1 . Steve Sparks was a young successful lawyer working for a famous law firm when his 3-year-old daughter’s serious leg problem changed his focus and the direction of his life. The problem led to many visits to doctors and an uncertain future. In a moment his life’s focus shifted from where he was going to take his clients to lunch to whether his daughter Katie was ever going to see her fourth birthday.
For three years Katie received many treatments in the hospital. And with the help of wonderful doctors and kind care-givers in Nemours Foundation, who Steve and his wife Michelle describe as heroes, Katie’s illness was cured.
Forever changed by the experience and inspired by the heroes who saved his daughter’s life, Steve felt he couldn’t go back to business as usual. He felt there was something else he was meant to do. He joined the Nemours Foundation as their lawyer. The job change came with a 65% pay cut from what he was making, but Steve’s purpose had found him and it was more important than a paycheck.
Fast forward 18 years, Katie is now a healthy 20-year-old junior in college and Steve is the Senior Vice-president of the Nemours Foundation where he brings Kati story and his purpose to work every day.
In 3 weeks Steve will celebrate Katie’s 21st birthday, and give a big thank-you to Nemours by riding his bicycle from Nemours’ headquarters in Jacksonville, Florida to Wilmington, Delaware. He will ride more than 900 miles in 9 days and raise 100,000 for the Nemours Foundation. His purpose hasn’t just become a part of his work. It has become a part of himself and his family.
1. What’s the text mainly about?| A．A hospital saved a girl’s life. | B．A girl going through a disease. |
| C．A man with a good purpose. | D．A family suffered a lot. |
| A．Injury. | B．Reduction. | C．Share. | D．Hole. |
| A．To find his purpose. | B．To cure his daughter. |
| C．To earn more money. | D．To help others. |
| A．Sometimes we find our purpose and sometimes our purpose finds us. |
| B．Unless you work hard, you cannot overcome any difficulty. |
| C．Anyone who is kind to others deserves good returns. |
| D．Nothing is more important than health. |
2 . Esports (electronic sports) are organized competitions where players — often referred to as “athletes” — face off against each other in video games. They are not just games in a sense. Actually, they are a sport that can improve the players’ thinking ability, hand-eye coordination, willpower and team spirit.
The esports industry has experienced significant growth in recent years around the world, though it’s still in the nascent stage, which means it has huge growth potential going forward.
While the assumption is that esports are only a recent phenomenon, in reality the first esports-like event was held back in 1972, when some Stanford University students competed against one another in the game Spacewar. The prize? A year-long subscription to Rolling Stone magazine.
The ’80s saw the first true videogame tournament, with over 10,000 players gathering for the Space Invaders Championship. However, most of the period saw that players focused on beating each other’s highest scores rather than competing in organized tournaments.
As gaming became more popular, the ’90s became the first decade when esports (a term which wasn’t yet coined) began to really take off, with companies such as Nintendo and Sega holding professional gaming tournaments. This is also when we began to see money becoming a factor in professional gaming. But it is the 1997 Red Annihilation Quake tournament that is considered the world’s first real esports event. Only a few weeks later, the Cyberathlete Professional League was formed — an organization which is considered a pioneer of esports.
Due to the normalization of gaming and the Internet (along with technological advances), the real surge ( 激增 ) of esports came in the recent decade. It was then that we began seeing what we now know to be modern-day esports. As streaming platforms such as YouTube took off, people began to show interest in not only playing videogames but watching them too. Popular tournaments now sell out stadiums and professional players can earn millions from prize money, advertising and salaries.
1. What does the underlined word “nascent” in Paragraph 2 probably mean?| A．Beginning. | B．Peak. |
| C．Mature. | D．Final. |
| A．By providing examples. | B．By making comparisons. |
| C．By following the order of time. | D．By following the order of importance. |
| A．They spread worldwide overnight. |
| B．Prize money appeared in the 1990s. |
| C．The first real esports event was held in 1972. |
| D．The athletes in esports are programmers. |
| A．They are getting popular. |
| B．They become too commercialized. |
| C．They boost the normalization of the Internet. |
| D．Their development relies on advertising. |
3 . The joy of giving is real, according to a study. Research presented in the Journal of the Association for Psychological Science shows that those who give gifts are happier — and happier for longer — than those who receive gifts.
Researchers conducted two studies last year. In one，participants were given $5 every day for five days and were required to spend the money on the same thing each day. Some participants were required to spend the money on themselves, while others were required to give to make a donation to charity. In a second experiment that was done online, participants played 10 rounds of a word puzzle game and each won 5 cents per round, which they could keep or donate.
In both experiments, participants reported their overall happiness. Those who donated their money showed that their happiness declined at a much slower rate than those who kept the money or spent it on themselves.
The researchers note that when people focus on an outcome, they can easily compare outcomes, which may diminish their sensitivity to each experience. When people focus on an action, they may focus less on comparison and instead experience each act of giving as a unique happiness-inducing event. Further analyses ruled out some potential alternative explanations, such as the possibility that participants who gave to others had to think longer and harder about what to give, which could promote higher happiness.
The results are especially interesting because according to one of the researchers, Ed O’Brien of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, they conflict with past research. “If you want to sustain happiness over time, past research tells us that we need to take a break from what were currently consuming and experience something new. Our research reveals that the kind of thing may matter more than assumed: Repeated giving, even in identical ways to identical other，may continue to feel relatively fresh and relatively pleasurable the more we do it,” O’Brien said.
So for all the holiday gifts you give this season, expect to feel happy and know that feeling is going to stick around for a while.
1. What’s the function of the first paragraph?| A．To lead to the topic. |
| B．To highlight the importance of the study. |
| C．To recommend a journal. |
| D．To persuade people to give gifts regularly. |
| A．To challenge the past research. |
| B．To rule out different experimental data. |
| C．To show the benefits of donation. |
| D．To make the conclusion more convincing. |
| A．Develop. | B．Show. | C．Reduce. | D．Lack. |
| A．Gift giving will result in longer happiness than receiving. |
| B．Thinking longer and harder on giving will promote higher happiness. |
| C．The feeling of happiness will disappear soon if people just give holiday gifts. |
| D．Taking a break from what were currently consuming will sustain happiness. |
4 . Researchers at the DogStudies lab at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History have shown that dogs may possess some metacognitive (元认知) abilities. Specifically, when they do not have enough information to solve a problem, they will actively look for more information, similarly to primates (灵长类).
In a recent study, project leader Julia Belger explored whether dogs have metacognitive abilities. To test this, the researchers designed a device involving two V-shaped fences. A reward, either food or a toy, would be placed by one researcher behind one of the two fences while another researcher held the dogs. In some cases, the dogs could see where the reward was placed, while in others, the dogs could not. The researchers then analyzed how frequently the dogs looked through the gap in the fence before choosing an option.
The researchers found that the dogs did check significantly more often for the reward when they had not seen where it was placed. These results show that dogs do tend to actively seek extra information when they have not seen where the reward is concealed.
The results did not allow the researchers to say definitively whether dogs possess meta-cognition, though they displayed some evidence for it. Julia said, “For humans, vision is an important information gathering sense. In this case, our experiment was based on a checking action relying on sight, but the dogs probably also used their sense of smell when checking through the gap. We know that smell is very important to dogs and we could see that they were using it.”
Julia added, “In future, we would like to develop an experiment to investigate under what circumstances dogs decide to use their sense of smell versus sight. This may give us additional insights into their information seeking abilities.”
1. What ability may dogs have according to the study?| A．To offer information like primates. | B．To use their skills to find more food. |
| C．To seek information to solve a problem. | D．To ask for help before choosing an option. |
| A．Decorated. | B．Hidden. | C．Produced. | D．Purchased. |
| A．Uncertain. | B．Friendly. | C．Negative. | D．Critical. |
| A．Environment and technology. | B．Humans and nature. |
| C．Literature and culture. | D．Society and life. |
5 . Why are pandas covering themselves with horse droppings? Researchers in China spent a decade studying this question. It really is something that some mammals will do in the Qinling Mountains in China. The pandas nose out fresh horse droppings, lay themselves down and roll their bodies in the dung(粪便).
The behavior may help pandas tolerate cold temperatures because a compound in horsedung, the researchers propose in the paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may help make pandas less sensitive to cold. “There are all kinds of reasons you want to stay away from dung.” Dr. Bowie said. She added that if they really are doing this, there must be “a clear fitness benefit”.
Field observations revealed that wild bears also seemed to smear themselves with horse droppings, preferentially engaging with dung during the cooler fall and winter months.
A chemical analysis of the dung revealed two compounds called sesquiterpenes(倍半萜烯), which are commonly found in plants. Further lab experiments showed the sesquiterpenes were gumming up(破坏)a type of cold-sensing protein for pandas and many other animals, including humans. “In theory, these chemicals, when applied topically like an ointment, might temporarily help pandas tolerate cold,” Dr. Wei, who was involved in the study said. “It's still unclear whether other animals might also cover themselves in dung for warmth.”
Isaac Chiu, a neuroscientist at Harvard University, praised the team's work, but added that the sesquiterpenes the researchers found in horsedung can do far more than weaken an animal’s ability to sense cold.
1. What’s special about pandas' behavior?| A．Pandas eat horsedung. |
| B．Pandas roll their bodies for fun. |
| C．Pandas wash horsedung off their bodies. |
| D．Pandas defend against cold with horsedung. |
| A．Cover. | B．Involve. | C．Content. | D．Surround. |
| A．Dr Wei was in charge of the study. |
| B．Sesquiterpenes can help pandas bear cold. |
| C．Many animals also coat themselves with dung. |
| D．Sesquiterpenes are commonly found in animals. |
| A．Unwilling. | B．Tolerant. | C．Positive. | D．Carefree. |
6 . Any actor would admit that it's tricky to play roles based on real people. They need to do mountains of research to make sure they're staying as true to life as possible. Besides, they try to add their own touches to the performance so that their work can be called their own.
American actor Andrew Garfield, 33, faced that dilemma when playing Desmond Doss in the film Hacksaw Ridge. Doss was a US army doctor during World War II who refused to carry a gun because of his beliefs, but saved 75 lives without firing a single shot. His actions made him the first conscientious objector —a person who objects to serving in the armed forces for moral or conscience reasons (基于道德或良心等原因)—to be presented with the Medal of Honor, the US's highest honor awarded for personal acts of bravery.
Garfield's first stage of research was to study as many documentaries of Doss he could get his hands on. But Garfield soon realized that he needed to learn not only the Doss' outer characteristics, but also “the deepest part of himself", he said. He traveled to Doss' hometown. The actor wanted to walk where Doss walked and handle the tools Doss handled, while all the time keeping in mind how the research would affect his performance.
"I don't think I could have gone too far in terms of getting to know who Doss was," Garfield said. "But it can't be an impression of him. That doesn't interest me. Garfield explains that it's like the difference between slipping into someone's clothes and stepping into their skin. Until he goes deep inside a role based on a real person, he doesn't feel he's done the work perfectly. And it's not until he fully understands the character that Garfield feels confident he can do the things asked of the role in the script (脚木)without hesitation or thought.
1. What makes it difficult for actors to play roles based on real people?| A．Copying the roles in appearance. | B．Masses of close touches with the roles. |
| C．Acting without their own feelings. | D．Lifelike performances with personal styles. |
| A．victory | B．failure |
| C．difficulty | D．celebration |
| A．To recognize his brave actions. | B．To attract people to join the army. |
| C．To admit the value of conscience. | D．To encourage doctors to follow his suit. |
| A．To meet Doss in person. | B．To do research on Doss early life. |
| C．To find out the insides of Doss. | D．To know about Doss' living conditions. |
7 . On the Father's Day before my father entered a nursing home, I gave him an Elmo doll. Like the colored pencils and sketchbook I bought him a year earlier, this was a desperate attempt to bring some joy to my increasingly bedridden father. Years ago, my father suffered a stroke which left him in bed for the rest of his life.
At the sight of Elmo, my three elder sisters shook their heads, certain that our father who was anything but childish would not like it. Sure enough, my father, 76, broke into that unpleasant smile that barely concealed his dislike.
“What on earth is this?” shouted my sisters, bursting into laughter.
“Daddy knows why I give him this,” I said, thinking that they had no idea what Elmo meant to my father. To my disappointment, my father shrugged. How could he not remember? Years earlier, I had been in the kitchen and heard something rare from the living room: laughter. I ran downstairs and saw that Elmo was on the PBS cooking show “The Frugal Gourmet”. “I don’t know what it is about him that gets to me,” my father choked out between laughter and tears. “He's just so funny!”
As my father lay in the nursing home, I would visit him in the evenings. We watched old movies with the lights off. Even though he never asked for it, I brought Elmo from home and put him where my father could see him. Before leaving, I would take Elmo from the dresser and place him in my father’s immobile arm. A slight smile would appear on his face. It never looked softer.
1. What’s the problem with the author’s father?| A．He lost the ability to feel joy. | B．He became childish after the stroke. |
| C．He was disappointed with his children. | D．He was bound to stay in bed due to an illness. |
| A．Hid. | B．Showed. | C．Explained. | D．Expressed. |
| A．His father asked for one. | B．An Elmo doll once amused his father. |
| C．Nothing but a doll made his father smile. | D．His father mentioned one on the cooking show. |
| A．The trouble a stroke can cause. | B．The difficulty to make a father happy. |
| C．How a simple gift brings joy to a father. | D．How to choose a proper toy for old people. |
8 . Children born in the past four decades had the luxury of being the center of their parents’ attention. The entire family’s resources were poured into their education and well-being.
However，when the same resources are split between two children，the amount distributed to each one is going to shrink.
According to the Hangzhou Daily，when there are two children in the family，parents tend to choose public schools instead of private schools，which are usually more expensive. Each child is enrolled in fewer after-school training classes.
But having a second child may cure some deep-rooted problems in China’s traditional family education.
Having two children in the family can help to prevent one child being spoiled by too much attention，according to People’s Daily. It also spares the only child from the pressure of shouldering parental expectations all alone. Taking care of a sibling also enables children to gain a sense of responsibility，cooperation，obedience and caring.
China’s public education system is also expected to shift. Currently，there are not enough vacancies in kindergarten and schools to accommodate the potential increase in children.
“It’s not only the enrollment capacity of educational institutions that will feel the pressure. People are also placing more emphasis on the quality of education，”Peng Xizhe， director of the Population and Development Research Policy Center at Fudan University，told China Education Daily.
He predicts the government may have to invest more to support the educational system as a result of the new family planning measure.
1. What can children benefit from a two-child family?| A．They can have less pressure. |
| B．They can study in private schools. |
| C．They can get much more attention. |
| D．They can take more after-school training classes. |
| A．hold | B．adapt | C．solve | D．consider |
| A．People are placing more emphasis on the quality of education. |
| B．The government may have to invest more to support the educational system. |
| C．The new family planning measure will challenge the current educational system. |
| D．The educational institutions will feel the pressure that their capacity is not enough. |
| A．To show benefits of owning two children. |
| B．To persuade people to bear more children. |
| C．To encourage people to have only one child. |
| D．To introduce the impact of two-child policy. |
9 . If you were to throw, say, a banana peel out of your car while driving along the motorway, that would be a completely harmless action, due to the fact that it’s part of a fruit — right? Actually, no. A banana peel can take up to two years to be naturally processed, and with a third of motorists admitting to littering while driving, that’s a whole lot of discarded banana peels. An orange peel and a cigarette butt has a similar biodegrading (生物降解) term to that of a banana peel, but tin cans last up to 100 years; and plastic bottles last forever, as do glass bottles.
Despite the fact that longer-lasting materials will serve to damage the environment and its animals for longer, we can’t merely measure the severity of a certain type of rubbish by its lifetime. For example, despite having a fairly short length of biodegrading time, more than 120 tons of cigarette-related litter is discarded in the UK every day.
It’s not a cheap habit either: to keep our streets clean annually costs UK taxpayers £500 million, and when you include our green spaces, that goes up to £1 billion. So, it’s not surprising that if caught fly-tipping you could face a £20,000 fine or even jail time and, if you disposed of something dangerous, the court could give you five years to serve. Regardless of how severe these punishments might seem, however, among the reported cases only 2,000 were found guilty out of 825,000, so we still have some way to go in making sure people obey the rules.
1. What does the underlined word “discarded” in para1 mean?| A．Harmless. | B．Processed. | C．Thrown. | D．Long-lasting. |
| A．Glass bottles. | B．Tin cans. | C．Cigarette butts. | D．Banana peels. |
| A．The severity of rubbish can be measured by its lifetime. |
| B．Quite a few people were found guilty of illegally littering. |
| C．Every year UK taxpayers spend £500 million keeping streets free of dirt. |
| D．Cigarette-related litter and peels can be ignored for their fairly short lifetime. |
| A．To inform readers of different biodegrading terms. |
| B．To call for people not to litter illegally. |
| C．To encourage people to use fewer plastic bags. |
| D．To stress the importance of good behavior. |
10 . Confused by food nutrition labels? You’re not alone. Now, researchers have suggested an alternative: labelling the amount and type of exercise needed to burn off the calories.
Current food and drink labels display nutritional information such as the amount of calories and fat. However, researchers led by Prof. Amanda Daley at Loughborough University say that these labels are having a limited effect on changing buying habits. Instead, they propose a labelling system called ‘physical activity calorie equivalent or expenditure’ (PACE) (体育活动热量当量), which shows how many minutes or miles of physical activity are needed to burn off the calories. For example, a small bar of milk chocolate contains 230 calories, which would take about 42 minutes of walking, or 22 minutes of running, to burn off.
They pooled the data from 14 previous studies which compared the impact of PACE labelling with that of other types of food labelling, or with no food labelling at all. They calculated that PACE labelling could cut a person’s daily calorie intake by up to 200 calories. “Public health agencies may want to consider the possibility of including policies to promote PACE food labelling as a strategy that contributes to the prevention and treatment of obesity (肥胖) and related diseases,” said the researchers.
The UK’s Royal Society for Public Health has already called for PACE labelling to replace the current system. However, not everyone is convinced. A spokesperson for the eating disorder charity Beat said: “We believe that anti-obesity campaigns that focus on weight instead of health are ineffective and that recommending more exercise is an ineffective and over-simplistic approach to a complex problem. Most urgently, public health campaigns must consider people’s mental as well as their physical health, moving from obesity-shaming to evidence-based campaigns that build confidence and support healthy eating.”
1. What additional information can you get from PACE labels compared with the current ones?
| A．Exercise advice | B．Fat content |
| C．Nutrition facts | D．Calorie content |
| A．collected | B．distributed | C．deleted | D．proved |
| A．Obesity is a physical problem and can be solved by increasing exercise. |
| B．Obesity is related to eating habits and can be tackled by cutting calories. |
| C．Obesity is no simple problem but can be settled by focusing on weight. |
| D．Obesity is complicated and should be tackled physically and mentally. |
| A．PACE: A new labelling option |
| B．Nutrition: A basic step towards health |
| C．Labelling: A smart advisor for shopping |
| D．Excise: An effective treatment for obesity |
