normal

2.

A．fighting

B．interacting

C．agreeing

D．competing

3.

A．Without

B．For

C．From

D．Despite

4.

A．escape

B．hit

C．touch

D．please

5.

A．admire

B．explore

C．change

D．promote

6.

A．amused

B．familiar

C．content

D．bored

7.

A．Remarkably

B．Undoubtedly

C．Accidentally

D．Fortunately

8.

A．salaries

B．profits

C．budgets

D．expenses

9.

A．results in

B．arises from

C．goes beyond

D．consists of

10.

A．recalls

B．imagines

C．expects

D．encounters

11.

A．recognition

B．advantage

C．strength

D．power

12.

A．examination

B．display

C．investigation

D．trade

13.

A．for

B．up

C．into

D．past

14.

A．decision

B．living

C．way

D．fortune

15.

A．principle

B．intelligence

C．emotions

D．limits

10 .

I grew up hearing that it is better to give than to receive, and the older I get, the more I aim to take this message to heart. Nevertheless, here I am, in the midst of the holiday season stressed out about gifts I have not yet purchased.

How did gift buying become an emotionally fraught chore (苦差事)? For a moment, it’s easy to question if it’s worth it. But science tells me that giving makes us feel good.

“The act of giving actually does improve your happiness,” says Michael Norton, a psychologist at Harvard Business School. He has published several studies on the effects of giving.

In one experiment that included about 700 people, the researchers randomly assigned participants to make either a purchase for themselves, or for a stranger. Afterwards, the participants reported how happy they felt. Turns out, giving to others led to a significant happiness boost, whereas spending on oneself didn’t move the needle.

“If you take $5 out of your pocket today, the science really does show that spending $5 on yourself doesn’t do much for you,” Norton says. “But spending that $5 on somebody else is more likely to increase your happiness.”

Take a scarf. If you buy one for yourself, it’s just another thing you don’t necessarily need. But if you buy a scarf for someone else, “you’ve shown them that they’re important to you,” Norton says. Either way, it’s just a scarf. “But it can either be a throwaway object or something that enhances a relationship between two people,” he says.

So, there’s evidence that generosity promotes happiness, but the process of shopping, wrapping and schlepping (搬) gifts can be tiresome — or even extremely annoying considering all of our day-­to­-day demands and other holiday stressors.

Studies also show when people are given something they are more likely to give back. Reciprocity (互惠) is a foundation of good relationships and when we surround ourselves with generous people, we tend to feel the same. Feeling that spirit of giving and the connection it can bring is what the holidays are all about.

1. Why does the author mention his own experience in paragraph 1?

A．To make a prediction.	B．To introduce the topic.
C．To present a reason.	D．To clarify a concept.

2. How does Norton illustrate his opinion in paragraphs 5 and 6?

A．By listing data.	B．By giving examples.
C．By making comments.	D．By telling personal experiences.

3. Why is preparing a gift sometimes an emotionally fraught chore?

A．It’s difficult and expensive.	B．It happens frequently.
C．It’s not valued by others.	D．It requires much effort.

4. What can we learn about giving gifts from the text?

A．It is not worth the effort.

B．It is a must to enhance a relationship.

C．It brings about emotional benefits.

D．It gains popularity during holidays.