1 . Your mind is very powerful. Yet, if you’re like most people, you probably spend very little time reflecting on the way you think. After all, who thinks about thinking?
If you draw wrong conclusions about whom you are and what you’re capable of doing, you’ll limit your potential. Your thoughts are a catalyst (催化剂) for self-perpetuating (自我持续的) cycles.
Once you draw a conclusion about yourself, you’re likely to do two things: look for evidence that strengthens your belief and consider anything that runs against your belief unimportant. Someone who develops the belief that he’s a failure, for example, will view each mistake as evidence that he’s not good enough.
| A．When he does succeed, he’ll owe it to luck. |
| B．Once that belief gets rooted in his mind, he will suffer a lot. |
| C．That lack of efforts prevents her from having a better career. |
| D．Creating a more positive thought can lead to better outcomes. |
| E．What you think influences how you feel and how you behave. |
| F．However, the way you think about yourself turns into your reality. |
| G．If we make an effort on purpose, you can learn to think more positively. |
2 . Ants know when an earthquake is about to strike, researchers have discovered. Their behavior changes greatly before the quake and they resume normal functioning only a day after it. Gabriele Berberich of the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany presented these findings according to Live Science.
Berberich and her team discovered that red wood ants preferred to build their homes right along active faults (断层) in Germany. They counted 15,000 mounds (土堆) lining the faults. These faults are the places where the earth breaks in earthquakes.
Using a special camera that tracked changes in activity, Berberich and her team tracked the ants round the clock for three years. They found that the ants’ behavior changed only when the quake was over magnitude 2.0. There were 10 earthquakes between magnitude 2.0 and 3.2 during this period, and many smaller ones. Humans can also sense quakes over magnitude 2.0 only.
According to Berberich, normal ant activity is made up of going about collecting food during the day and resting in the night. But before an earthquake, the ants didn’t go back to their mound in the night and moved around outside it. This strange behavior continued till a day after the earthquake, Berberich told a news conference, according to Live Science.
How do ants know an earthquake is coming? Berberich suggested that they could either be picking up changing gas or noting small changes in the earth’s magnetic fields (磁场). “Red wood ants have special cells which can sense changes in carbon dioxide levels. They also have special cells for discovering electromagnetic fields,” she said. Berberich and her team are planning to continue the research in areas where there are more and bigger earthquakes.
1. What does the underlined word “resume” in Paragraph 1 probably mean?| A．present. | B．avoid. | C．quit. | D．recover. |
| A．To explain a finding. |
| B．To introduce the topic. |
| C．To make the text interesting. |
| D．To tell how to predict an earthquake. |
| A．They are too excited to rest. |
| B．They don’t collect their food. |
| C．They get lost on their way back home. |
| D．They don’t go inside their mound in the night. |
| A．They can only sense smaller earthquakes. |
| B．They have two ways to predict earthquakes. |
| C．The result of the research is completely reliable. |
| D．They can be depended on to warn people of earthquakes. |
3 . Listening to music perhaps is not the most obvious choice of relaxation.
Dr Gray’s research to examine the effect music has on studying found it important to choose the right music for the topic a person is studying. She said students, who listen to classical music with 60 to 70 beats per minute while they study, score on average 12 percent more in their math exams.
Dr Gray said, “Music has a positive effect on the mind and listening to the right type of music can actually improve studying and learning.
| A．Music can put you in a better state of mind to learn. |
| B．Definitely music can not give you an edge over others. |
| C．In fact, music plays an important role in medical treatment. |
| D．Those are key skills in Science, Humanities and Languages. |
| E．Moreover, listening to music while revising makes students smarter. |
| F．Nevertheless, one clinical (临床的) psychologist believes pop songs do help us in learning. |
| G．This is because the rhythm in classical music helps students study longer and keep more information. |
4 . In a series of studies, researchers found highly trained dogs may be more successful than untrained pets in independently solving newly-presented problems.
Researchers have discovered that one of the factors underlying this process may be persistence (坚持). It involves reinforcement, the principle that behaviors that are rewarded become stronger and more frequent. The other side of this is extinction, which refers to the fact that behaviors that are not rewarded grow weaker and become less likely to appear. When extinction sets in, the animal will simply quit before the problem is solved. It is possible that highly trained dogs have learned to persist and thus have developed resistance to extinction, which would make them better problem solvers.
In this recent study, the researchers looked at 26 adult dogs divided into two groups, “trained dogs” and “pet dogs”. There were two tasks that the dogs were tested on. One was a social learning task where the dog had to learn to look directly into the experimenter’s eyes. Every time the dog stared at the experimenter’s face, they received a treat (reinforcement). Once the dogs were performing this task, the extinction stage began, and the staring behavior was no longer rewarded in order to see how persistent the newly learned behavior was.
The second task focused on problem-solving. It involved a flat disk that had bone-shaped plastic bones. The dogs had to learn to remove the plastic bones to obtain the treat hiding under each one. After the series of rewarded trials, the extinction stage began, and no more reinforcements were provided for removing the bones.
In the social learning task, the trained dogs gazed at the experimenters more than the pet dogs during extinction. While in the problem-solving task, the trained dogs picked up a larger number of bones during extinction. In other words, for dogs who had been trained, their newly learned behaviors persisted longer and were stronger than the behaviors of the pet dogs who received no training in any area.
1. How does the author introduce the topic?| A．By stating a fact. | B．By raising a doubt. |
| C．By making an assumption. | D．By presenting a conclusion. |
| A．Chaining a dog up while walking it every day. |
| B．Giving a goat some grass every time it stands up. |
| C．Putting a fish back into the pool every time it jumps out. |
| D．Yelling at a cat every time it fails to catch a mouse. |
| A．Their newly learned behaviors last longer. |
| B．They can grow stronger than untrained dogs. |
| C．They are more likely to live longer. |
| D．They are better at helping their friends. |
| A．How researchers carry out animal experiments |
| B．Why trained dogs don’t give up easily |
| C．Why persistent dogs make better pets |
| D．How to pick out a suitable pet dog |
5 . Kids everywhere love to play. And they know a ball is a perfect thing to play with. Now scientists at London’s Queen Mary University report that bumblebees seem to know the same thing, making bumblebees the first insects known to play.
When people talk about “play”, they’re describing an animal doing something that doesn’t really seem to help it. They’re not doing the action to get food or shelter or another similar “reward”. Play usually happens when a creature is relaxed and is often repeated.
However, scientists think many animals and birds’ playing is a kind of training for things they’ll have to deal with in later life. But before this, there were no reports of insects playing.
Scientists at Dr. Chittka’s lab, carried out an experiment. First, they tagged (贴标签) 45 young bumblebees, both male and female, between 1 and 23 days old. The tags made the bees easier to identify and follow.
The scientists set up a clear pathway from the bumblebees’ nest to a feeding area. On either side of the open pathway, the researchers placed small colored wooden balls. On one side of the path, the balls were attached and couldn’t move. On the other side, the balls could roll around. It turned out that the bumblebees weren’t interested in the unmovable balls, but they made lots of visits to the rolling balls.
Grabbing the balls with their legs, the bees would flap (拍打) their wings to pull on the balls, causing them to roll. The 45 tagged bumblebees rolled balls 910 times during the experiment. Though some only did it once, others did it a lot. The younger bumblebees spent more time rolling balls. Males seemed more likely to play than females.
“It’s not clear why the bees roll the balls or whether they enjoy it But the experiment raises important questions about how the insects’ minds work and whether they have feelings. With further research, the future will hold surprises and answers in store for us,” said Dr. Chittka.
1. What is the purpose of animals’ play according to scientists?| A．To find ideal shelter. |
| B．To receive extra rewards. |
| C．To develop survival skills. |
| D．To get their fellows’ attention. |
| A．Bumblebees’ categories. | B．Bumblebees’ habitats. |
| C．Bumblebees’ intelligence. | D．Bumblebees’ behavior. |
| A．Younger male bumblebees preferred to roll the balls. |
| B．Bumblebees possessed different wing beat frequency. |
| C．Bumblebees could distinguish balls of different colors. |
| D．A specially-built pathway helped bumblebees find food. |
| A．Uncertain. | B．Doubtful. | C．Optimistic. | D．Critical. |
6 . What is heritage? The word can be difficult to define. Heritage is always something that is passed down by families or other groups for many years.
Many parts of the natural world are also important to cultural heritage. This can include bodies of water, plant life, landforms and more. One example is the Nile River.
The intangible group includes any part of cultural heritage that you can’t feel through touch. Maybe you’ve read about forms of dance, like Flamenco dancing. You might know about the music of Mariachi Bands or holidays like Eid. These are all examples of intangible heritage.
Exploring your own heritage can be fun. It can help you learn about yourself, your family, and your ancestors. But it’s also important to learn about the heritage of others.
| A．They are treasures that can be touched. |
| B．What tangible items can be part of heritage? |
| C．However, heritage isn’t limited to concrete objects. |
| D．Languages, holidays and customs also make the list. |
| E．Therefore, it’s difficult to protect them from fading away. |
| F．Doing so can help you build a stronger understanding of other cultures. |
| G．It has been part of cultural heritage in many African nations for centuries. |
7 . Imagine a new smartphone product. It works the same as any other smartphone, but when dropped, those cracks that appear after an annoying fall slowly begin to fade away, and the phone magically repairs itself、A team of researchers led by chemistry professor Takuzo Aida have found a way to create self-repairing plastics that can be used in smartphones, cars and other products. But their new plastics won’t only be used to create unbreakable products, but also help the fight against growing wastes harming the planet.
91% of plastic is non-recyclable and filling Earth with waste. The increasing plastic in landfills is a growing concern due to its negative environmental impact. In 2019 about only9% of plastics were recycled globally, leading Japanese scientists to seek to find plastic that can start its own formation or self-repair.
The self-repairing plastics are made by adding a tiny amount of a specialized substance into ordinary plastic to hold the monomers (单体) together by hydrogen bonds (氢键). When the new plastic is broken down by heat, instead of burning to waste, the hydrogen bonds mix and allow for the formation of special shaped monomers to create a foundation for more monomers to layer on and rebuild itself. The team found that their self-healing plastic was able to automatically repair at room temperature over an hour to regain its durability.
The team’s work suggests great prospects for the future of plastic. “The technique could lead to the development of a made-to-last plastic that does not need to be recycled,” lead professor Aida said at the conference, “and can one day be in products from smartphones to cars and even buildings.”
1. What is the special feature of the new plastics?| A．Hard to break. | B．Cheap to produce. |
| C．Good to health. | D．Easy to recycle. |
| A．Global warming. | B．Industrial needs. |
| C．Economic crisis. | D．Green awareness. |
| A．Its social effect. | B．Its main function. |
| C．Its working principle. | D．Its economic value. |
| A．Doubtful. | B．Favorable. | C．Disapproving. | D．Unconcerned. |
8 . Most teenagers kill time playing video games, or surfing TikTok. Not William Gadoury, a 14-year-old from Matha, Quebec. William Gadoury has been crazy about the Mayans for most of his childhood, ever since his grandparents bought him books about the civilization. What started as a hobby at age 12 snowballed into serious research, and he theorized that the locations of Mayan cities might correspond to stars in Mayan constellations(星座).
Using ancient books, Gadoury analyzed 22 Mayan constellation maps and covered the positions onto Google Earth images of the Yucatan Peninsula, which to this day is home to large local populations and some best-preserved architecture from Mayan culture. He would track the constellations from Google Earth using special sheets, covering them onto the position of Mayan cities on a paper map. The teen was able to show that 117 Mayan cities matched up with the position of the stars, with the brightest stars representing bigger cities.
But when Gadoury was working on the 23rd Mayan constellation, he found a conflict: three stars, but only two ancient cities on Google Earth. The third star pointed to a location on the Mexico-Belize border. However, the area was covered with thick jungle, leaving Gadoury stuck.
Luckily, he asked NASA for images from their RADARSAT-2 satellite. Indeed, there was a square, man-made-looking structure in the heavy forest. Gadoury then learned a fire had swept across the region, thinning out the grass cover. He found images from the agency, and eventually concluded that there was indeed a city there.
Gadoury’s findings eventually took him into the jungle in 2022 to search on foot, along with scientist Francisco Bell. The team discovered a farming village deep in the Mexican jungle, which showed the “backbone” of the Maya’s long-term success, which was down to their ability to work the land and support large cities.
1. What is Gadoury’s finding mainly about?| A．The villages in the Mexican jungle. |
| B．The images from NASA satellites. |
| C．The origins of Mayan culture. |
| D．The locations of Mayan cities. |
| A．By tracking the best-preserved building on maps. |
| B．By analyzing 117 Mayan cities in ancient books. |
| C．By checking star maps against satellite images. |
| D．By updating the Google Earth on the Internet. |
| A．A thick forest. | B．A forest fire. |
| C．Fund shortage. | D．Bad weather. |
| A．Cheerful. | B．Intelligent. |
| C．Ambitious. | D．Sympathetic. |
9 . Kieran Moise, 18, started growing out his hair in the eighth grade, after losing a friend to brain cancer. He had seen people donate their hair to children who had lost theirs during medical treatment and wanted to do same.
“Kieran has always been known for his hair. It was a big part of his personality and who he was,” said his mother, Kelly Moise. “But he has always been the most compassionate and caring person. Since he was 6 years old, he somehow had the mindset of raising money and giving it to people who need it, and that never changed.”
In May, Moise graduated from high school with an impressive 19-inch Afro (非洲发式). But with him set to enter the U.S. Air Force Academy, it was finally time for the big cut.
To maximize his impact, Moise organized a live event at a local brewery in Huntsville and an online fundraising campaign called “Kieran’s Curls for Cancer”, where he aimed to raise $1,000 per inch cut.
On May 29, nearly 100 people attended the event, where they watched Moise get his hair braided and snipped off. His hair was donated to Children With Hair Loss, a non-profit organization in Michigan that makes free wigs for kids and young adults facing medically related hair loss.
By the end of the day, the event raised $20,000 for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and has continued to raise money online. As of Saturday, it was more than $39,000.
“Charitable giving comes in many forms, from direct acts of kindness to impactful public statements that motivate others to come together to support a cause,” Richard C. Shadyac Jr., President and CEO for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, told CNN, “Kieran’s simple act of kindness exemplifies (例证) the power of younger generations and is something to celebrate, a selfless decision that will make a direct impact on the lives of the kids at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and children everywhere for years to come.”
1. What contributed to Kieran Moise’s starting growing out his hair?| A．His high-quality fine hair. | B．The death of one of his friends. |
| C．His witness of children’s pain | D．The encouragement from his mother |
| A．To introduce his kind deeds in the past. | B．To prove his unique personality |
| C．To praise him for his contributions | D．To show that he is kind from an early age |
| A．Kieran’s kindness benefited himself | B．Kieran’s love will be richly rewarded |
| C．Kieran’s deeds will inspire more kindness | D．Kieran’s behavior showed a new form of charity |
| A．Kind-hearted and creative | B．Kind-natured and tolerant |
| C．Good-natured and ambitious. | D．Good-tempered and considerate |
10 . One day when I was 5, my mother scolded (责骂) me for not finishing my breakfast and I got angry. I wanted to play outside and not to be made to finish eating my breakfast. When angrily opening the screen door with my foot, I kicked back about a 12-inch part of the lower left hand corner of the new screen door. But I had no remorse, for I was happy to be playing in the backyard with my toys.
Today, I know if my child had done what I did, I would have scolded my child, and told him about how expensive this new screen door was, and I would have delivered a spanking (打屁股) for it. My parents never said a word. They left the corner of the screen door pushed out, creating an opening, a breach (裂缝) in the defense against unwanted insects.
For years, every time I saw that corner of the screen, it would constantly make me think about my mistake. For years, I knew that everyone in my family would see that hole and remember who did it. For years, every time I saw a fly buzzing (嗡嗡) in the kitchen, I would wonder if it came in through the hole that I had created with my angry foot. I would wonder if my family members were thinking the same thing, silently blaming me every time a flying insect entered our home, making life more terrible for us all. My parents taught me a valuable lesson, one that a spanking or stern (严厉的) words perhaps could not deliver. Their silent punishment for what I had done delivered a hundred stern messages to me. Above all, it has helped me become a more patient person and not burst out so easily.
1. When the author damaged the door, his parents ________.| A．gave him a spanking |
| B．left the door unrepaired |
| C．scolded him for what he had done |
| D．told him how expensive it was |
| A．regret | B．joy | C．anger | D．notice |
| A．to hide his anger away from others |
| B．not to go against his parents’ will |
| C．to have a better control of himself |
| D．not to make mistakes in the future |
| A．Adults should ignore their children’s bad behavior. |
| B．Parents are the best teachers of their children. |
| C．Patience is the key to becoming a better person. |
| D．One learns most when shown the result of his/her action. |
