3 . Rogers saw a woman sitting on the side of the road. She had long hair and expressive eyes. What he didn’t see was that she was also in ________. Her right leg was injured. She tried to stand but failed. So she dragged herself to the ________, like a badly wounded animal preparing to die. She’d called a ________, but after 30 minutes, her friend said he was lost.

At first, Rogers tried to play it cool. He ________ to ride by-at a slower speed and ________ asked if he could help. The woman ________ her problem and asked for help.

With Rogers holding her ________, she tried to hop(单脚跳) along, but the pain was too severe. After a brief discussion, Rogers decided to ________ her down the 0.6-mile trail over his shoulder.

To avoid the ________, the pair introduced themselves, discussed life goals and future plans. ________ laughed a lot along the way. 40 minutes later, they arrived at the parking lot, where her friend was waiting.

Rogers ________ loaded her into the back seat. Though she was in pain, she looked at Rogers through expectant eyes, wishing he would make the first move. Rogers also wanted to ask for her number, but felt that the ________ wasn’t right. After she was rushed to the hospital, Rogers went to get his bike.

At the hospital, the girl looked for Rogers on Facebook. No luck. At the same time, Rogers was ________ her online, with no luck, either. On the trail, they’d fallen so deeply into conversation that such details as last names had seemed ________. So she contacted the local newspaper, which published her story the next day. Rogers happened to read the article.

Immediately, he got in touch with her and arranged their first ________: a trip to the same spot after her recovery.

1.

A．shape

B．love

C．shock

D．pain

2.

A．roadside

B．tree

C．car

D．meeting

3.

A．doctor

B．friend

C．policeman

D．coach

4.

A．pretended

B．stopped

C．wanted

D．forgot

5.

A．occasionally

B．secretly

C．rudely

D．casually

6.

A．solved

B．hid

C．explained

D．missed

7.

A．arm

B．leg

C．head

D．hair

8.

A．throw

B．carry

C．kick

D．drag

9.

A．delay

B．heat

C．embarrassment

D．misunderstanding

10.

A．All

B．She

C．He

D．Both

11.

A．violently

B．carefully

C．abruptly

D．impatiently

12.

A．payment

B．ceremony

C．timing

D．answer

13.

A．talking with

B．searching for

C．turning to

D．fighting with

14.

A．unimportant

B．curious

C．interesting

D．serious

15.

A．conference

B．marriage

C．work

D．date

4 . As a qualified teacher of art and design, Theresa Harwood offers short online courses on drawing and painting to help students both young and old develop into confident artists.

Academic drawing course

This course is for absolute beginners of any age who are not sure on what to do or how to use a pencil. The course will be limited to only six participants, 5 sessions, once a week.

Start date: June 5

Time:10:00 am～11:00 am

Price: $380

Water color painting course

This course is for anyone who is interested in developing skills for water colour painting. Through a series of 6 projects we learn wet on wet and wet on dry. The course will be limited to only twelve participants. 6 sessions, once a week.

Start date: April 23

Time:4:30 pm～5:30 pm

Price: $380

Landscape drawing course

This course is suitable for anyone from 11 to 90 years who are interested in developing skills for landscape drawing. The only requirement of the course is that you want to learn to draw! The course will be limited to only ten participants. 5 sessions, once a week.

Start date: May 24

Time:8:00 pm～9:00 pm

Price: $380

Western art history course

This course is for students, aged between 9 and 12 years. It looks at the fun facts of the key artworks of each art movement and explains why the artists painted certain views or people. The course will be limited to only eight participants. 6 sessions, once a week.

Start date: May 7

Time:10:30 am～11:30 am

Price: $380

These courses have limited spaces and are often sold out quickly, so do book your spot soon!

1. How many students are admitted for each academic drawing course?

A．6.

B．8.

C．10.

D．12.

2. When does the landscape drawing course start?

A．On April 23.

B．On May 7.

C．On May 24.

D．On June 5.

3. Which course just accepts schoolchildren?

A．Water color painting.	B．Western art history.
C．Landscape drawing.	D．Academic drawing.

5 . Be it sugar or social media, the response in our brain is the same: It produces a “feel-good” chemical called dopamine. It first brings about pleasure, but it doesn’t last very long. It is then followed by pain so that we have to search for the pleasurable things again.

“This cycle of pleasure and pain made sense in the time of early humans when we had to constantly search for our basic needs-food, water, shelter,” says Dr. Anna Lembke, a Stanford Medical School researcher. “But our brains weren’t adjusted to put out the ‘fire of dopamine’ caused by pleasurable things that are so easily available in modern life.”

In addition, when we’re repeatedly exposed to pleasure-producing things, we’re not able to take joy in the same rewards. Instead, we need stronger and stronger stimulus (刺激) just to feel good. Otherwise, the cycle will lead us to anxiety, depression and many other problems.

“This is a universal problem—not one limited to those struggling with the disease of addiction. If we want to stay mentally healthy, we must rethink how to break the cycle in a dopamine-overloaded world,” says Lembke.

Her suggestions for the addicts?

Take a 30-day break from anything that we rely on for pleasure. This doesn’t mean going cold turkey forever. But this first month is key to breaking the pleasure-pain cycle and it’s a lot easier to cut out an addictive behavior entirely at first. Then re-introduce the pleasurable things little by little, like just a few bites of ice cream at a time or just one hour online a night.

Another strategy is to create physical distance between us and our addiction. That could mean just removing the addictive thing from our personal space. For someone who’s addicted to video games, that could mean a separate laptop for work and one for play.

“In a time of abundance, we have to strike a pleasure-pain balance, which means intentionally avoiding pleasure and seeking the kind of purposeful pain that keeps us healthy, such as exercise,” Lembke says. “By doing so, we will reset reward pathways and eventually be a lot happier. It’s not easy, but it’s well worth doing in the long term.”

1. What can we learn about dopamine from the text?

A．It has always been harmful to humans.

B．It gives us less joy for the same rewards.

C．It can be caused by anything available.

D．It can lead to a lasting good feeling.

2. What do the underlined words “going cold turkey” probably mean?

A．Abandoning.

B．Waiting.

C．Cooking.

D．Repeating.

3. What does Dr. Anna Lembke suggest we do in the long term?

A．Avoid pleasure in life.

B．Set a strict limit on pleasurable things.

C．Change reward pathways.

D．Expose ourselves to repeated rewards.

4. Which of the following is a suitable title for the text?

A．Ways to Live With Dopamine in Peace

B．Tips on Getting Rid of Social Media Addiction

C．Strategies for Making Most of the Modern Life

D．The Need to Strike a Pleasure-pain Balance

6 . Humans have long been trying to make sense of our place in the universe. Waiting at a launch site in French Guiana? NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is the latest step forward in that ancient quest (探索).

Using telescopes, astronomers have seen many galaxies (星系) such as the Andromeda Galaxy and the NGC 3227 Galaxy. So far, the most distant galaxy ever discovered, GN-z11, was spotted by the Hubble Space Telescope. To the untrained eye, it looks like a red blob (小点点), but it’s basically like looking back in time about 13.4 billion years ago. That’s just about 0.4 billion years after the Big Bang.

“Hubble is limited in how far back in time it can look, so finding this one was just a lucky break,” says Marusa Bradac, an astronomer at the University of California. “Astronomers only spotted it because decades of using Hubble have let them cover much of the sky, and this particular early galaxy is surprisingly bright although it is 25 times smaller than the Milky Way Galaxy and has just one percent of its mass.”

Already, with that one galaxy, we’ve started to question some of our assumptions about how galaxies grow. The powerful, $ 10 billion James Webb Space Telescope has technology that should let it see back to 0.1 ~0.2 billion years after the Big Bang, the period when the very first galaxies possibly formed.

“If all go well, the James Webb Space Telescope will help us to build up the story of how the first galaxies ever formed and how they grew into galaxies we see today and we live in today,” says Bradac. “But the chances of seeing those first born stars with the new telescope are small. There’s maybe even more of a chance that we might see some of those stars explode. Such information can help us understand how galaxies formed and changed into the familiar shapes and structures seen today. That’s what’s amazing about the new telescope.”

1. When did the Big Bang take place?

A．Around 13.0 billion years ago.

B．Around 13.4 billion years ago.

C．Around 13.6 billion years ago.

D．Around 13.8 billion years ago.

2. What does the underlined words “this one” in paragraph 3 refer to?

A．The Milky Way Galaxy.	B．The GN-z11 Galaxy.
C．The Andromeda Galaxy.	D．The NGC 3227 Galaxy.

3. What is the fourth paragraph mainly about?

A．The great potential of the new telescope.

B．The need for new scientific breakthroughs.

C．The cost of the James Webb Space Telescope.

D．The importance of the Hubble Space Telescope.

4. What can the new telescope most likely help scientists do according to Bradac?

A．Find the first born star in the universe.

B．Witness the occurring of the Big Bang.

C．See the explosion of some of the first born stars.

D．Get a complete understanding of the universe.

7 . There is a curious love triangle that sits at the center of the new documentary Fire of Love. It’s between a man, a woman and a volcano. Well, all of them are volcanoes.

Their names might not be especially well-known today, but in the 1970s and ‘80s, French scientists Katia Krafft and Maurice Krafft were very famous for their photographs and writings about the volcanoes. When they died in 1991 on Mount Unzen in Japan, their deaths were covered globally. But their story has somewhat faded in the public memory in the past three decades? though Werner Herzog did spotlight them in his 2016 documentary Into the Inferno.

The Kraffts? who first bonded over Mount Etna and Mount Stromboli and were married in 1970, witnessed about 140 eruptions on every continent except Antarctica and won an Emmy for their National Geographic documentary Mountains of Fire. They would famously drop everything to get to an active volcano, and were often the first on site. They were also known for their willingness to get dangerously close.

Filmmaker Sara Dosa once met the Kraffts while making an earlier film about Iceland many years ago. In 2020, with the help of Image’ Est, a French museum, and Maurice Krafft^’s brother, Bertrand Krafft, Dosa and her team were able to get access to over 180 hours of footage shot by the Kraffts. So Dosa decided to make something about the Kraffts in the true spirit of the Kraffts.

“We wanted to let them play themselves. We see them as the authors of their own story,“ Dosa said. ”This is a co-creation, shot by them and starring them. We’re just stringing together the pieces of their life for the audience to connect with.”

However, Fire of Love is anything but a filmed Wikipedia(维基百科)page. Dosa and her team have drawn on the techniques of French New Wave films to help shape the style of their film, including playful multiple screens.

1. Where did Katia Krafft and Maurice Krafft pass away?

A．On Mount Etna.	B．On Mount Stromboli.
C．On Mount Unzen.	D．On Mount Krakatoa.

2. Why were the Kraffts considered as volcanoes?

A．They were enthusiastic about studying volcanoes.

B．They were well-known for their short-lived marriage.

C．Their deaths were related to the biggest volcano.

D．Their love story appeared in many volcano books.

3. Who directed the film Fire of Love?

A．Bertrand Krafft.

B．Sara Dosa.

C．Werner Herzog.

D．Katia Krafft.

4. What is the text?

A．A love story.

B．A biography.

C．A documentary.

D．A film review.

8 . Being honest may not get you a lot of friends, but it will get you the right ones. That’s true, so you should pursue authentic positivity in your friendships, the opposite of toxic (有毒的) positivity that would have you encouraging friends in all things, regardless of what you might feel or observe or know about the challenges of life.     1    

1. Ask questions.

A feature of authentic positivity is a curious mindset, a mentality where you are less locked into “telling it like it is” and more interested in wondering and exploring the possibilities together with your friend.     2     If your friendship has a history of welcome advice-giving, your question could be “Are you looking for ideas, or do you just want me to listen?”

2.     3    

“That’s so disappointing” is sometimes the most positive thing you can say to your friend when they are struggling. Resisting the urge to say “It’s all going to work out; don’t worry” shows your friend that you see them in their pain, and that you are available to support them here and now.     4     You can use “yes/and” statements like “What happened at work is so frustrating—AND I know how creative you are, so you’ll find a way to move forward.”

3. Learn to apologize —and ask for an apology.

    5     That includes you, too. Being authentic in a friendship means having the freedom to say to a friend, “I’m sorry I hurt you.” It also means being able to say, “Your words/ actions hurt me.” Friendships that stand the test of time have room for mistakes, and for repair.

A．Name hard truths.

B．Don’t disappoint your friend.

C．Every friend misses the mark sometimes.

D．Instead, friends should be authentic and positive.

E．Here are three ways to be an authentically positive friend.

F．But that doesn’t mean you need to focus on the negative all the time.

G．Positive friends ask each other questions, and listen deeply to the answers.

9 . Google made waves recently by announcing its new program, “Google Career Certificates,” a collection of courses designed to help participants get qualifications in high-paying, high-growth job fields without attending university. The courses take about six months to complete and will cost much less, compared to a traditional college education.

The response was huge. The article has been shared thousands of times and has caused thousands of comments. Most of the feedback has been extremely positive. Those who commented included professionals, employers and especially students who were happy to see an alternative to what many consider a broken educational system — one leaving many burdened with student debt for years while unprepared for the real world. With less time, the program can better equip graduates for the jobs they are seeking with practical and necessary skills.

What Google is offering isn’t exactly new. In some ways, the alternative resembles other traditional types of training like professional education or apprenticeship (学徒制) programs. The difference since Google is a household name, its certificate can be easily recognized and accepted across companies and industries - much like a degree from a major university.

Not all the feedback I received was in praise of Google’s initiative. Many readers expressed concern that not enough employers would value Google’s certificate program. One even described it as money racket (敲诈). So to ensure other companies to follow its lead, Google has established an association for employers to tap into the program and is currently inviting more to join. But still some readers leveled the criticism that there are certain lessons taught in higher education that you simply can’t get in other places.

In the end, I don’t think Google’s program will completely replace college education. But I do think it’s a step in the right direction — a separate path for students who are looking for something different than traditional higher education.

1. Who is the new Google program intended for?

A．Career trainers.	B．Job seekers.
C．Business managers.	D．College professors.

2. Which words can best describe the Google program?

A．Well-equipped and risk-free.	B．Time-consuming and well-rounded.
C．Cost-effective and widely-recognized.	D．Time-honored and highly-valued.

3. What does paragraph 4 mainly talk about?

A．Praises on Google’s purpose.	B．Arguments against the Google program.
C．Solutions to Google’s problems.	D．Advantages of Google training courses.

4. What is the author’s attitude to the Google program?

A．Favorable.

B．Intolerant.

C．Skeptical.

D．Ambiguous.