I was nearly twenty-two, about to graduate, and unsure which to follow—my head and my long interest in natural science, or my heart and my passion for photography. A job at the museum would be the safe choice. Or I could try to pursue a career in architectural photography, even though I had no specific training in the field. I longed to land that job.
I asked the advisor, John Smith, to recommend someone qualified to give mean objective opinion. His reply: “See Benjamin Moskowitz, a famous architect, NYC. Good luck.”
During the Spring break I booked a cheap room and took the train to New York City. At his office on the twenty-third floor I asked the receptionist for Mr. Moskowitz. “I think Mr. Moskowitz has already left, Miss. I know he was planning a long weekend. Did you have an appointment?”...
She sighed and asked my name and told me to wait while she tried to see if he might still be there. I paced nervously, thinking that my time and money and my best chance for an expert opinion had been thrown away. The receptionist rang his office; no answer. “Sorry, but it looks like you’re out of luck, Miss White,” she said.
Why hadn’t I planned this better? Called for an appointment? Taken an earlier train? How could I have made such a mistake? I was close to tears.
Just then at all, gray-haired man, beautifully dressed, strode (阔步) through the reception area. The receptionist signaled me and mouthed, “That’s him.” I didn’t hesitate. “Oh, Mr. Moskowitz!” I called out. “Just a moment, sir, please! I’d like to speak to you.”
He glanced at his expensive-looking gold watch and kept walking. “Sorry, I have a train to catch,” he said straightforward, “I don’t believe you had an appointment.” I hurried after him toward the elevator. “I apologize, sir, but I was told to talk to you and to show you some photographs.”
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。
Paragraph 1：
Mr. Moskowitz glanced at it, impatiently at first and then more carefully a second time.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Paragraph 2：
One hour later, I walked out of his office with great confidence and excitement
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________2 . Top-down processing is the process of using context or general knowledge to understand what we perceive (感知). In 1970, psychologist Richard Gregory introduced the concept. He claimed that perception is constructive.
The processing plays an important role in our interactions with our environment. Our five senses are constantly taking in information. At any given time, we are experiencing different sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and ways things feel when we touch them. If we paid attention to each one of our senses all the time, we’d never do anything else. It enables us to simplify the process by relying on context and our pre-existing knowledge to understand what we notice. If our brains didn’t employ top-down processing our senses would overwhelm us.
Top-down processing helps us understand what our senses are perceiving in our daily lives. For example, suppose you receive an important letter but a few drops of water have ruined part of the text. A few letters in different words are now just smudges (污迹). Yet, you’re still able to read the letter in its entirety using top-down processing. You use the context of the words and sentences in which the smudges appear and your knowledge of reading to comprehend the meaning of the letter’s message. See a word LO*E, with one letter knocked down, yet you are still able to quickly recognize the word as LOVE.
On the one hand, top-down processing serves a positive function by simplifying the way we comprehend our sensory perceptions. It enables us to shortcut the cognitive path between our perceptions and their meaning. On the other hand, patterns can also prevent us from perceiving things in unique ways. So we may understand the pattern of how to use a mobile phone, but if the manufacturer comes out with a new phone that employs completely unique interaction patterns, we may not be able to figure out how to use it. Besides, as our knowledge is limited and biased (片面的) in certain ways, it can lead to perceptual errors.
1. What is the author’s purpose in writing paragraph 2?| A．To explain main reasons. | B．To give practical examples. |
| C．To draw specific conclusions. | D．To analyse theoretical frameworks. |
| A．Pre-existing knowledge. | B．Active interactions. |
| C．Five physical senses. | D．Lessons from mistakes |
| A．Seeing is believing. | B．Practice makes perfect. |
| C．Every coin has two sides. | D．Experience is the best teacher. |
| A．Introduce a reading method. | B．Deepen underlying meanings. |
| C．Illustrate a cognitive strategy. | D．Clarify a producing process. |
3 . Science is always seen as hard-core and hard to understand. But could you imagine hundreds of people being attracted by the cover of a science magazine?
The achievement was completed after Wang Yixi and his team made the cover of an October issue of Structure, a US-based Cell Press journal. The cover shows a Chinese ink painting that vividly shows the process in which a special enzyme (酶) involved in the biosynthesis (生物合成) of an important organic compound is activated―the latest breakthrough by a Chinese scientific research team. Another one of his popular works that carries distinctive Chinese elements is a composite image, describing a scientist as the folk goddess Nyuwa, carrying her newly discovered compound to fill a crack in the sky.
While studying chemistry at university, Wang Yixi often came across an experimental preparation process that he had to explain, but the amount of text was too large and abstract. A she had been interested in drawing, and related software like Photoshop, he decided to turn his graphics into a fine art. He went on to study 3D graphics software in order to better display the microscopic structures in his field and improve the presentation of his papers.
It didn’t take long before his classmates and professors noticed his talents and asked him to help them with their papers. By word of mouth, more people beat a path to Wang’s door and were willing to pay for his service. Over the past four years, Wang and his team have come up with more than 10,000 visual works for academic papers across a variety of fields, many of which have made their way to the world’s top academic journals, including Nature, Science and Cell.
“Every scientific paper is innovative, and graphics are an essential part of scientific papers,” Wang says, adding that what he tries to achieve is an explanation of models or methods, to showcase experimental results, visually process data or compare differences among experiments.
1. What play a special role in Wang’s works?| A．Fairytales. | B．Chinese elements. | C．Rich colors. | D．Complex structures. |
| A．He preferred painting to Chemistry. | B．He developed useful mapping software. |
| C．He had an active mind to solve problem. | D．He had trouble conducting his experiment. |
| A．By visualizing them vividly. | B．By showing them accurately. |
| C．By explaining them in detail. | D．By constructing them uniquely |
| A．The power of art | B．Dilemmas of science |
| C．Mysteries of Chemistry | D．Inspiration from science |
4 . “How the brain perceives time depends on its expectations. The brain can predict the probability that something is going to occur, given that it hasn’t happened yet,” said Dr. Michael Shadlen, a scientist at Columbia University.
Every thought has various “horizons”, Shadlen told Live Science. In a book, for example, horizons lie at the end of every syllable (音节), the end of every word, the end of the next sentence and so on. Time moves according to how we anticipate these horizons, he said.
When you’re really absorbed in something, the brain anticipates the “big picture”, which makes time seem to fly, Shadlen said. But when you’re bored, you anticipate the closer horizons such as the end of a sentence instead of the end of the story; these horizons aren’t knitted together as a whole, and time slows down.
There isn’t a single spot in the brain that’s responsible for how we perceive time in this way. Rather, any area that gives rise to thought and consciousness is likely involved in this task, Shadlen said. “There are almost certainly a lot of timing mechanisms (机制) in the brain,” added Joe Paton, a scientist at the Champalimaud Foundation in Portugal. One mechanism involves the speed at which brain cells activate one another and form a network when you’re performing an activity. The faster those paths of neurons (神经元) form, the faster we perceive time, Paton and his team have found in some animals, such as rats and squirrels.
Another mechanism involves chemicals in the brain. Again, in rats, Paton and his colleagues found that a set of neurons that releases the neurotransmitter dopamine—an important chemical involved in feeling rewarded—impacts how the brain perceives time. When you’re having fun, these cells are more active. They release a lot of dopamine and your brain judges that less time has passed than actually has. When you’re not having fun, these cells don’t release as much dopamine, and time seems to slow down.
1. What can be learned about “horizons” in a book from paragraph 2?| A．They exist throughout. | B．They change our anticipation. |
| C．They are totally invisible. | D．They are very unpredictable. |
| A．our brain anticipates the distant horizons | B．we are engaged in something interesting |
| C．our brain sees the “big picture” of an event | D．we are anxious to see the ending of a sentence |
| A．An unknown chemical in human brain. |
| B．A specific timing mechanism in the brain. |
| C．The speed of brain cells forming a network. |
| D．The function of brain cells activating each other. |
| A．By describing a process. | B．By providing examples. |
| C．By introducing a concept. | D．By listing statistical data. |
5 . If you’ve scrolled through your Facebook feed recently, you may have noticed something surprising: lots and lots of short videos.
What makes this “Reels” feature strange is that it is hugely addictive, which I know quite well from my own personal experience. Last Friday, I took a break and hit on one short clip of someone making dinner and, well, the next time I looked up it was 20 minutes later and the blank document on my computer monitor was confirming to me that my work was still not done.
However, as silly as it seems, Reels-is actually super important, and is at the centre of a major battle between the world’s largest tech firms. The format (格式) was first pioneered by TikTok-the Chinese-owned video app that has taken the world by storm since it launched in 2016. Today, TikTok has around 23 million UK users every month-including basically every person you know under the age of 25. And that fact has made Facebook and its parent company, Meta, very nervous indeed. As TikTok has continued to boom, Facebook has actually fallen in popularity among “Gen Z”. The reason Tik Tok has proven such a powerful challenger to Facebook’s social media dominance is almost entirely down to these sorts of short-form videos.
The format is almost perfectly optimised to be as addictive as possible: Tik Tok’s app shows you a short-form video, and if you don’t like it, you can simply swipe it away and another one will start playing instantly. And because it is portrait, not landscape, videos look “right” when viewed on your phone. What’s also smart is that TikTok’s algorithm (算法) picks videos for you based on what you actually watch, and not what you say you want.
Facebook isn’t the only app trying to do what TikTok does so well. Instagram, which is owned by Facebook’s parent company Meta, has integrated Reels even more aggressively into its app. And even Google is nervous, launching its own TikTok-style video section of YouTube(which it owns)a couple of years ago. As things stand, though TikTok currently maintains a healthy lead in the category, both YouTube and Facebook have deep pockets-so expect to see even more Reels and Shorts popping up in your feed as this intense battle continues to rage. You won’t be able to take your eyes off them.
1. Why did the author mention his own experience in paragraph 2?| A．To illustrate the feature of short videos. |
| B．To stress the importance of short videos. |
| C．To prove his preference to short videos. |
| D．To introduce the functions of short videos. |
| A．It has shown the trend of the fall in popularity among “Gen Z”. |
| B．It is perceived as a potential threat to Facebook’s social media dominance. |
| C．Its number of registered UK users has reached 23 million since it launched in 2016. |
| D．It underestimates the essential role of short videos in competition with large tech firms. |
| A．The beautiful visual effects. |
| B．The high video quality. |
| C．The random recommendation. |
| D．The quick switch between videos. |
| A．The short videos have a profound impact on our daily life. |
| B．TikTok seems to be losing its advantage over short videos in the short run. |
| C．YouTube and Facebook may encounter financial difficulties in developing Shorts. |
| D．A growing number of tech firms have engaged in fierce competition for the short video market. |
6 . There Are 4 Types of Anger: Which One Is Yours?
You’re passive-aggressive (被动攻击型)
You make mountains out of molehills (小题大做)
You find the fault in every situation, and regard each conversation as an argument you have to win. Maybe you were made to look or feel inferior（卑微的） growing up. To pay off, you become more aggressive. Instead of feeling like a victim, you learn to be the "rejecter".
Your fuse (保险丝) is short and you burst into anger
When you lose the ability to control a situation, it may set off aggression, violent behavior or explosive outbursts that are not necessary to the situation.
When it comes to your religious, political or other beliefs—yours are right, the others are wrong; yours are good, the others are bad. So when others go against your beliefs, you're on the offensive because your beliefs are correct, and therefore your anger is reasonable. Even if your intentions are good, anger gets you in trouble when you allow it get out of control.
| A．Your morals fuel your anger |
| B．Anger itself is not a bad emotion |
| C．You give an enthusiastic "sure, no problem!" |
| D．It's how you use your anger that makes it good or bad |
| E．And you feel you have the right to do whatever you want |
| F．You put down or reject others first before it can be done to you |
| G．Getting stuck in traffic, for example, may lead you to yell at other drivers |
7 . The demands of today's busy schedules have driven us indoors, where we now spend almost 90 percent of our time commuting（通勤）, at work, and inside our homes. This modern way of living disconnects us from the outdoors and from the natural light and fresh air we all require to be healthy.
Marvin Skycove is a glass structure that projects into the open air, enhancing connections with the outdoors. Skycove creates a smart extension of usable space, opens a room to panoramic（全景的）views, and allows in restorative light from four directions.
Marvin Signature
Modern: Windows and Doors that Play Nice
Combining large windows and doors to create large glass walls is a great way to complement a modern design and truly blur（模糊）the boundaries between indoors and out.
At Marvin, well-being is our guidepost.
| A．But doing so can result in poor performance and may create odd feelings. |
| B．Bi-fold windows are often found between doorways and outdoor living space. |
| C．Our windows and doors are designed to help people feel balanced and healthy. |
| D．This glowing（发光的）setting creates a calming space to enjoy a coffee or a book. |
| E．When Bi-fold doors open, the panels are folded, leaving the whole space wide open. |
| F．It was designed to allow people to effortlessly create a personalized atmosphere inside. |
| G．Here are some products that are designed to connect our indoor space to the outside world. |
8 . I had to say something after reading The Anxious Generation. It is going to sell well , because Jonathan Haidt is telling a scary story about children’s development many parents are led to believe. However, the book’s repeated suggestion that digital technologies are rewiring our children’s brains and causing the epidemic (流行病) of mental illness is unsupported by science. Worse , the rude proposal that social media is to blame might distract (分心) us from effectively responding to the real causes of the current mental-health crisis in young people.
Researchers have searched for the effects suggested by Haidt. Our efforts have produced a mix of no, small and mixed associations. Most data are correlative. When associations over time are found, they suggest not that social-media use predicts or causes depression, but that young people who already have mental-health problems use such platforms more often or in different ways from their healthy peers.
We are not alone here. Several analyses and systematic reviews centralize on the same message. An analysis done in 72 countries shows no consistent or measurable associations between well-being and social media globally. Moreover, studies from some authorities finds no evidence of intense changes associated with digital-technology use.
As a psychologist studying children’s and adolescents’ mental health, I appreciate parents’ frustration (沮丧) and desire for simple answers. As a parent of adolescents, I would also like to identify a simple source for the pain this generation is reporting. There are, however, no simple answers. The beginning and development of mental disorders are driven by a complex set of genetic and environmental factors.
More young people are talking openly about their mental-health struggles than ever before. But insufficient services are available to address their needs. In the United States, there is, on average, one school psychologist for every 1,119 students. We have a generation in crisis and in desperate need of the best of what science and evidence-based solutions can offer. Unfortunately, our time is being spent telling stories that are unsupported by research and that do little to support young people who need, and deserve, more.
1. What is presented in The Anxious Generation?| A．Scary stories affect children’s brains. |
| B．Parents are responsible for children’s health. |
| C．Teen’s mental illness results from screen time. |
| D．The epidemic of mental illness is unavoidable. |
| A．Many countries do research in mental health. |
| B．Well-being and social media are closely related. |
| C．The young are trapped in the mental-health crisis, |
| D．Social media don’t necessarily cause mental illness. |
| A．Effective actions need to be taken. | B．Positive stories should be shared. |
| C．Financial support needs to be provided. | D．Broader research should be done. |
| A．To suggest ways to help those in need. |
| B．To encourage parents to brave the crisis. |
| C．To recommend a newly-published book. |
| D．To give a voice to children’s mental issues. |
1. Why did Carla change the way she worked?
| A．She didn’t enjoy the work she did. |
| B．She had health problems. |
| C．She spent very little time at home. |
| A．She does a new kind of exercise now. |
| B．She exercises at a different time of day. |
| C．She does more exercise than she used to. |
| A．Making a to-do list. |
| B．Having a lot of similar clothes. |
| C．Checking emails on the way to work. |
10 . Every bookstore in Beijing used to have a massive fiction room piled to the ceiling with great books. These days, you’re as likely as not to find that those rooms have been shrunk down to the size of a solitary (单独的) table thickly covered with the latest releases and best-selling novels. This, however, begs the question: Is fiction dying out, or is print media finally succumbing to (屈服于) its electronic and audio copy rivals (对手)?
Now that Kindle is leaving China, some say that maybe people will get back to traditional reading. I doubt it, however. This downward reading trend has been evident for a long time now. When Jeff Bezos first launched Kindle, Steve Jobs from Apple said it would fail because “people don’t read anymore. It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is.”
But I don’t think reading itself is dying. It is merely becoming more functional — in other words, something you have to do in order to get some tangible (实际的) benefit. Gone are the days when people just read for fun. Why lumber (迫使担负) through a musty old book when you can watch an action movie or play a video game? Of course, people know that these are poor substitutes (替代品) for a good book.
In fact, there is nothing better than getting lost in a great book. I remember reading Shackleton, the British polar explorer, when I was a boy. After turning over the last leaf of this extraordinary adventure, I felt as if I, too, had just been to the South Pole and back. This imaginary achievement translated into a sense of confidence which must have been infectious, as soon afterwards all of my friends were themselves picking up books to read for fun. Psychologists say that you are the average of the five friends you surround yourself with. We can learn from them and they can also come to have a profound effect on our own habits and mindset. In this way, a book, too, can be a mentor (导师). The ideas, advice, mindset, and experiences of other people living in other times can get transmitted to us down through the pages of a good book.
In the age of fragmented (碎片化的) information, the winners will be those who can stay focused. However, in a world that easily gets distracted, deep reading seems to be getting further away from us. Our biggest problem is not Kindle’s departure from China, but our own departure from reality. Great books transmit universal truths; get them read. How exactly you do so is up to you.
1. The author mentioned Kindle in the text to _______.| A．praise its convenience and popularity in reading |
| B．explore the reason for the decline of print media |
| C．highlight the decreasing trend of traditional reading |
| D．show our regret for its departure from China’s market |
| A．He is famous for imaginary writing. | B．He finds nothing better than an old book. |
| C．He visited the South Pole many times himself. | D．His adventure story influenced the author a lot. |
| A．we can be influenced by positive ideas | B．we’d surround ourselves with good friends |
| C．we can learn from other people’s experiences | D．we can develop good habits and ways of thinking |
| A．great books are more popular than action movies |
| B．we should avoid being distracted by modern technology |
| C．reading great books can help us stay focused |
| D．traditional reading will eventually disappear |
| A．It’s necessary to find a better substitutes for books like Kindle. |
| B．We should read more in order to escape from reality. |
| C．We need to face the reality that reading is becoming less popular. |
| D．We have to accept the fact that Kindle is leaving China. |
| A．To discuss the future trend of reading. | B．To advocate the benefits of reading. |
| C．To analyze the reasons for the decline of reading. | D．To compare different forms of reading. |
