1 . What’s more important in determining life success-book smarts or street smarts? This question gets at the heart of an important debate contrasting the relative importance of cognitive(认知的)intelligence (CI) and emotional intelligence (EI).
Cognitive intelligence is still recognized as an important element of success, particularly when it comes to academic achievements. People with high cognitive intelligence typically do well in school, often earn more money, and tend to be healthier in general.
But today experts recognize that cognitive intelligence is not the only determining factor of life success. Instead, it is part of a complex range of influences-one that includes emotional intelligence. Many companies now provide emotional intelligence training and use emotional intelligence tests as part of the hiring process. Research has found that individuals with strong leadership potential also tend to be more emotionally intelligent, suggesting that high emotional intelligence is an important equality for business leaders and managers. According to a survey of hiring managers, almost 75% of the responders suggested that they valued an employee’s emotional intelligence more than his cognitive intelligence.
Now that emotional intelligence is so important, can it be taught or strengthened? According to one meta-analysis that looked at the results of social and emotional learning programmes, the answer to that question is definitely yes. Strategies for teaching emotional intelligence include character education, modeling positive behaviours, encouraging people to think about how others are feeling, and finding ways to be more empathetic(感同身受的)towards others.
All in all, life success is a result of many factors. Both cognitive intelligence and emotional intelligence play roles in overall success, as well as health, wellness, and happiness. Rather than focusing on which factors have a prior influence, the greatest benefit may lie in learning to improve skills in multiple areas. In addition to strengthening cognitive abilities, such as memory and mental focus, you can also acquire and improve social and emotional skills.
1. What can we know about people with book smarts?| A．They can debate with other people. |
| B．They can deal with various situations. |
| C．They can be outstanding in academic research. |
| D．They can be good at gaining real life experience. |
| A．To indicate the strictness of the hiring process. |
| B．To prove the importance of emotional intelligence. |
| C．To explain the result of emotional intelligence tests. |
| D．To show the influence of cognitive intelligence on success. |
| A．Evaluating how others feel. | B．One’s extreme behaviours |
| C．One’s academic performance. | D．Controlling others’ emotions. |
| A．Does book smarts matter? | B．Is CI or El more important? |
| C．What counts most in life? | D．Mental health or physical health? |
2 . With greater climate disasters lying ahead, it is natural for us to make every effort to stop a series of floods, unusual snowstorms, and alarming reports from scientists. For many of us, part of that means running out to buy reusable drinking tubes, organic cleaners, and packaging-free products.
However, before you are joyful of your “green” purchases, take a second to consider a principle that should be obvious: simply consuming less is better for the planet. After all, every new item a factory pumps out requires some resources to produce. But in the confusing stream of environmental news, this simple truth can get lost. Take plastic bag bans for instance. If your city is getting rid of single-use shopping bags, it can be tempting to pay for that fashionable organic cotton bag hanging in the check-outline of supermarkets. However, experts who have analyzed the data on environmental impact insist that growing cotton is actually no better for the Earth than producing the conventional plastic bag. Any bag you already own is your best bet for carrying your groceries if you care about sustainability.
It is not just the Earth that will be happier if you buy less. You will feel more contented too. There is a common view that green buying patterns mean people are going green. However, it doesn’t seem to be that way. Reduced consumption has positive effects on increased well-being, but you don’t see that with “green” consumption.
Many studies have shown that materialism in general makes us unhappy and lonely. It is perfectly possible to be a materialist and an environmentalist at the same time. Lusting (欲望) for every new “green” product on the market might make you feel good about yourself but it presents the same emotional traps as lusting for whatever the Joneses next door are buying. If you relieve yourself of that burden of ownership, most people report feeling a lot better and freer.
1. What is the function of Paragraph 1?| A．To introduce the topic. |
| B．To send a warning. |
| C．To offer practical advice. |
| D．To advocate green purchases. |
| A．To promote cotton bags. |
| B．To call for less consumption. |
| C．To ban the using of plastic bags. |
| D．To reveal the harm of using plastic bags. |
| A．Buying less does benefit to the Earth. |
| B．Green consumption increases well-being. |
| C．Buying green indicates a green awareness. |
| D．Being green gives rise to more consumption. |
| A．Green Products Win Popularity |
| B．Don’t Be Lost in Environmental Passion |
| C．Buying Green Is Never a Final Solution |
| D．Buying Less Beats Buying Green |
3 . A recent study in the science publication Joule says there are enough rare earth metals (稀土金属) on Earth for new “low-carbon electricity generation” technologies. The researchers said the amount of minerals available is enough to supply a switch to renewable energy and more mining is needed to make more of the valuable metals available to industry.
Rare earth metals are in demand for products such as magnets, wind turbines (涡轮机), solar panels and computers. All are part of the “green energy” push to remove carbon gases from electricity generation.
Zeke Hausfather, an expert who works at a technology company called Stripe and at Berkeley Earth, called the process “big and messy”. But he thinks reducing carbon gases, or “decarbonization”, can be done. He said he is not worried about the long-term supply of rare earth materials.
However, the scientists warn that in the early days of the switch to green energy, there will be shortages. For example, there could be a shortage of the element called dysprosium. It is used to make strong magnets. Industry will require three times more of the metal than is produced now. However, there is 12 times more dysprosium available than needed, the researchers said.
Another element is tellurium, which is used in large groups of solar panels, called solar farms. There is just enough of that material available if the world makes a fast push to solar power, the researchers said. In addition, there are other materials that can be used instead of tellurium if needed.
Daniel Ibarra, an environment professor at Brown University, told the Associated Press that the study is forceful and “debunks” concerns about running out of rare earth materials. He said the main question is whether production of the materials can keep up with demand.
The United States Geological Survey reports that the countries with the largest supplies of rare earth metals are China, Vietnam, Russia and Myanmar, also known as Burma.
1. What is Zeke Hausfather’s attitude towards the storage of rare earth metal?| A．Confident. | B．Skeptical. | C．Uncertain. | D．Indifferent. |
| A．compare it with other elements |
| B．indicate its wide existence in nature |
| C．stress its importance in industrial production |
| D．show its shortage in the early change to green energy |
| A．have doubt about | B．show something false |
| C．be certain about | D．prove something correct |
| A．Necessity of Mining for Renewable Energy |
| B．Concerns about Shortage of Rare Earth Metals |
| C．Rare Earth Metals Are Enough for Green Energy |
| D．Low-carbon Technologies Are Developing Fast |
4 . Swot satellite is scheduled to be launched Thursday morning to conduct a comprehensive survey of Earth’s vital resource. By using advanced microwave radar technology it will collect height-surface measurements of oceans, lakes and rivers in high-definition detail over 90% of the globe. It’s really the first time to observe nearly all water on the planet’s surface.
The major mission is to explore how oceans help to minimize climate change by absorbing atmospheric heat and carbon dioxide in a natural process. Oceans are estimated to have absorbed more than 90% of the extra heat trapped in the Earth’s atmosphere by human-caused greenhouse gases Swot will scan the seas from the orbit and precisely measure fine differences in surface elevations (高度) around smaller currents and eddies (漩涡), where much of the oceans’ decrease of heat and carbon is believed to occur. “Studying the mechanism will help climate scientists answer a key question: What is the turning point at which oceans start releasing, rather than absorbing, huge amounts of heat back into the atmosphere and speed up global warming, rather than limiting it,” said Nadya Shiffer, Swot’s program scientist.
By comparison, earlier studies of water bodies relied on data of rivers or oceans taken at specific points, or from satellites that can only track measurements along a one-dimensional line, requiring scientists to fill in data gaps through extrapolation (外推法). Thanks to the radar instrument, Swot can scan through cloud cover and darkness over wide ranges of the Earth. This enables scientists to accurately map their observations in two dimensions regardless of weather or time of day and to cover large geographic areas far more quickly than was previously possible.
“Rather than giving us a line of elevations, it’s giving us a map of elevations, and that’s just a total game changer,” said Tamlin Pavelsky, Swot freshwater science leader.
1. What does the underlined expression “vital resource” in the first paragraph refer to?| A．Technology. | B．Climate. | C．Oceans. | D．Water. |
| A．To explore the influences of greenhouse gases. |
| B．To explain the consequence of global warming. |
| C．To identify the causes of water absorbing heat and CO2. |
| D．To study the mechanism of oceans influencing climate. |
| A．The high-definition computer. |
| B．Advanced radar technology. |
| C．The three-dimensional image. |
| D．An accurate map of elevations. |
| A．A Solution to Climate Change |
| B．A Breakthrough in Space Travel |
| C．First Global Water Survey from Space |
| D．The Successful Launch of Swot Satellite |
5 . Deepfake Videos of Tom Cruise Raise Concern
A series of deepfake videos of Tom Cruise have gained more than 11 million views on TikTok. The creator said he never wanted to trick people. But since he has, he’s hoping the sudden influx (涌入) of attention can help bring greater awareness to the continued evolution of the technology that can create incredibly realistic fake videos of people.
“The important thing is, we didn’t want to fool people at any moment,” Chris Ume, 31, the Belgian visual effects artist behind the visual deepfake, said in an interview. “If I can help in creating awareness, or even work on detection in the future, I would love to.”
Ume created the four videos, in which it appeared to show the Hollywood star playing golf, doing a magic coin trick, and falling over while telling a story. The videos went visual, attracting attention on TikTok and across the Internet.
And though most people realized quickly that the videos were fake, even experts were impressed by their quality.
“My first thought was they’re incredibly well done,” said digital image expert HanyFarid, who is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and specializes in image analysis. “They are funny, and they’re clever.”
But they also offer a warning: Deepfake technology that has emerged in recent years continues to evolve and improve. And while deepfake videos have not yet been effectively used in many misinformation(虚假消息) campaigns, the danger is growing.
“In the early days, you could see the potential, but it wasn’t even close to being there,” Farid said. “But this felt to me like it was a real step, like we just took a big step forward in the development of this technology.
Synthetic(合成的) digital content, otherwise known as a deepfake, can include anything from an image or video in which one person or object is visually or audibly manipulated(操纵) to say and do something that is fabricated(伪造).
Although Ume used sophisticated visual effects editing, advancements in digital editing through smartphone apps such as Reface, Facetune and even Snapchat have made techniques like face-swapping(换脸) and image altering easier and could cause serious consequences, experts say.
1. What does the creator intend to do according to the text?| A．To attract more attention. | B．To earn much more money. |
| C．To play a trick on people. | D．To show technological progress. |
| A．The danger is increasing. |
| B．The technology is developing. |
| C．The deepfake videos are spreading widely. |
| D．The deepfake videos are effectively used. |
| A．Negative. | B．Optimistic. | C．Objective. | D．Pessimistic. |
| A．The deepfake videos are popular. | B．The deepfake videos raise concern. |
| C．The deepfake videos should be stopped. | D．The deepfake technology is advancing. |
6 . Researchers at the University of Cambridge carried out a year-long study with Design and Technology(D&T) year 9 pupils at two London schools. Pupils at one school spent the year following school lessons while the other group’s D&T lessons used a set of engineering design thinking tools. Creativity of both groups of pupils was assessed at the start and end of the school year using an authoritative mental test.
Results showed a significant increase in creativity among pupils at the intervention(干预) school where thinking tools were used. At the start of the year, the creativity scores of pupils at the control school were 11% higher than those at the intervention school according to data from the mental test. By the end, however, creativity scores of pupils in the intervention group were 78% higher than those in the control group.
The research is part of a program called Designing Our Tomorrow and challenges pupils to find ways of dealing with real-world problems by thinking about the thoughts and feelings of others. The particular challenge used in the study required pupils at the intervention school to design an asthma-treatment(哮喘治疗) pack for children. Pupils were given various “tools”. They were shown data on the number of asthma-related deaths of children in the UK, and a video about a child having an attack. They also explored the problem and tested their design ideas by role-playing---for example---patients, family members, and medical staff.
Nicholl, Senior Lecturer in Design and Technology Education, said, “When I taught D&T, I didn’t see children as potential engineers who would one day contribute to the economy - they were just people who needed to be ready to go into the world at 18. Although teaching empathy(同理心) has been part of the D&T National Curriculum for over two decades, this study suggests it is still a missing link in the creative process, and vital if we want education to encourage designers and engineers of tomorrow.”
1. What can we learn about the control group?| A．They used thinking tools. |
| B．They didn’t take D&T lessons. |
| C．They followed standard courses. |
| D．They got higher creativity scores twice. |
| A．To develop their empathy. |
| B．To test their creativity levels. |
| C．To inspire them to solve problems. |
| D．To help them understand asthma. |
| A．Appreciative. | B．Doubtful. | C．Objective. | D．Unsatisfied. |
| A．Teaching Kids Empathy Is a Must. |
| B．Pupils Should Empathise with Others. |
| C．Empathy Improves Creativity in Pupils. |
| D．Empathy Is Missing in the Creative Process. |
7 . Technology seems to discourage slow, immersive reading. Reading on a screen, particularly a phone screen, tires your eyes and makes it harder for you to keep your place. So online writing tends to be more skimmable and list-like than print. The cognitive neuroscientist Mary Walt argued recently that this “new norm” of skim reading is producing “an invisible, game-changing transformation” in how readers process words. The neuronal circuit that sustains the brain’s capacity to read now favors the rapid absorption of information, rather than skills developed by deeper reading, like critical analysis.
We shouldn’t overplay this danger. All readers skim. Skimming is the skill we acquire as children as we learn to read more skillfully. From about the age of nine, our eyes start to bounce around the page, reading only about a quarter of the words properly, and filling in the gaps by inference. Nor is there anything new in these fears about declining attention spans. So far, the anxieties have proved to be false alarms. “Quite a few critics have been worried about attention span lately and see very short stories as signs of cultural decline,” the American author Selvin Brown wrote. “No one ever said that poems were evidence of short attention spans.”
And yet the Internet has certainly changed the way we read. For a start, it means that there is more to read, because more people than ever are writing. If you time travelled just a few decades into the past, you would wonder at how little writing was happening outside a classroom. And digital writing is meant for rapid release and response. An online article starts forming a comment string underneath as soon as it is published. This mode of writing and reading can be interactive and fun. But often it treats other people’s words as something to be quickly harvested as fodder to say something else. Everyone talks over the top of everyone else, desperate to be heard.
Perhaps we should slow down. Reading is constantly promoted as a social good and source of personal achievement. But this advocacy often emphasizes “enthusiastic”, “passionate” or “eager” reading, none of which adjectives suggest slow, quiet absorption.
To a slow reader, a piece of writing can only be fully understood by immersing oneself in the words and their slow comprehension of a line of thought. The slow reader is like a swimmer who stops counting the number of pool laps he has done and just enjoys how his body feels and moves in water.
The human need for this kind of deep reading is too tenacious for any new technology to destroy. We often assume that technological change can’t be stopped and happens in one direction, so that older media like “dead-tree” books are kicked out by newer, more virtual forms. In practice, older technologies can coexist with new ones. The Kindle has not killed off the printed book any more than the car killed off the bicycle. We still want to enjoy slowly-formed ideas and carefully-chosen words. Even in a fast-moving age, there is time for slow reading.
1. What is the author’s attitude towards Selvin Brown’s opinion?| A．Favorable. | B．Critical. | C．Doubtful. | D．Objective. |
| A．advocacy of passionate reading helps promote slow reading |
| B．digital writing leads to too much speaking and not enough reflection |
| C．the public should be aware of the impact skimming has on neuronal circuits |
| D．the number of Internet readers is declining due to the advances of technology |
| A．Comprehensive. | B．Complicated. | C．Determined. | D．Apparent. |
| A．Slow Reading Is Here to Stay |
| B．Digital Technology Prevents Slow Reading |
| C．Screen vs. Print: Which Requires Deep Reading? |
| D．Reading Is Not a Race: The Wonder of Deep Reading |
8 . Applied Ethics
Although ethics classes are common around the world, scientists are unsure if their lessons can actually change behavior; evidence either way is weak, relying on contrived laboratory tests or sometimes unreliable self-reports. But a new study published in Cognition found that, in at least one real-world situation, a single ethics lesson may have had lasting effects.
The researchers investigated one class session’s impact on eating meat. According to study co-author Eric Schwitzgebel, a philosopher at the University of California, Riverside: students’ attitudes on the topic are variable and unstable, behavior is easily measurable, and ethics literature largely agrees that eating less meat is good because it reduces environmental harm and animal suffering. Half of the students in four large philosophy classes read an article on the ethics of factory-farmed meat, optionally watched an 11-minute video on the topic and joined a 50-minute discussion. The other half focused on charitable giving instead. Then, unbeknownst to the students, the researchers studied their anonymized meal-card purchases for that semester — nearly 14,000 receipts for almost 500 students. “It’s an awesome data set,” says Nina Strohminger, a psychologist who teaches business ethics at the University of Pennsylvania and was not involved in the study.
Schwitzgebel predicted the intervention would have no effect; he had previously found that ethics professors do not differ from other professors on a range of behaviors, including voting rates, blood donation and returning library books. But among student subjects who discussed meat ethics, meal purchases containing meat decreased from 52 to 45 percent — and this effect held steady for the study’s duration of several weeks. Purchases from the other group remained at 52 percent.
“That’s actually a pretty large effect for a pretty small intervention.” Schwitzgebel says. Strohminger agrees: “The thing that still blows my mind is that the only thing that’s different between these two cases is just that one day in class.” She says she wants the effect to be real but cannot rule out some unknown confounding variable. And if real, Strohminger notes, it might be reversible by another nudge: “Easy come, easy go.”
Schwitzgebel suspects the greatest impact came from social influence — classmates or teaching assistants leading the discussions may have shared their own vegetarianism, showing it as achievable or more common. Second, the video may have had an emotional impact. Least rousing, he thinks, was rational argument, although his co-authors say reason might play a bigger role. Now the researchers are probing the specific effects of teaching style, teaching assistants’ eating habits and students’ video exposure. Meanwhile Schwitzgebel who had predicted no effect — will be eating his words.
1. Paragraph 2 is mainly about .| A．Research reasons and process |
| B．Research subjects and findings |
| C．Research topic and significance |
| D．Research data collection and analysis |
| A．Students’ knowledge of the topic. |
| B．Students’ easily-measured behaviors. |
| C．Students’ changeable and unsteady attitudes. |
| D．Students’ unawareness of ethics lessons’ impact. |
| A．Convinces me. | B．Upsets me. | C．Alarms me. | D．Amazes me. |
| A．To prove Schwitzgebel’s prediction is wrong. |
| B．To show teaching works in behavior changing. |
| C．To explain students are easy to make a change. |
| D．To justify investigation into ethics is worthwhile. |
9 . What may well be the oldest metal coins in the world have been identified at an ancient abandoned city known as Guanzhuang in China. Like many Bronze Age (青铜时代) coins from the region, they were cast in the shape of spades (铲) with finely carved handles. These ancient coins existed during an in-between period between barter (以物易物) and money, when coins were a novel concept, but everybody knew that agricultural tools were valuable.
Reading about this incredible discovery, I kept thinking about the way modern people represent computer networks by describing machines as having “addresses”, like a house. We also talk about one computer using a “port” to send information to another computer, as if the data were a floating boat with destination. It’s as if we are in the Bronze Age of information technology, grasping desperately for real-world reference to transform our civilization.
Now consider what happened to spade coins. Over centuries. metalworkers made these coins into more abstract shapes. Some became almost human figures. Others’ handles were reduced to small half-circles. As spade coins grew more abstract. people carved them with number values and the locations where they were made. They became more like modern coins, flat and covered in writing. Looking at one of these later pieces, you would have no idea that they were once intended to look like a spade.
This makes me wonder if we will develop an entirely new set of symbols that allow us to interact with our digital information more smoothly.
Taking spade coins as our guide, we can guess that far-future computer networks will no longer contain any recognizable references to houses. But they still might bring some of the ideas we associate with home to our mind. In fact, computer networks — if they still exist at all — are likely to be almost the indispensable part of our houses and cities, their sensors inset (嵌入) with walls and roads. Our network addresses might actually be the same as our street addresses. If climate change leads to floods, our mobile devices might look more like boats than phones, assisting us to land.
My point is that the metaphors (比喻) of the information age aren’t random. Mobile devices do offer us comfort after a long day at work. In some sense, our desire to settle on the shores of data lakes could change the way we understand home, as well as how we build computers. So as we cast our minds forward, we have to think about what new abstractions will go along with our information technology. Perhaps the one thing we count on is that humans will still appreciate the comforts of home.
1. Why were many Bronze Age coins made into the shape of a spade?| A．These coins also served as agricultural tools. |
| B．This stylish design made the coins valuable. |
| C．A lot of emphasis was put on agriculture. |
| D．The handles made the coins easily exchanged. |
| A．To show they both used to be new concepts when first invented. |
| B．To highlight their same importance in our civilizational transformation. |
| C．To suggest computers will experience dramatic changes as coins did. |
| D．To explain abstract digital worlds are different from concrete coins. |
| A．Flexible. | B．Wasteful. | C．Essential. | D．Alternative. |
| A．How Agriculture Loses to Digital Industry |
| B．What Coins and Computers Bring Us |
| C．What Bronze Age and Information Age Have In Common |
| D．What Ancient Money Tells Us About the Future Digital World |
10 . For breeding (繁殖) birds, timing is everything. Most species have just a narrow window to get the food they need to feed chicks. Now, after analyzing data that span from 1975 to 2017, a science team suggests that as the climate warms, birds are not only breeding earlier, but their breeding windows are also narrowed—some by as many as 4 to 5 days.
On average, the beginnings and ends of the breeding periods are occurring earlier in the year. However, the ends are shifting back faster than the beginnings, resulting in an average breeding window that is 1.7 days shorter in 2017 than it was in 1975. During that same period, Finland’s average temperature rose by 0.8℃, suggesting many bird species are actively responding to changing temperatures, Hällfors, who led the team, says.
“It’s good for the species if it’s able to follow the optimum conditions as the climate changes,” she says. However, the shorter breeding windows mean more birds are breeding earlier in the season—a risky time for chicks’ survival, especially if the weather turns suddenly cold. In addition, because many late-season species are shifting their breeding windows up, that could mean more competition for food and nesting sites early on, leaving some chicks to go hungry.
Lucyna Halupka, an ecologist at the University of Wroclaw, calls the study “a very important paper” because it’s one of the few ways to measure the breeding period duration. For 2 decades, she says, many scientists studying birds and climate change have looked only at the earliest, median (中间的), or mean laying dates for specific groups of birds. However, she reminds that because the study is limited to Finland, the findings may not apply universally; future studies should examine how breeding seasons move in other regions where the effect of climate change is different. They should also try to determine how shifting breeding windows affect population sizes, she says.
1. What did the scientists find?| A．The weather in Finland becomes warmer. |
| B．It is becoming more difficult for birds to breed. |
| C．The birds in Finland spend fewer days breeding. |
| D．There isn’t enough food for some chicks in Finland. |
| A．Exact. | B．Proper. | C．Changeable. | D．Dangerous. |
| A．It is carried out in a different way. |
| B．It is helpful for people to protect the birds. |
| C．It opens a window for people to learn about these birds. |
| D．It demonstrates the living situation of the birds on earth. |
| A．Scientists Revealed the Secrets of Birds’ Breeding |
| B．Scientists Take Steps to Protect the Birds in the Wild |
| C．Birds Play a Role in Fighting Against Global Warming |
| D．Birds’ Breeding Windows Are Affected by Global Warming |
