1 . Mahanakhon SkyWalk is one of the best attractions at the heart of Bangkok, combining wonderful views with an unmatched guest experience.

Mahanakhon SkyWalk facilities include:

1st Floor: In the Lobby (大厅) are the Main Entrance and Mahanakhon SkvWalk Ticket Counter (柜台). It conveniently linked to the elevator (电梯) lobby through a Bangkok-themed digital corridor. Feel the excitement of Thailand’s fastest elevators that are capable of reaching the 74th floor in just 50 seconds.

74th Floor: The Indoor Observation Deck affords 360-degree panoramic views of landmark destinations around Bangkok. It comes complete with interactive windows and Augmented Reality (AR) screen experience to capture and send postcards to loved ones direct from Thailand’s highest mailbox!

75th Floor: The Mezzanine offers restroom facilities and access to the glass elevator lobby.

78th Floor: The Rooftop and Outdoor Observation Deck comes alive with the excitement of “The Glass Tray”, a floor space that sits 310 meters from the ground. The viewing deck ranks among the world’s largest glass floors. Take your time as you take in the awe-inspiring view of the city skyline. It’s home to the highest rooftop bar with plenty of drinks and cocktails.

Ticket Information:
Ticket Type: Mahanakhon SkyWalk
Description: Indoor Observatory Deck (74th Floor)
Adult Admission: 850 THB and 250 THB for Children under 12 years of age / Seniors over 60 years of age
Ticket type: Mahanakhon SkyWalk & Rooftop
Description: Indoor and Outdoor Observatory Deck (74th and 78th Floors)
Adult Admission: 1,050 THB and 450 THB for Children under 12 years of age /Seniors over 60 years of age
1. What does Mahanakhon SkyWalk offer its visitors?

A．The fastest elevators in Thailand

B．The quickest mail delivery in Thailand

C．The highest ticket counter in Thailand

D．The cheapest cocktails in Thailand

2. Where is The Indoor Observatory Deck?

A．On the 1st floor.	B．On the 74th floor.
C．On the 75th floor.	D．On the 78th floor.

3. How much should a couple with an 11-year-old child pay for Mahanakhon SkyWalk & Rooftop?

A．1050 THB.

B．1950 THB.

C．2100 THB.

D．2550 THB.

2 . The backfire effect is a very strong, psychological aspect in all of our minds. Due to this effect, whenever you are faced with information and facts that contradict something you believe, instead of changing your view or forming a new opinion, your original beliefs will often be strengthened. Yon will believe in your previously formed opinion even more vigorously (坚定地), despite seeing hard proof.

For example, remember that classmate you formed an opinion about too fast? And even though everything they did suggested otherwise, you didn’t want to believe you were wrong about them, so you convinced yourself that you weren’t wrong.

You found reasons, dwelt on minor things, and ignored the facts that contradicted your opinion. With all of this struggle, you believed that your opinion didn’t have to change. The huge amount of thought you gave it only strengthened your original opinion about your classmate.

The backfire effect is very powerful and a part of the mechanism of our minds as humans. We can’t get rid of it, but we can make ourselves more aware of it. Being aware that you may be straining your logic only to preserve your beliefs will cause you to keep your mind more open, allowing you to definitely change and learn much faster.

Arguments can be approached in better ways when you are aware of the backfire effect. Apart from being aware of it, you can keep your own mind open. You shouldn’t state facts that counter (反驳) the opposing person’s opinion. Instead, you should ask them questions that will make them question what they believe.

The Internet revolution has provided the ability to argue with people across the globe, even if you’ve never met them. Heated arguments you might have witnessed (or participated in) on the Internet between two people going back and forth about a very emotional issue will usually end in very raised tempers and no conclusions. This is because each side is really just strengthening the other side’s original opinion.

In my opinion, it is critically important to be aware of the backfire effect, because of how much it helps us grow. We can change and learn much faster if we allow our ideas of the world to be flexible, and not be so certain that our beliefs are superior.

1. What will people most probably do under the influence of the backfire effect?

A．Accept contradictory information.	B．Come up with new ideas.
C．Stick to previous beliefs.	D．Notice solid evidence.

2. How can people deal with arguments better when noticing the backfire effect?

A．By inspiring others to doubt their own belief.

B．By bravely providing the fact opposed by others.

C．By removing the influence of the backfire effect.

D．By becoming aware of the logic of the arguments.

3. Why do heated arguments on the Internet tend to end in vain?

A．They are not discussed by people face to face.

B．They are strengthening the opponents’ initial opinion.

C．They are too debatable for people to draw conclusions.

D．They are only between two people.

4. What does the author suggest readers do with the backfire effect?

A．Ask for help from other people if necessary.

B．Improve the flexibility of their schedule.

C．Learn from other people as quickly as possible.

D．Avoid absolutely believing their views are better than others.

3 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

The animated film Chang An is making history as a dark horse during China’s bustling summer movie-going season by     1     (take) in as much as 600 million yuan at the Chinese mainland box office and exciting the feelings of poetic romance in the hearts of moviegoers.

Sitting in the cinemas crowded     2     moviegoers of all age groups, the audience eagerly recited poetry alongside the main characters on screen as they headed down memory lane with a famous poet from the Tang Dynasty (618-907).

The story of the deep friendship between poet Gao Shi and the master of romantic poetry Li Bai     3     (offer) a glimpse into the star-studded history of the Tang era,     4     is often seen as a golden age in Chinese history due to     5     (it) economic prosperity and cultural integration and advancement.

As the unique charm and soul of the movie, 48 Tang poems help audiences travel from the     6     (sand) desert frontier to the mist-filled regions south of the Yangtze River. The movie is     7     (undoubted) a masterpiece showing the characteristics of Chinese culture to the world. These poems describe both the historical changes of a dynasty     8     people’ understanding and perception of the world. While older moviegoers may be familiar with the poems     9     (describe) in the movie, younger audiences get to enter a new and unique world through the movie, re-discovering and appreciating the essence and charm of Chinese culture.

The success of Chang An lies not only in its artistic expression, but also in its     10     (create) way of respecting and inheriting traditional culture.

4 . 阅读下面材料，根据其内容和所给段落开头语续写两段，使之构成一篇完整的短文。

Different sports filled my days in my youth. I dreamed or a big win some day, with a big trophy (奖杯). I was skillful and fast, or so I thought. However, I soon learned my skills seemed quite weak because the bigger, stronger boys seemed to occupy every corner of the playground. Once I was in the 100-yard hurdles, the only recognition I received for my performance was two bloody knees.

In college, I took a swim competition, dreaming of the glory! It turned out I achieved nothing. As an older adult, I still maintained an active lifestyle. In 2010 I signed up for a stair-climbing challenge to raise money for fighting against lung cancer. My father had died of the same disease, so this was a meaningful cause for me. Then, in 2019,the organization offered an even more challenging climb option: the vertical (垂直的) mile. So I would have three hours to climb up and down twenty-eight floors fifteen times, plus three more.

I trained hard. When the challenge started. I felt confident. But soon my legs started feeling heavy. What was worse, I began experiencing leg cramps (抽筋). My progress slowed dramatically and I quickly fell behind. When came down after finishing lap 14, it was past the time limit, so my big win had escaped once again.

Soon after the climb, I struggled to experience the sense of self-satisfaction. And I had, after all, set a goal for myself to prove what I was made of, what I had inside me. And what I had inside me was, “Nice try, but you didn’t make it.” So, a year later, at age 62 and after numerous workouts, I was back. Like last year, I was well ahead after an hour and I again started feeling some discomfort in my legs. I heard myself cry out loud, “Oh, no not again!” I finally stopped and sat down on the stairs, feeling quite depressed and wondering if my dream was over. A few climbers stopped to offer help. I was touched, but embarrassed to accept. Except for one climber. An angel climber, really.

Jessica, who I happened to know, was a salesman’s friend when I bought new running shoes at his store. And without that connection, she might have climbed past me as I sat on those steps, my legs shaking. But all those things did happen, and Jessica stopped to help.

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。

When she saw I was cramping, she offered me some sports drinks containing electrolytes (电解质).

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The cramps in my legs finally started to go away.

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5 . From the roar of a crowd to the quiet of a library, sound and silence might seem like polar opposites. However, according to a new research, our brains perceive them in the same way. Silence may not be a sound, but scientists say we can truly hear it.

In this new study, researchers examined how people experience silence using well-known auditory illusions (错觉). The illusions are meant to test the perception of noise, but for the study, the team adapted them to measure people’s response to silence, instead.

“If you can get the same illusions with silences as you get with sounds, then that may be obvious that we literally hear silence after all.” Chaz Firestone, a co-author of the study and cognitive scientist at Johns Hopkins University, says in a statement.

In the study, participants were tricked by these “silence illusions” in a similar way to how people are typically fooled by the sound versions of the experiments.

The researchers prepared seven experiments and tested them on 1,000 study participants. In one experiment, researchers played a recording that sounded like background noise in a crowded place. In the first half of the recording, the background noise was interrupted by two separate periods of silence. In the second half, one continuous period of silence was inserted (嵌入). Researchers asked participants which silence felt longer- the combination of the first two periods of silence, or the second uninterrupted one. Most participants thought the continuous silence was longer, but it was actually the same length as the two shorter silences combined.

These results were consistent with previous research that examined auditory illusions, which used two separate sounds and one continuous sound. With that illusion, people also perceived the continuous sound as longer than the two separate ones together.

Similar findings across the seven experiments suggested that humans experience silence and sound in much the same way: They can distort (扭曲) our perception of time.

1. Why did researchers use auditory illusions in the new study?

A．To help people perceive sounds.	B．To test people’s adaptability to noise.
C．To measure how people respond to silence.	D．To remind people to be quiet in the library.

2. What can we infer from paragraph 5?

A．Illusions of silence fool people’s brains.

B．The three periods of silence are of the same length.

C．Sound is usually difficult for people to perceive.

D．Participants chose a recording and played it.

3. Where is this text most likely from?

A．A diary.

B．A journal.

C．A novel.

D．A guidebook.

4. What is the best title for the text?

A．We can truly hear silence like a sound.

B．Sound and silence are actually the same.

C．Auditory illusions affect our perception ability.

D．Our brain has the ability to perceive sound and silence.

6 . 阅读下面材料，根据其内容和所给段落开头语续写两段，使之构成一篇完整的短文。

Next to our house lived an old couple, who, accustomed to country life, were unwilling to move to the city to live with their son and stuck in a lonely existence for many years. It seemed that they didn’t feel like making any new connections with others, including their next-door neighbours.

The neighborhood kids nicknamed the strange old couple Crazy Jack and Ruby Rednose. Rumor (流言，传言) was that they sat inside and drank tea all day. The only words we ever heard from them were “Keep out of our rosebushes!” The rosebushes crawled along the fence. Or rather, they served as a fence between our house and theirs, overgrowing the support.

I was eleven at the time and the oldest of our family girls. A suitable playing court was a headache problem for us when we felt like playing softball games, which was our favourite sport then. We should have played our softball games elsewhere to avoid hurting the roses, but we secretly enjoyed annoying Crazy Jack and Ruby Rednose.

One day, we had a softball game in our yard. Mary was trying to catch a fly ball. She stumbled (绊倒) over one of Ruby Rednose’s rosebushes and fell on top of several more. Just at that moment, Ruby Rednose sprang out and ran toward Mary. She screamed angrily, “Look at what you’ve doneto our family’s roses! You’ve always been a trouble. You have no idea what this rosebush means to me!”

Hearing this, my sisters and I ran into our house. Breathlessly, we told Mom what had happened. “Girls, I have told you not to play softball near those bushes. Come outside right now and help me fix them.” “Mom, we thought you didn’t like the couple,” we protested. “They’re mean to us.” Mom just glared at us. We followed her outside to help repair the rose fence. While Mom was examining the damaged roses, Ruby slowly walked out. She looked sad. And it wasn’t her nose that was red, but her eyes.

注意：
1. 续写词数应为150字左右。2. 请按如下格式在答题卡相应位置作答。     
Paragraph 1:                  

Ruby walked over to my mother, we girls holding our breath.

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Paragraph 2:

A few weeks later, the plants all came back to life.

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7 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

Huizhou enjoys a time-honored history. In 2000, Xidi and the nearby Hongcun village were declared World Heritage sites by UNESCO for their outstanding preservation of rural architecture     1    (date) back to the Ming and Qing dynasties.   

Huizhou houses are often wooden structures with brick walls, which require a lot of maintenance. Moreover, daylight is valued in Huizhou houses, which is reflected in the building of open interior courtyards,     2     (allow) sunshine to enter the rooms. Now, walking along the bluestone streets there, visitors can appreciate the distinctive Huizhou-style houses featuring white walls, dark tiles (瓦片) and layered horse-head roofs,     3    feel like they are immersed in a traditional Chinese ink painting.   

The tourism boom helps to protect and breathe life into the ancient village. A    4    (symbol) paifang, standing at the entrance to Xidi,     5     (build) in the 16th century in memory of Hu Wenguang,     6    Ming Dynasty official born in the village who made great     7    (contribute) to local education and livelihoods. It is the local people’s desire to protect the local historical characteristics that leads to the buildings     8    (preserve) to this day. Besides ancient dwellings and paifang, there stand some ancestral halls    9    clans (宗族，家族) will gather to make sacrifices to their ancestors. With their own unique and marketable value, all these old Huizhou buildings are giving full play    10    their distinctive cultural charm.

9 . It is well-known that food which is full of fat isn’t good for your heart.     1    Australian researchers tested people with asthma(哮喘)before and after a high-fat meal or a low-fat meal. Then they found that the high-fat meal increased inflammation(炎症)and reduced the lung functions.

30 non-obese people with asthma took part in the study, as well as 16 obese adults. The non-obese volunteers received either a high-fat or low-fat meal, while the obese ones were all given a high-fat meal    2    The low-fat meal was 13 percent fat.

Four hours after the meal, the researchers found that the airway inflammation increased a lot and lung function was affected in those who had the high-fat meal. And these people saw just a 1 percent improvement in their lung function when they used their inhalers(吸入器)to treat asthma.    3    

“If these results can be tested again by further research, this suggests that reducing the amount of fatty food one eats may be useful for managing asthma,” said the study’s lead author, Lisa Wood, at the Hunter Medical Research Institute in New Lambton. “The number of people in the world with asthma has increased greatly over the past few decades.    4    ”

Dr Thomas Leath, director at Scott & White Healthcare in Texas, said, “Eating fatty food can lead to obesity, and fat can certainly cause a small amount of inflammation.     5    ”He doubted whether the effect on lung function was great enough for people to notice, but said the study provided one more reason why people shouldn’t have high-fat diets.

A．And one reason is the high-fat Western diet.

B．Inflammation can be either short-lived or long-lasting.

C．But now a new study suggests that fatty meals may affect the lung function too.

D．But I’m surprised that one meal could do this.

E．The high-fat meal was 50 percent fat.

F．People are generally considered obese when their body mass index is over 30 kg/㎡.

G．Those who ate the low-fat meal saw a 4.5 percent improvement.

10 . Technology is starting to give us superpowers once reserved only for comic book heroes like Spider-Man and Superman. We now live in an age of human enhancement and related technology has captured the attention of the media and investors.

Some of these new technologies achieve their effects by means of electronic devices that connect our brains to external sources of knowledge, sensory data or physical power. We may not get chips implanted in our brains any time soon, but think about Google Glass--who needs an inserted chip when you can wear a computer on your head?

Wearable technology doesn’t only come in the form of a pair of glasses. A Japanese laboratory is working on a more practical prototype (雏形) of a muscle suit than lron Man’s shiny armor (盔甲). The muscle suit, called an exoskeleton, enables the sick and elderly to move around more easily, New Scientist magazine reported. Coveting (觊觎) the powers of Spider-Man, the US military is working on a “Spider-Man suit” that not only lets wearers climb vertical walls, but also allows them to sense approaching objects without looking at or hearing them, according to an American military technology website.

But perhaps you favor more subtle powers like mind control or mind reading. This may one day come true as well. The most amazing human enhancement technologies that have come into reality are devices that interact directly with the human brain.

Q Sensor, created by scientists at MIT, is a wireless sensor that measures electricity conducted through the skin. It can detect whether people are bored, stressed or excited, and therefore has wide applications in research and therapy, the BBC reported.

Scientists envision neural implants that could allow humans to manipulate real-world objects with their mind--a power not unlike mind control. Slate magazine reported this might already be happening.

1. What can be learned from the first two paragraphs?

A．New technologies have brought us into a new era.

B．Superpowers of comic book heroes have been widely applied nowadays.

C．Human enhancement refers to the superpowers of the comic book heroes.

D．Spider-Man and Superman have captured the attention of the media and investors.

2. What can we know about Google Glass?

A．It is implanted in our brains.

B．It is technology with inserted chips.

C．It is a device which makes us superheroes.

D．It is a technology that enhances human power.

3. Which of the following items does NOT involve wearable technology?

A．Google Glass.	B．The muscle suit.
C．Iron Man’s armor.	D．The Spider-Man suit.

4. What is the best title of the passage?

A．Explore superpowers for human enhancement

B．Go beyond Iron Man’s shiny armor

C．Meet superheroes in real life

D．Embrace the unknown world