1 . The British accent of Cary Gran has finally been revealed after a fellow actor tracked down a secretly tape recording of the Bristol-born big screen superstar.
Jason Isaacs, who plays Cary Grant in a coming ITV biopic (传记片), said that although setting his mind on figuring out the actor’s real accent, he had become upset by the absence of interviews with Cary Grant.
The star, whose death aged 82 in 1986 brought to an end one of the 20th century’s greatest screen careers, rarely spoke in public and would always adopt a mid-American accent for the cameras
Isaacs, 60, said this week that after some “detective work”, he found out about an interview Cary Grant gave to a student from the University of Iowa months before his death. The student’s classmate secretly recorded the interview in which Cary Grant spoke about his hatred (厌恶) of being approached by fans. The secret recording reveals Cary Grant’s true accent.
At the launch of the ITV drama Archie-after Cary Grant’s birth name Archibald Leach — Isaacs said that when he landed the role, “the first thing I did was look for interviews of Cary Grant.” Isaacs added; “He didn’t want to be seen and he didn’t want to be known. There was nothing at all. Only the films. And that’s not what he spoke like. His accent changed a lot in the films.
Isaacs said of listening to the tape: “I felt like I’d finally made a real connection with him and that’s the voice you hear on screen in Archie. It’s more English than he is in the movies. People think they remember Cary Grant’s voice but what they remember is Tony Curtis in Some Like It Hot.”
The ITV biopic focuses on Grant’s troubled family relationships. Jennifer Grant, Grant’s daughter, said her father had rarely spoken about his childhood. “Sadly I think there was so much shame wrapped up in it,” Jennifer Grant said.
1. Why did Jason Isaacs attempt to get a recording of Cary Grant?| A．To recreate his accent for real. |
| B．To show sincere respect to him. |
| C．To get the role of Cary Grant easily. |
| D．To make the film more profitable. |
| A．He acted as a detective. |
| B．He worked in a university. |
| C．He hated being recorded secretly. |
| D．He disliked having his life disturbed. |
| A．Cary Grant. | B．Tony Curtis. | C．Jason Isaacs. | D．Jennifer Grant. |
| A．Generous. | B．Ambitious. | C．Determined. | D．Knowledgeable. |
When I was seven years old, my family moved from Mexico to America. In Mexico, I was a cheerful girl who loved making people laugh with my jokes and inventing fun games to play with my friends. However, when I arrived in America, I found it hard to fit in, and I became quieter.
We lived in a small house with a modest yard where we grew vegetables—my responsibility. While I took pride in watching them grow, there were times when I dreamed of having a beautiful garden like my schoolmate Luella’s, with its delicate tulips (郁金香). Although Luella lived in the same neighborhood as me, we barely knew each other.
It was after a tornado that Luella and I finally became close friends.
The tornado struck on a Sunday afternoon.The gentle breeze transformed into a strong wind, and thick gray clouds filled the sky. Gradually, the tornado took shape, starting as a thin rope and growing into a large black funnel (漏斗). My entire family gathered in the bathroom, seeking shelter from the storm. Terrified, I sat close to my mom, knees in my chest. After the storm had passed, our worries and fears were replaced by relief that we were unharmed and that our house had remained undamaged.
As I stepped outside, I witnessed the extent of the damage the tornado had caused to our neighborhood. Across the street, a tall tree had fallen, crushing Luella’s garden in front of her yellow house. We hurried over to check on it. Fortunately, her family seemed to be away at the time, and no one was injured. However, her once-beautiful garden was in ruins, with the fallen tree destroying the tulips and debris (碎片) spread everywhere. I could only imagine how heartbroken they must feel seeing this.
Then my mom’s usual words rang in my ear, “It is more blessed to give than to receive,” and my family started to think about how we could help.
注意：1. 续写词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Just at that moment, Luella’s family returned in their car.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Even after the debris was cleared, I could still sense Luella’s sorrow for her lost garden.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________3 . HOW TO OVERCOME A CREATIVE BLOCK
I’m sitting at my desk, staring at a blank document, hoping my fingers will start typing and a brilliant story will appear on my screen. Even though I feel fortunate to usually be full of ideas, I still face creative blocks times — when I feel uninspired.
Fortunately, there are steps we can take to breakthrough these blocks.
Working with our inner critic
We work with our inner critic by teaching it more compassionate (有同情心的) ways of speaking to us.
We can try other creative and mindful activities to help reduce anxiety, and boost yourself-esteem (自尊). It could be singing along to your favourite music, doing some weeding, going out for a walk in nature, taking photographs on a lunchtime stroll, or having interesting conversations with friends. Then you’ll feel ready to get your creativity on the go again.
Next time you’re feeling a creative block, remind yourself that it’s OK to just get something written, or painted, or crafted and that you don’t need to share it with anyone. It’s all about making a start.
| A．Filling your creativity cup |
| B．Talking to someone you trust |
| C．We’d better be mindful of our loved ones |
| D．Perfectionism maybe another contributor |
| E．Creativity is like a muscle and gets easier once you get doing |
| F．Such a problem can be solved by understanding the causes of them |
| G．We must identify its comments as something separate from ourselves |
1. Who is the speech intended for?
| A．Teachers. | B．Students. | C．Writers. |
| A．Because it won’t stop when we leave campus. |
| B．Because it means the colorful life in the future. |
| C．Because it will inspire your potential. |
| A．To believe in your ability. |
| B．To dare to explore the unknown. |
| C．To adapt to the fast-paced world. |
I was nominated (提名) for the Junior Honor Society. When I came back home that day, I sat in the family room and filled out the honor society application. I tried my best to prove that. I had all the characteristics required in a candidate: scholarship, leadership, service, character, and citizenship.
The next day, I turned the paperwork in to the advisor and waited patiently.
Months went by, and I received a letter from the school about the honor society. As soon as the school bus let me off that afternoon, I raced into the house. My mother was typing at the computer. “Mom,” I said, “I didn’t make the honor society.”
She smiled and held up her hand to give me a high five. “You jokester (捣蛋鬼).”
I felt tears well into my eyes. “No, really, they didn’t choose me,” I said and handed her the letter.
“Oh, honey, I’m sorry. I thought you were kidding,” my mother said. “There must be some mistake.” She grabbed the phone from the charger and dialed the honor society advisor.
He told her that no mistake was made, but he couldn’t disclose the reason for my non-selection. The decisions of the committee were final. There was no appeal process (申诉程序). She contacted the school headmaster. His answers were the same.
Not being a member of the honor society wasn’t going to ruin my future, but it did hurt me. Nearly all of my friends were chosen for the honor society. You could never imagine how difficult those weeks were for me!
“It’s not fair,” I said one night at supper. “It bothers me that I don’t know why I wasn’t chosen,” I said. “The committee should give a reason, so the student can do better.”
My parents agreed. We discussed ways that the selection process might be improved.
注意：1.续写词数应为150左右；2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
I managed to have a meeting arranged with our headmaster to share the ideas.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Unexpectedly, I received a special award for my ideas at the Junior Honor Society ceremony.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________6 . At Countryside High School in Clearwater, Fla. , 16-year-old Sage Waite is already taking a class in cybersecurity, and she’d welcome one that’s in the works on cyber disinformation.
“For the longest time, I didn’t actually know what disinformation was,” said Waite, who’s in the 11th grade. “There was always the idea that things could be wrong in what you’re hearing and what you’re being told. But the idea of misinformation and disinformation wasn’t in my day-to-day.” This past year, she says, has been an eye-opener. “My friends and I definitely started looking into stuff more and doing more research after that,” she said.
A new program on “digital literacy,” with a focus on topics like disinformation, is in the pipeline, thanks in part to Mike McConnell, who is now working to fight false information aimed at young people. “We need to understand this so we can appreciate what's happening to us, and be able to not only understand it, but also to navigate through it,” McConnell said. “That’s what I call digital literacy.”
McConnell is executive director of Cyber Florida, which is based at the University of South Florida in Tampa. The group works with kids throughout the state at universities, high schools, and even those in younger grades. Cyber Florida helped set up the cybersecurity program now being taught at many Florida schools. The new project, Cyber Citizenship, is even more ambitious. “We think if we can do this for Florida, we can spread it across the nation,” he said.
The expanded program now in the works aims to make digital literacy something all Florida students get, at several grade levels, before they finish high school.
There’s no date yet for the cyber disinformation classes in Florida, but computer teacher Jason Felt says it can’t come soon enough and he is ready to embrace it.
“The Internet is a wonderful tool. It’s connected us in a way that’s never really been seen before. But it’s a blessing and it’s also a curse.”
Teaching students the difference, he says, is a huge challenge.
1. What can we learn about the class that Sage Waite is taking from the first two paragraphs?| A．It receives a cold welcome. | B．It aims to form a bond. |
| C．It focuses on technologies. | D．It has a positive impact. |
| A．The specific strategies for protecting privacy. | B．The inborn capacity to track fake information. |
| C．The general skills of maintaining cybersecurity. | D．The overall ability to handle online information. |
| A．To outperform Cybersecuritiy. | B．To take the lead in the world. |
| C．To reach a wider range of students. | D．To make a substantial profit. |
| A．Welcoming. | B．Unclear. | C．Opposed. | D．Prejudiced. |
7 . When you teach a child how to solve puzzles, you can either let them figure it out through trial and error, or you can guide them with some basic rules and tips. Similarly, incorporating (合并) rules and tips into AI training — such as the laws of physics — could make them more efficient and more reflective of the real world. However, helping the AI assess the value of different rules can be a tricky task.
Researchers report that they have developed a framework for assessing the relative value of rules and data in “informed machine learning models” that incorporate both. They showed that by doing so, they could help the AI incorporate basic laws of the real world and better navigate scientific problems like solving complex mathematical problems and optimizing experimental conditions in chemistry experiments.
“Embedding human knowledge into AI models has the potential to improve their efficiency and ability to make inferences, but the question is how to balance the influence of data and knowledge,” says first author. Hao Xu of Peking University. “Our framework can be employed to evaluate different knowledge and rules to enhance the predictive capability of deep learning models.”
Generative AI models like ChatGPT and Sora are purely data-driven — the models are given training data, and they teach themselves via trial and error. However, with only data to work from, these systems have no way to learn physical laws, such as gravity or fluid dynamics, and they also struggle to perform in situations that differ from their training data. An alternative approach is informed machine learning, in which researchers provide the model with some underlying rules to help guide its training process.
“We are trying to teach AI models the laws of physics so that they can be more reflective of the real world, which would make them more useful in science and engineering. We want to make it a closed loop (闭环) by making the model into a real AI scientist,” says senior author Yuntian Chen of the Eastern Institute of Technology, Ningbo.
1. How did the author introduce the topic of the text?| A．By assessing basic rules. | B．By comparison of similarity. |
| C．By explaining laws of physics. | D．By analysis of human learning. |
| A．Planting. | B．Stressing. | C．Employing. | D．Revealing. |
| A．They’re dependent too much on data. |
| B．They’re inflexible to carry out new tasks. |
| C．They struggle to learn new things. |
| D．It’s tough for them to deal with familiar situations. |
| A．Informed machine learning may be an alternative to generative AI. |
| B．Helping the AI assess the value of different rules can be a tricky task. |
| C．Generative AI models can be more reflective of the real world in the future. |
| D．Balancing training data and human knowledge makes AI more like a scientist. |
1. What is the key to each method of learning English?
| A．Repetition. | B．Good memory. | C．Enough time |
| A．Speak constantly. | B．Write regularly | C．Read carefully. |
| A．Writing down what happened. |
| B．Describing a photo |
| C．Copying some poems |
| A．Challenges of learning English. |
| B．The importance of repetition. |
| C．Practical ways of learning English. |
9 . If you work in a white-collar job in an office, it is likely that you will wear a uniform. Why do you need to wear one?
For employers who require it, there are several arguments in favour of uniforms. They help ensure a level of professionalism in appearance. They project a brand identity, from the red coats of Virgin Atlantic crew to the “Browns” uniform of UPS delivery drivers. They may have useful job-specific features.
A study by Robert Smith of Tilburg University and his colleagues asked people to imagine being on the receiving end of poor service when ordering a pizza. They were then shown pictures of the uniformed or non-uniformed employee. The person without a uniform who had treated them badly was circled. In this sense, if corporate clothing is a symbol of good service, the authors suggest that it may be a good idea not to give it to inexperienced workers, because, to some extent, it’s a representative of a profession.
Uniforms can also affect the psychology of employees. In 2012, Hajo Adam, a professor in Columbia Business School, coined the term “enclothed cognition (认知)” to describe the effect that specific clothes have on the way that people think and feel. Questions have been raised over the validity of enclothed cognition, but a new meta-analysis by Messrs Adam and Galinsky, along with Carl Blaine Horton of Columbia Business School, concludes that the phenomenon is real.
The obvious objection to uniforms, at least from people who do not wear them, is that they limit individuality and autonomy. But employees who do not have to wear a formal uniform often gravitate towards a costume anyway. Some coders (编码人员) seem to be under an unspoken duty to wear T-shirts. The combination of shirt, trousers and Patagonia gilet (马甲) is known as the “midtown uniform” for finance types in New York. Bosses build brands by wearing the same outfit day after day. Therefore, you may not be required to wear a uniform when you head off to work. You may still be in uniform.
1. Why is Virgin Atlantic crew mentioned in Paragraph 2?| A．To emphasize the need for uniforms in all industries. |
| B．To highlight the importance of job-specific features in uniforms. |
| C．To provide an example of how uniforms establish a brand image. |
| D．To discuss the variety of uniform styles across different professions. |
| A．They mean professional. |
| B．They impress customers. |
| C．They guarantee quality service. |
| D．They symbolize the corporate image. |
| A．The variety of the coined term. |
| B．The state of being logical and true. |
| C．The context of questions being raised. |
| D．The complexity of the phenomenon. |
| A．Opposed. | B．Dismissive. | C．Approving. | D．Doubtful. |
In the busy city of Evercrest lived a young woman named Lily. She was a recent transplant from a small town, chasing her dreams of becoming a successful graphic designer (平面设计师). With stars in her eyes and a heart full of hope, Lily had moved into a tiny apartment in the city, ready to begin her new journey.
One chilly autumn evening, Lily got into an unexpected, tough situation. She had just left the local library, her arms laden (装满的) with books on design theory and software guides, eager to dive into her studies. As she walked towards the bus stop, her phone buzzed with a notification—her last email informed her that the deadline for a crucial design competition had been brought forward unexpectedly. Panic set in, she needed to submit her entry tonight.
With a growing sense of urgency, Lily quickened her pace, her heels clicking against the pavement. But fate, it seemed, had other plans. Just as she turned the corner, one of her worn-out shoes broke, leaving her walking awkwardly on one foot. The bus stop was still a good ten minutes away, and there was no way she could make it in time like this.
Feeling a mix of frustration and despair, Lily leaned against a nearby lamppost, thinking about what to do. It was then that a gentle voice interrupted her thoughts.
“Are you alright there, miss?” asked a tall, middle-aged man with kind eyes and a warm smile. He was dressed casually, wearing a faded jacket and holding a leather bag. Lily looked up, surprised by the stranger’s concern. “I…I’m okay, just my shoe broke, and I have to get home urgently,” she explained, gesturing towards her useless footwear.
Without hesitation, the stranger introduced himself as Mr. Thompson. “Please, let me help,” he offered, pulling out a small roll of tape from his bag. “It won’t be pretty, but it’ll hold until you can get a proper fix.” Grateful for the unexpected assistance, Lily watched as Mr. Thompson skillfully repaired her shoe.
注意：1. 续写词数应为150个左右;
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
They chatted like friends while he worked.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Putting on the shoe, she felt warm and inspired to join in the design competition.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
