1 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. comprehensive	B. spread	C. impact	D. incredible	E. observed
F. compared	G. success	H. firmly	I. combination	J. heavily	K. motivate

A new report by the World Health Organization (WHO) reveals that around one in a hundred deaths worldwide is due to passive smoking, which kills an estimated 600,000 people a year.

In the first study to assess the global     1     of second-hand smoke, WHO experts find that children are more     2     exposed to second-hand smoke than any other age-group, and around 165,000 of them a year die because of it.

Children’s exposure to second-hand smoke is most likely to happen at home, and the double blow of infectious diseases and tobacco seems to be a deadly     3     for children in these regions. Commenting on the findings, Heather Wipfli and Jonathan Samet from the University of Southern California, said policymakers try to     4     families to stop smoking in the home.

While deaths due to passive smoking in children were skewed (曲解) toward poor and middle-income countries, deaths in adults were     5     across countries at all income levels.

In Europe’s high-income countries, only 71 child deaths occurred, while 35,388 deaths were in adults. Yet in the countries like Africa, an estimated 43,375 deaths due to passive smoking were in children     6     with 9,514 in adults.

Only 7.4 percent of the world population currently lives in places with     7     smoke-free laws, and those laws are not always     8     enforced (施行). In places where smoke-free rules are     9    , research shows that exposure to second-hand smoke in high-risk places like bars and restaurants can be cut by 90 percent, and in general by 60 percent, the researchers said.

Studies also show such laws help to reduce the number of cigarettes smoked by smokers and lead to higher     10     rates in those trying to quit.

2 . Fill in each blank with a proper word given in the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word that you do not need.

A. influence                 B. majority                 C. moderate               D. rushing          E. rose          F. average     G. consumed               H. preferring                 I. consumption             J. portions            K. decreased

As for what is driving America’s chronic weight problem, there are no definite answers. But a lot of evidence points to the two causes most people already suspect: too much food and too little exercise.

Bigger    1    

The US Department of Agriculture(USDA)reports that the average American ate almost 20% more calories in the year 2000 than they did in 1983, thanks, in part, to a boom in meat     2    . Today, each American puts away an     3    of 195 Ibs of meat every year, compared to just 138 Ibs in the 1950s. Consumption of added fats also shot up by around two-thirds over the same period, and grain consumption     4    by 45% since1970.

Inactivity is the new normal

Lack of exercise is also a major culprit in the obesity epidemic. It’s been decades since most Americans worked in fields and on factory floors. A far greater     5    of us are sitting throughout our working day. This means less exercise each day. According to one study, only 20% of today’s jobs require at least     6    physical activity, as opposed to 50% of jobs in 1960. Other research suggests Americans burn 120 to 140 fewer calories a day than they did 50 years ago. Add this to the higher amount of calories we are packing in, and we get a perfect recipe for weight gain.

But lethargy goes well beyond the workplace. It is also how we get to work and what we do after. Americans walk less than people in any other industrialized country,     7    to sit in cars to get around. And at the end of the day, 80% of Americans don’t get enough exercise, according to the CDC.

In the end, though, we can’t lose sight of the big picture. Over the past years, diet fads have come and gone, with people     8    to blame red meat, dairy, wheat, fat, sugar, etc. for making them fat, but in reality, the problem is much simpler. Genetics and age do strongly     9    metabolism, but as the CDC points out, weight gain and loss is primarily a formula of total calories     10    versus total calories used.

3 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. hints       B. dominant       C. oriented       D. duly E. rhyme       F. featuring       G. preservation       H. inheritance I. symbolizes       J. historically       K. morality

Huizhou heritage comes to life

It was a natural choice for veteran Huang Yu, after serving in the army and owning a business in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, for years, to go back to his hometown in Xidi village, Huangshan, Anhui province, in 2016. He took over the homestay his parents opened when he was a middle school student.

In 2000, Xidi and the nearby Hongcun village were declared World Heritage sites by UNESCO for their outstanding     1     of rural architecture dating to the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties. Now, walking along the bluestone streets in Xidi or Hongcun, visitors can appreciate the distinctive Huizhou-style houses,     2     white walls, dark tiles and layered horse-head gables, and feel like they are immersed in a traditional Chinese ink painting.

This level of preservation could not be achieved without the participation of local residents. According to Huang, this awareness is not new - since all streets and alleys in Xidi are paved with bluestone,     3    , street dealers carrying wares on shoulder poles were forbidden from letting their poles touch the ground in order to protect the bluestone.

A local folk     4     says: “One is not lucky to be born in Huizhou. At 13 or 14 he is kicked out of his hometown to make a living.” It     5     at the struggles once endured by the people of Huizhou. Toward the end of the Ming Dynasty, a group of Huizhou merchants became famous, trading in salt, wood and tea, and working as pawnbrokers (当铺老板) with a reputation for     6     and honesty.

“Some folk customs have been retained and newly     7     toward tourism, offering glimpses into the lives of the ancient Huizhou people.”These customs are revived as a demonstration for tourists, and to maintain the     8     of traditional culture. Zhang Wangnan, director of the China Huizhou Culture Museum in Huangshan says “This     9     the combination of intangible with tangible cultural heritage.”

He further suggests that the old Huizhou villages explore and find their own unique, marketable themes. “Each of them should find a     10    local feature, whether it is tea, chrysanthemum or rapeseed flowers, and then make it the theme of the village, so that they can give full play to their distinctive cultural charm.”

4 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. ranging          B. appropriately     C. association     D. facilitating E. evidence                 F. modest             G. obtaining     H. offered I. rose       J. steer        K. treatment

That throbbing headache just won’t go away and your mind is racing about what might be wrong. It turns out googling your symptoms may not be as ill-advised as once thought.

Although some doctors advise against turning to the internet before going to the clinic, a new study suggests that researching symptoms online may not be harmful after all, and could lead to     1     improvements in diagnosis (诊断).

Using “Dr. Google” is controversial, with fears that it can lead to inaccurate diagnoses, bad advice on where to seek     2    , and increased anxiety.

Previous research into the subject has been limited to observational studies of internet search behavior, so researchers from Harvard sought to empirically (以经验为主地) measure the    3     of an internet search with diagnosis, triage (分诊，即按患者伤势决定治疗次序), and anxiety by presenting 5,000 people in the US with a series of symptoms and asking them to imagine someone close to them was experiencing the symptoms

The participants were made up of roughly equal numbers of men and women with an average age of 45. They were asked to provide a diagnosis based on the given information，which ranged from mild to severe, and described common illnesses such as viruses, heart attacks and stroke.Then, they looked up their case symptoms on the internet and again     4     a diagnosis. Participants were also asked to select a triage level,     5     from “let the health issue get better on its own” to calling emergency services, and to record their anxiety levels.

The result showed a sharp increase in diagnosis accuracy, which was 49.8% before the search and     6     to 54% after the search. However, there was no difference in triage accuracy, or anxiety, the authors wrote in the journal JAMA Network Open.

About three-quarters of the study participants were able to identify the severity of a situation, and     7     choose when to seek care.

The lead author, Dr. David Levine, said the findings suggested that medical experts and policymakers probably did not need to     8     patients away from the internet when it came to seeking health information and self-diagnosis or triage. Instead, using the internet was likely to help patients figure out what was wrong.

“Many physicians believe that using the internet to search for one’s symptoms is a bad idea and this provides some     9     that is unlikely the case,” he said. “Searchers for the most part did not use poor sources of information such as chat forums or social media. This similarly refutes the idea that folks who search the internet are     10     ‘bad advice’ from poor data sources.”

5 . Direction: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. addressing       B. adoption       C. attend       D. budgeting       E. cautions F. correspond       G. extended       H. hesitancy       I. packages       J. regardless K. rigid

Top work-life balance benefits for 2023

“Flexibility is the gold standard of work-life balance benefits,” says Jonathan Pas, health care leader at consulting firm Mercer.

It’s no surprise then that two years after the pandemic forced most office workers to perform their jobs remotely. 78% of employers say they’ll allow employees to continue doing so regularly in 2023, according to a Mercer survey. But there’s still some     1    : only 9% say they will allow employees to work remotely daily.

    2    , flexibility around when employees work is just as important as where. In the survey, 66% of employers said they would offer flexible work schedules over the course of a typical work day, such as specific times during the week to     3     to personal matters and four-day work weeks. Employees no longer want to organize their personal life around a(n)     4     work schedule but instead want the two interwoven, so they can decide what to prioritize and when.

Pas     5     against making hollow promises about a company’s commitment to work-life balance. “If employees feel a disconnection between programs that are rolled out and what senior leaders really expect, credibility is questioned, and the goodwill created through the program is denied.” He cites paid time off to volunteer, which almost half (45%) of companies say they will add to their benefits     6     next year.

Other benefits requiring a broader organizational buy-in are sabbaticals(公休假) and unlimited vacation days. Both benefits encourage employees to pursue interests outside of work with     7     periods off. Still, if they feel a dishonour associated with taking advantage of them, they’ll be hesitant to do so. The relatively low     8     rates for 2023, though—only 12% for sabbaticals and 15% for unlimited vacation—indicate that employers are still against paying employees not to work.

Instead, they prefer to find new ways to give employees more money, with the rise of employer-funded lifestyle accounts, which are often reserved for big-ticket items that might otherwise require some     9    . Nevertheless, only 12% of employers said they would add lifestyle accounts in 2023, and 70% said they are considering them, which could indicate a trend on the horizon.

But perhaps the most telling statistic about the importance of     10     work-life balance is the number of companies that said they don’t plan to offer any additional benefits to support work-life balance: a mere 5%.

6 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. alert                    B. connected             C. correspond             D. dismiss             E. embarrassed F. invaluable             G. judgement             H. piloted                    L. respectful             J. urge                    K. wellbeing

Are you listening? But are you really listening?

You’d think we’d be very good at listening, but do we deeply listen? Sometimes we quickly    1    another’s opinion if it doesn’t fit neatly with our own. The British Council has launched a project Crossing Divides aimed to train young people to listen and understand other people with very different perspectives.

Practicing deep listening means tuning into empathy(同理心), resisting the    2    to judge people who are distinct from oneself. It develops important skills that will make anyone a better listener: empathy, silence and becoming aware of our    3    .

The project was    4    in Lebanon, where it helped local people find common ground with each other, in a society divided by bitter years of conflict. People taking part in the project said they felt that they were being heard, helping them to feel recognized and understood, which opened communication between communities. All the participants greatly improved their listening skills, which proved    5    in their working and personal lives.

They have also had a chance to be listened to and heard, which research shows can improve    6    . This is because we all feel accepted, valued and more    7    to others when we sense that we are being truly listened to, and the person listening to us doesn’t have to agree with us for those benefits to be enjoyed.

The project is also an opportunity for participants to feel the benefit of stepping outside their own “echo chamber (回声室)”. Echo chambers are created by our natural tendency to seek out people and opinions, in person and online, that we agree with, so we mainly see and hear information and opinions that    8    to our own. Not surprisingly this leads us to think our views are definitively correct, so we become    9    or even angry when we encounter perspectives that our worldview suggests arc wrong, because they don’t agree with our own echo chamber.

So, training young people with deep listening skills can encourage many more people to take part in challenging and    10    conversations. Scott McDonald, the organization’s CEO said: “The deep listening training gets to the heart of what we do by providing opportunities for people to step out of their echo chambers, to cross divides, and build trust and understanding.”

7 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in each blank with a proper word given in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. steadily B. predicts C. biology D. temporary E. dramatic F. recovers G. permanent H. grounded I. expansion J. formed K. kindly

Teens Are Still Developing Empathy Skills

The teen years are often full of door-slamming, eye-rolling and seeming insensitivity, even by kids who behaved     1     before. Some parents worry that they are doing something wrong or that their children will never think of anyone but themselves. A six-year study published in Developmental Psychology shows that     2     is partly to blame.

In adolescence, critical social skills that are needed for one to feel concern for other people and to understand how they think are undergoing major changes. Adolescence has long been known as prime time for developing cognitive skills for self-regulation and executive function.

“Cognitive empathy,” or the mental ability to take others’ perspective, begins to rise     3     in girls at the age of 13, according to the study co-authored by Jolien van der Graaff at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. By comparison, boys do not begin until the age of 15 to show increases in perspective-taking, which helps in problem-solving and avoiding conflict.

Adolescent boys actually show a     4     decline, between the ages of 13 and 16, in a related skill—“affective empathy,” or the ability to recognize and respond to others’ feelings. This may be the result, at least in part, of a     5     rise in the primary male sex hormone, during adolescence, which sparks a desire for dominance and power. Fortunately, the boys’ sensitivity     6     in their late teens. Girls’ affective empathy remains relatively high and stable throughout adolescence.

This doesn’t mean, however, that we can do nothing but just wait for teenagers to develop a feeling of empathy. In fact, parents can help instill(灌输) affective empathy into their children. Affective empathy is     7     in marginal region of the brain, which regulates emotions. This capacity begins to develop in infancy. Children learn to practice empathy by watching their parents and by experiencing it themselves—being well treated by adults who sensitively respond to their emotions. While cognitive empathy arises from a different part of the brain, the two abilities are linked. Children’s affective empathy     8     their level of cognitive empathy as teens.

The findings reflect a major     9     in researchers’ understanding of cognitive growth during adolescence. They used to believe that both forms of empathy were fully     10     in childhood. Now, it is clear that “the brain regions that support social cognition, which helps us successfully understand and interact with others, continue to change dramatically” in our teens, says Jennifer Pfeifer at the University of Oregon. Research in her lab also suggests that cognitive empathy rises in teens. The discoveries serve as a new lens for exploring such teen behavior as bullying and drug abuse.

8 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. virtually	B. pride	C. drawn	D. consistently
E. course	F. spot	G. spied	H. representing
I. dominate	J. banning	K. host

China is challenging South Korea’s e-sports dominance

Some 4,000 fans gathered at the BEXCO Centre in Busan, a big port city in South Korea, on May 29th. Another 2.2m tuned in online. They were there for the finals of the Mid-Season Invitational, a prestigious(有声望的) e-sports tournament. A dozen teams had been competing over the     1     of three weeks to show off their skills at League of Legends (LOL), an online strategy-fantasy game. Now just two remained: Royal Never Give Up from China and T1,     2     the home side. As the battle raged, T1 soon sputtered(被打花了). The mood in the hall grew sad. Some fans left early. By the time the Chinese team, joining     3     at home, emerged victorious, few were left.

The enthusiasm, and bitter disappointment, reflect the place e-sports have in South Korean youth culture. The games are not just fun, but a source of national     4    . Since the 1990s players have honed(磨练) their skills in PC bangs (internet cafés), where children would go straight after school. Games such as StarCraft and LOL filled time and fired up competitive spirit like after-class basketball in America or football in Brazil. The pool of talent expanded, and South Korean players came to     5     online-gaming championships.

No longer. China is now on the rise. Chinese companies are at the heart of gaming globally. The country’s biggest tech firm, Tencent, owns Riot Games, which developed LOL, as well as 40% of Epic Games, which makes Fortnite. Interest in the pastime has grown, too. There are some 685m gamers in China, including those who play on their phones, compared with 33m in South Korea. Over the past few years China has     6     beaten South Korea in big championships.

South Korea contributed to its own downfall. “Skilled Korean players and coaches played a role in cultivating the e-sport scene in China,” says Choi Eun-Kyoung of Hanshin University, near Seoul. South Korean masters,     7     in by big money, taught Chinese players the lessons of their success and established real-world gaming academies and systems to     8     and hire talent.

South Korea has now     9     a chance to catch up. Last year, China limited under-18s to three hours of online gaming a week. Given that serious players start as young as 14 and practise some 70 hours a week, Chinese e-sports are likely to suffer. South Korea, meanwhile, last year canceled a decade-old law     10     under-16s from playing online games in the dead of night.

9 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. academic B. previously C. submit D. assessed E. classifier F. controversy G. subscribed H. detect I. typically J. access   K. labelled

OpenAI releases “not fully reliable” tool to detect AI generated content

ChatGPT has been creating waves across the internet with its writing ability and responses to requests. The use of ChatGPT has been full of     1     . There have been concerns that students can use this tool to     2     AI-generated work and claim it as their own.

OpenAI, the research laboratory behind ChatGPT, has released a tool designed to     3     whether text has been written by artificial intelligence, but warns it’s not completely reliable – yet. In a blog post on Tuesday, OpenAI linked to a new     4     tool that has been trained to distinguish between text written by a human and that written by a variety of AI, not just ChatGPT.

The tool could be useful in cases where AI was used for “    5     dishonesty” and when AI chatbots were positioned as humans, they said. But they admitted the tool “is not fully reliable” and only correctly identified 26% of AI-written English texts. It also incorrectly     6     human-written texts as probably written by AI tools 9% of the time.

“Our classifier’s reliability     7     improves as the length of the input text increases. Compared to our     8     released classifier, this new classifier is significantly more reliable on text from more recent AI systems.”

Since ChatGPT was opened up to public    9    , it has given rise to a wave of concern among educational institutions across the world that it could lead to cheating in exams or assessments. Lecturers in the UK are being urged to review the way in which their courses were     10    , while some universities have banned the technology entirely and returned to pen-and-paper exams to stop students using AI.

10 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A.confirmed       B. measurable       C.previously       D. determine       E. tracking       F. habitable G.virtually        H. sensitive        I. protect        J. surprised        K.system

A New Exoplanet in the System

In 2014, data from NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope allowed astronomers to announce the detection of three planets orbiting Kepler-138. This was based on a     1    dip in starlight as the planet momentarily passed in front of their star, a transit.

Benneke and his colleague Diana Dragomir, from the University of New Mexico, came up with the idea of re-observing the planetary     2    with the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes between 2014 and 2016 to catch more transits of Kepler-138d, the third planet in the system, in order to study its atmosphere.

While earlier NASA Kepler space telescope observations only showed transits of three small planets around Kepler-138, Piaulet and her team were     3    to find that the Hubble and Spitzer observations suggested the presence of a fourth planet in the system, Kepler-138e.

This newly found planet is small and farther from its star than the three others, taking 38 days to complete an orbit.The planet is in the     4    zone of its star, a temperate region where a planet receives just the right amount of heat from its cool star to be neither too hot nor too cold to allow the presence of liquid water. Observing the exoplanet’s transit would have allowed astronomers to     5    its size.

With Kepler-138e, the masses of the    6    known planets were measured again via the transit timing-variation method, which consists of     7    small variations in the precise moments of the planets’ transits in front of their star caused by the gravitational pull of other nearby planets.

The researchers had another surprise: they found that the two water worlds Kepler-138c and d are twin planets, with     8    the same size and mass, while they were previously thought to be greatly different. The closer-in planet,Kepler-138b, on the other hand, is     9     to be a small Mars-mass planet, one of the smallest exoplanets known to date.

“As our instruments and techniques become     10     enough to find and study planets that are farther from their stars, we might start finding a lot more water worlds like Kepler-138 c and d,” Benneke concluded.