1. What did the speaker use to do?
| A．He watched TV a lot. |
| B．He stayed at home and did homework. |
| C．He played sports with his classmates. |
| A．Textbooks. | B．Storybooks. | C．Cartoon books. |
| A．He can chat with them. |
| B．He can concentrate on study. |
| C．He can learn a lot from them. |
| A．An engineer. | B．A doctor | C．A writer. |
1. Where are the Greens going first?
| A．To the bus station. | B．To the subway station. | C．To the man’s house. |
| A．To see Tommy’s grandparents | B．To go on a trip. | C．To attend a meeting. |
| A．Saturday. | B．Friday. | C．Sunday. |
| A．He misses his grandparents. |
| B．He’ll stay in Washington for a month. |
| C．He is always slow. |
1. Where was the ring found first?
| A．Inside a piece of cake. | B．On the newspaper. | C．In a drawer. |
| A．David. | B．David’s father. | C．The woman. |
| A．When she was washing her hands. |
| B．When she was eating the cake. |
| C．When she was making the cake. |
4 . When Eugenie George first heard that her friend passed an exam, her heart sank. She’d failed that test weeks earlier, and needed more work to advance her own career. But instead of anxiety, she called her friend. “I congratulated her and told her she inspired me,” she says. She was surprised when it changed her attitude, so she could share her friend’s happiness and experience her own, in turn.
Finding pleasure in another person’s good fortune is what social scientists call freudenfreude, a term that describes the joy we feel when someone else succeeds, even if it isn’t directly connected with us. Freudenfreude is like social glue, says Catherine Chambliss, a professor of psychology at Ursinus College in Pennsylvania. It makes relationships “closer and more enjoyable”. Sharing in someone else’s joy can also improve life satisfaction and resilience(适应力) and help people cooperate during a disagreement.
While the benefits of freudenfreude are plentiful, it doesn’t always come easily. Sometimes, your loss might last, making freudenfreude feel out of reach. If you were raised in a family that paired winning with self-worth, Chambliss says, you might misread someone else’s victory as your own personal shortcoming. And factors such as mental health and overall wellbeing(幸福) can also affect your ability to participate in someone else’s joy. Still, freudenfreude is worthwhile and there are ways to encourage the feeling.
Instead of an automatic response, freudenfreude is often an active process. To help people strengthen joy-sharing muscles, Chambliss and her colleagues developed a programme called FreudenfreudeEnhancement Training (FET). They found that depressed people who used the practices for two weeks had an easier time expressing freudenfreude, which built up their relationships and improved their mood.
Jean Grae, an artist, supports friends in this mindset. When someone gets a new opportunity or reaches a milestone, she makes sure to celebrate. Grae says she’s especially moved when anyone considered ‘other’ succeeds. “It’s truly inspirational,” she says, “because it lifts us all up and makes us shine.”
1. What do we know about Eugenie George?| A．She took pride in passing her exam. | B．She shared her success with her friend. |
| C．She was pleased with her friend’s success. | D．She was annoyed at her failure in an exam. |
| A．Its great benefits. | B．Its disadvantages. |
| C．Reasons for its absence. | D．Ways of improving it. |
| A．To test the effect of freudenfreude. | B．To help people apply freudenfreude. |
| C．To get people to know freudenfreude. | D．To show the advantages of freudenfreude. |
| A．How to experience freudenfreude? |
| B．Let’s share what leads to freudenfreude. |
| C．Freudenfreude: View others’ success as our own. |
| D．A win-win: Freudenfreude brings our own pleasure. |
5 . How Can You Get Wiser?
Becoming wiser is a journey and not a destination. Here are some strategies that you can use to get wiser.
Try experiencing new opportunities
Experiencing new opportunities is how you gain wisdom. This is the only way you will gain wisdom and become better.
Open yourself to different perspectives
Always develop a sense of curiosity, and observe the world from different angles. It will always help you out. Never base your perspective(想法) on the most popular opinion or what is the most comfortable for you.
Meet new people
Limiting yourself to only one type of people that share the same ideology as you can be comforting but it doesn’t get you anywhere in life. You need to meet new people and learn what they have to offer.
You must develop a thirst for knowledge. Take new classes, read books, and the list goes on and on. If something confuses you, surf the internet and clear out your problems. All of these activities will strengthen your critical-thinking skills.
Learn and grow from your mistakes
All of us make mistakes in life, but it is what makes us grow and do better next time. Whenever we make a mistake, we should learn from it. We can think about what made us fail, so that we may improve ourselves.
| A．Listen to your heart |
| B．Never back away from learning |
| C．Stop blaming others for your mistakes |
| D．This will open up new pathways for us |
| E．Share what defines you and learn from others |
| F．You will never grow from being in your comfort zone |
| G．Train your mind to be a judgment-free space for ideas |
6 . The difficulty in learning a foreign language lies not only in its complexity (复杂) but also in its difference from your own. The first thing many learners will think of is the writing system. Chinese stands out for its difficulty. A learner is said to memorize at least 2,000 characters to be able to read a newspaper.
A second way languages can be hard is with sounds and differences that do not exist in the learner’s language. To an English-speaker, the novelty includes the clicks of many African languages and the ejective sounds made by a sudden release of pressure in the mouth in some Caucasian ones. But just as hard is the problem of languages that differ from your own.
The vocabulary obviously matters too. Most European languages share an ancestor (called proto-Indo-European) and so their words, too, often come in related pairs. If you know water in Spanish is agua, it is easy to figure out Italian acqua and English aquatic. But the European languages share vocabulary for another reason: they have freely borrowed from one another over the centuries. Not only will languages unrelated to the European ones lack the “genetic” similarities in vocabulary but also they, culturally distant, have far less borrowed European vocabulary too.
Finally there is grammar. Many people connect tricky grammar with long lists of endings that change according to a word’s use in a sentence. This exists all over Arabic such as prefixes, suffixes (后缀), or vowels (元音) and consonants, which accounts for the difficulty of the language. Foreign grammar is also difficult to the extent that it differs from your language.
If you want to learn a language just for fun, start with Swedish. If you want to learn more, stay in Europe. But if you really want to impress, mastering Cantonese or Korean is the sign of the true linguistic (语言的) Ironman.
1. What does the underlined “novelty” mean in paragraph 2?| A．Culture. | B．Civilization. | C．Uniqueness. | D．Unfamiliarity. |
| A．To tell their differences. | B．To compare the languages. |
| C．To prove their shared connections. | D．To show difficulty in learning them. |
| A．Arabic. | B．English. | C．Swedish. | D．Korean. |
| A．learning strategies | B．learning difficulties |
| C．learning contents | D．learning processes |
7 . More than just shelter for weary travellers, these lodges (乡间小屋) double as a base for adventurers to explore the surrounding wilderness.
Puketui Forest Escape
Best for: Couples world
Enveloped in podocarp forest, Puketui feels a world away despite being a short drive from Taupō. Solar power keeps the lights on, water is sourced from a spring, heating is fed by a cosy, freestanding fireplace. Explore the forest via walking tracks, then walk to the house to stargaze. From NZ$399 (£208)a night B&B.
Awaroa Lodge
Best for: Wifi-free
Without wifi and phone or TV signal, you’ll have little to distract you at Awaroa Lodge. Available only by hiking or water taxi, the lodge produces its own power and grows organic food for the restaurant. It also protects the national park’s wetlands for the return of white herons (苍鹭) in 2020 after years of absence. From NZ$206(£108) a night.
Lake Moeraki Wilderness Lodge
Best for: Wildlife spotting
Wilderness Lodge at Lake Moeraki is surrounded by coastal rainforest and guests can join lessons in kayaking, star-gaze and feed giant eels with recycled waste. The members at the lodge protect unique Tawaki penguins and run guide d penguin-watching tours from July to December. From NZ$450(£235), includes breakfast, dinner, and twice-daily guided activities.
Timber Trail lodge
Best for: Fresh forest air
Timber Trail Lodge, is fantastic for weary cyclists and hikers, with cosy lounges (休息室) flooded with natural light during the day and then lit by the glow of the fireplace by night. Nearly all power is solar, rainwater is harvested and profits are spent on trail conservation. From NZ$390 (£205) a night, with all meals.
1. How much will you pay for one-week stay in Awaroa Lodge?| A．£756. | B．£1442. | C．£1456. | D．£1435. |
| A．Puketui Forest Escape. | B．Awaroa Lodge. |
| C．Lake Moeraki Wilderness Lodge. | D．Timber Trail lodge. |
| A．Water sports. | B．Organic food available. |
| C．Convenient transportation. | D．Green lifestyle. |
8 . A university lecturer in Linyi, Shandong province, has shone a light on the difficulties of food delivery drivers by taking on the role himself for a month and sharing his trials and sufferings online.
Last December, Xing Bin, a lecturer at the College of Literature at Linyi University, was so eager to know about what life and work must be like for a delivery driver, so he decided to sign up and be one from December to January this year. The gig economy (临时工), for better or worse, has exploded in China in recent years, and though many members of the workforce choose to work in the gig economy because of its flexibility (灵活性), others prefer full-time employment.
During the month, Xing worked more than 10 hours and took 30,000 steps a day. He lost 6 kilograms and earned a total of 7,000 yuan. On average, he earned 10 yuan each hour, and 20 yuan at most. “ I was delivering food from early morning till late at night for around 13 hours a day. When I had classes, I delivered food for two hours early in the morning, and after dinner I continued delivering until one or two in the morning,” Xing said.
“Before, if I got a call from a delivery worker, I might delay answering it. But now I will always answer it immediately because I know they might be riding an electric bike while making the call, which is very dangerous,” said Xing, adding that he now understands the difficulties of delivery workers better and realizes how hard they work to make a living.
“During that month, I tasted the bitterness and the happiness of this job with my heart. I delivered over 2,000 orders, and three of the people who ordered impressed me a lot.” he said.
1. Why did Xing try the job of a delivery driver?| A．Out of curiosity. | B．Owing to its high pay. |
| C．Because of its flexibility. | D．For its low career requirements. |
| A．To introduce Xing’s experiences. | B．To praise delivery workers’ spirits. |
| C．To describe delivery workers’ hardships. | D．To show delivery workers’ achievements. |
| A．Requirements for the job. | B．Memories of Xing’s experiences. |
| C．Xing’s calling for more respect. | D．The online reaction to his posts. |
| A．No pains, no gains. | B．Save for a rainy day. |
| C．Easier said than done. | D．Knowledge starts with practice. |
9 . Unmanned planes, or drones, have a great possibility to transport emergency necessities to distant or disaster-attacked places. However, they are expensive to mass produce and often require special launch pads (发射台) to launch and land safely. In addition, the need for the aircraft to have enough battery life to return cuts the flying distance to half. But these problems may be history, thanks to an affordable drone that is designed for a one-way journey.
The APSARA drone is the production of San Francisco-based Otherlab. The drones, which measure about a meter in size, are made almost entirely of cardboard together with packing tapes.When dropped from a plane, APSARA drones can travel up to 150 kilometers and land within 10meters of the aim. The developers say to get to the farthest distance, the drones should be dropped from a height of 35,000 feet or higher in the air. Despite the fact that the aircraft can carry things of only 2. 2 pounds now, Otherlab researchers are confident they will be able to increase the number to 22 pounds in future models. Since the drones are designed for single-use, a crash landing is not just acceptable, but preferred, given that it speeds up to break down the cardboard as long as it doesn’t affect the precious goods, of course! The best thing is APSARA’s easy assemblage (装配) that takes only 30 minutes.
However, though the cardboard meets DARPA’s requirement to “break down”, the small electronic parts on the aircraft don’t. To change that, Otherlab hopes to borrow some of the technology developed for DARPA’s Vanishing Programmable Resources (VAPR) project. VAPR provided money for research to build self-destroying accessories to prevent high-tech military equipment from falling into enemies hands.
The cost of these single-use aircraft has not been revealed, but the producer promises they will be“very cheap”. If that’s the case the amazing drones will make transportation of medicines, blood, communication equipment, and other emergency necessities to unreachable areas an easy job!
1. According to the first paragraph, which of the following is the disadvantage of traditional drones?| A．Their price is too high. | B．They can’t carry too many goods. |
| C．Special pads are needed to launch. | D．The battery life is not long enough to return. |
| A．It is dropped from a flying plane. | B．It is sent up from a sailing ship. |
| C．It is launched from a land pad. | D．It is released from a satellite. |
| A．They’re able to land in the aim place exactly. | B．They can travel up to 150 kilometers. |
| C．They can hold 22 pounds of things. | D．They need only half an hour to be assembled. |
| A．as light as possible | B．as strong as possible |
| C．as small as possible | D．as green as possible |
10 . Cichlids and stingrays (慈鲷和黄貂鱼) can perform simple plus and subtraction (减法) in the number range of one to five. This has been shown in a recent study by the university of Bonn, which has now been published in the journal scientific Reports.
This fact has been known for sometime that Cichlids and stingrays can precisely detect small quantities without counting. However, the new research led by Dr. vera schluessel from the university of Bonn has shown that both species can even calculate. “We trained the animals to perform simple additions and subtractions,” Schluessel explains. “In doing so, they had to increase or decrease a premier value by one.”Blue means “add one”, and yellow means “subtract one”.
But how do you ask a cichlid for the result of “2 +1”or “5 - 1”? The researchers used a method other research groups had already successfully used to test the mathematical abilities of bees: They showed the fish a collection of geometric shapes — for example, four squares. If these objects were colored blue, this meant “add one”. Yellow, on the other hand, meant “subtract one”. After showing the original stimulus (e. g. four squares), the animals were shown two new pictures — one with five and one with three squares. If they swam to the correct picture(i. e. to the five squares in the “blue”arithmetic task), they were rewarded with food. If they gave the wrong answer, they went away empty-handed. Overtime, they learned to associate the blue color with an increase of one in the amount shown at the beginning, and the yellow number with a decrease.
But can the fish apply this knowledge to new tasks? Have they actually mastered the mathematical rule behind the colors? “To check this, we will designedly leave out some calculations during future training,” Schluessel explains.
1. What is known about the two species before the new research?| A．They can count small quantities easily. |
| B．They can associate colors with numbers. |
| C．They can do simple calculations by training. |
| D．They can identify small quantities accurately. |
| A．To illustrate fish’s ability. | B．To ensure the research’s reliability. |
| C．To compare fish and bees. | D．To promote the research’s application. |
| A．By collecting and calculating. | B．By comparing and analysing. |
| C．By observing and concluding. | D．By predicting and checking. |
| A．The fish are competent in mathematical calculation. |
| B．The procedure of the experiment needs improvement. |
| C．More trials are still needed to confirm the new findings. |
| D．Calculation methods are comprehended by both species. |
