1 . There’s a useful concept from psychology that helps explain why good people do things that harm the environment: the false consensus effect. That’s where we overvalue how acceptable and prevalent (普遍的) our own behavior is in society. Put simply, if you’re doing something (even if you secretly know you probably shouldn’t), you’re more likely to think plenty of other people do it too. What’s more, you likely overestimate how much other people think that behavior is broadly OK.
This bias (偏见) allows people to justify socially unacceptable or illegal behaviors. Researchers have observed the false consensus effect in drug use and illegal hunting. More recently, conservationists are beginning to reveal how this effect contributes to environmental damage.
In Australia, people who admitted to poaching (偷猎) thought it was much more prevalent in society than it really was, and had higher estimates than fishers who obeyed the law. They also believed others viewed poaching as socially acceptable; however, in reality, more than 90% of fishers held the opposite view. The false consensus effect has also shown up in studies examining support for nuclear energy and offshore wind farms.
Just as concepts from psychology can help explain some forms of environmental damage, so too can they help address it. For example, research shows people are more likely to litter in areas where there’s already a-lot of trash scattered around; so making sure the ground around a bin is not covered in rubbish may help.
Factual information on how other people think and behave can be very powerful. Energy companies have substantially reduced energy consumption simply by showing people how their electricity use compares to their neighbors. Encouragingly, stimulating people’s natural desire for status has also been successful in getting people to “go green to be seen”, or to publicly buy eco-friendly products.
As the research evidence shows, social norms can be a powerful force in encouraging and popularizing environmentally friendly behaviors. Perhaps you can do your bit by sharing this article!
1. Which example best illustrates the false consensus effect?| A．A student spends long hours surfing the internet. |
| B．A blogger assumes many people dislike his posts. |
| C．A driver frequently parks illegally in public places. |
| D．A smoker believes people generally approve of smoking. |
| A．It is unacceptable. | B．It is widespread. |
| C．It is controversial. | D．It is complex. |
| A．Embrace green habits for better health. |
| B．Make green choices that others can perceive. |
| C．Join green movements for personal fulfillment. |
| D．Choose green items that are easy to spot in stores. |
| A．Understate social norms. | B．Highlight personal responsibilities. |
| C．Publicize sustainable practices. | D．Encourage technological innovations. |
We’ve all heard the advice to “get out of your comfort zone” by taking on a new challenge. A recent study goes a step further: Make discomfort a direct goal. That’s more likely to motivate you
In the first of five experiments, the researchers assigned several hundred students training at Second City Chicago
Experiments
Reframing anxiety as excitement has been proven a way to improve singing in front of strangers, and thinking of stress as
“When people reinterpret negative experiences as
3 . A speech in a play by Shakespeare can be as short as a word or as long as several hundred. But what is the most common length?
Staying away from Shakespeare himself for a moment, we can take Ben Jonson’s play Volpone (1606) and count the number of speeches and their lengths. The most common length is four words. The next most common length is five words. Of the other 16 Jonson’s plays, 12 also have a speech length mode (模式) of four. It was not just Jonson; it was everybody. After 1602, four-word speeches were the most common kind across all the early modern plays that survived.
The London theatre industry took off in the late 1580s and early 1590s and we see a concentration of speech length modes of nine or ten. After 1602, the mode of four predominated. If we look just at Shakespeare’s plays, we find him doing what everyone else did: changing from favoring nine-word speeches to favouring four-word speeches around 1597-1602 and never going back.
Our suggestion is that the playwrights (剧作家) learned progressively from one another how to represent more closely the speech lengths of everyday exchanges and found that audiences responded well to these. They started to focus less on strict writing rules and more on the liveliness of everyday speech.
Another way to think of this is offered by the Russian literary scholar Boris Yarkho. He put forward an “index (指数) of liveliness” — the ratio of the number of speeches to the total number of lines in a play. He researched the works of the 17th-century French playwright Pierre Corneille and found that his comedies have a higher index because of their shorter speeches. The move from a mode of nine words to a mode of four represents the shortened average speech, and thus a move to livelier drama in Yarkho’s terms.
Nevertheless, we have no record of any dramatist or playgoer reflecting on the shortening of average speech lengths; our only knowledge of it comes from counting the words in the plays for ourselves.
1. What happened in English plays around the 1600s?| A．Their storylines were about famous writers. | B．They were influenced by a poetic writing style. |
| C．They featured different storytelling techniques. | D．Their speeches were generally shorter in length. |
| A．Remained unique. | B．Took the leading position. |
| C．Disappeared slowly. | D．Played an educational role. |
| A．To challenge traditional writing rules. | B．To stand out by applying their unique style. |
| C．To avoid being affected by social values. | D．To create realistic and acceptable speeches. |
| A．It saved actors the trouble of memorizing their lines. |
| B．It reflected people's preference for serious dialogues. |
| C．It helped present dramas in an active and pleasant way. |
| D．It made the characters express their feelings effectively. |
I will share the kind act that I met with all of you. We had dozens of restaurant options within a short distance, so we often took advantage of this luxury. On one occasion, I ran out to get some food. I saw the clouds in the distance and decided I could make it there and come back in time, but I was wrong. I was about to leave the restaurant when the rain just poured. The street was flooded within minutes.
But I had my little girl and husband waiting for me back at home, and they were hungry, so I knew I had to make a run for it. The owner of the restaurant tried to encourage me to wait inside, but I insisted that I should go. At this point, he grabbed his umbrella and said, “Okay, let’s go.” Of course I tried to convince him that it wasn’t necessary for him to walk me home, but I knew I wouldn’t prevent him from doing so. So off we went. We quickly realized that the umbrella wouldn’t help much in keeping us dry. He walked me all the way to my apartment building, where he said goodbye and ran back to the restaurant.
Again I encountered this act of kindness when I was making my way to the bus. As I waited at the crosswalk (人行道), it began to rain lightly. Nothing was too bad, but a young guy nearby felt like it was heavy enough to make him step next to me and hold his umbrella above both of us. After a while, the lights turned green. I thanked him and walked across the street.
Getting around the city when you are six months pregnant (怀孕的) and have a two-year-old kid can be challenging sometimes. One spring afternoon, I realized I needed something from the store to finish preparing for dinner. The weather seemed a bit questionable but the store was around the corner so I decided to risk it.
注意：1. 续写词数应为 150 左右；
2. 续写部分分为两段，每段的开头语已为你写好。
Paragraph 1:
It wasn’t raining when we left so we didn’t carry my umbrella.
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As we crossed the street the woman offered me her umbrella.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________5 . Willful ignorance exists in large amount in daily life. People regularly look the other way rather than examining the consequences of their actions. Despite plenty of scientific evidence for climate change, for instance, many people still avoid engaging with facts about global warming.
We wanted to understand how common willful ignorance is and why people engage in it. After collecting data from multiple research projects that involved more than 6,000 individuals, we discovered that willful ignorance is common and harmful, with 40 percent of people choosing “not to know” the consequences of their actions to free themselves of guilt while maximizing their own gains. But we also found that about 40 percent of people are unselfish: rather than avoiding information about the consequences of their actions, they seek it out to increase the benefits to others.
In the experiments, the decisions were made in one of two settings. In the transparent (透明的) setting, decision-makers had information about how their choice would affect themselves and their partner. In an ambiguous (模糊的) setting, decision-makers knew how their choice would matter for themselves but not for their teammate — although they could request that insight.
The overall balance tipped toward selfishness when participants had the option to avoid information. Only 39 percent of people in the ambiguous setting made the choice that ultimately benefited their partner — a significant drop from 55 percent in the transparent condition.
If we can avoid putting a strong moral emphasis on decisions, it may make people feel less threatened and, as a result, be less willfully ignorant. Other research groups have found promising ways to do this. For instance, we could encourage people to think more positively about good deeds rather than guilt-trip them for what they have failed to do. Highlighting recent global achievements, such as healing the ozone (臭氧) layer, can inspire people to keep up the good work rather than feeling like the battle is lost and that the situation is hopeless.
In short, we can encourage one another and ourselves toward more selfless and generous actions.
1. Why do some people choose not to know the consequences of their actions?| A．To make easier choices to be a good person. |
| B．To increase their own benefits more than others’. |
| C．To avoid the influence of consequences on actions. |
| D．To get the most benefits without a sense of shame. |
| A．By focusing less on its morality. | B．By stressing its potential threat. |
| C．By being more positive about oneself. | D．By getting people aware of their actions. |
| A．Culture. | B．Environment. | C．Psychology. | D．Biology. |
| A．The reason for willful ignorance. |
| B．The results of willful ignorance. |
| C．The harmful effects of willful ignorance. |
| D．The influence of willful ignorance on environment. |
Dora Kellert was the school’s spelling bee champion, winner of the reading contest at the public library three summers in a row and the playground grand champion in chess. She was a straight-A student.
Though Dora was talented, she was no good at sports. She could not figure out in which direction to kick the soccer ball. She was no good at baseball or basketball either. It wasn’t until last year, when she was eleven years old, that she learned how to ride a bike. And even then she had to use training wheels.
“I’ll never be good at sports,” she thought one day as she lay on her bed staring at the shelf her father had made to hold her trophies (奖杯). “How I wish I could win something, anything, even marbles (弹珠).”
At the word “marbles,” she sat up, “That’s it. Maybe I could be good at playing marbles.” She jumped out of bed and found a can full of her brother’s marbles. “Yes,” she thought. “I could play marbles, and marbles is a sport.” At that moment she realized that she had only three weeks to practice. The playground championship was coming up. She had a lot to do.
To strengthen her wrists (腕关节), she decided to do twenty push-ups on her fingertips, five at a time. By the end of the first set she was breathing hard. She did one more set and decided that was enough push-ups for the first day. She squeezed (握) a rubber eraser one hundred times, hoping it would strengthen her thumb (大拇指). This seemed to work because the next day her thumb was painful. She could hardly hold a marble in her hand, so Dora rested that day and listened to her brother’s tips on how to shoot.
After school the next day she practiced three hours straight. After practice, she squeezed the eraser for an hour. Practice, practice, practice. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. Dora got better and even beat her brother for the first time.
注意：1．续写词数应为150左右；
2．请按如下格式在相应位置作答。
Time flew and soon came the big day.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Dancing home, she placed the trophy on the middle of the shelf.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________It was an unpleasant, cold Sunday evening. The sun was on its way home and so was Sara. Sara was a health inspector, so she had to check people’s houses to see if they were living a health y life.
Sundays were the only days she got a holiday, so she had been out trying to relax and enjoy the day. She was almost home when a small old house caught her eye. Her curiosity didn’t allow her to pass by without checking it.
Hesitantly, she approached the house and knocked. She did not think anyone would be living in such an old, shabby cabin, but, to her surprise, an old couple answered the door. The house and the couple were quite similar, both old, ragged and very easily broken.
She greeted them and asked if she could come in. Their house was empty, just like their empty stomachs that growled (低吼) aloud. It was a heartbreaking scene to witness the condition they were in.
She gathered her courage and asked the reason behind their condition. The couple were a bit nervous at first, but eventually opened up about their life. The couple, named Razia and Shahid,were going through tough times. Shahid was not educated, so he couldn’t get a decent job and only worked as a laborer, but that also for a short time because he would often fall il l due to old age. Rizia would work as a maid at people’s homes when she was young, but when age caught up with her, she also could not work properly and fell sick.
They had no children, so there was no one to look after them in their old age. Some nights, they slept hungry, while on other nights, they received a meal from some kind people. They explained how hunger was like an unwanted companion, always present, making their stomachs growl.
Sara felt saddened by their tough situation and tried to comfort them. She thought about making some arrangements for their care.
注意：1. 写作词数应为 150左右；
2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Suddenly her eyes li t up with, an idea.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________The couple were delighted, and prayed for Sara’s health and long life.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________16-year-old Tim looked up to his father Roger, who worked as a firefighter. While the teenager always talked about his dream of joining the fire department, the man didn’t believe the boy was cut out to be a firefighter because Tim left the usual stereotype of a bookworm: a straight-A student who wore large glasses, and was physically weak.
It was a typical school day. Tim’s math teacher announced their weekly test results, and the boy was delighted to learn that he had scored the highest mark. His friend Harry, however, was upset because he got a bad grade.
Seeing him sit in a corner with his head resting on the table, he approached him and said, “Hey, Harry, I know you got a bad grade, but I can teach you these topics. You’ll grasp it in no time, I’m sure. And you can improve your grade next week. What do you say?” “That’s so sweet of you, Tim! Let’s meet at my house after school today,” Harry said with a smile. “Sure!” Tim replied.
Harry lived on the outskirts of town. It took Tim, who passed his driving test recently, half an hour to drive there. Once his car neared Harry’s estate, he was shocked to see a blazing fire. Upon driving closer, he realized his house was on fire. Frightened, he quickly picked up his phone and called 911.
Then, Tim took off his shirt, grabbed a bottle of water from his car, and poured it on the shirt. He wrapped the wet shirt around his face, as he had seen in movies, and entered the house. He started climbing towards the hallway window of Harry’s bedroom.
Tim found a baseball bat in the hall. It took him five whole minutes to swing it hard enough to break the window. Once the glass was broken, he rushed towards Harry’s room. He couldn’t see much because of the thick black smoke floating in the air, but he managed to locate him. He was lying unconscious (昏迷的) on his bed after breathing in the smoke.
注意：1.续写词数应为 150 左右；
2.请按如下格式在相应位置作答
Paragraph 1:
He knew he had to act fast before it was too late.
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Roger received an unexpected call from the hospital telling him of Tim’s heroic act.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________9 . The greatest irony (讽刺) of the world-wide celebrations held in 2012 to honour the 200th anniversary (周年纪念) of the first edition of the Grimms’ Hausm rchen involves the discovery that most people really don’t know the original Grimms’ tales published in 1812.
If we return to take a closer look at the first edition, we’ll find it was this edition that inspired scholars of folk culture throughout Europe to gather tales from the oral tradition and preserve them for future generations.
When the Grimms Jacob and Wilhelm began collecting al kinds of folk tales and songs at the beginning of the 19th century, what attracted them to concentrate on old German literature was a belief that the most natural and pure forms of culture were to be located in the past, while modern literature, even though it might be remarkably rich, was artificial and thus could not express the genuine quality of folk culture that originated naturally from people’s experiences and bound the people together. Broadly speaking, the Grimms sought to collect and preserve ancient things consisting of tales, songs and documents. They intended to demonstrate how natural language, originating from the needs and customs of the common people, created genuine bonds and helped form civilized communities.
Turning to the first edition a reader might notice that, totally unlike the final edition of 1857, the first edition collects more genuine folk tales, keeping spoken and raw contents, despite the fact that the language is not as pleasing as that in later revised versions. Forinstance, Snow White’s mother, not her stepmother, wants to kill the beautiful girl out of envy. The storytellers do not beat about the bush and they tell the truths they know, engaging peopleto learn from symbols how to engage their realities, even though magic, incredible transformation and cruelty are involved.
Lastly, the Grimms’ little-known first edition reveals forgotten voices that are actually deep within us. Therefore, the irresistibility of the Grimms’ tales are that really not theirs, but ours.
1. According to the author, why should we rediscover the Grimms’ first edition?| A．To explore its origin. |
| B．To appreciate its significance. |
| C．To honour its 200th anniversary. |
| D．To remember the Brothers Grimm. |
| A．The quality of the folk culture. |
| B．The contents of the first edition. |
| C．The feature of the old German literature. |
| D．The motivation of the Grimms collecting tales. |
| A．It is loosely based on the folk tale. |
| B．It instructs readers to integrate into life. |
| C．It is appealing for its beautiful language. |
| D．It exposes envy and cruelty of the stepmother. |
| A．They were collectors of antiques. |
| B．They kept their style in later editions. |
| C．They thought highly of modern literature. |
| D．They were pioneers in preserving folk culture. |
The library was typically so quiet that you could hear a pin drop. But on this Wednesday afternoon, there was a roar of laughter that spread through the halls. It was coming from a table in the back. Books were piled so high that one could barely see the source of all the noise. Brian and Josie were hiding behind the mountain of history texts, their faces bright red from laughing.
Mrs Cane, the librarian, followed the laughter and then approached the table. As she cleared her throat and looked over the piles of books, Brian and Josie looked up to meet her gaze. Mrs Cane looked at the books, then at the kids. “And what is it you two are supposed to be working on?”
Brian hesitated a moment, and then answered, “We’re working on a paper for our history class.”
“I see,” Mrs Cane said harshly. “Perhaps one of the private reading rooms would be a better place for you to concentrate and study. Quietly.”
The kids collected their books and their backpacks and followed Mrs Cane down a long hallway until they got to a dark row of doors. Mrs Cane pulled out a ring of keys from her pocket and unlocked a door. She turned on the light, which shone brightly overhead. The kids placed their books on the dusty table and reluctantly (不情愿地) climbed into the chairs. Brian and Josie shrugged (耸肩) and opened their books, finally focusing on the project at hand.
Time was ticking away. After what seemed like hours, Brian and Josie decided to take a break and when Josie opened the door of the room, Brian’s eyes opened wide. The library was completely dark. Looking at his watch, he let out a gasp. “It’s 9:30! The library closed an hour ago!”
Paragraph 1:Brian looked through his backpack for his cellphone.
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They heard a noise that sounded like a telephone ringing.
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