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. afford B. attention C. beneficial D. incredibly E. lowers F. memory G. opposite H. priority I. regularly J. schedule K. significant

How Does Exercise Improve Academic Performance?

You already know that regular exercise is important for controlling weight and avoiding a variety of health conditions. But it can also improve your academic performance. As an expert said, “What we know is that students who exercise     1    , at least 3 times a week, graduate at higher rates than those who do not exercise.”

It’s tempting to think you’re so busy that you can’t     2     to exercise. However, the exact     3     is true: you will have to deal with many problems because of lack of exercise. Even if you can’t spare 30 minutes, 5- or 10-minute exercises during the course of the day could make a     4     difference in your academic performance. Five-minute walking every hour had a positive impact on mood, fatigue (极度疲劳), and hunger at the end of a day. This may be particularly     5     to students who also work a full-time job and study in the evening and nighttime hours.

Exercise     6     stress and anxiety while increasing focus. A study by researchers at the University of Illinois found that physical activity increased the ability of elementary school students to pay     7    , and also increased their academic performance.

Exercise also improves academic performance in other ways. 1. Exercise requires time management. Arranging for exercise forces students to also     8     study time and this teaches them the importance of block timing, and urges them to give     9     to their studies. 2. Exercise reduces stress. These reductions are very important to students, because too much stress is bad to memory production and your ability to seep: two key things needed to score high on exams. 3. Exercise leads to a better quality of sleep. Better sleep means moving your studies from short term to long term     10     during REM, a period of sleep. That way, on test day you remember that tiny fact that gets you the scores you need.

2 . Directions: Fill in the blanks with the proper form of the given words.

The heart of Gandhi’s nonviolence was love, in the spiritual form of the word. In the face of racist British rule, Gandhi so loved his opponents that he refused to take up arms against them. But Gandhi was not     1     his critics. Some observers said he was lucky that the British were the ones colonizing India, as they were tolerate of the Indians’ opposition. They also questioned     2     racist American whites would allow similar disobedience of the law. Martin Luther King was willing to take a chance, at least in America and the answer was yes.

For King, nonviolence was     3     but passive. “Nonviolent resistance is not a method of cowardice,” he said. “It does resist. It is not a method of stagnant passivity. The nonviolent resister is just as opposed to the evil as the violent resister, but he resists without violence.”

What did King mean by nonviolence? It meant     4    (organize) thousands across the South in specific mass actions that would force face-to-face encounters with white, racist power. Doing so, King said,     5    (demonstrate) both the powerlessness of white violence and show the country that the black community was not afraid to fight for its rights. For King, responding to violence in kind would show the weakness of the black community, not its strength.

Nonviolence would also strengthen the activist community through     6     (share) suffering and struggle. This experience would expand outward to involve the black community broadly and, King hoped, all Americans in what he called “the beloved community”.

Of course, King also understood the practical reasons for nonviolence. Given that blacks were a minority, and     7     Southern whites often had the power of the local and state police behind them, violence was a dead end. Even demonstrating the possibility of a violent response would provoke a massive backlash, potentially     8    (destroy) the civil rights movement. And it would spoil     9     good will the movement was building in the national community, and especially in Washington,     10     King and other leaders hoped to see federal civil rights legislation.

3 . Assibit was a slave in Niger (尼日尔) for 50 years. She was born a slave. Her mother was a slave, as were her husband and children. She had to work all day from daybreak, preparing food for the master and his family, milking camels and doing all household chores, including moving their tent. This is heavy work, the tent alone can be made up of around 200 goat skins and has to be moved four times a day to ensure that the master and his family are always shaded from the strong sun.

On 28 June 2004, she escaped, walking 30 kilometers to freedom. "We were never paid. I was only given one tenth of the camel milk and the leftovers. I have never known happiness until this month of freedom.     1     Now that Now that I am free, I can live as I please."

Slavery has a long history in Niger.     2     They are used as herders, agricultural laborers and as domestic servants. Everything that a household needs to have done is done by slaves. The master and his family do no labor; they do not even lift a cup.

Regardless of their age, slaves are under a master's total control. They are not allowed to make any decisions for themselves, whether it is deciding when to cat and sleep or whom they marry.     3    . The children of slaves are removed from their mothers when they are as young as two years old, and are given to other masters.

Despite its prevalence, the true scale of slavery in Niger only became clear last year, following joint research that Anti-Slavery International carried out with the local organization Timidria. In conducting the first national survey of this abuse, over 11,000 people were interviewed.     4     The research establishes that at least 43,000 people are in slavery across the country.

A．Most of them were identified as slaves.

B．Now I can go to bed when I want and no one insults me.

C．In many cases, families are not even allowed to stay together.

D．Today, people born into a slave class are forced to work without pay throughout their lives.

E．Children can be taken away without cause and their parents never know what happen to them.

F．Ethnic minorities could also be targeted, whose cultures traditionally involve street-corner gatherings.

4 . When you "like" a story online, you're not just telling your social media followers that you like it, you're also exposing them to that story. And they, in turn, can expose others, and so on. We are interconnected in ways we can hardly imagine, and our little online actions can have big consequences. That can be a good thing, if the stories we share contain valuable information or ideas. But falsehoods are dangerous, and when they spread they can cause real harm. Yet we seem blindly willing to share stories whose truth we are not sure of.

Why do we transmit false information? One reason is that we too easily believe that it's actually true. We all suffer from confirmation bias, the readiness to accept evidence that confirms our views, and to reject evidence that contradicts them. Another reason we transmit falsehoods is that we often don't care if a story is true or not. If we treat information as more entertainment than news, then we share what pleases us, without considering what might happen if others believe it is true.

It reveals a fundamental lack of care in how we handle information. This is particularly troubling in the social media age. We have suddenly acquired unprecedented powers to transmit information in an instant to millions of others. But we have yet to learn how to handle that power mindfully and ethically.

Compare this to the history of infectious disease. Changes in living conditions through population explosions and urbanization introduced drastic new risks of infection. With no knowledge of how diseases actually spread, people actively contributed to the crisis with dangerous behavior such as poor sanitation. But in time, scientific breakthroughs in our understanding of how diseases spread not only revolutionized our day-to-day practices -from washing our hands to vaccinating our children -they set new standards of accountability in our individual behavior. As it became commonly known that germs carry discase, we learned that sneezing onto people could be harmful to their health. And as it became known that vaccination works, we learned that it protects our kids and ourselves as well as the broader population.

We need to apply the same ethical reason in our handling of information in this age of truth decay (没落). In his article "The Ethics of Belief", philosopher William Clifford argued that "it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence". Among his reasons for saying this were that it compromised our shared culture of respect for evidence and reason: "The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough: but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them".

What we urgently need now are advances in information literacy. This must start with a true appreciation of our susceptibility to falsehood and its dangers, and it must lead to an individual sense of duty to pause, think, and check before passing on information.

1. People share false information online partly because ________.

A．they are easily affected by mistaken ideas

B．they take news authenticity lightly

C．they tend to misinterpret the actual news

D．they get news from unreliable sources

2. The history of infectious disease is mentioned to illustrate ________.

A．the importance of vaccination for health care

B．the power of scientific knowledge in discase control

C．the significance of acting for the public interests

D．the widespread presence of truth decay in the digital world

3. According to William Clifford, believing without evidence ________.

A．can be morally justifiable	B．is found in most cultures
C．encourages dishonesty in society	D．weakens the habit of reasoning

4. Regarding information sharing what the author tries to suggest may best be interpreted as ________ as actually true.

A．"It's no use crying over spilt milk"	B．"More haste, less speed"
C．"Look before you leap"	D．"Be just to all, but trust not all"

5 . After the Civil War, Mark Twain briefly served in the Confederate Army (南方邦联军), then rejoined his brother Orion, who had recently won a position in the Nevada territory government as ______ for his work on President Abraham Lincoln's re-election campaign. Twain traveled with his brother to Nevada then began a year's work panning for gold and silver. These experiences would later provide the basis for his volume Roughing It (1872). In 1862, he joined the publication and assumed the Mark Twain pseudonym (笔名) almost exclusively when ______ his humorous reports with conventional pieces.

Throughout the remainder of the 1860s, Twain traveled widely and ______ his observations to various West Coast publications. For much of this period he even served as an official journalist for the San Francisco Daily Morning. One of his most celebrated and notorious writings from this period, ______ came as a journalist for the Alta California, whose editors he ______ to finance a five-month journey aboard the Quaker in Europe and the Middle East. Upon returning to the United States, he compiled (编写) the Quaker City correspondence as The Innocents Abroad (1869) and agreed to widespread demand for his ______ as a public lecturer.

With The Innocents Abroad, Twain enjoyed considerable commercial and ______ success. Its popularity was rather ______, for the book was published by a subscription house，which sold works door to door before publication. Interested readers would pay in advance for the book, which would ______, realize actual publication only after sufficient sales had been ______. Twain, who significantly filled the book with 61 chapters of real-life stories - great length was a disadvantage for sales -______ succeeded in producing a work that appealed to readers with its lively humor and ______ insights and depictions. Notable in the book are ______ in Venice, Italy, where the boatmen are inevitably ______ as cheery opportunists, and in Palestine, where deceitful beggars exploit the company's more vulnerable members. Perhaps because of the work's broad, seemingly bitter humor, The Innocents Abroad still ______ among Twain's most accomplished works.

1.

A．reception

B．admission

C．reward

D．award

2.

A．associating

B．replacing

C．comparing

D．alternating

3.

A．attributed

B．contributed

C．distributed

D．formulated

4.

A．therefore

B．moreover

C．however

D．besides

5.

A．inspired

B．convinced

C．promised

D．appealed

6.

A．presence

B．experience

C．emergence

D．competence

7.

A．crucial

B．critical

C．magical

D．economical

8.

A．surprising

B．encouraging

C．confusing

D．satisfying

9.

A．in case

B．in turn

C．in person

D．in time

10.

A．boosted

B．proved

C．projected

D．guaranteed

11.

A．instead

B．nonetheless

C．afterwards

D．thus

12.

A．typical

B．fundamental

C．keen

D．active

13.

A．episodes

B．events

C．landmarks

D．columns

14.

A．rationalized

B．personalized

C．characterized

D．popularized

15.

A．ranks

B．puts

C．grades

D．places

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. exposed                      B. resistance                      C. restricted                      D. governing                      AB. persists AC. appreciation             AD. existing                      BC. produced               BD. generally                    CD. perceives ABC. fully

More than 150 years ago, thousands of Chinese immigrants arrived in the American West to construct the first transcontinental railroad and participate in the California gold rush. But as they moved into urban areas in search of work, they were met by violent     1    . Lawmakers largely stood by as mobs terrorized Chinese communities and even passed laws that     2     Chinese immigrants' employment opportunities, limited their mobility, and prohibited them from voting or purchasing property. With few safe housing options available, Chinese residents concentrated in ethnic ghettos that demanded almost complete self-sufficiency to survive. Chinatowns were     3     not created as the result of a natural tendency to self-segregate, but rather due to various federal, state, and local policies prohibiting Chinese Americans from     4     participating in the United States' housing and employment markets.

Over time, single-family zoning emerged and replaced race-based zoning as one of the most popular local     5     tools for segregating American communities. As white households typically had higher incomes and access to a range of federal home loan programs, single-family zoning     6     racially segregated neighborhoods without explicit race-based regulations. With a greater tax base and support from federal programs, these areas could afford public goods that others could not and, as a result, experienced greater real estate     7    . At the same time, city planners zoned areas adjacent to neighborhoods with apartment buildings and multifamily units - which were predominantly low-income - for industrial and commercial use. These zoning decisions concentrated poverty and     8     vulnerable people to dangerous environ mental hazards. This all but ensured that property values in these communities would appreciate at much slower rates. Single-family zoning     9     to this day and helps maintain     10     patterns of racial segregation in communities across the country.

7 . 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. evident                      B. relatively                    C. concentration               D. dissolved                      AB. rough AC. necessarily               AD. evolved                      BC. reach                      BD. common                      CD. consume ABC. access

Studies have shown that the love children have for sugar may be innate. The preference for sweet foods is found to be already     1     in newborns, who prefer sweeter formulas (配方奶). There's further evidence that kids' taste buds are more sensitive to bitter-tasting foods, further pushing them to     2     for the sweets.

One study showed that adults tend to max out their sugar preference at about the level of sugar in a can of soda, but older children still liked drinks that were twice as sweet. The scientists couldn't find a limit to the     3     of sugar younger children preferred. It turns out that the kids still liked the sugary drink even past the point where there was too much sugar to be     4     in water anymore.

In the times of early humans, those who ate the most calories had a better shot at survival and thus at passing on their genes. Fruit, the most     5     natural source of sugar, could provide more energy than other sources of food, like vegetables, but was     6     scarce. So some scientists suggest that those early humans that ate the most fruit lived longer and had more babies. Those future generations may have then     7     to crave that sugary fruit as an important part of their survival.

Now, of course, sugar is no longer scarce and we     8     it in much larger quantities than the occasional rare fruit. So, in the evolutionary game of survival of the fittest, the fittest isn't     9     the one with the most sweets anymore.

Will we start to adapt to our new, easy     10     to refined sugars and eventually stop craving them? Perhaps, but that kind of evolution takes time.

8 . Forks trace their origins back to the ancient Greeks. Forks at that time were fairly large with two tines that aided in the carving of meat in the kitchen. The tines prevented meat from twisting or moving during carving and allowed food to slide off more easily than it would with a knife.

By the 7th century A.D., royal courts of the Middle East began to use forks at the table for dining. From the 10th through the 13th centuries, forks were fairly common among the wealthy in Byzantium. In the 11th century, a Byzantine wife brought forks to Italy; however, they were not widely adopted there until the 16th century. Then in 1533, forks were brought from Italy to France. The French were also slow to accept forks, for using them was thought to be awkward.

In 1608, forks were brought to England by Thomas Coryate, who saw them during his travels in Italy. The English first ridiculed forks as being unnecessary. “Why should a person need a fork when God had given him hands?” they asked. Slowly, however, forks came to be adopted by the wealthy as a symbol of their social status. They were prized possessions made of expensive materials intended to impress guests. By the mid-1600s, eating with forks was considered fashionable among the wealthy British.

Early table forks were modeled after kitchen forks, but small pieces of food often fell through the two tines or slipped off easily. In late 17th century France, larger forks with four curved tines were developed. The additional tines made diners less likely to drop food, and the curved tines served as a scoop so people did not have to constantly switch to a spoon while eating. By the early 19th century, four-tined forks had also been developed in Germany and England and slowly began to spread to America.

1. What is the passage mainly about?

A．The different designs of forks.

B．The spread of fork-aided cooking.

C．The history of using forks for dining.

D．The development of fork-related table manners.

2. By which route did the use of forks spread?

A．Middle EastGreeceEnglandItalyFrance

B．GreeceMiddle EastItalyFranceEngland

C．GreeceMiddle EastFranceItalyGermany

D．Middle EastFranceEnglandItalyGermany

3. How did forks become popular in England?

A．Wealthy British were impressed by the design of forks.

B．Wealthy British thought it awkward to use their hands to eat.

C．Wealthy British gave special forks to the nobles as luxurious gifts.

D．Wealthy British considered dining with forks a sign of social status.

4. Why were forks made into a curved shape?

A．They could be used to scoop food as well.

B．They looked more fashionable in this way.

C．They were designed in this way for export to the US.

D．They ensured the meat would not twist while being cut.

9 . “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who is swimming naked.” This is a quote attributed to Warren Buffet, who is widely ________ to be one of the world's most successful investors of all time, with a net worth of over＄86 billion.

What does it mean? Simply, you can’t appreciate the risks you (or a company) are taking until tested by ________ circumstances. In other words, in favorable market conditions, making a small fortune is ________ but hard. It is only when market conditions ________ that you can tell who has made solid investment decisions.

This concept is more important than ever, as investing is literally just a few taps away on a smart-phone. This has ________ more young people to start their own financial ventures for the first time. According to a report published by The Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance, about 60 percent of the Alipay financial management users are under 35, with a significant ________ born after 1990. The traditional impression of Chinese youth as big spenders clearly does not ________ everyone. And increasingly, the younger generation are moving away from the habits of their parents. They are more willing to put some of their earnings into financial products instead of just ________ the money into a bank account or buying an apartment.

I ________ their decision. There is no doubt that it is critical for an individual to become financially literate. It means being able to set yourself short-and long-term financial goals, as well as to make good use of your ________ to meet these targets. For those who lack the skills and knowledge needed to make a budget, ________ spending, manage credit cards, and calculate interest on savings and loans, they will be more ________ to financial difficulties. A study conducted by the FINRA Foundation revealed that nearly two-thirds of Americans failed to pass a basic test of financial literacy. I am much more fortunate than them because my parents helped me open my first bank account when I was young and advised me on how to make ________ meet.

New investors are riding a wave of growth in China that has been largely uninterrupted for decades now. They have never experienced a severe economic depression. Having a long life ahead of them, they have to keep on learning how to protect their wealth and to manage their risk—________ setting ambitious goals for the growth of personal finances may be desirable. Or, as Buffet would likely advise those ________ investing for the first time: Dress appropriately and swim safe.

1.

A．regarded

B．thought

C．considered

D．estimated

2.

A．positive

B．various

C．disadvantageous

D．sarcastic

3.

A．anything

B．nothing

C．everything

D．something

4.

A．sour

B．soar

C．sustain

D．surge

5.

A．guaranteed

B．motivated

C．tricked

D．confirmed

6.

A．sample

B．ingredient

C．number

D．part

7.

A．contribute to

B．lead to

C．switch to

D．apply to

8.

A．turning

B．accumulating

C．attributing

D．depositing

9.

A．fend

B．adjust

C．enhance

D．applaud

10.

A．sources

B．resources

C．magnitude

D．funds

11.

A．track

B．streamline

C．spot

D．trigger

12.

A．resistant

B．open

C．vulnerable

D．easy

13.

A．supplies

B．demands

C．ends

D．money

14.

A．as if

B．just because

C．only when

D．even though

15.

A．running toward

B．diving into

C．jumping into

D．flying towards

10 . Directions: Complete the article with the words or phrases in the box. Each word or phrase can only be used once. There is one extra that you do not need.

A. struggling        B. largely       C. troubling        D. theoretically            E. question F. pursuit             G. exactly       H. promise          I. discrimination

A star athlete at the college where I work recently stopped by my office. After committing a few unforced errors during a weekend match, she was torn apart by self-criticism. “I can’t stop beating myself up,” she told me. “I’m at peak fitness, and I practice hard. How is this happening?”

This student, like many I teach, believes she should be able to control the outcomes of her life via her hard work. The mentality can be described as such: all-nighters in the library and hours on the field should get her     1     where she needs to go.

I study and write about resilience (适应力), and I’m noticing a     2     point in students like this athlete. When they win, they feel powerful and smart. When they fall short of what they imagine they should accomplish, however, they are crushed by self-blame.

We talk often about young adults     3     with failure because their parents have protected them from discomfort. But there is something else at play among the most advantaged in particular: a false     4     that they can achieve anything if they are willing to work for it.

The cruel, messy reality is that you can do everything in your power and still fail. This knowledge comes early to underrepresented minorities whose experience of     5     and inequality teaches them to prepare for what is, for now,     6     beyond their control to change. Yet for others, the belief that success is always within their grasp is a setup. University of Chicago professor Lauren Berlant calls this “cruel optimism,” when the     7     of a goal harms you because it is largely unachievable.

Instead of allowing our kids to beat themselves up when things don’t go their way, we should all     8     a culture that has taught them that feeling anything less than overwhelmed means they're lazy, and that how they perform for others is more important than what actually inspires them. The point is not to give our kids a pass on working hard. We would be wise to remind our kids that life has a way of sucker-punching us when we least expect it. It’s often the people who learn to say “stuff happens" who get up the fastest.