1 . The consequences of climate change weigh on all of us. Terms such as “climate change anxiety”, “eco-anxiety” and “solastalgia” are regularly used to describe the negative emotional states created by thinking and worrying about climate change and environmental destruction.
Climate fiction, or cli-fi, has been advertised as one of the ways to help save the world, with an emphasis on how imagining our future might make us reconsider our relationship with the natural world. Cli-fi novels often portray dystopian (反乌托邦的) scenarios where humanity barely survives amidst flooded or desolate wastelands, using these apocalyptic visions as warnings to spur action and prevent such dark outcomes. But do dystopian fictions help us engage with the climate crisis? An empirical (经验主义的) study of the effects of climate fiction on readers attitudes or actions found little evidence that those who read cli-fi have a stronger engagement with environmental concerns.
Writing about a climate-changed future does more than bring up the anticipated negative emotions. Of course, sitting with the climate crisis is challenging. It demands we wrestle with guilt, shame, responsibility, rage and despair. Clare Moleta said her climate anxiety was a bit more concentrated while writing her novel Unsheltered, but also that the manifestations (表现) of this anxiety were familiar to her; I had waking patches in the night over that time, where I’d be very intensely imagining something and sad about it.
But many of the writers spoke of the writing process as helping, not worsening, their anxiety. For some, writing about climate change gave them a sense of purpose. Jennifer Mills stated that having a book to write gives you something to do. It makes you feel like you have some power over the events that are happening around you.
To imagine the complexity of the lived experience of what lies ahead, and to insist that life will go on and history will keep happening, we need to shift from worrying about the effects of cli-fi texts to thinking about the benefits of writing creatively as we imagine our possible futures. As Mireille Juchau observes, the sense of control when writing on a difficult topic helps to manage anxiety. Whether it’s climate change, or something else, when I’m preoccupied, writing helps put some order into the chaos.
1. How does cli-fi affect readers?| A．It enhances their environmental concerns. |
| B．It fails to inspire their environmental action. |
| C．It leads to their measurable behavior changes. |
| D．It strengthens their engagement with climate crisis. |
| A．Great excitement of the plot. | B．The sadness over the climate crisis. |
| C．A long period of sleepless nights. | D．A guilt complex of her climate anxiety. |
| A．Empowering them with a drive to act. | B．Helping them reduce anxiety fast in life. |
| C．Increasing their understanding of history. | D．Developing more advanced writing skills. |
| A．Positive. | B．Cautious. | C．Disapproving. | D．Unclear. |
2 . One recent report found that adults in the US check their phones, on average, 344 times a day — once every four minutes — and spend almost three hours a day on their devices in total. But have you wondered what this constant use is doing to our brains?
As you might expect, the simple distraction of checking a phone can have negative consequences. And it isn’t just the use of a phone that has consequences — its me re presence can affect the way we think. In one study, researchers asked participants to either put their phones next to them or in another room. Participants then completed a series of tasks to test their abilities to process and remember information, their problem-solving, and their focus. They were found to perform far better when their phones were in another room instead of nearby — whether visible, powered on or not. The mere proximity of a phone, it seems, uses up the brain’s energy. Our brains may be hard at work in controlling the desire to check our phones. The only “fix,” the researchers found, was putting the device in a different room.
However, there is one way we can try to lessen its ill effects. And it has to do with our beliefs. People who think our brains have limited resources are more likely to give in to temptations (诱惑). But for those who believe resisting temptations strengthens our ability to keep resisting, exercising self-control on one task doesn’t worsen their performance in subsequent ones. They believe our brains have unlimited resources.
What am I taking from this? To cut down on mindless reaching for my phone, I’ll keep practicing leaving it in another room. But I’ll also remind myself that my brain has more resources than I think — and that each time I resist the temptation to check my phone, I’m laying down new neural (神经的) pathways that will make it easier and easier to resist that temptation, and perhaps others as well, in future.
1. What did the study aim to find out by placing the phones differently?| A．How people’s performance was affected. |
| B．How people gained access to digital resources. |
| C．Whether people used different skills in the test. |
| D．Whether people developed dependence on phones. |
| A．Thought. | B．Dependence. | C．Nearness. | D．Mention. |
| A．It will strengthen our belief. | B．It will improve concentration. |
| C．It will weaken brain activity. | D．It will use up the brain’s resources. |
| A．Practice self-control. | B．Increase brain power. |
| C．Only use the phone for work. | D．Set a timer to limit phone use. |
3 . Whether playing tricks or holding funerals in the wild, crows have surprised the public with their unexpected capabilities. But their “intelligence” knows no bounds. A new study published in Current Biology revealed for the first time that crows can use statistical logic to solve problems.
Crows have a large brain for their size and a particularly noticeable forebrain, associated with statistical and analytical reasoning in humans. “In our lab, crows have shown complicated numerical competence and careful consideration during decision-making,” said Dr. Melissa Johnston, a fellow at the University of Tübingen. In her recent work, Johnston and her team pushed these abilities to a new extreme, testing statistical reasoning.
In the experiment, two crows were first trained to peck (啄) at various images on touchscreens to earn food treats; and gradually they had to choose between two of these images, each corresponding to a different reward probability. “Crows were tasked with learning rather abstract quantities and then applying that combination of information in a reward maximizing way,” Johnston detailed. Over 10 days of training and 5,000 trials, the two crows managed to pick the higher probability of reward, showing their ability to use statistical inference. To researchers’ much surprise, even after a month without training, the crows still perform well every time.
Statistical reasoning involves using limited information about a situation to draw conclusions and make decisions. People unknowingly use such cognitive ability every day. When we select cafes for social meetups, our brains automatically weigh collected statistics from past observations and favor the one more capable of meeting needs. Similarly, crows remembered and analyzed the connections between the images and the reward probabilities to make themselves get the most treats possible.
Crows once symbolized misfortune and death, causing them disliked even killed by people. Actually, they are among the few animals to adapt to urbanization successfully due to underestimated intelligence. “I think these studies do help change public views and improve our relationship with these lovely animals,” Johnston stated.
1. What makes crows’ intelligence possible?| A．Their limitless abilities of tricks. |
| B．Their social leaning in the wild. |
| C．Their physical structure of brains. |
| D．Their training received in the lab. |
| A．Instruct, task, and retest. |
| B．Train, perform, and record. |
| C．Assume, prove, and reflect. |
| D．Prepare, teach, and examine. |
| A．By sharing a personal experience. |
| B．By quoting a previous study. |
| C．By making a detailed comparison. |
| D．By using a common example. |
| A．Food Prize Competition: Crows Choosing Rewards |
| B．Urban Bird Survival Strategies: Living with People |
| C．Beyond Tricks: Surprise of Crows’ Statistical Reasoning |
| D．Animal Behavior Study: Training Crows in Experiments |
4 . It may feel unforgivably rude to reject an invitation — even one to an event you would much prefer not to attend—but people often overestimate the social consequences of saying “no”.
In one experiment, the researchers asked participants to read a scenario (脚本) where they either invited or were invited by one of their friends to dinner on a Saturday night at a local restaurant with a celebrity chef. The participants who were given the invitation were told to imagine they declined because they already had plans during the day and wanted to spend a night at home relaxing. The participants who imagined giving the invitation were told their friends declined for the same reason. “Across our experiments, we consistently found that invitees often overestimate the negative consequences that may arise in the eyes of inviters after declining an invitation,” Julian Givi, a professor said.
In another experiment, the researchers recruited (招募) 160 people to participate in what was called a “couples survey” with their significant other. Of the couples who participated, 4% had been together for less than six months, 1% six to 12 months, 21% one to five years and 74% had been together for more than five years. Regardless of the length of the couples’ relationship, the researchers found that the person who rejected their partner’s invitation to a fun activity tended to believe that their partner would be angrier or more likely to feel as if the rejection meant they did not care about their partner than they actually did.
The researchers believe their findings show people consistently overestimate how upset someone will be when they decline an invitation, even if they have a long-standing, close relationship.
Givi says that people could benefit from turning down invitations on occasion when it could help them avoid burnout, as doing so will not necessarily have the major consequences they expect it will. “Burnout is the real thing, especially around the holidays when we are often invited to too many events,” he said. “Don’t be afraid to turn down invitations once in a while. But, keep in mind that spending time with others is how relationships develop, so don’t decline every invitation.”
1. How did the researchers conduct the first experiment?| A．By asking participants to invite their friends. |
| B．By analyzing the data of declining consequences. |
| C．By recording the invitation refusals of participants. |
| D．By offering participants an imaginary life situation. |
| A．How partners decline an invitation. |
| B．What couples care about during an invitation. |
| C．If relationships affect the refusal of an invitation. |
| D．Why partners feel angry about the refusal of an invitation. |
| A．To keep away from tiredness. | B．To develop their own inner mind. |
| C．To experience their Individual time. | D．To avoid the negative impact on relationships. |
| A．Send a Proper Invitation | B．How to Refuse an Invitation |
| C．Decline in a Polite Way | D．Say “No” to That Invitation |
5 . For many years researchers focused on what people know about science, thinking that “To know science is to love it.” But do people who think they know science actually know science? A new study led by Cristina Fonseca of the Genetics Society, Laurence Hurst of the Milner Centre for Evolution (进化) reveals that people with strong attitudes tend to believe they understand science, while neutrals (中立者) are less certain. Absolute attitudes, both for and against, build on high self-confidence in knowledge about science.
The study performed a survey of over 2,000 UK adults, asking them both about their attitudes to science and their belief in their own understanding. Questions focused on genetic (基因的) science, for example, “How would you rate your understanding of what the term DNA means?” All individuals were scored from zero (they know they have no understanding) to one (they are confident that they understand). The results suggest that those at the attitudinal extremes — both strongly supportive and firmly opposing — have very high self-belief in their own comprehension, while those answering neutrally do not.
Psychologically, the team suggests, this makes sense: to hold a strong opinion you need to strongly believe in the correctness of your interpretation of the basic facts. Results of previous studies also indicate that those more accepting of science both believe they understand it and score well on the textbook fact (true/false) questions. By contrast, people with strong negative attitudes to science tend to be overconfident about their level of understanding.
Whether it be climate change or GM foods, important science can inspire strong and opposing attitudes. Understanding how to communicate science requires an awareness of why people may hold such different attitudes to it. When it was thought that what mattered most for scientific literacy was scientific knowledge, science communication focused on passing information from scientists to the public. However, this approach may not be successful, and in some cases can have adverse effects. Working to address the gap between what people know and what they believe they know may be a better strategy.
1. What is the new study mainly about?| A．An assessment of people’s interest in genetics. |
| B．A survey of various attitudes towards evolution. |
| C．A report of people’s general knowledge of science. |
| D．An analysis of factors on people’s belief in science. |
| A．To support the findings of the study. |
| B．To clarify the concept of confidence. |
| C．To stress the importance of basic facts. |
| D．To compare different research methods. |
| A．Random. |
| B．Negative. |
| C．Indirect. |
| D．Favorable. |
| A．It should help people boost confidence. |
| B．It should focus on scientific knowledge. |
| C．It should inspire people to score well in tests. |
| D．It should emphasize objective awareness of oneself. |
6 . Raised in a family of artists, the 24-year-old Russían woman Aleksandra developed a deep love for painting from an early age. Six years ago, she
In 2018,
Throughout her stay in Hainan, Aleksandra has
| A．moved | B．rode | C．wrote | D．rushed |
| A．exhibition | B．knowledge | C．enthusiasm | D．understanding |
| A．picked up | B．referred to | C．focused on | D．turned to |
| A．taken | B．changed | C．promised | D．driven |
| A．equally | B．incredibly | C．recently | D．normally |
| A．different | B．average | C．leisure | D．current |
| A．trains | B．demonstrates | C．permits | D．enables |
| A．structures | B．themes | C．figures | D．characters |
| A．economy | B．culture | C．history | D．tourism |
| A．tested | B．impacted | C．encouraged | D．observed |
| A．gratitude | B．doubt | C．delight | D．anxiety |
| A．highlights | B．covers | C．designs | D．shifts |
| A．chances | B．money | C．advice | D．services |
| A．memory | B．intention | C．help | D．launch |
| A．discovers | B．brings | C．shows | D．gives |
| A．to release; admitted to |
| B．having released; to be admitted to |
| C．released; being admitted to |
| D．releasing; admitted to |
8 . Humans act with purpose, but much is still unknown about how we become purposeful agents — that is, how we develop the ability to willfully make things happen. In a recent study to explore agency’s mysterious roots, we tried to catch infants (婴儿) in the act of discovering their own agency, thereby revealing the process of agency formation.
Researchers place a baby into a cradle with a mobile suspended above. Then a scientist ties one end of a string to the mobile and the other to the infant’s foot. Now if the baby moves, the toy will, too. By observing babies in this setup, scientists can watch as the infants learn and recall a simple cause-and-effect interaction: kick a foot and the mobile moves.
As predicted by the researchers, infants kicked significantly more when their foot was tethered (拴住) to the mobile than when it was not. However, when an experimenter pulled the string to make the mobile move instead, infants moved less than when the mobile was at rest. Furthermore, when we freed the babies’ foot from the mobile, they kept on kicking at higher rate to make the toy respond — and were visibly frustrated when that did not happen.
Our observations also pointed to a notable pattern: The babies’ initial movements consisted of twisting and pushing without clear direction. But once tethered to the mobile, the more intensely they moved, the more their attention was drawn to the effect their kicking had on it. At some point, the infants must have figured out that they had agency, thus the aimless movements became intentional action — a highly coordinated exchange between the tethered infant and the mobile.
The baby-mobile study emphasizes how understanding the relationship between an organism and its environment is essential to uncovering the origins of directed behavior. The experience of agency emerges only when an organism senses it is coupled to its environment. In this way of thinking, the interaction and relationship between the two are crucial for purpose to arise.
1. What can we learn about agency according to the text?| A．It is an inborn ability without learning. | B．It embodies in babies the most evidently. |
| C．It exists in all aspects of our daily life. | D．It is a resonance with our surroundings. |
| A．By predicting multiple possible results. | B．By tracking babies’ behaviour precisely. |
| C．By setting up comparative experiments. | D．By building proper interpretation model. |
| A．Analysis of experimental phenomena. | B．Supplement to experimental details. |
| C．Explanation of experimental design. | D．Summary of experimental outcomes. |
| A．To uncover the process of agency formation. |
| B．To report a cutting-edge discovery about agency. |
| C．To guide people on how to take advantage of agency. |
| D．To clarify the importance of environment to creatures. |
Holding Mom’s Hand
Technically speaking, my Mom is old－she is in her 70s now. She once used to be a woman full of life and laughter. All of that changed after my Dad passed away about ten years ago. Although they were not what you would call a “lovey dovey” couple, Mom did take his sudden death quite badly. To make matters worse, my brother decided to relocate to another city, while Mom decided to stay behind with her sister.
Whenever my Mom comes over to stay with me for some time (I live with my husband and his parents), she always demands constant attention from me. She generally gets nostalgic (怀旧的) of the good old times we used to spend together discussing pets, books, cooking, or life in general. Sometimes it turned into a complaining session－“You never spare time for me anymore” or “I have become useless to everyone”. I always used to retort (反驳) with “Oh, Mom, please don’t start all over again” or sometimes rudely remark, “How can you expect me to do the things we used to do together years ago? There is no time for such things anymore!” Mom would become silent, probably because she had resigned herself to the way things are now. I could sense I had hurt her but there was little I could do, or so I thought at the time.
Then it struck me－I always try to be nice to people at work. I do random acts of kindness for strangers. I sometimes surprise an old friend with a phone call. But what have I done for my Mom? Why is it that I am so reluctant to hold her hands in front of others? Is it because I am embarrassed to be labeled as “mama’s girl” at my age? Well, I am no longer young myself. Is it because I have taken my Mom for granted because her days are done?
Today was yet another chaotic day. I was occupied in dealing with my own things, getting ready for work, leaving my Mom to have her breakfast all alone at the table. I had so many things on my mind－the deadline at work, an appointment with my dentist, what to cook for dinner...
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。
Mom stared at me silently, with a wronged (委屈的) look.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Then, all of sudden, I stopped myself.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Teachers are a gift, especially Troy’s teacher, Donna. She always goes above and beyond for her students, but what she did for Troy’s family is truly beyond selflessness but a miracle(奇迹).
Donna is one of those teachers who pay close attention to the students in their classroom. She began to notice something odd in one of her elementary students, Troy. He was not active in class like he had been. Troy used to be a passionate student in class, engaging with teachers and his friends. Being a helping hand to the teacher and classmates, Troy was always welcomed by everybody. However, he was all of a sudden so shut down and his behavior was simply not the same. He seemed to be silent all the time, and his eyes lost light of desire for knowledge and passion for any activities. Donna grew very concerned and wondered if there was something going on that affected his performance at school. So, she reached out to Troy’s mom to express her concerns.
And that was when she discovered something wrong. For the past year, his mom had been in stage-five kidney(肾)failure. She was in pain every day and desperately needed a new kidney. But she had a rare blood type, so finding a match for a kidney transplant was virtually impossible. Her condition had been a very long and anxious journey. It had been so painful for the family, and it had definitely made an impact on Troy. And in class, he had been silently carrying the pain his mom was going through at home.
The news broke Donna’s heart. She knew that she just had to do something. She was there as a loving friend to help Troy with his studies, but she was also there for his mom. Donna researched how to become a kidney donor and discovered that she had the same rare blood type as Troy’s mom. She got tested and, surprisingly, she was a match.
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。
When Donna told the news to Troy’s family, everyone was surprised.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Soon the kidney transplant took place.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
