In a small village called Brightville, there lived three friends: Kimberley, John and Alicia. They were all students at Brightville High School. Kimberley was a hardworking and determined girl; John was a curious and creative boy; and Alicia was a kind and helpful girl. They shared a common dream of achieving their goals through education.
On a sunny day, the three friends gathered at their favorite spot near the village river. They often met there to discuss their dreams and motivate each other. Kimberley always emphasized (强调) the importance of studying and setting goals. John loved exploring new things and finding creative ways to learn. Alicia, with her caring nature, always supported and encouraged her friends.
One day, they came across an old abandoned library in the heart of Brightville. The library was filled with dust-covered books. Kimberley saw this as an opportunity for their dreams to come true. She suggested turning the library into a learning center for the village.
The three friends spent months cleaning, organizing and renewing the library. They reached out to the villagers, and soon, volunteers joined them to set up the learning center. They created a friendly and welcome environment where students could come to study, read books, and seek help.
Word about the learning center spread throughout the village. Students from all ages and backgrounds started attending. Kimberley, John and Alicia devoted their after-school hours to tutoring (指导) the students. They understood that education was not just about memorizing facts but also about nurturing curiosity and passion for learning.
注意：
1. 续写词数应为150左右;
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
As days turned into months, they saw the effect of their hard work.
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The success of the learning center in Brightville caught the attention of the local government.
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“I don’t think anyone is going to send you money, Jessica. People just aren’t that kind.” said my mother. I was shocked by such a comment. “But you’re wrong. People are kind and they will be generous enough to send me money.” I argued.
Last fall, I sent 200 letters to businesses, doctors and friends asking for sponsorship so I could attend the National Youth Leadership Forum on Medicine. everyone doubted my efforts, and I heard every excuse why people would be too busy to help me. “These people don’t even know you. Do you honestly think a stranger will send you money?” asked my friends. “Why put yourself through all this disappointment? Just forget it.” said my grandfather. I decided not to listen. The best thing I could do was to attend the Forum and learn more about my future career.
I waited weeks for my first response, which came from a bank. “Dear Jessica,” it read. “At this time. Our bank does not offer aid to students, but we wish you luck and success in your project.” My heart sank. I was rejected. I looked at my grandpa. “Well?” he asked. He should have been able to tell from my disappointed face. “ Here, ” I said, as I handed him the letter and locked myself in my room. But then I realized what I was doing. “It’s only one rejection,” I said to myself, “Cheer up. You will receive a letter with a check in it.”
注意：
续写词数应为150左右；
请按如下格式作答。
Paragraph 1:
I rushed home from school every day the next two weeks.
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Paragraph 2:
But one day, I came home and heard five beautiful words: Jessica, you have two letters.
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3 . Why isn’t science better? Look at career incentives.
There are often substantial gaps between the idealized and actual versions of those people whose work involves providing a social good. Government officials are supposed to work for their constituents. Journalists are supposed to provide unbiased reporting and penetrating analysis. And scientists are supposed to relentlessly probe the fabric of reality with the most rigorous and skeptical of methods.
All too often, however, what should be just isn’t so. In a number of scientific fields, published findings turn out not to replicate (复制), or to have smaller effects than, what was initially claimed. Plenty of science does replicate — meaning the experiments turn out the same way when you repeat them — but the amount that doesn’t is too much for comfort.
But there are also ways in which scientists increase their chances of getting it wrong. Running studies with small samples, mining data for correlations and forming hypotheses to fit an experiment’s results after the fact are just some of the ways to increase the number of false discoveries.
It’s not like we don’t know how to do better. Scientists who study scientific methods have known about feasible remedies for decades. Unfortunately, their advice often falls on deaf ears. Why? Why aren’t scientific methods better than they are? In a word: incentives. But perhaps not in the way you think.
In the 1970s, psychologists and economists began to point out the danger in relying on quantitative measures for social decision-making. For example, when public schools are evaluated by students’ performance on standardized tests, teachers respond by teaching “to the test”. In turn, the test serves largely as of how well the school can prepare students for the test.
We can see this principle—often summarized as “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”—playing out in the realm of research. Science is a competitive enterprise. There are far more credentialed (授以证书的) scholars and researchers than there are university professorships or comparably prestigious research positions. Once someone acquires a research position, there is additional competition for tenure (终身教授) grant funding, and support and placement for graduate students. Due to this competition for resources, scientists must be evaluated and compared. How do you tell if someone is a good scientist?
An oft-used metric (标准，度量) is the number of publications one has in peer-reviewed journals, as well as the status of those journals. Metrics like these make it straightforward to compare researchers whose work may otherwise be quite different. Unfortunately, this also makes these numbers susceptible to exploitation.
If scientists are motivated to publish often and in high-impact journals, we might expect them to actively try to game the system (钻空子). And certainly, some do—as seen in recent high-profile cases of scientific fraud (欺诈). If malicious (恶意的) fraud is the prime concern, then perhaps the solution is simply heightened alertness.
However, most scientists are, I believe, genuinely interested in learning about the world, and honest. The problem with incentives is that they can shape cultural norms without any intention on the part of individuals.
1. Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?| A．Scientists are expected to persistently devoted to exploration of reality. |
| B．The research findings fail to achieve the expected effect. |
| C．Hypotheses are modified to highlight the experiments’ results. |
| D．The amount of science that does replicate is comforting. |
| A．The public. | B．The incentive initiators. |
| C．The peer researchers. | D．The high-impact journal editors. |
| A．Good scientists excel in seeking resources and securing research positions. |
| B．Competition for resources pushes researchers to publish in a more productive way. |
| C．All the credentialed scholars and researchers will take up university professorships. |
| D．The number of publication reveals how scientists are bitterly exploited. |
| A．High-impact journals are encouraged to reform the incentives for publication. |
| B．The peer-review process is supposed to scale up inspection of scientific fraud. |
| C．Researchers are motivated to get actively involved in gaming the current system. |
| D．Career incentives for scientists are expected to consider their personal intention. |
4 . No Guts, No Glory? The Fear and Attraction of Risky Winter Sports
Once I went flying off the side of a mountain on skis. Certainly, I didn’t mean to. Before I
The Winter Olympics are here, and I’ll be astonished with my heart in my mouth, watching ski-jumping and people hurtling downhill at
It
Eric Brymer and Robert Schweitzer asked people who had been doing an extreme sport for many years, to reflect
For me, reading what the research participants said was
I have an almost total lack of mastery of winter sports. The contrast between my enthusiasm and lack of skill
Perhaps the best
| A．left | B．hit | C．flew | D．lost |
| A．short-lived | B．mind-numbing | C．break-neck | D．long-drawn-out |
| A．turns | B．hangs | C．takes | D．bursts |
| A．applauded | B．prohibited | C．recommended | D．challenged |
| A．interest | B．respect | C．priority | D．price |
| A．simple | B．straightforward | C．complicated | D．close |
| A．swiftly | B．deeply | C．intensely | D．temporarily |
| A．identify | B．dread | C．treasure | D．conduct |
| A．experience | B．society | C．fear | D．environment |
| A．enlightening | B．distressing | C．entertaining | D．confusing |
| A．Hence | B．Furthermore | C．Rather | D．However |
| A．scene | B．picture | C．odds | D．straw |
| A．stands for | B．accounts for | C．checks out | D．points out |
| A．belt | B．helmet | C．protection | D．blade |
| A．take-away | B．carry-out | C．take-off | D．try-out |
“The dangerous thing about lying is people don’t understand how the act changes us,” says Dan Ariely, behavioural psychologist at Duke University. Psychologists have documented children lying as early as the age of two. Lying is even considered
According to Ariely, lying takes work. In studies, he gave subjects a chance to deceive for monetary gains while examining their brains in a functional MRI machine. Some people told the truth instantly. But others opted to lie, and they showed increased activity in their frontal parietal(颅腔壁的)control network, which is involved in complex thinking. It suggested that they were deciding between truth and dishonesty, and after thinking about it,
External conditions also matter in terms of when and how often we lie. We are more likely to lie, research shows, when we see others being dishonest. And we are less likely to lie when we think others are watching. “We
In a 2016 study, Ariely and colleagues showed how dishonesty alters people’s brains, making it easier to tell lies in the future. When people told a lie, the scientists noticed a burst of activity in their amygdala, a crucial part of the brain that produces fear and guilt. But when scientists had their subjects
6 . With advances in electronics and neuroscience, researchers have been able to achieve remarkable things with brain implant devices. In addition to restoring physical senses, scientists are also seeking innovative ways to
For years, scientists have been trying to control and use neutral inputs to give a voice back to people whose neurological damage prevents them from talking. Until now, many of these brain-computer interfaces have
The brain is undamaged in these patients, but the neurons - the pathways that
The researchers started with high-resolution brain activity data collected from five volunteers over several years. These participants - all of whom had normal speech function - were already undergoing a
From there, the UCSF team worked out a two-stage process to recreate the spoken sentences. First, they created a decoder to
Other research has tried to decode words and sounds directly from neural signals,
Using this method, the researchers successfully reverse-engineered words and sentences from brain activity that
| A．offer | B．facilitate | C．initiate | D．influence |
| A．signs | B．consciousness | C．signals | D．waves |
| A．featured | B．neglected | C．rejected | D．missed |
| A．expressions | B．muscles | C．languages | D．masks |
| A．contribute to | B．communicate with | C．match with | D．lead to |
| A．daily | B．delicate | C．repetitive | D．tough |
| A．growing | B．producing | C．checking | D．monitoring |
| A．track | B．map | C．organize | D．design |
| A．copy | B．transform | C．follow | D．interpret |
| A．physical | B．virtual | C．individual | D．external |
| A．considering | B．creating | C．skipping | D．moving |
| A．other than | B．aside from | C．regardless of | D．rather than |
| A．roughly | B．barely | C．similarly | D．formally |
| A．spell | B．identify | C．parallel | D．invent |
| A．version | B．fluency | C．pronunciation | D．accuracy |
注意：1.字数 100字左右。
2.可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
3.参考词汇：报名：sign up
英文短剧大赛：English short play competition
Notice
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The Students’ Union
When Valentine's Day was around the corner, Grandma came down with a terrible cold when she was travelling from Colorado to my family's house in California. She was too weak to go out at all, which was sad and disappointing. That was because Grandma and Grandpa had been planning to take my little sister Indi and me to the zoo for Valentine's Day. Grandma, as an animal lover, had been especially looking forward to it.
On Valentine's Day Indi begged Grandma to go to the zoo together. But Grandma jokingly explained that if she went there, she might spread her cold to other visitors, or even to the animals, making them all start sneezing.
In my mind, I imagined the sight that an elephant kept sneezing. Meanwhile I made my arm into a trunk and blurted out a funny trumpeting sound that ended in a gigantic sneeze. "Good one, Brother!" Indi laughed. "That elephant would need a huge box of tissues.”
Grandma was amused. But she insisted that she should stay at home and rest up. She wished us a pleasant visit and reminded us to send her regards to the monkeys in the zoo.
Well, we did go and we did have a great time but I kept wishing Grandma could have been there with us. When we reached the monkey mountain, Grandpa told us to hold still and say “cheese" and snapped a good picture of the monkeys and us.
“Cheese!” I said. But Indi said, “Happy Valentine's Day, Grandma!”
"You were supposed to say cheese." said Grandpa.
Indi shrugged, “It just came out.”
"I'm glad it did" I said, because your words just gave me a fantastic idea! What if we take pictures of different animals, and then turn them into a special Valentine gift for Grandma?" Indi and Grandpa agreed and we kept taking pictures with delight for Grandma's surprise.
注意：1、所续写短文的词数应为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:
When we got home, we set about making the gift.
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Paragraph 2:
Then we took the gift upstairs to Grandma’s room.
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1. 这种单车的使用方法（如：APP查看车辆、扫码开锁等）；
2. 这种单车的优势；
3. 你对这种单车的看法。
注意：
1. 词数大约100左右；
2. 开头和结尾已给出，不计入总词数。
提示词：智能手机 smartphone, 二维码 the QR code
Dear Jim,
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Yours,
Li Hua
10 . Gone are the days when a mother’s place was in the home: in Britain women with children are now as likely to be in paid work as their unburdened sisters. Many put their little darlings in day care long before they start school. Mindful that a poor start can spoil a person’s chances of success later in life, the state has intervened ever more closely in how babies and toddlers are looked after. Inspectors call not only at nurseries but also at homes where youngsters are minded; three-year-olds follow the national curriculum. Child care has increasingly become a profession.
For years after the government first began in 2001 to twist the arms of anyone who looked after an unrelated child to register with the schools, the numbers so doing fell. Kind but clueless neighbours stopped looking after little ones, who were instead herded into formal nurseries or handed over to one of the ever-fewer registered child-minders. The decline in the number of people taking in children now appears to have halted. According to data released by the Office for Standards in Education on October 27th, the number of registered child-minders reached its lowest point in September 2010 and has since recovered slightly.
The new lot are certainly better qualified. In 2010 fully 82% of nursery workers held diplomas notionally equivalent to A-levels, the university-entrance exams taken mostly by 18-year-olds, up from 56% seven years earlier, says Anand Shukla of the Daycare Trust, a charity. Nurseries staffed by university graduates tend to be rated highest by inspectors, increasing their appeal to the pickiest parents. As a result, more graduates are being recruited.
But professionalization has also pushed up the price of child care, defying even the economic depression. A survey by the Daycare Trust finds that a full-time nursery place in England for a child aged under two, who must be intensively supervised, costs £194 ($310) per week, on average. Prices in London and the south-east are far higher. Parents in Britain spend more on child care than anywhere else in the world, according to the OECD, a think-tank. Some 68% of a typical second earner's net income is spent on freeing her to work, compared with an OECD average of 52%.
The price of child care is not only eye-watering, but has also become a barrier to work. Soon after it took power the coalition government pledged to ensure that people are better off in work than on benefits, but a recent survey by Save the Children, a charity, found that the high cost of day care prevented a quarter of low-paid workers from returning to their jobs once they had started a family. The government pays for free part-time nursery places for three-and four-year-olds, and contributes towards day-care costs for younger children from poor areas. Alas, extending such an aid during stressful economic times would appear to be anything but child’s play.
1. Which of the following is true according to the first paragraph?| A．Nursery education plays a leading role in one’s personal growth. |
| B．Pregnant women have to work to lighten families’ economic burden. |
| C．Children in nursery have to take uniform nation courses. |
| D．The supervision of the state makes child care professional. |
| A．the registered child-minders are required to take the university-entrance exams |
| B．the number of registered child-minders has been declining since 2001 |
| C．anyone who looks after children at home must register with the schools |
| D．the growing recognition encourages more graduates to work as child-minders |
| A．prevents mothers from getting employed |
| B．may further depress the national economy |
| C．makes many families live on benefits |
| D．is far more than parents can afford |
| A．Objective. | B．Skeptical. | C．Supportive. | D．Biased. |
| A．The professionalization of child care has pushed up its price. |
| B．The high cost of child nursing makes many mothers give up their jobs. |
| C．The employment of more graduates makes nurseries more popular. |
| D．Parents in Britain pay most for child nursing throughout the world. |
