1 . The Spotlight Effect
Have you ever felt as if the entire world was watching while you made a mistake? Well, here’s some good news: it’s likely that no one even noticed.
The spotlight effect exists because we all get used to seeing things through our own eyes. Every person is the main character in his or her story, and the events of our lives seem to have great importance.
The spotlight effect is a very common part of the human experience. However, in some cases, it can lead to extreme social anxiety and nervousness around other people. Everyone suffers some degree of social anxiety. We all care about what others think, and we all want to be liked. It’s normal to wonder about what effect we have on other people.
Learning about the spotlight effect is important because it can help us reduce our anxiety. Next time you feel like everyone is staring at you, remind yourself that it’s just your mind playing tricks on you.
| A．However, this can be a problem when the anxiety is too much to handle. |
| B．That’s why fewer people notice the embarrassing circumstances they encounter. |
| C．Another good exercise is to make an effort to notice the people around you, rather than focusing on yourself. |
| D．The spotlight effect is a trick of the mind that makes us believe that people notice us more often than they really do. |
| E．What you can do at this moment is to ignore them. |
| F．We are so busy examining ourselves that we actually observe very little about everyone around us. |
| G．It can also appear when we score a big goal, ask someone on a date, or do a good deed. |
2 . Modern technology has a strong influence on every part of our life, including the education in the universities.
Ashok Goel, a professor of Georgia Institute of Technology, says he uses the Internet in almost all of the classes he teaches. Every term over 300 graduate students take his class on artificial intelligence (人工智能). The students never meet in person. All of the classes take place online — through a website, which lets students ask questions and complete their work from anywhere in the world.
Having hundreds of students in a class means Ashok Goel has to answer thousands of questions. He has eight teaching assistants to help him. But even that is not enough to give all the students the help they need.
So, in January, Goel had an idea. He decided to try an experiment. At the start of the spring 2016 term, he added a new member to his teaching team: Jill Watson. She was able to answer questions faster than most other teaching assistants. And she was available 24 hours a day.
It was only at the end of the term that Goel’s students learned Watson’s true identity: she was not a real person like the other teaching assistants. Jill Watson was an AI computer program.
And it seems Goel’s stories will become more common in the universities.
A website called Campus Technology publishes stories about how colleges and universities use new technology. In August, the site published a survey of over 500 professors and their use of technology. Fifty-five percent of the professors asked students to use study materials online before coming to class. And, more than 70 percent combined (使相结合) online materials and face-to-face teaching in their classrooms.
1. What can we learn from Paragraph 2?| A．Goel seldom uses the Internet in his class. | B．The students take Goel’s class online. |
| C．Goel occasionally meets his colleagues. | D．Goel’s students dislike going to college. |
| A．He is not a clever professor. | B．He wants to have a good sleep. |
| C．He does not want to give answers. | D．He has no time to answer all the questions. |
| A．She was a real person. | B．She helped Goel with his work. |
| C．She was one of Goel’s students. | D．She could ask all the questions. |
| A．Who a person is. | B．The name of a person. |
| C．Where a person is from. | D．A person’s contribution. |
| A．Ashok Goel has eight assistants to help him. |
| B．New technology is changing our way of living. |
| C．Modern technology greatly influences college education. |
| D．Teachers will be completely replaced by the computers. |
| A．whether | B．that | C．which | D．what |
4 . It will come as no comfort to a child shivering (打哆嗦) on a playing field on a cold winter’s day. But regular organized school sport helps children in their academic studies in years to come. The researchers said other “structured” activities such as music or religious activities were not as beneficial for attention as taking part in a games lesson. The difference in academic ability was noticeable even at age ten, with those who had taken in sports since the start of junior school performing better than those who hadn’t.
The Canadian study looked at children aged six and then ten. Professor Linda Pagani said:“We worked with information provided by parents and teachers to compare kindergarteners’ activities with their classroom activities as they grew up. By the time they reached the fourth grade, kids who played structured sports were clearly better at following instructions and remaining focused in the classroom. There is something special to the sporting environment — perhaps the sense of belonging to a team to a special group with a common goal — that appears to help kids understand the importance of respecting the rules and honoring responsibilities.”
Researchers began studying 2,694 Canadian children around the age of six, with teachers filled in questionnaires about their behavior in school. Meanwhile, the children’s parents were interviewed by phone or in person about their home life. The exercise was the repeated four years later to test what effect the behavior had.
Professor Pagani said: “We found children who had better behavior in the kindergarten class were more likely to be involved in sport by age ten. Nevertheless, we found those children who were specifically involved in team sports at kindergarten scored higher by the time they reached the fourth grade.” The researchers believe sporting activities and attention skills go hand in hand. Professor Pagani added: “The results should be encouraging for schools looking to cut childhood obesity rates and low attainment in schools.”
1. What kinds of children may do better in their academic study according to paragraph one?| A．Those who join in structured activities. |
| B．Those who don’t shiver on a cold winter’s day. |
| C．Those who don’t like school sports. |
| D．Those who take part in game lessons. |
| A．The classroom activities. | B．The results of the exams. |
| C．The performance at kindergarten. | D．The time spent in classrooms. |
| A．understand each other better | B．follow the rules |
| C．respect the teachers | D．give up |
| A．How scientists carried out the research. |
| B．Why parents were interviewed by phone. |
| C．How kids behaved at home or at school. |
| D．How many sports kids did at school. |
| A．The research will be of great benefit. |
| B．It’s necessary for children go to kindergartens. |
| C．Childhood obesity rates can lead to low attainment. |
| D．Team sports will be reduced at kindergartens. |
5 . There is hot, and then there is hot! Extreme heat is a period of high heat and humidity with temperatures above 90 degrees Fahrenheit for at least two to three days. Extreme heat is responsible for the highest number of annual deaths among all weather-related hazards (危害).
It’s not your imagination. Summers have been getting hotter and hotter with extreme heatwaves occurring earlier and more frequently. But why is this happening and can we better predict heatwaves in advance to give people time to prepare?
“Climate change is here and it’s already been changing human behavior and causing significant influence in the society. As global temperatures rise, historically excessive (过高的) temperatures are more likely to occur.” says Craig Ramseyer, an assistant professor who studies climate modeling in the department of geography at Virginia Tech.
Ramseyer says heatwaves are the most concerning because of the lack of attention they normally receive. “Hurricanes, tornadoes, and flash floods drive more media attention because of the natural attraction with the visual impact of those types of hazards. However, heat does not tend to be as attractive and it becomes very difficult to communicate the danger to the public,” said Ramseyer. “Around the world, more deaths occur due to extreme heat than from hurricanes, flooding, and drought combined. It impacts the most helpless of our citizens who do not have enough access to air conditioning, water, and other important resources.”
Since the Earth is running warmer than it used to, Ramseyer says that when these heatwave-related weather patterns take place, it results in higher extreme temperatures than we used to experience 30 years ago.
“As a global community, we need to decrease carbon emissions as soon as possible. We have rapidly developing technologies that are going to help advance the process, but the faster the better, there is no time to waste.”
1. What can we learn from the article?| A．Extreme heat is a No.1 death cause. |
| B．People are suffering more extreme heat. |
| C．A 100-degree heat is an extreme heat. |
| D．Extreme heat is getting better over the years. |
| A．Climate change will soon affect human behaviors. |
| B．High temperatures happened frequently in history. |
| C．Air conditioning and water can stop the extreme heat. |
| D．Garbage sorting can less advance the climate change. |
| A．Extreme heat can be stopped by technology. |
| B．People have enough time to solve the climate problems. |
| C．The danger of extreme heat is not easily transferred to the public. |
| D．Heatwave-related weather patterns will decrease in the future. |
| A．Complaints about extreme heat. | B．Prevention of extreme heat. |
| C．Characters of extreme heat. | D．Technologies behind extreme heat. |
6 . According to a new study， teens focus on rewards and have a hard time learning to avoid punishment or consider the consequences of alternative actions.
University College London researchers compared how teens and adults learn to make choices based on the available information. They tracked the way in which 18 volunteers aged 12-17 and 20 volunteers aged 18-32 completed tasks in which they had to choose between abstract symbols.
Each symbol was consistently associated with a fixed chance of a reward, punishment, or no outcome. As the trial progressed ， participants learned which symbols were likely to lead to each outcome and adjusted their choices accordingly. Teens and adults were equally good at learning to choose symbols associated with reward， but teens were less good at avoiding symbols associated with punishment. Adults also performed significantly better when they were told what would have happened if they had chosen the other symbol after each choice， while teens did not appear to take this information into account.
“From this experimental lab study we can draw conclusions about learning during the teen years. We find that teens and adults learn in different ways， something that might be relevant to education," said lead author Dr. Stefano Palminteri. " Unlike adults, teens are not so good at learning to adjust their choices to avoid punishment. This suggests that incentive systems based on reward rather than punishment may be more effective for this age group. Additionally, we found that teens did not learn from being shown what would have happened if they made alternative choices."
To interpret the results, the researchers developed computational models of learning and ran simulations （模拟）applying them to the results of the study. The first was a simple model, one that learned from rewards, and the second model added to this by also learning from the option that was not chosen. The third model was the most complete and took the full context into account, with equal weight given to punishment avoidance and reward seeking. For example, obtaining no outcome rather than losing a point is weighted equally to gaining a point rather than having no outcome.
Comparing the experimental data to the models, the team found that teens" behavior followed the simple reward-based model while adults" behavior matched the complete, contextual model. “Our study suggests that teens are more receptive to rewards than they are to punishments of equal value, ” said senior author Dr. Sarah-Jayne Blakemore. “As a result, it may be useful for parents and teachers to frame things in more positive terms.”
1. It can be learned from the study that .| A．adults made choices faster than teens |
| B．adults understood rewards better than teens |
| C．teens reacted better to reward than punishment |
| D．teens were aware of the outcome of each choice |
| A．They reflected people’s strong desire for punishment avoidance. |
| B．They gave circumstances different degrees of consideration. |
| C．They paid equal attention to reward and punishment. |
| D．They shaped the behavior of people at different ages. |
| A．accustomed | B．opposed |
| C．sympathetic | D．responsive |
| A．“If you insist on doing things in this way， you will lose ten points. " |
| B．“If we had talked about this earlier， you wouldn’t have made the mistake. " |
| C．“ If you hand in your assignment ahead of time， you will get an extra bonus." |
| D．“If you want to approach a problem differently ， you can talk to your parents. " |
7 . VARK is a questionnaire that helps with your learning by suggesting the strategies you should be using. According to VARK, some people learn best by reading materials, while others are more visually-oriented (视觉导向的) and must see something to understand. Others might fall into the auditory learning subtype, meaning they tend to urderstand materials by listening to instructions. There are also kinesthetic (动觉的) learners, or those who learn best through hands-on activities.
Learning style theories had their popularity in the 1990s, when Beth Rogowsky was just starting as a middle school teacher. “At that time, when my students were given some learning material, if they disliked reading it, they could listen to it instead as long as they’d like to listen to others reading it; whatever they preferred, they would be encouraged to do it,” says Rogowsky, who is now an associate professor of teaching and learning at Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania.
But when it comes to preferred learning styles, there’s a problem. The idea of using learning styles emerged in the 1980s as many researchers voiced their support, but few actually tested their concepts to confirm the validity in randomized, experimental settings. In the 2000s, when researchers started to do just that, they found little evidence that matching students to their supposed learning style helped them memorize information better.
Rogowsky herself has confirmed the belief that learning styles don’t hold up in her recent studies. In one study published in Frontiers in Psychology this year, Rogowsky and her colleagues tested fifth-graders with preferred auditory and visual learning styles. Students were given standardized reading tests, in both written and audio formats. The team didn’t uncover a relationship between their preferred learning styles and academic performance, according to Rogowsky.
The team’s study noted that a preference to learn material using a certain method could mask skill lack. “Someone who prefers to lean by listening instead of visual approaches might just have underdeveloped reading skills. Letting students learn in their preferred manner doesn’t push them to improve weaker skill sets,” Rogowsky says. “If you need to improve your skills, don’t just keep doing what’s easy to you.”
1. What’s the purpose of Paragraph 1?| A．To explain the complexity of the learning process. |
| B．To inspire people to actively engage in a questionnaire. |
| C．To show different people have different learning styles. |
| D．To suggest using VARK to choose efficient learning styles. |
| A．Encourage students to learn creatively. |
| B．Allow students to use their preferred learning style. |
| C．Help students improve their reading and listening ability. |
| D．Provide varied reading materials for students to choose from. |
| A．Correctness. | B．Faulty. | C．Arrangement. | D．Budget. |
| A．Students need to focus on their academic performance. |
| B．Students should stick to their favorite learning materials. |
| C．Students hiding skill lack can boost their confidence |
| D．Students should go beyond a certain preferred learning style. |
| A．thoughtful | B．average | C．common | D．typical |
1、该人物是谁；
2、该人物的主要贡献；
3、该人物对你的影响。
注意： 1. 词数不少于100；
2. 开头和结尾已给出，不计入总词数。
Dear Jim,____________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________
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Yours
Lihua
| A．helping | B．to help | C．help | D．having helped |
