1 . 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。

The word “motivation” comes from the Latin term motivus, “a moving cause”. It is described as the force that drives us to pursue a goal, including the desire to continue pursuing meaning, purpose, and a life worth living. It fuels competition and boosts social connection. Its absence can lead to mental illnesses such as depression.

People often have multiple motives for engaging in any one behaviour. Motivation might be extrinsic. That means a person is inspired by outside forces—other people or rewards. Anything promised for completing the task or received as a result of completing the task are extrinsic motivators. Extrinsic motivation can increase motivation in the short term, but over time it may gradually decrease.

Motivation can also be intrinsic. Intrinsic motivation comes purely from within, with no expected reward, deadline, or outside pressure. For example, people who are intrinsically motivated to run do so because they love the feeling of running itself. Compared to extrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation tends to push people more forcefully, and the achievements are more satisfying, since it is integrated into identity and serves as a continuous source of motivation.

To understand motivation, Abraham Maslow introduced the concept of hierarchy of needs (需求层次) in 1943. According to Maslow,   humans are intrinsically motivated to meet physical needs, the most fundamental ones such as needs for food. Then they gradually satisfy several levels of needs from safety, to higher-order needs for love, belonging, and self-respect, and finally move to ward expressing their full potential—self-actualization, the desire to become the most that one can be.

Although the generality of Maslow’s theory has been challenged, many believe it reveals fundamental truths about human motivation. No matter where motivation begins, there are always ways to increase it — whether that be your own motivation or someone else’s. Sometimes you might feel completely unmotivated — and that’s OK. In that situation, allow yourself to feel the discomfort, hear the negative self-talk, and then take action anyway.

1. What is motivation?
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2. Why is intrinsic motivation more powerful?
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3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
▷According to Maslow, we are motivated by different levels of needs, starting at the lowest and the most basic level known as self-actualization needs.
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4. In what way(s) do you think you can get motivated? (In about 40 words)
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2 . Many of us set goals, but sometimes we fail to achieve them. There are many causes why we don’t manage to realize our goals.    1    There is a way, though, to help address this problem: set reminders. People employ a psychological strategy called cognitive (认知的) offloading, where we use a physical action to reduce demands on our brain. Specifically, we may outsource our intentions from being stored in our brains to reminders outside our head.    2    

Understanding the benefits of cognitive offloading can improve our ability to remember and follow through with our intentions. The biggest benefit is simply that it improves memory performance. It increases the probability that we will work towards the goals we need to reach.     3    “The more we offload unimportant information, such as items on a shopping list, the more we can use our brain for those more significant cognitive tasks, such as creativity,” said Sam Gilbert, professor at the University College London.

    4    Still, there are potential negative parts for it. We are more likely to forget what we offloaded if we no longer access our storage, such as when our smartphone dies. We also tend to offload the important things we most want to remember. In a surprise test where their reminders were wiped clean, the participants were more likely to forget the important items and recall the unimportant ones, that is, the more important the intention we want to remember, the more likely we are to offload it—and to forget it.

We’d better tend to create reminders when we think we need them, but not necessarily when we do need them.     5    “If our understanding of our memory ability is wrong, this suggests that we will either overuse or underuse reminders,” Gilbert said. “We can learn by noticing the times that we have forgotten to do something and could have used reminders to help.”

A．Cognitive offloading has noticeable benefits.

B．One common reason is that we simply forget them.

C．Besides, it can free up our limited cognitive resources.

D．A good example can be documents on our smartphone calendars.

E．The process of cognitive offloading helps us identify false information.

F．Our beliefs about how good our memory is directly influence whether we set them.

G．Other experts say it’s too soon to understand how cognitive offloading affects our brains.

3 . 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个适当的单词，在给出提示词的空白处用括号内所给词的正确形式填空。

Technology is constantly advancing.     1     we imagined it years ago cannot keep up with its pace of development. In the past, autonomous vehicles were just a part of movies,     2     these technologies are now successfully coming into being. An autonomous car, also     3    (know) as a self-driving car, can perform all functions related to everyday driving and parking. It is a technology that senses the environment and, upon entering the destination,     4    (find) its way without human intervention.

4 . 阅读下面短文，根据题目要求用英文回答问题。

Yuan Xin, who is now pursuing his doctoral degree, learned from a young age the only way for him to succeed was with his brain rather than brawn (体力).

At the age of three, a terrible accident cost Yuan his right arm. His parents didn’t send him to kindergarten but kept him home. The idea was to ease him into learning with family care and better prepare him for further education. They believed that knowledge can change one’s life.

When he entered primary school, he started receiving unwanted attention and some kids gave him nicknames. “I had doubts about myself then, but my parents told me to dismiss unfriendly noises and focus on learning,” he says. He buried his head in his books and, as a result, his academic performance stood out. It gradually brought him admiration and respect from people around him.

His academic strength saw him admitted to computer science of Wuhan University of Science and Technology. “I figured it was less demanding on the ‘hand’ and more about brainwork,” he says. However, he had his work cut out for him from the start. Before college, he hadn’t even touched a computer. He couldn’t make any sense of the first class, and had no clue about the keyboard. To catch up with the class, for the first term, Yuan spent his spare time studying and practicing in the computer room of the school library.

Yuan took every learning opportunity seriously and always followed up with his own actions. When he saw keyboards gathering dust and failing to work properly afterwards, he thought of setting up a protection cover over the keypads. He then spent half a year looking into the subject, consulting his professor and experimenting. Later he developed an idea and got a patent for it.

With his remaining hand, Yuan has come up with original designs and patents that have earned him more than 60 prizes and awards. “Although there might be many hard situations to face, I will make progress as long as I work for it,” he says.

1. Why did Yuan’s parents keep him home rather than send him to kindergarten?
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2. How did Yuan respond to his classmates’ unfriendliness?
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3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
Yuan spent his spare time in his first term working hard in the computer room because he wanted to develop his ideas and get patents.
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4. Among Yuan’s qualities, which one(s) do you think will be important for us? Why? (In about 40 words)
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5 . During the final scenes of the movie, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, we experience the full range of emotions. We hold our breath as the fire surrounds Frodo; we cheer when Gandalf saves him. So what’s going on? There must be a special kind of movie magic that makes us care about what we know isn’t real. As it happens, there is a special kind of magic, but it’s not in the movie. It’s in the minds of people who watch it. Dr. Norman Holland, professor of the University of Florida, believes this magic is particularly potent when we watch movies on the big screen.

“The first thing that happens, “he argues,” is that you give up control. The movie is in control.” In normal life our brains are like tractor beams (牵引光束), busy taking in any information that seems important or interesting. This is called the attentional system. But as the characters come alive on screen, we stop sensing our body. Psychologists call this kind of mental state “flow”: when our attention is completely absorbed in one activity and there isn’t any juice left in our attentional system to take in any more information. We are effortlessly swept along in the currents of the ride. This is why we love the movies: it’s like going on a roller coaster (过山车) for the brain.

But there’s another kind of magic at work here too; in a movie theater, as we give up control, our sense of reality changes. Deep down we know that what we’re seeing is make-believe, but because we’re not going to act upon it, because it doesn’t have a direct physical bearing upon us, we don’t test if it is real. It’s like that part of our brain goes on a temporary vacation. Something else is happening in the brain to make this possible too. The mind has different abilities, and each one has a distinct place in the brain. Our knowledge that we’re only watching a movie happens in the front part of our brain. But emotions come from the limbic system (边缘系统), in the back of the brain. Even though our front brain knows that a movie isn’t real, the back brain never gets them message.

Sadly, the intensity of the emotions that movies produce in us may be decreasing. At home, or on our smart phones, movies are wonderfully convenient. But watching in this way limits their magic because we’re in control; we have the power to stop the film or fast forward bits we don’t like. “If you’re not giving up control to the movie, “Holland says,” you’re getting a thinned-out movie experience.” More control might be more convenient, but it won’t mean more magic. Surely, we deserve better than that, and Frodo does too.

1. What does the underlined word “potent” in Paragraph 1 probably mean?

A．Complicated.

B．Effective.

C．Subjective.

D．Temporary.

2. Why does the author mention a roller coaster?

A．To illustrate the excitement that a movie can provide.

B．To explain the film-making techniques used by directors.

C．To demonstrate the working state of the attentional system.

D．To describe psychological methods involved in seeing a movie.

3. What can we learn from this passage?

A．Distinct parts of our brain are interactive.

B．The limbic system can help us sense the reality.

C．Going to theaters creates better viewing experience.

D．Movies on phones can take us to the state of flow easily.

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

A．Your Brain on Movies

B．Emotions out of Control

C．The Rise of Movie Theatres

D．Different Choices of Moviegoers

6 .

Brian Schwartz became one of the many to turn jobless under the epidemic. For Brian, the timing could not have been worse. It was a stressful time between a wife carrying a baby, a dad battling brain cancer, and everything else going on in the news.

Brian needed to do something productive and he turned to mow mowing lawns for stress relief. “I just decided to create my own good news, really just as a time filler,” says Brian. He wanted to help neighbors, just keeping himself busy mentally and physically. Brian offered his lawnmowing service free to seniors and people with disabilities in his community.

As word spread of his good acts, the local media began picking up on the story. The attention got Brian thinking. There was clearly a broader need for what he was offering. So he decided to launch a website, loanttomowyourlaen.com, and a kindness movement was born. Pretty soon, Brian had a large crowd of clients needing others to mow their lawns and an army of volunteers, from 18-year-olds in college to recent retirees. As news of his organization spread, he also began to attract donations to help with operating costs, which encouraged him to turn the service into a nonprofit.

As the organization has evolved (演变), Brian has expanded his offerings to include other services like removing trees and clearing snow. But he believes the benefit of what his team does goes way beyond the practical. “We are not only providing them with financial relief,” he says. “It’s mental and physical relief as well. And we’re hearing feedback not only directly from the people we’re helping, but also from their neighbors who thank us for helping make the community better. And I’m even receiving occasional letters from people that we might not even help, but they might have just been at the time looking for some uplifting news.”

lwanttomouwyourlawn.com has become a passion. Not least of all for the benefits the kindness brings. “It stimulates my mind, my body and my soul just by helping others,” he says. “It’s a really good feeling. I feel like I’m doing something that has some meaning and purpose.”

1. What got Brian into a bad situation?

A．Taking care of a baby.	B．Being out of work.
C．Fighting against cancer.	D．Being reported in news.

2. Why did Brian create the website?

A．To gain more public attention.

B．To provide a wider range of services.

C．To raise donations for people in need.

D．To collect news of kindness movements.

3. What can we learn about Brian’s organization?

A．It puts forward plans on bettering the community.

B．It requires people to give feedback on the offerings.

C．It reduces the unemployment among people in need.

D．It gives people spiritual support as well as direct help.

4. What can we conclude from this passage?

A．Good things take time.	B．Every moment matters.
C．We rise by lifting others.	D．Fame brings opportunities.

7 . Most kids spent their summer holidays playing video-games, watching TV and sleeping in.Parents can follow the steps below, and your kids can break their summertime tech habits and adapt to a school-friendly schedule in two weeks.

Shift bedtime

There’s nothing more important to kicking off the school year successfully than getting sufficient sleep. Two weeks before school begins, schedule bedtime back by about 20 minutes a night to stop kids staying up late or sleeping in. Instead of a long, fun bathtime, switch to a quick shower. Keep all digital devices out of their bedrooms and buy them alarm clocks.

Set screen goals

Having intentional goals for screen use can help kids change their tech habits. You might decide to make screen time a reward rather than a right. Set limits on digital activities such as no videogames until they complete homework. Don’t jump to no apps but consider using apps that control the length of time kids can use a device. Establish zones in your house where electronics simply are not allowed. Besides, get your kids involved in activities that don’t need a screen.

Make a schedule

A summer spent without routine can make jumping back into the structure of school difficult for kids. Setting a schedule for the last two weeks of summer can work. Ms. Rawson, founder of the Screen Time Clinic, suggests creating blocks of time that mirror those of the school day,arranging 30 to 50 minutes for an activity, depending on the kid’s age, along with a set lunchtime. Kids should have a say in deciding how to fill the day’s time blocks. The activities can involve anything but screens.

1. Before the new school year begins, kids can shift bedtime by     .

A．taking a long bath	B．sleeping in a lot
C．using phones as alarm clocks	D．moving to bed earlier

2. According to the passage, what should parents do to adjust kids’ screen time?

A．Manage homework time with apps.

B．Forbid them from using electronics.

C．Reserve areas for screen-free activities.

D．Remove apps from their digital devices.

3. A school-friendly schedule should        

A．reflect individual needs of kids

B．copy the exact school timetables

C．start from the beginning of holidays

D．combine study with digital entertainment

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个适当的单词，在给出提示词的空白处用括号内所给词的正确形式填空。

The Sanxingdui Ruins site in Sichuan province,     1     (consider) as one of the greatest findings of mankind in the 20th century, has continued to amaze the world. Since May, 2001, more than 500 cultural relics     2     (find) at the site, including bronze ware (青铜器), gold and bronze masks and so on. Among them, a gold mask is catching the world’s attention. It’s 37.2 cm wide, 16.5 cm high and     3    (weigh) about 100 grams, which is strong proof of the existence of ancient Shu state.

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个适当的单词，在给出提示词的空白处用括号内所给词的正确形式填空。

Extreme heat is becoming increasingly common across the globe. It is an     1     (extreme)dangerous weather condition where the temperatures are much hotter than average. It’s clear that how hot future summers will get depends on     2     humans do to stop climate change.Governments appeal to people to reduce greenhouse     3     (gas)—like methane (甲烷) and carbon dioxide (CO₂) -in the atmosphere. Also, they will set up public cooling stations     4    (protect) people at risk.

10 . 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个适当的单词，在给出提示词的空白处用括号内所给词的正确形式填空。

I enjoyed a lovable college time both on campus and at home. At college, I joined a variety of clubs to enrich my life. As the term was drawing to an end, I     1    (plan) to do plenty of things during the vacation. First of all, I wanted to help my mother     2     housework. I also wished to finish the thickest book     3     had been recommended by my teacher. It turned out that everything went smoothly as I expected.