1 . Socrates, Galileo, Marie Curie, Einstein ... What did these great thinkers have in common? They all practiced deliberate doubt and used it as a tool to improve their thinking and generate creative ideas.

    1     It is about suspending our certainty and letting go of our preconceived (先入为主的) notions in order to explore new ideas and perspectives. When we’re certain of something, we tend to stop looking for alternative explanations or possibilities.     2     Doubt can, of course, be unsettling, but it can also result in a greater understanding of a subject and inspire fresh thoughts and insights.

    3     But it doesn’t mean we should use it all the time. While deliberate doubt can be a valuable tool for generating creative ideas and exploring complex problems, it can also be counterproductive if it is not practiced in the right way.

It’s important to keep in mind that deliberate doubt is not constant doubt. If we’re continuously doubting our own ideas, we’ll be less likely to pursue them and see them through to completion.     4     We spend so much time doubting everything and end up not doing anything.

    5     We can become self-critical and unsure of our abilities, which can undermine our self-esteem. As a result, we may be too afraid to try new things or take risks.

To avoid these traps, it’s important to strike a balance between doubt and certainty, and to use doubt as a tool to stimulate creative thinking and exploration, rather than as a means of undermining ourselves or others.

A．Deliberate doubt can also lead to a lack of confidence.

B．But when we doubt, we’re forced to consider other perspectives.

C．In this case, deliberate doubt can prevent us from making decisions.

D．When practiced all the time, deliberate doubt can lead to a different belief.

E．By turning doubt into a deliberate process, we open ourselves to new possibilities.

F．Deliberate doubt is the practice of actively questioning our beliefs and assumptions.

G．Deliberate doubt can help us to develop a more open-minded approach to the world.

2 . Mark Brown, 57, had been making films for 30 years, but he found himself feeling tired of it. “I thought, things can only go downhill.” Brown knew he needed to do something else — but what? A few years earlier, he had bought his childhood house and moved in. While Brown wondered about a second care er in gardening, he heard a different internal voice. “That child who used to love drawing whispered to me down the years,” he said. Some unacknowledged longing in him was brought out.

There was a great oak tree near his home. It had stood out to his young self as a “fantastical giant — a treasure home to birds, insects and animals. There was a cave inside. We used to squeeze in through this hole.” He decided to lock himself away for two months to draw it in all its glorious detail.

“While I was drawing,” he said, “there came moments when it was as though the tree was drawing itself. I had spent so much time playing in it. I could feel it. It was deep inside me.” His finished oak held “a real power”, he said. “As you walk towards it, it just grows.” Brown became a tree portraitist.

Over the next few years, he travelled across Britain and spent days with the trees selected with the help of the Ancient Tree Forum, the Tree Council and the Woodland Trust. Brown has started work on a 20-drawing series of Britain’s most important ash trees. “These beautiful old ash trees are going to be lost to us,” he says. “They are 350 years old and they are dying because of a disease that we’ve spread.”

Drawing is not only an act of care and a demand for preservation, but it “gives me that interface between my passion for the natural world and my creativity,” Brown says. It has also given him a different perspective on the passage of time. “I’m an old man yet I’m only 71, and some of the trees I’ve drawn are 1,000 years old. When I’m with them and when I draw them, I think about the end of my life and the brief nature of human life that passes momentarily beneath them.”

1. At the age of 57, Brown ______.

A．moved into his old house	B．awakened a childhood interest
C．reached the peak of his life	D．developed a passion for gardening

2. What can we learn about the oak tree and Brown?

A．It helped him start a new career.	B．It linked him with the world.
C．He built a tree house in it.	D．He studied creatures in it.

3. What is Brown working on?

A．Setting up tree organizations.	B．Looking for cures for tree diseases.
C．Drawing to call for protection for trees.	D．Travelling to select important trees in Britain.

4. When Brown is with trees, he feels that ______.

A．time is endless	B．human life is temporary
C．nature is dynamic	D．life-long learning is crucial

3 . 阅读下面短文，根据题目要求用英文回答问题。请在答题卡指定区域作答。

When I think about running a timed mile in elementary school PE class, I can still feel the full-body sensation of stress. The mile run was part of the National Physical Fitness Test, a bi annual assessment given to elementary through high school students, which included five events: the mile run, sit-ups, pull-ups or push-ups, a sit-and-reach and a shuttle run.

Twice a year, the top 15 percent of participants nationwide were honored with a Physical Fitness Award. At my school, the winners’names were painted on one of the gym’s walls. For years I stared admiringly at those names, wondering if I would ever make the cut. But no matter how hard I tried, I could never pull my chin above the bar.

I believe deeply in the value of physical activity for both the mind and the body. However, it wasn’t until I was in my 30s and had run a half-dozen half-marathons, at a comfortable pace, that I even began to believe I was a sportswoman. I’ve heard similar stories from many people. My friend Natalia, a group fitness instructor, said that for years she saw herself as lacking athleticism thanks to her experience in PE class. It was only when she took a fitness class that she began to see herself as physically capable.

Their experiences, and my own, made me believe even if PE class and fitness assessment fail to make you develop a positive relationship with sports, there is definitely a positive opportunity to make it a source of joy in your life.

It’s taken years to meet myself where I am. When I run a mile these days, I feel so good by the end that I want to run another. I still can’t do a traditional pull-up, but a trainer at my gym recently introduced me to assisted pull-ups with resistance bands; I delight in finally feeling up to the task.

Fitness shouldn’t be for the few. We all benefit from sports, whether we earn our names on the wall or not.

1. What is the National Physical Fitness Test?
______________________________________________________________________________
2. What was in her mind when the author stared at the names on the wall?
______________________________________________________________________________
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.

According to the author, many people fail in PE class or fitness assessment and then they will find it difficult to make sports a source of joy in their life.

______________________________________________________________________________
4. What do you think of the idea “fitness shouldn’t be for the few” in the last paragraph? （In about 40 words）
______________________________________________________________________________

4 . You might not think that an AI capable of making music would stimulate your emotion, but others think differently, particularly those who gathered at Mexico City’s Symphony Hall in 2019 for Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, which I finished using melodies generated by an AI.

As the orchestra (管弦乐团) finished Schubert’s original work and began the music the AI and I had written, I could feel the crowd’s energy shift from astonishment to indignation and fear. They seemed afraid that an AI might be able to make emotional symphonic music. You can see their point: an AI that makes emotional music could affect the emotional lives of thousands or even millions of people in a small, but profound way, just like a human musician does.

Positive and negative, people reacted very strongly to AI’s symphonic debut (首秀). Even though most people don’t believe that AI can create something enjoyable, they, at least partly, did enjoy the Unfinished Symphony.

Enjoyment in music implies that there’s something in the music that the listener connects to, a perception of shared emotion. But, in the case of AI music, an emotion shared with who? AI, as of yet, has no emotions. So what is the meaning of music made without an emotional composer? The unsatisfying answer is that music has no objective meaning. A composer can decide how a piece of music sounds, but it’s the listener that decides what it means.

No matter how it’s created, music doesn’t exist in a vacuum (真空) to the listener. The meaning we assign to music depends on its context — how the piece connects to other elements in our lives. Without context, music is like the results of a game whose rules have been lost. The context for a music is part of who you are. The music is emotional to you because you have the context to appreciate it. As it continues to evolve, AI music will develop its own context. Certainly, it’ll be different from human-made music. It’ll mix existing genres to create new ones; it’ll combine instruments that we wouldn’t think of combining. Its rules will be different.

I’m now always asked the same question: “Who put the emotion in that music: you, the composer, or the AI?” But that’s not the question they really want to ask, though. There’s a deeper question that most people are too afraid to ask right now: “Are my emotions so simple that they can be maneuvered by a machine?”

In my experience, this could be possible one day. If a modestly capable music AI in 2019 could stir up emotions of an audience, maybe AI can have a more powerful effect on our emotional lives than we’d like to admit.

1. The audience reacted strongly to the symphony mainly due to ______.

A．their doubts about AI’s capabilities	B．their uneasiness about AI’s influence
C．the orchestra’s brilliant presentation of AI music	D．the likeness between AI music and the original work

2. What might the author agree with?

A．AI poses little impact on people’s emotions.

B．Music bears no intended emotional meaning.

C．AI music will outperform human-made music.

D．The context reflects people’s interpretation of music.

3. What does the word “maneuvered” underlined in Paragraph 6 most probably mean?

A．Refreshed.

B．Challenged.

C．Revealed.

D．Directed.

4. Which would be the best title for the passage?

A．Are Composers To Be Replaced?	B．Would AI Music Be a Rising Trend?
C．Could AI Make Music That Moves You?	D．Was the Unfinished Symphony Successful?

5 . Neuroscientists usually investigate one brain at a time. They observe how neurons(神经元)fire as a person reads certain words, for example, or plays a video game. As social animals, however, those same scientists do much of their work together — brainstorming hypotheses, puzzling over problems and fine-tuning experimental designs. Increasingly, researchers are bringing that reality into how they study brains.

Collective neuroscience, as some practitioners call it, is a rapidly growing field of research. An early, consistent finding is that when people converse or share an experience, their brain waves synchronize. Neurons in corresponding locations of the different brains fire at the same time, creating matching patterns, like dancers moving together. The experience of “being on the same wavelength” as another person is real, and it is visible in the activity of the brain.

Such work is beginning to reveal new levels of richness and complexity in sociability. In classrooms where students are engaged with the teacher, for example, their patterns of brain processing begin to synchronize with that teacher’s — and greater synchrony may mean better learning. Couples exhibit higher degrees of brain synchrony than non-romantic pairs, as do close friends compared with more distant acquaintances.

But much about the phenomenon remains mysterious — even scientists occasionally use the word “magic” when talking about it. One straightforward explanation could be that synchrony between brains is a result of shared experience or simply a sign that we are hearing or seeing the same thing as someone else. But the newest research suggests that synchrony is more than that — or can be. Researchers are discovering synchrony in humans and other species, and they are mapping its choreography — its rhythm, timing and undulations(波动) — to better understand what benefits it may give us.

Given that synchronized experiences are often enjoyable, researchers suspect this phenomenon is beneficial: it helps us interact and may have facilitated the evolution of sociality. This new kind of brain research might also cast light on why we don’t always “click” with someone or why social isolation(孤立) is so harmful to physical and mental health. With synchrony and other levels of neural interaction, humans teach and learn, forge friendships and romances, and cooperate and converse. We are driven to connect, and synchrony is one way our brains help us do it.

1. According to the passage, collective neuroscience ______.

A．collects and refines research on neurons

B．analyses activities of one brain at a time

C．promotes connections among neuroscientists

D．focuses on studying brains in interactive groups

2. What can we infer about brain synchrony from Paragraph 4?

A．It can benefit other species.

B．Its mechanism has changed.

C．It demands further investigations.

D．Findings about it are contradictory.

3. Which of the following may result from brain synchrony?

A．Increasing popularity among peers.

B．Better cooperation among teammates.

C．Improved techniques for conversations.

D．More shared experiences between a couple.

6 .

Spot Over 1,000 of these yellow robots, Spot, are already checking factories and power plants. And now the New York City Fire Department is starting to use the dog-like devices for search-and-rescue missions. In April 2024, a Spot surveyed the remains of a collapsed car park that was considered too unstable for fire crews to enter. Spot can also send back video footage, carry up to 14 kg and when fitted with an add-on “arm”, open doors and press switches.

Lightning Swarm Inspired by fireflies, these robots are tiny and can give out light in various colours. The scientists intend the robots to use their lights to signal to and track each other: a low-power communication strategy for a lightweight robot. “We envision sending hundreds or more of these tiny flying robots into a disaster site, and having them collectively search for survivors,” says MIT robotics engineer Prof Kevin Chen. “Once a survivor is found, they’ll pass the information out to the operators.”

Trail Blazers At the Bajiao Firc Rescue Station, in Yantai, northeast China. a firefighter tests out a fire-fighting robot. For a few years, China has been promoting the technology, which allows human firefighters to stay safely outside the danger zone while controlling robot firefighters to put out fires at chemical plants and in subways. One major advantage of this approach is fire resistance — Trail Blazers can work at temperatures of 1,000℃ for over 30 mins.

Rooster Thanks to its clever design, Rooster can roll across surfaces or fly around to examine almost any type of disaster site, moving through narrow passages and windows, or over obstacles and up or down staircases. Designed to assist in search operations, the robot uses cameras and sensors to scan a space, so that rescuers don’t need to enter dangerous areas. Rooster can also communicate with search teams and other robots via a radio link.

1. Which robots can work in the air?

A．Spot and Trail Blazers.	B．Spot and Lightning Swarm.
C．Rooster and Trail Blazers.	D．Rooster and Lightning Swarm.

2. What do these robots have in common?

A．They can send radio signals.

B．They are fitted with cameras.

C．They can help conduct rescues.

D．They are modelled after animals.

3. This passage is probably from ______.

A．a science magazine	B．a test report
C．an operating handbook	D．a modern fiction

7 . 阅读下面短文，根据短文内容填空。在未给提示词的空白处仅填写1个恰当的单词，在给出提示词的空白处用括号内所给词的正确形式填空。

When Lauren Schroeder, a high school student,     1     (show) up to a community food drive last year, she saw what people there got — just a lot of     2     (can) goods. She decided to become the change she wanted to see. Schroeder grew 7,000 pounds of produce and gave it all away to food banks. Her work drew the attention of Future Farmers of America, which gave her some money for     3     (supply) and seeds. Her goal is     4     (donate) 20,000 pounds of vegetables by the time she graduates.

8 . 阅读下面短文，根据短文内容填空。在未给提示词的空白处仅填写1个恰当的单词，在给出提示词的空白处用括号内所给词的正确形式填空。

At the moment, AI tools provide results that are not always correct or appropriate. That’s     1     companies are looking for people to help train AI programs. These people are called prompt engineers, who     2     (pay) six-figure salaries. Anna Bernstein, a prompt engineer, writes prompts and feeds them     3     AI tools. This helps the AI generate text with accurate information. She thinks prompt engineering is now one of the hottest tech jobs and she loves her job.

9 . 阅读下面短文，根据短文内容填空。在未给提示词的空白处仅填写1个恰当的单词，在给出提示词的空白处用括号内所给词的正确形式填空。

Have you ever heard of the Ring of Fire? It might sound like something straight out of science fiction,     1     it is a real place. The Ring of Fire is the name used by scientists to describe an area     2     frequent volcanic eruptions and earthquakes take place. In fact, most of the world’s volcanoes are located there. The Ring of Fire is an arc-shaped region that     3     (run) along the coast of North and South America, along the eastern edge of Asia, across Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, and along the coast of New Zealand.

10 . Steven took his 7-year-old son Alex and 4-year-old daughter Mia out on his boat for fishing and fun. But in the blink of an eye, things took a terrifying _______ when a strong current suddenly swept through, causing Mia to _______ her hold on the boat.

While Mia wore a life jacket, Alex did not. But as the current pulled his sister away, Alex wasn’t going to leave her alone. He, too, let go of the _______ and swam toward his sister.

Realizing the danger, Steven _______ jumped into the water and tried to help his kids. But the strong current made it difficult even for him. So he told Alex to swim to shore while he tried to rescue Mia.

“I told them both I loved them because I wasn’t sure what was going to happen,” Steven recalled. “I tried to _______ Mia as long as I could. But finally I wore myself out, and she drifted away (漂走) from me.”

Alex followed his dad’s _______ and headed for the shore. But it was no easy task. “The current was going the opposite way,” he explained.

This little boy spent an hour _______ his way back to land. He swam more than a mile. Once he finally made it to the shore, the boy ran to the first house he could find and begged for _______. From there, Jacksonville authorities _______ and rescued Steven and his daughter.

Alex, the brave and __________ little boy saved his sister and dad. If not for him, it would have been a different story.

1.

A．hit

B．turn

C．pause

D．risk

2.

A．release

B．find

C．escape

D．regain

3.

A．fish

B．jacket

C．boat

D．current

4.

A．unusually

B．suddenly

C．instantly

D．unexpectedly

5.

A．relate to

B．wait for

C．count on

D．stick with

6.

A．explanation

B．footsteps

C．example

D．instructions

7.

A．clearing

B．fighting

C．picking

D．changing

8.

A．security

B．understanding

C．permission

D．help

9.

A．cut in

B．looked out

C．took over

D．came around

10.

A．tough

B．humble

C．hard-working

D．confident