1 . I once got lost on East Nanjing Road in a boiling sea of people. Music blared from every store. Having nowhere to sit and nowhere to stand, I was begging to be teleported to some deserted island. Even for extroverts (性格外向者) like me, who get energy from the _________ , Shanghai is overwhelming (令人难以招架的). I can’t imagine what it’s like during the holidays when the party animals, who have a fear of missing out, hit the streets to have fun. 

At times like these, I truly envy people who are introverted (内向的) and prefer their own thoughts and _________ world to being around other people. Introverts are self-sufficient and don’t need other people to be happy. They can be happy by themselves. It’s a _________ belief that introverts are lonely or shy, and that they would be much happier if they _________ their comfort zones and became more talkative. 

It is, therefore, fitting that January 2 is World Introvert Day. Following _________ full of glittering lights, bright colors and small talks, introverts might feel in need of some alone time to recharge. The day also _________ the positive points of introverted personalities, emphasizing that being the quiet one is not only acceptable but something to be _________.

Yet, society in general prefers _________ because, among other reasons, they tend to go out more and spend more money, which is good for the economy. For this reason, families often pressure their introverted kids to attend large _________ and fake being social butterflies to improve career prospects (前景). __________ this is sometimes necessary, to be happy, it is essential to be accepted for who we are.

1.

A．street

B．crowd

C．adventure

D．thoughts

2.

A．inner

B．outer

C．material

D．real

3.

A．negative

B．common

C．false

D．true

4.

A．came along with

B．kept staying in

C．looked forward to

D．stepped out of

5.

A．nights

B．holidays

C．weekends

D．weekdays

6.

A．gathers

B．highlights

C．loads

D．prefers

7.

A．discussed

B．criticized

C．praised

D．pursue

8.

A．introverts

B．customers

C．extroverts

D．teenagers

9.

A．schools

B．meetings

C．gatherings

D．lectures

10.

A．While

B．Since

C．If

D．Once

2 . 听下面一段独白，回答以下小题。1.

A．The South Atlantic Ocean.	B．The coast of South America.
C．African continent.	D．The coast of Angola.

2.

A．He studies the similarities between ancient and modern animals.

B．He discovers the remains of ancient sea animals on the coast.

C．He studies the cause of separation of South America and Africa.

D．He helps do the arrangement of the ancient animal remains in a museum.

3.

A．Because the remains were exposed on the coast.

B．Because these animals used to live close to each other in one place.

C．Because these animals were driven to one place and killed.

D．Because these animals were all eaten by one large, fierce ancient sea animal.

3 . 听下面一段独白，回答以下小题。1.

A．Aircraft design.

B．Mathematics.

C．Engineering.

D．Science.

2.

A．40.

B．14.

C．4.

D．0.

3.

A．She stuck to studying engineering at college.

B．She addressed to students at high schools and colleges.

C．She tried to persuade women not to do engineering for its hard work.

D．She researched defense systems of satellites and rockets.

4 .

A．They went to see a movie.	B．The dancers impressed them both.
C．The woman is also a dancer.	D．The man invited the lady to the show.

6 . My father decided to start learning French when he was 57. On the surface, his retirement hobby seems a little random — our family has no connection to French-speaking countries — but his ______ ran deeper than a passion for cakes. My grandmother developed signs of Alzheimer’s disease (阿尔兹海默症) in her early 70s, and studies suggest that being bilingual, that is, being able to speak two languages equally well, can ______ the start of the condition by up to five years. Drawn by that ______ benefit, many people have attempted to pick up a new language in adulthood.

Lots of activities are linked to better brain health in old age, like getting more education when you’re younger and physical activity. Experts say regularly speaking multiple languages may be especially ______ though. “We use language in all aspects of daily life, so a bilingual brain is ______ working,” said Mark Antoniou, a professor at Western Sydney University who specializes in bilingualism.

The age at which you learn another language appears to be less important than how ______ you speak it. The cognitive (认知的) benefit is from having to ______ your mother tongue, which your brain is forced to do if you’re trying to recall the right words in another language. So if the second language is used a lot, you’re getting that cognitive ______. That process is called cognitive inhibition. In theory, by improving these types of processes, the brain becomes stronger to the ______ caused by diseases like dementia. The stronger your mental power, the thinking goes, the longer you can function normally, even if your brain health starts to ______.

However, evidence for the benefits of learning a second language as a hobby in your 60s is ______. Research by Dr. Antoniou and colleagues found that while Chinese adults 60 and up improved on cognition tests after a six-month language learning program, people who played games like Sudoku did as well. Two more recent studies on the topic found virtually no ______ in cognitive performance after people took part in language-learning programs.

The scientists who conducted those studies offered a few potential ______. One is that the participants were highly motivated volunteers, who may have already been at peak performance for their age, making it hard to see any ______. Another is that the language interventions were perhaps too short. The handful of studies looking into the issue have used language lessons that were very different in their ______ and frequency. Some studies taught participants for eight months, others for just one very intense week.

1.

A．affection

B．contribution

C．motivation

D．struggle

2.

A．delay

B．prevent

C．signal

D．stimulate

3.

A．additional

B．educational

C．lasting

D．potential

4.

A．beneficial

B．common

C．impractical

D．rare

5.

A．carelessly

B．constantly

C．creatively

D．delicately

6.

A．long

B．often

C．soon

D．well

7.

A．command

B．practice

C．restrict

D．spread

8.

A．function

B．psychology

C．system

D．training

9.

A．damages

B．operations

C．pains

D．signs

10.

A．decline

B．improve

C．matter

D．restore

11.

A．available

B．mounting

C．stronger

D．weaker

12.

A．difference

B．involvement

C．point

D．reduction

13.

A．applications

B．explanations

C．findings

D．suggestions

14.

A．diversities

B．improvements

C．outcomes

D．possibilities

15.

A．content

B．intention

C．length

D．requirement

7 . Directions: Read the following passage. Summarize the main idea and the main point(s) of the passage in no more than 60 words. Use your own words as far as possible.

It Takes at Least 200 Hours to Make a Close Friendship, and More to Maintain It

Many of us worry that we don’t put in enough time to maintain close friendships. But how much is enough? Unfortunately, there’s no magic formula (公式) for how much time you need to spend on your friends to keep them. Each friendship and friend are unique and develops or ends depending on how we interact.

Forming a friendship in the first place takes a certain number of hours of being together. We need between 40 and 60 hours together for a person we know slightly to become a casual friend. In order to move from casual friends to close friends, we need to spend an additional 140 to 160 hours together for a total of about 200 hours.

However, deeper interactions can quicken that timeline. We can form a close bond in less than 200 hours with meaningful conversations. Contrarily, spending 200 hours together doesn’t necessarily mean a person will become a close friend. They have to want to be your friends. Some co-workers can spend 300 hours together and never become close friends.

When it comes to maintaining friendships, it’s not just the number of hours spent together, but what we do that matters. Engaging in passive activity with friends — like watching a TV series — is fun and enjoyable, but it doesn’t do as much to maintain friendship as having deep conversations, sharing feelings, and being a good listener. And routinely checking in with people we choose to connect with, through calls and texts or in person, helps maintain relationships and leads to higher scores of positive feelings, like happiness.

The key point is that sharing things about ourselves can lead to close friendships. Once that closeness is established, some ways to maintain closeness are supporting friends when things go wrong for them and celebrating their achievements.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

8 . 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.

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. convincing       B. disinformation       C. hazards       D. illogical       E. maintain   F. preview G. publicly       H. racing       I. response       J. speed       K. seemingly

OpenAI Unveils A.I. that Instantly Generates Eye-Popping Videos

Last April, a New York start-up called Runway AI revealed technology that let people generate videos. The four-second videos were shadowy and disturbing. But they were a clear sign that artificial intelligence technologies would generate increasingly     1     videos sooner. Just 10 months later, OpenAI has revealed a similar system, Sora, that creates videos that look as if they were lifted from a Hollywood movie.

OpenAI is among the many companies     2     to improve this kind of instant video generator. The technology could     3     the work of experienced moviemakers. It could also become a quick and inexpensive way of creating online     4    , making it even harder to tell what’s real on the internet.

In an interview, the team behind the technology said the company was not yet releasing Sora to the public because it was still working to understand the system’s     5    . The intention here is to give a(n)     6     of what is likely to happen soon, so that people can see the capabilities of this technology.

Like other generative A.I. technologies, OpenAI’s system learns by analyzing digital data — in this case, videos and subtitles describing what those videos contain. OpenAI declined to say how many videos the system learned from or where they came from, except to say the training included both     7     available videos and videos that were licensed from copyright holders. The company says little about the data used to train its technologies, most likely because it wants to     8     an advantage over competitors.

Sora generates videos in     9     to short descriptions. Though the videos can be impressive, they may include strange and     10     images. The system, for example, recently generated a video of someone eating a cookie — but the cookie never got any smaller.

10 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passages coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Walking and Using a Phone is Bad for Your Health

Spend time on any crowded sidewalk and you’ll see heads bent over and eyes cast downward. One recent study of college students found that a quarter of people crossing intersections     1     (absorb) in a device. That screen in your hand isn’t just distracting your attention. It also changes your mood, your manner of walking and etc. — and affects your ability to get from point A to point B     2     running into trouble.

When you walk and use a phone at the same time, you automatically adjust     3     you move. Video footage of walkers has shown that people on phones walk about 10 percent slower than those undistracted ones. These changes can block traffic on the sidewalk. And     4     walking makes up a big portion of your daily physical activity, walking more slowly may have impacts for your fitness.

Looking down at a smartphone while walking can also increase the amount of force     5     (place) on the neck and upper back muscles, which could reduce balance and increase the risk of falls.

It’s now widely accepted that walking in natural spaces is good for your mental health. It appears that     6     (get) these benefits, it’s important that your attention is on the environment, rather than on your phone.

Most of us understand that walking and using a phone can be risky. Some cities, like Honolulu,     7     (pass) laws to control distracted walkers. But research on those dangers has turned up some surprises. One study has looked at the connection between “phone-related distracted walking” and emergency department visits. Using government data     8     (extend) over the years 2011 to 2019, the researchers turned up nearly 30,000 walking injuries occasioned by phones.

If you’re distracted by a phone, you’re definitely putting     9     at some risk. So how do you stay safe? If you do walk and use your device at the same time, stop when you’re around stairs, crosswalks and messy or uneven ground,     10     accidents are more likely to occur.