1 . Just like happiness and sadness, anxiety is part of everyone’s lived experience — but it’s not always tolerated as such. “People often spend too much time and effort trying to rid anxiety,” says Dr Joel Minden, a clinical psychologist. “I encourage them to remember that anxiety is a normal emotional response.”
If you try to banish anxiety, all you’re doing is putting it more at the forefront of your mind. But if you accept anxiety as part of life, you can learn to relate to it with self-pity or even with humour. This is a cornerstone of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), which has been gaining clinical validation, including by the American Psychological Association. ACT guides people to see their unpleasant emotions as just feelings and to accept that parts of life are hard. Sufferers are encouraged to begin a dialogue with anxious thoughts, examining their causes while also keeping in mind their personal goals and values.
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What may Dr Joel Minden agree about anxiety?| A．It is often improperly treated. | B．It should be seriously taken. |
| C．It is easily-earned experience. | D．It goes hand in hand with joy. |
2 . My husband and I always wanted to go to the Caribbean but didn’t know much about the islands or how we were going to afford it. By chance, a friend of ours in Australia mentioned “pet sitting” and that it is something you can do all over the world.
We quickly created an account on a pet sitting website and began searching for options. There were only a couple of sits available in that part of the world, but we tried our luck, sent a request, and to our surprise, landed a three-month job in Grenada, so our year was going to be taken up with Caribbean pet sits.
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Why did the author do pet sitting?| A．To cover travel expenses. | B．To raise fund. |
| C．To conserve the environment. | D．To shoot beautiful beaches. |
3 . As we all know, insects can be remarkably agile (灵活的) in flight. This is really hard to build into flying robots, but MIT Assistant Professor Kevin Yufeng Chen has developed an insect-sized drone (无人机) that approaches insects’ agility.
Typically, drones require wide open spaces. “If we look at most drones today, they’re usually quite big,” says Chen. “Most of their applications involve flying outdoors. The question is: Can you create an insect-sized drone that can move around in very crowded and complex spaces?”
According to Chen, he overcame many problems when building the drone. The insect-sized drone requires a fundamentally different construction from a larger one. The large drone is usually powered by a motor, but the motor loses efficiency as you shrink it. So, Chen says, “For an insect-sized drone, you need to look for alternatives.” The principal alternative until now has been employing a small, rigid actuator (执行器) built from new materials. Chen designed a more agile tiny drone using soft actuators instead of hard ones.
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1. What can we know about the actuator designed by Chen?| A．It weighs about six grams. |
| B．It drives the insect-sized drone. |
| C．It loses efficiency too much. |
| D．It employs conventional materials. |
4 . When the Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) began last Friday, Steve and Janet Kistler of Hart County, Kentucky, joined in. They’ve done so every year since the now-global tradition began 25 years ago.
For Moira Dalibor, who teaches math at a school, this was the first count. She led a group of students and parents to an arboretum (植物园) for an exercise in data-gathering. They were among hundreds of thousands of people around the world counting and recording over four days. Last year, about 385,000 people from 192 countries took part in the GBBC.
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This is how it works: Participants watch birds, whether that means looking out of the window for 15 minutes or taking a longer trip to a nature area. Organizers recommend the Merlin bird ID app to distinguish birds by size, shape, song or other characteristics. Many participants also carry field guides and binoculars (双筒望远镜) along with their phones. They then enter the findings into the eBird app. Those numbers help researchers track the ups and downs of various species, which then help determine the direction of conservation efforts.
Dalibor prepared her classes with information about local species and practiced with the Merlin app. The kids recorded bird sightings with pencils and drawing boards, and parent volunteers entered those numbers on phones.
1. Why did Dalibor lead her students to an arboretum?| A．To do exercise for health. | B．To observe different plants. |
| C．To practice their math skills. | D．To collect information about birds. |
| A．To record their findings. | B．To identify different birds. |
| C．To help determine the birds’ habitat. | D．To track the ups and downs of various species. |
5 . Eighteen-year-old David Aguilar from Andorra was born without a right forearm due to a rare genetic condition but that has never stopped him from doing anything he wanted to do including typing on a computer with his partial arm.
Like most kids, David was a LEGO fan and he loved building cars, boats, planes, and motorbikes. But David also knew that he looked different and wanted to do something about it. “As a child I was very nervous to be in front of other guys, because I was different, but that didn’t stop me believing in my dreams,” David said. “I wanted to... see myself in the mirror like I see other guys, with two hands.”
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David plans to create affordable prosthetics for people who need them, saying, “I would try to give them a prosthetic, even if it’s for free, to make them feel like a normal person.”
1. How did David feel when standing in front of other kids?| A．Anxious. | B．Natural. | C．Confident. | D．Frightened. |
| A．To be an expert in building LEGO. | B．To become rich by selling prosthetic arms. |
| C．To offer disabled people cheaper prosthetics. | D．To start a company hiring more disabled people. |
6 . A new study suggests that mindfulness education — lessons on techniques to calm the mind and body — can reduce the negative effects of stress and increase students’ ability to stay engaged, helping them stay on track academically and avoid behavior problems.
After finding that students who self-reported mindful habits performed better on tests and had higher grades, researchers from the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University wanted to know if school-based mindfulness training could help more students reap similar benefits.
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What was the purpose of the study?| A．To examine the techniques for practicing mindfulness. |
| B．To study the effects of group mindfulness training on students. |
| C．To see how students help themselves to perform better on tests. |
| D．To understand why mindfulness training calms the mind and body. |
7 . People trained to detect lies often rely on multiple signs, such as eye contact, length of responses and the details in what people say, but studies have shown that assessing a wide range of behavioural information can make it harder to decide if someone is lying. Bruno Verschuere at the University of Amsterdam and his colleagues wondered whether solely focusing on the detail of statements could provide more consistent results.
To test this idea, researchers asked 44 students to go for a walk or steal from a mock (模仿的) crime. Students were instructed to lie if they committed the fake theft.
Next, the researchers recruited 171 people to watch six truthful and six deceptive (欺骗的) interviews from these recordings, ranking interviewees’ eye contact and detail level. The results revealed that both truth-tellers and liars averted (转移) their gaze a similar amount, but truthful statements were substantially more detailed than deceptive ones, suggesting the latter is a more useful way to tell that someone is lying.
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1. Bruno Verschuere and his colleagues conducted the research to confirm that ________.| A．behavioral information played a vital role in finding out the truth |
| B．people should be trained to detect lies by referring to multiple cues |
| C．truthtellers and liars shared something in common when performing the task |
| D．it’s relatively easier to identify liars by relying only on the detail of statements |
| A．Liars turned away their eyes more often than truth-tellers. |
| B．Truthful statements included considerably more details than deceptive ones. |
| C．It’s difficult for participants to detect liars by using multiple cues like eye contact. |
| D．Participants who relied on one cue can distinguish lies from the truth faultlessly. |
8 . ......
During the world’s first holographic lesson, Ms Raducanu’s avatar appeared to feed balls to the players and gave live feedback on their shots, like “that was fast and there was lots of topspin on that”. Even Sam said he thought she had been prerecorded at first until she spoke with him directly.
Their holographic training session offers a glimpse into how advancing technology could revolutionize tennis coaching, according to Dr Ian Pearson.
Dr Pearson thinks that mixed reality headsets will soon allow tennis players to feel they are playing in unusual virtual environments, like on a space station or the middle of a lake Through 5G, the future of tennis will see increased interaction between real life tennis courts and the rich imagination we see in computer games-playing whenever, wherever and whoever you want.
Full sensory virtual reality could even place the viewer inside the tennis player’s shoes in real time. Dr Pearson said: “By 2030, with active skin technology, the playing styles and even the sensations of top-level players could be captured, so that anyone could experience how it actually felt to play that game through full sensory virtual reality.”
1. What did Ms Raducanu do in the first holographic lesson?| A．Give players a real time guidance. | B．Require players to follow her shots. |
| C．Record coaching contents in advance. | D．Share her experiences through the hologram. |
| A．Increase their imagination of sports. | B．Take the place of top level players. |
| C．Experience the feeling of players on the spot. | D．Have a sense of playing in an unusual place. |
9 . It isn’t easy to climb the Old Man of Hoy, one of the tallest in the United Kingdom. It is even more dangerous if you happen to be a blind climber, as Jesse Dufton is. The 34-year-old was born with a rare genetic disease (遗传病) that left him with less than 20 percent of his vision (视觉), which then kept dropping over the years. He chooses to climb, because it’s better than sitting at home feeling sorry for yourself, right? Climbing is not the most dangerous thing I do on an average day; crossing the road on the way to work is far more risky than Hoy.”
Dufton has been climbing mountains since childhood. As a skilled climber, his father would take him out at weekends. He was always physical then, always up for adventure. He played sports at school, though quickly grew frustrated (沮丧) with many of them. Badminton was a joke for someone like me, and even blind cricket — with a ball with a bell in it — annoyed me. “Instead he was attracted to climbing and skiing, and insists that climbing is one of the safer activities for a blind person to undertake. “True, you can’t see the handholds, or the footholds. You can’t see where the opportunities are, or where to place your hands and your gear (齿轮), so you just have to take it slowly. You search around until you can feel for something to hold onto, and then basically repeat the process over and over again. To keep calm in these situations helps.”
It was Jesse himself who made a documentary happen. He told the filmmaker Alistair Lee about his pastime, believing it might be worth capturing on film. I realized my story was quite unusual,” he says, adding that he felt almost duty-bound to share it. If somebody like me watches it, and they find it inspirational, then it wouldn’t be right for me to keep that from them, wouldn’t it?”
1. What is more dangerous in Jesse Dufton’s eyes?| A．Losing eyesight gradually. | B．Daily routines in his life. |
| C．Climbing the Old Man of Hoy. | D．Staying at home all day. |
| A．show his unique talent for climbing |
| B．inspire more people with disability |
| C．give credit to the brave climbers |
| D．educate people about risky sports |
10 . Explore Central Park, one of the largest city parks in the world and one of the most famous symbols of New York. Let’s have a look at its main sights.
Central Park is New York’s largest city park and one of the biggest in the world, with an area of 843 acres (about 3.4km2). This park is home to man-made lakes, waterfalls, grass and wooded areas. You will also find the Central Park Zoo, among other attractions in this greenspace of New York.
Besides being the city’s primary green lungs, Central Park is also a favorite spot for many New Yorkers. It is perfect for sunbathing, going for walks, or doing any outdoor sports. Something that we found curious is seeing so many people running with their babies in prams (婴儿车).
What can we learn about the Central Park from the text?| A．It is home to lakes and waterfalls. |
| B．It is perfect for doing outdoor sports. |
| C．It is the largest city park in the world. |
| D．It is the most famous symbol of New York. |
