It’s the Saturday, 1:00 am, and Stormy, my dog, and I were going on a pre-dawn bird-watching adventure. The weatherman predicted fog, but as we hit the road, it’s clear. Along our journey, I stopped at a petrol station, ensuring Stormy was safely locked in the truck.

“Stormy, hang tight,” I whispered, stepping out into the night air.

Back on the highway, as we were near the marshlands, a heavy fog began to swallow everything. At a sharp bend, my truck hit soft ground, and I lost control. “Oh, no!” Panic set in as the vehicle slid off the road with a bang, falling down a steep bank and into the water.

In the strange silence that followed, I was floating inside the car, gently carried downstream by the canal. “Come on, door,” I said, switching uselessly at the handle. It won’t move; the electrical system had shorted out due to the water. “I’ve got a glass breaker,” I reminded myself, reaching for the tool in the center part.

With each failed attempt to break the window — the glass bouncing back at me — I felt a growing sense of urgency. Water moved over the floorboards, cooling my feet. “Stormy, stay calm,” I said, lying down to kick at the window with all my strength. But my efforts only met resistance.

As the water level rose threateningly close to the ceiling, fear clawed at my heart. In a last effort, I dived behind the seat for my toolbox. “Got to find something solid.” My hands brushed against the cold metal toolbox, then the fire extinguisher (灭火器). “This might work.”

“Here goes everything,” I thought, holding the extinguisher and hitting it against the window. The impact resounded through the car, but the glass holds firm. “Not yet,” I begged under my breath, as the extinguisher bounced harmlessly away.

The water kept rising, and so did my fear. A voice inside me screamed to give up, but another thought pierced through — Stormy. “For Stormy, I can’t quit.” Just then, I sensed a pause in the water’s rise.

An unspoken sound said, “You have more time. What will you do?”

“I’ll fight harder,” I promised aloud.

Exhausted, we caught the now flooded vehicle, waiting for daylight.

2 . 假如你是光明中学足球队队长李华，请你给上海希望国际学校足球队负贵人Mr Brown发一封邮件，邀请该校足球队来你校打一场友谊赛。要点包括：

1. 发出邀请；

2. 友谊赛的意义和目的。

注意：

1. 词数80左右；

2. 可适当增加细节，使内容充实，行文连贯。

Dear Mr. Brown,

I hope this email finds you well.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Best regards,

Li Hua

4 . Every decision we make is arrived at through hugely complex neurological processing. Although it feels as though you have a choice, the action that you ‘decide’ to take is entirely directed by automatic neural activity. Brain imaging studies show that a person’s action can be predicted by their brain activity up to 10 seconds before they themselves become aware they are going to act. Multiple neuroscientific studies show that even those important decisions that feel worked out are just as automatic as knee-jerk reactions (膝跳反应) (although more complex).

Decision-making starts with the amygdala: a set of two almond-shaped nuclei (杏仁状核) buried deep within the brain, which generate emotion. The amygdala registers the information streaming in through our senses and responds to it in less than a second, sending signals throughout the brain. These produce an urge to run, fight, freeze or grab, according to how the amygdala values various stimuli.

Before we act on the amygdala’s signals, however, the information is usually processed by other brain areas, including some that produce conscious thoughts and emotions. Areas concerned with recognition work out what’s going on, those concerned with memory compare it with previous experiences, and those concerned with reasoning, judging and planning get to work on constructing various action plans. The best plan—if we are lucky—is then selected and carried out. If any of this process goes wrong, we are likely to hesitate, or do something silly.

The various stages of decision-making are marked by different types of brain activity. Fast (gamma)waves, with frequencies of 25 to 100 Hz, produce a keen awareness of the multiple factors that need to be taken into account to arrive at a decision. If you are trying to choose a sandwich, for instance, gamma waves generated in various cells within the ‘taste’ area of the brain bring to mind and compare the taste of ham, hummus, wholemeal, sourdough, and so on. Although it may seem useful to be aware of the full range of choice, too much information makes decision-making more difficult, so irrelevant factors get dismissed quickly and unconsciously.

After this comparison stage, the brain switches to slow-wave activity (12 to 30 Hz). This extinguishes most of the gamma activity, leaving just a single ‘hotspot’ of gamma waves which marks the chosen option.

Although there is no ‘you’ outside your brain to direct what it’s doing, you can help it to make good decisions by placing yourself in a situation which is likely to make the process run more smoothly. Doing something that is physically or mentally stimulating before making a decision will help your brain produce the initial gamma waves that generate awareness of the competing options. Getting over-excited, on the other hand, will prevent the switch to the slow brainwaves, making it much harder to single out a choice.

6 . One of the curious things about social networks is the way that some messages, pictures, or ideas can spread like wildfire while others that seem just as catchy or interesting barely register at all.

Before you go deep into the puzzle, consider this: If you measure the height of your male friends, for example, the average is about 170 centimeters. You are 172 and your friends are all about the same height as you are. Indeed, the mathematical concept of “average” is a good way to capture the nature of this data set.

But imagine that one of your friends was much taller than you. This person would dramatically skew the average, which would make your friends taller than you, on average. In this case, the “average” is a poor way to capture this data set.

Exactly this situation occurs on social networks. On average, your coauthors will be cited more often than you, and the people you follow will post more frequently than you, and so on.

Now Lerman from University of Southern California has discovered a related paradox, which they call the majority illusion. They illustrate this illusion with an example. They take 14 nodes linked up to form a small network. They then color three of these nodes and count how many of the remaining nodes link to them in a single step.

In one situation, the uncolored nodes see more than half of their neighbors as colored. This is the majority illusion — the local impression that a specific feature is common when the global truth is entirely different.

So how popular is it in the real world? It’s found out that the majority illusion occurs in almost all network scenarios. “The effect is largest in the political blogs network, where 60% of nodes will have majority active neighbours, even when only 20% of the nodes are truly active,” says Lerman.

It immediately explains many interesting phenomena. For a start, it shows how some content can spread globally while other similar content does not — the key is to start with a small number of well-connected early adopters fooling the rest of the network into thinking it is common. The affected nodes then find it natural to follow the trend. A real spread finally comes into being.

But it is not yet a marketer’s charter. For that, marketers must first identify the popular nodes that can create the majority illusion for the target audience. These influencers must then be persuaded to adopt the desired behavior or product, which is essential to the prospect of the marketing plan.

8 . Language studies traditionally have paid much attention to verbal and written language. But recently they have begun to consider language without _______ , for people regard nonverbal(非言语的) _______ as having meaning. Nonverbal acts either accompany verbal messages are used _______ . They may support or even contradict _______ messages. They are more likely to be used _______ because they are habitual and routine behaviors.

In some _______ , people express more nonverbally than verbally. If you ask an obviously depressed person, “What’s wrong?”, and he answers, “Nothing. I’m fine, ”you probably won’t _______ him. When an angry person says, “Let’s _______ the subject. I don’t want to talk about it anymore!” actually he hasn’t _______ communicating. His withdrawal and ________ continue to convey emotional meaning.

One study showed that 93 percent of the ________ was communicated by the tone of the ________ and facial expressions, while only 7 percent of the speaker’s attitude was conveyed by words. It is ________ that we express our emotions and attitudes more nonverbally than verbally.

Nonverbal communication expresses ________ or feeling beyond words. Universal emotions, such as happiness, fear, and sadness, are expressed in a ________ nonverbal way throughout the world. There are, however, nonverbal differences across cultures that may be a source of ________ for foreigners. For example, feelings of friendship ________ everywhere but their expression ________ . It may be acceptable in some countries for men to embrace each other and for women to hold hands; in other countries these acts of ________ may be shocking.

What is acceptable in one culture may be completely unacceptable in another. In order to correctly ________ another culture’s style of communication, it is necessary to study the ”silent language“ of that culture.