2 . We are the sum of our actions. I believe that the actions you take determine who you are. But, you say, had an abusive father/mother, I was poor growing up, just wasn’t born smart, I have a disease... All of these things do not make you who you are. They only broaden your knowledge or experience. They are things that happen to you, circumstances. You are not the sum of your circumstances, but of your “action” to them.

This is why rich kids become drug addicts or wife beaters; kids from ghetto (贫民窟) become doctors or loving fathers, and everything in between. All walks of life produce all walks of life. So, it is all about your own choices/reactions/actions/behavior, Every human being has within them a mechanism that guides their actions. The more you rebel against your inner guide, the more you tune your selective hearing to the “me” channel, the father down the “bad” side of the scale you will slide. On the other hand, if you not only listen to but act upon, the “universal” channel, the farther up the “good” side of the scale you will fly.

Even psychiatrists have in recent years discovered that in order to change thinking, a person must frst change behavior. At first thought, it would seem the opposite is true, it is not. We all have the same range of human emotions. When we feel slighted (被看轻), it sounds in our heads like: “I want to slap them, curse them, get even, and cause them the same pain they caused me. Acting upon these thoughts perpetuates (使继续) cycles of abuse, addiction, and pain. It’s when you choose not to act upon these thoughts, and instead, forgive and heal, that your thoughts and perceptions will start to change also. You change because right actions produce right results. You are choosing to heal properly by forgiving, and accepting life and mankind as it is, and in turn yourself as you are, which is the only way to have peace, joy, and true happiness.

I will admit that if you have a parent who accepts you as a whole person, inclusive of “good and bad”, you may have an edge or jumpstart (快速启动) on understanding life, yourself, and others. If you don’t, it may just take you longer to understand, accept, and act on it. Either way, who you are is determined by you, and you are determined by your actions. So, tune in everybody, to that universal channel, and act right!

1. The author argues that an abusive parent a person once had ________.

A．affects the reaction he will take in different circumstances

B．prevents him from understanding life

C．has little to do with what kind of person he is

D．determines the tough circumstances he lives in

2. By saying “All walks of life produce all walks of life”, the author means that ________.

A．poor children are more likely to succeed in their work

B．the occupation a person engages in affects his personality

C．wealthy children tend to be spoiled by their parents

D．circumstances contribute little to a person’s future success

3. The example of what we think and do when we feel slighted is given to show that ________.

A．our behavior is guided by our thought	B．human beings share similar emotions
C．we have to cultivate our behavior first	D．it’s wrong to act upon your thoughts

4. The passage is intended to show us that ________.

A．we should accept life and mankind as it is

B．everyone is determined by what he does

C．understanding life promotes right action

D．it is better to have a parent who accepts both your “good and bad”

3 . Camera flashes cut across the softly lighted downtown Los Angeles restaurant, as the crowd at Ludo Bites jostles (推挤) for the photo-of the Columbian River king salmon duck. “This is the game we all now play, ” chef and owner Ludo Lefebvre said. “We cook, we smile-and the people, they don’t eat. They get their cameras.”

Not so long ago, diners, hungry for special meals, would pull out a point-and-shoot at a restaurant for a quick picture of sliced birthday cake.

No more. Taking a cue from Twitter and Facebook cultures, serious foodies (美食家) and casual consumers alike are using digital technology to document each bite, then sharing the pictures online.

Flickr, the photo-sharing website, has seen the number of pictures tagged as “food” jump from about half a million in 2008 to more than 6 million today, according to company officials. In the group “I Ate This” on Flickr’s site, nearly 20,000 people have uploaded more than 307,000 images of their latest meals.

Camera manufacturers are joining the trend, selling cameras that offer “food” settings, which adjust to enhance colors and textures (质地) on close-ups.

“I am sharing my experiences with my friends,” said Hong Pham, 33, a Los Angeles radiologist who runs the food blog Ravenous Couple. “Why shouldn’t I share what inspires me?”

But what is documentary fun for people such as Pham is souring the gastronomic (烹饪的) set.

Managers regularly face diners demanding to be moved away from camera flashes and sounds. Waiters find themselves tongue-tied as customers take out voice recorders to capture a recitation of each course. Some chefs have had enough.

Chef Grant Achatz allows only no-flash photography in his restaurant. He, like many other chefs, finds himself torn between being flattered by the public’s enthusiasm and annoyed with the effect the picture-taking is having on the restaurant’s operation.

Some consumers now believe food should be consumed visually as well as physically. “What happened to the enjoyment of just eating the food?” said Andrew Knowlton, the restaurant editor for Bon Appetite magazine. “People are losing sight of why you go out.”

1. Who is the most supportive of taking pictures of food in restaurants?

A．Grant Achatz.	B．Andrew Knowlton.
C．Hong Pham.	D．Ludo Lefebvre.

2. People tend to take pictures in restaurants because ______.

A．delicately-made dishes are visually inviting

B．they will share with others their dining experience

C．cameras can be specially set for food photography

D．they can profit by selling pictures to famous websites

3. What can we infer from the passage?

A．More pictures will be uploaded at websites like Twitter and Facebook.

B．Consumers used to take pictures in restaurants only for their birthdays.

C．Rules should be set out that there is no food photography in restaurants.

D．Chefs are likely to accept picture-taking in their restaurants to a limited extent.

4. The passage is most probably a ______.

A．news story	B．feature article
C．commercial advertisement	D．survey report

5 . Antarctic Tourism: Should We Just Say No?

More people are visiting Antarctic, the frozen continent than ever before.     1     This has brought a new urgency to the question of how much, if any, tourism should be allowed on the icy continent.

The distance most visitors travel to reach Antarctica makes carbon emissions a serious problem.     2     One study calculated that each tourist between 2016 and 2020 was effectively melting around 83 tonnes of snow, due largely to emissions from vacation ships.

    3     The Antarctic Treaty, established in 1961 to provide governance for the continent, operates on a consultative basis, which means all 56 parties have to agree before a change can be put into action. The last major decision on tourism was a measure passed in 2009 that prohibits vacation ships carrying more than 500 passengers from making landings. That regulation has still not officially been carried out as not every signatory country has accepted it domestically.

There is clear agreement that something needs to change, but no agreement on what those changes should be.     4    

A．The number of visitors hit 100,000 for the first time this tourist season, a 40% jump over the previous record.

B．The Antarctic is at risk not just because of the breakability of its environment, but due to the lack of a single governing body.

C．Should landings be made at a larger number of sites for instance, or should we aim to keep the human footprint as small as possible?

D．If what you really want is to connect with snow and ice and you’re in the northern half, can you catch a train to the nearest snow region instead?

E．The average per-person carbon emissions for an Antarctic tourist are 3.76 tonnes – about the total sum that an individual typically generates in an entire year.

F．There is so little regulation now that almost anything that will protect the areas by an official legal source rather than self-regulated would be really positive.

6 . ①A group of 41 states and the District of Columbia began a legal case against Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, insisting that the company knowingly used features on its platforms to cause children to overuse them. The accusations in the lawsuit raise a deeper question about behavior: Are young people becoming addicted to social media and the internet? Here’s what the research has found.

②David Greenfield, a psychologist and founder of the Center for Internet and Technology Addiction in West Hartford, Conn, said the devices tempt users with some powerful approaches. One is “intermittent reinforcement,” which creates the idea that a user could get a reward at any time. But when the reward comes is unpredictable. Adults are easily influenced, be noted, but young people are particularly at risk, because the brain regions that are involved in resisting temptation and reward are not nearly as developed in children and teenagers as in adults. Moreover, the adolescent brain is especially accustomed to social connections, and social media is all a perfect opportunity to connect with other people.

③For many years, the scientific community typically defined addiction in relation to substances, such as drugs, and not behaviors, such as gambling or internet use. That has gradually changed. In 2013, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the official reference for mental health conditions, introduced the idea of internet gaming addiction.

④A subsequent study explored broadening the definition to “internet addiction.” The author suggested further exploring diagnostic criteria and the language, for instance, noting that terms like “problematic use” and even the word “internet” were open to broad interpretation, given the many forms the information and its delivery can take.

⑤Dr. Michael Rich, the director of the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital, said he discouraged the use of the word “addiction” because the internet, if used effectively and with limits, was not merely useful but also essential to everyday life.

⑥Greenfield agreed that there clearly are valuable uses for the internet and that the definition of how much is too much can vary. But he said there also were obvious cases where immoderate use disturbs school, sleep and other vital aspects of a healthy life. “Too many young consumers can’t put it down, ” he said.“ The internet, including social media like Meta, are the drugs affecting the mind.”

1. What was Meta accused of?

A．It added problematic features to its platform.

B．It started a discussion to mislead young people.

C．It tempted children to use social media too much.

D．It conducted illegal research on its parent company.

2. According to David Greenfield, users tend to be addicted to social media and the internet due to         .

A．their under-developed brain

B．the random pattern of rewards

C．their desire to be socially connected

D．the possibility of escaping from reality

3. What can be concluded about the study introduced in Paragraph 4?

A．Addiction is something about behaviors instead of substances.

B．The online language can be interpreted from a broad perspective.

C．Current diagnostic criteria of “internet addiction” isn’t satisfactory.

D．There should be an agreement on the definition of the word “internet”.

4. Dr. Michael Rich and David Greenfield both agree that        .

A．proper use of the internet does good to children

B．the internet is to blame for disturbing healthy life

C．there are cases against immoderate use of the internet

D．the word “addiction” is improperly used on the internet

7 . Brenda Thomas’s heart became a shell when her 21-year-old son died in a motorcycle accident in September 2019, only one week into his senior year of college. But she has found something that helps her to deal with her grief.

She keeps “acts of kindness” cards in honor of her son. These folded pieces of paper are tucked in her purse at all times and always stored in the glove compartment of her car. Whenever she does a good deed for a stranger— which is about once a week— she passes along a card with a message written on it: “If you receive this card, then you must be a recipient of a random act of kindness.” At the top of each note is her son’s name, Trevor Paul Thomas.

Trevor was an athlete who played baseball at Allegany College of Maryland and Penn State Fayette. He was a loyal friend and a force for good, with a witty sense of humor and a big smile. According to his mother, one of Trevor’s best qualities was his compassion for others, no matter how well he knew them. He regularly shoveled(铲) snow off the driveways of older neighbors, delivered hot meals to those in need, and befriended classmates who struggled to fit in. It seemed a natural fit to launch a kindness campaign in his memory.

The Thomas family adopted the “acts of kindness” cards to mark what would have been Trevor’s 23 birthday. They hoped that these cards would encourage people to do a good deed as part of Trevor’s legacy. On each card, they included a mantra (箴言) that the family said best describes the way Trevor had lived his life: “Be somebody who makes everybody feel like somebody.”

Recently, while dining with her daughter Whitney in a restaurant, Brenda decided to pay for the meal of a mother and two children. The recipient of Brenda’s spontaneous (发自内心的) gift was Liana Arruda. She was taking her nine-year-old son and his five-year-old sister for dinner. She felt shocked and moved after the waitress handed her the card. She used it as an opportunity to teach her children about compassion and is now brainstorming ways to pass on the goodness. “I’m waiting to find the perfect opportunity,” she said. “I want it to matter, because it mattered to me.”

For the Thomas family, while there is still—and forever will be—a massive void(空虚感) in their lives without Trevor, committing to “living like him” has helped them turn their pain into purpose. “We’ll keep paying it forward in Trevor’s honor because it would make him so proud,” said Brenda.

1. Trevor Paul can be best described as________.

A．ambitious, witty and optimistic

B．sympathetic, humorous and warmhearted

C．faithful, passionate and competitive

D．compassionate, persistent and rigorous

2. According to the context, the sentence “Be somebody who makes everybody feel like somebody.”(P4) can be best illustrated by __________.

A．Do as Romans do.

B．Serve others to be popular.

C．Influence others with what you do.

D．Nothing is impossible to a willing heart.

3. Which of the following statements is TURE?

A．Trevor would have graduated from university within one year but for the accident.

B．Every time Brenda does a good deed for others, they’ll receive an anonymous card.

C．Liana was astonished and touched because her two children gave her the gift spontaneously.

D．Liana has found a perfect opportunity to pass on the goodness and teach her children about compassion.

4. What conclusion can we draw from the passage?

A．Your pain can be turned into purpose to push you forward.

B．Compassion means standing in others shoes.

C．Void can be replaced with satisfaction by “living like him”.

D．Committing to “following his way” is a good way to honor somebody.

8 . This hobbit was a very well-to-do hobbit, and his name was Baggins. The Bagginses have lived in the neighbourhood of The Hill for time out of mind, and people considered them very respectable, not only because most of them were rich, but also because they never had any adventures or did anything unexpected; you could tell what a Baggins would say on any question without the bother of asking him. This is the story of how a Baggins had an adventure, and found himself doing and saying things altogether unexpected. He may have lost the neighbours’ respect, but he gained — well, you will see whether he gained anything in the end.

The mother of our particular hobbit — what is hobbit? I suppose hobbits need some description nowadays, since they have become rare and shy of the Big People, as they call us. They are (or were) a little people, about half our height, and smaller than the bearded dwarves (小矮人). Hobbits have no beards. There is little magic about them, except the ordinary everyday sort which helps them to disappear quietly and quickly when large stupid folk like you and me come along clumsily, making a noise like elephants which they can hear a mile off. They are likely to be fat in the stomach; they dress in bright colours (chiefly green and yellow); wear no shoes, because their feet grow natural leathery soles and thick warm brown hair like the stuff on their heads (which is curly); have, long clever brown fingers, good-natural faces, and laugh deep fruity laughs(especially after dinner, which they have twice a day when they can get it). Now you know enough to go on with. As I was saying, the mother of this hobbit-Bilbo Baggins, that is — was the famous Belladonna Took, one of the three remarkable daughters of the Old Took, head of the hobbits who lived across The Water, the small river that ran at the foot of the The Hill.

1. According to the passage, what is a well-to-do hobbit like?

A．Respectable among the dwarves.	B．Predictable as all the other hobbits.
C．Careful enough to do things well.	D．Wealthy in the neighbourhood of The Hill.

2. Why were the Bagginses considered respectable?

A．They recently moved to The Hill.	B．They lived ordinary lives.
C．They were very magical.	D．Belladonna Took was famous.

3. What do Hobbits think of Big People?

A．Loud and clumsy.	B．Frightening and noisy.
C．Quite large and easy to laugh.	D．Similar to elephants with poor hearing.

4. Which of the following is TRUE about Hobbits according to the passage?

A．They were rich, predictable and stronger than the Big People.

B．They are shorter than the Big People and smaller than bearded dwarves.

C．Most of them are of half the height of the bearded dwarves.

D．All hobbits were regarded as noisy and adventurous as elephants.

9 . Deepfake technology is now a threat to everyone

Last October, MIT Prof. Sinan Aral warned his Twitter followers that he had discovered a video of himself that he hadn’t recorded supporting an investment fund’s stock-trading algorithm (算法). In reality, it wasn’t Prof. Aral in the video, but an artificial-intelligence creation in his likeness, or what is known as a highly persuasive “deepfake.”

It is striking that scammers (诈骗犯) targeted Prof. Aral, considering he is a leading expert on the study of misinformation online.     1     Thanks to a number of free deepfake apps that are just a click away, anyone can become a victim of such a scam.

The term deepfake has come to mean the use of AI to create fake media in which someone appears to be doing or saying what in reality they haven’t done or said.     2     But positive use cases are likely to be overshadowed in coming years by the technology’s potential role in financial scam, identity theft, etc.

Another big challenge is that in an online world where people can upload content of unknown names, it can be difficult to find the individuals behind deepfakes.     3    

One such solution is to detect deepfakes through machine-learning methods. While these detectors can be successful in the short term, people looking to avoid such systems will likely just respond with better technology, creating a continuing and expensive cat-and-mouse game.     4     While lawmaking eventually may offer protection against deepfakes, I believe the market could be quicker — provided we, as consumers and citizens, care.

A．The technology isn’t always misused.

B．It also suggests that deepfake technology is now at a turning point.

C．The technology is moving so fast that lawmakers will likely always fall behind.

D．That is why I believe we are going to have to rely on technology to protect us from a problem it helped create.

E．A better approach with a longer time horizon is media provenance systems to confirm the origins of images and videos.

F．To be effective in practice, such systems would have to be widely adopted by all content creators, which will take time.

10 . ChatGPT became the hottest issue due to its ability to produce human-sounding essays, poetry, and screenplays on virtually any subject in seconds. Soon after ChatGPT was released, the potential for it to be misused to do things such as spread misinformation and write junk mails became apparent. Schools and educators also have warned of the potential for students to use it to write essays or other work they have been assigned. Last December, the software passed all three parts of the U.S. Medical Licensing Examination as part of a research experiment.

So the startup, OpenAI behind the viral chatbot, revealed a tool for detecting text generated by artificial intelligence amid growing concerns the technology will be abused by cheaters, junk mail senders and others. OpenAI said that its so-called AI classifier was designed to help people distinguish between text written by a human versus a range of artificial intelligence programs—not just ChatGPT.

OpenAI said it had schools in mind when developing its latest classifier tool. “We recognize that identifying AI-written text has been an important point of discussion among educators, and equally important is recognizing the limits and impacts of AI-generated text classifiers in the classroom,” it said.

The classifier isn’t good enough on its own, though it can be used to go with methods that educators, employers and others rely on to determine the source of a piece of text. In evaluations, the new tool correctly identified 26% of AI-written text as “likely AI-written”, while it also had false positives 9% of the time in which it incorrectly labeled human-written text as AI-written. Another problem is that the tool can’t easily tell if a list of facts—U.S. state capitals for example—was written by a person or AI, because the correct answer would be the same. AI-written text can also be edited to escape the classifier.

“While it is impossible to reliably detect all AI-written text, classifiers like ours can be updated and re-trained based on successful attacks,” OpenAI said. “But it is unclear whether detection has an advantage in the long-term.”

1. ChatGPT’s passing the U.S. Medical Licensing Exam is mentioned to __________.

A．account for its operating principles

B．illustrate its complex structure

C．emphasize its growing popularity

D．warn against its potential danger

2. What’s the function of AI classifier?

A．Deepening the impact of AI writers.

B．Identifying the texts generated by AI.

C．Promoting the use of AI in classroom discussion.

D．Arousing educators’ awareness of AI-related technology.

3. What can be concluded from the evaluation of AI classifier?

A．It is a work-in-progress.

B．It is good at storing factual information.

C．It can help a journalist to edit a text.

D．It is a reliable educational tool.

4. What does OpenAI think of AI classifier?

A．It will be reliable after continuous self-update and retraining.

B．Whether it can help educators in the long-term is out of question.

C．Whether it can solve the problems as intended remains a question.

D．It will succeed in detecting all human-written texts in the near future.