1 . Who is a genius? This question has greatly interested humankind for centuries.

Let’s state clearly: Einstein was a genius. His face is almost the international symbol for genius. But we want to go beyond one man and explore the nature of genius itself. Why is it that some people are so much more intelligent or creative than the rest of us? And who are they?

In the sciences and arts, those praised as geniuses were most often white men, of European origin. Perhaps this is not a surprise. It’s said that history is written by the victors, and those victors set the standards for admission to the genius club. When contributions were made by geniuses outside the club—women, or people of a different color or belief—they were unacknowledged and rejected by others.

A study recently published by Science found that as young as age six, girls are less likely than boys to say that members of their gender(性别)are “really, really smart.” Even worse, the study found that girls act on that belief: Around age six they start to avoid activities said to be for children who are “really, really smart.” Can our planet afford to have any great thinkers become discouraged and give up? It doesn’t take a genius to know the answer: absolutely not.

Here’s the good news. In a wired world with constant global communication, we’re all positioned to see flashes of genius wherever they appear. And the more we look, the more we will see that social factors(因素)like gender, race, and class do not determine the appearance of genius. As a writer says, future geniuses come from those with “intelligence, creativity, perseverance(毅力), and simple good fortune, who are able to change the world.”

1. What does the author think of victors’ standards for joining the genius club?

A．They’re unfair.	B．They’re conservative.
C．They’re objective.	D．They’re strict.

2. What can we infer about girls from the study in Science?

A．They think themselves smart.

B．They look up to great thinkers.

C．They see gender differences earlier than boys.

D．They are likely to be influenced by social beliefs

3. Why are more geniuses known to the public?

A．Improved global communication.

B．Less discrimination against women.

C．Acceptance of victors’ concepts.

D．Changes in people’s social positions.

4. What is the best title for the text?

A．Geniuses Think Alike	B．Genius Takes Many Forms
C．Genius and Intelligence	D．Genius and Luck

2 . Self-esteem is the ruling view you have of yourself. This includes your beliefs about your inner qualities and how you think others see you.     1     Someone can develop low self-esteem even when they are highly functional and greatly skilled. Understanding this mysterious emotional currency might be the key to unlocking your own self-worth.

People with healthy self-esteem don't need to boast about themselves to others. People with low self-esteem may tell you how much everyone loves them, what a great job they do at work, and how amazing they are at pretty everything under the sun even though they really wonder if it's true. People may see them as obnoxious or “full of themselves”.     2     They are not shy about sharing ideas, including constructive criticisms of others. They also take care of themselves without second-guessing or apologizing. They are the people who we say seem “sure of themselves”.

If you're starting to think you may have low self-esteem, you can work on the way you talk to yourself. When you turn off negative self-talk, you can open the floor to positive reinforcements and access the courage to show different sides of yourself. It isn't going to feel good at first, though. Keep going until it becomes less and less and maybe even a few awkward laughs in the mirror may help.     3    

However, in serious cases of low or even non-existent self-esteem, you may want to call in a professional or a specialist. Good mental health is important, and professionals doing psychotherapy do not pass judgement or give corrections.     4     It is the best way to get at the roots of your real self-esteem problems.

    5     It will take some work but your entire life — from your relationships to your body image to your work habits — will be touched with the kind of power that only comes from someone believing in themselves. This is the hardest part, and the greatest leap. With some changes and support, you can improve your self-esteem and see how everything else changes as a result.

A．Self-esteem is not always rooted in reality, though.

B．You have the power to shape a new self-perception.

C．This encourages you to speak openly without worry.

D．The real test of character is whether they can learn from their mistakes.

E．Self-esteem refers to a person's overall sense of his or her value or worth.

F．People with a healthy level of self-esteem present themselves with a casual confidence.

G．With some practice and persistence, you will win this internal struggle to see your self-worth.

3 . At a museum in Vietnam, Lena Bui’s film Where Birds Dance Their Last reflected on the beauty and vulnerability of Vietnamese feather farms after Bird Flu. During a festival in Rwanda, Ellen Reid’s audio experience Soundwalk was shared in a hopeful discussion about music, parks and mental health. These are a few of the things I have helped bring to life over the years, working at the intersection of scientific research, the arts and advocacy to support science in solving global health challenges.

Science is key to addressing these issues. But it isn’t the only key. To achieve its potential and for its advances to be implemented and reach all who could benefit, science depends on trust and good relationships. People might not always see science as relevant, trustworthy or meaningful to their lives. There are reasons why some see science as having a chequered past, from nuclear weapons to eugenics, and are therefore uninterested in, or suspicious of, what it proposes. Others feel excluded by the incomprehensibility of hyper specialist knowledge.

In its capacity to build upon and test an evidence base, science is powerful, but researchers and funders haven’t been as good at ensuring this evidence base responds to the needs and interests of diverse communities, or informs policy makers to take action. Science might be perceived as distancing itself from the personal, the poetic and the political, yet it is precisely these qualities that can be most influential when it comes to public interest in atopic or how a government prioritizes a decision.

A moving story well told can be more memorable than a list of facts. This is where the arts come in. Artists can give us different perspectives with which to consider and reimagine the world together. They can redress the proclaimed objectivity in science by bringing stories —subjectivities —into the picture, and these can help foster a sense of connection and hope.

In 2012, I set up artist residencies in medical research centres around the world. Bui was attached to the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Vietnam. The head of the research team was delighted, finding that Bui, as a Vietnamese artist, had license to be in, and to share useful insights from, villages where infectious disease researchers weren’t welcome. Six years later, I led Wellcome’s Contagious Cities program, which established artist residencies worldwide to support locally led explorations of epidemic preparedness. The recent pandemic made this work more noticeable, and has informed our Mindscapes program which is currently sharing experiences of mental health through the work of artists.

With pandemic, climate and mental health crises upon us, rising inequality and what feels like an increasingly broken world, never has there been more need to build and nurture hopeful and imaginative spaces to grow human connection and shared purpose for the common good. Science and the arts can work hand in glove to achieve this.

1. The author lists two works in Paragraph 1 mainly to ______.

A．reveal the gap between science and art	B．prove his competence in both science and art
C．introduce successful science-related artworks	D．show that science can be promoted in art forms

2. What does the underlined word “chequered” in Paragraph 2 probably mean?

A．Recent and remote.	B．Good and bad.
C．Usual and unusual.	D．Peaceful and scary.

3. Which of the following would the author agree?

A．Policy-makers base their decisions on science.	B．Researchers popularize science effectively.
C．Science is well received among the public.	D．The arts help people build connections.

4. Which of the following would be the best title for the passage?

A．The Value of the Arts to Science	B．Where Do Science and the Arts Meet?
C．A New Way to Fight Pandemic—the Arts	D．Which Matters More, Science or the Arts?

4 . The Science of Recreational Fear

From peek-a-boo to Halloween haunted houses, research shows that recreational fear can teach us to face scary situations. The “paradox of horror” is that being scared, under the right circumstances, can be fun.     1    

Having fun with fear is an “extremely important tool for learning,” said Mathias Clasen, director of the Recreational Fear Lab at Aarhus University in Denmark. “We learn something about the dangers of the world. We learn something about our own responses: What does it feel like to be afraid? How much fear can I take?”

Horror movies have gotten more popular. And in one survey of more than 1,000 Americans, conducted by Clasen, 55% described themselves as horror fans.     2     Many people who would not consider themselves fans of fear enjoy true-crime podcasts and novels featuring violence and murder. Others may enjoy nature documentaries about top predators (捕食性动物) such as sharks and bears.

Even babies like being a little spooked (惊的). Peek-a-boo is “an infant jump scare,” Clasen said.     3     “I don’t think I’ve yet come across a person who did not enjoy some kind of recreational fear,” he said.

    4     It is a combination of an adrenaline (肾上腺素) rush and an opportunity to learn about dealing with scary situations in a safe environment, researchers say. When we are afraid, our endocrine system releases adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol to help prepare our body for physical action. We know the “Halloween” movie Michael Myers is not real, but our brain still responds as if he were a burning threat. One brain imaging study found that watching horror movies activates threat-response brain regions such as the amygdala (扁桃腺), prefrontal cortex and insula as if the danger were real.

After this rush, many people experience an uplifted mood. One study examined how 262 adults felt before and after they entered an extreme haunted house.     5     Brain recordings before and after showed that those whose mood improved had a smaller neural response to subsequent stressors, which is associated with the post-haunt high.

A．So why do we like it?

B．Fifty percent of people said they felt better after the visit.

C．And recreational fear, as it is rightly named, could benefit us, too.

D．Playing with fear helps us learn what our body does under pressure.

E．Horror, though, is not the only genre of what people find scary fun, he said.

F．We define recreational fear broadly as a mixed emotional experience of fear and enjoyment.

G．Classic childhood games of tag and hide-and-seek are just like the real scenes of predator vs. prey.

5 . Humans have long tried to conquer water. We’ve straightened once-winding rivers for shipping purposes. We’ve constructed levees (防洪堤) along rivers and lakes to protect people from flooding—We’ve erected entire cities on drained and filled-in wetlands. We’ve built dams on rivers to store water for later use.     1     But it’s not, argues environmental journalist Erica Gies,author of Water Always Wins.

Levees, which narrow channels causing water to flow higher and faster, nearly always break. Cities on former wetlands flood regularly—often disastrously. Dams starve downstream areas of sediment (沉积物) needed to protect coasts against rising seas. Straightened streams move faster than winding ones, giving water less time to flow downward. And they wash away riverbed ecosystems.

In addition to laying out this damage done by supposed water control, Gies takes readers on a hopeful global tour of solutions to these problems. Along the way, she introduces “water detectives” —scientists,engineers,urban planners, and many others.     2    

These water detectives have found ways to give the slippery substance the time and space it needs to flow slowly underground. Around Seattle’s Thornton Creek, for instance, reclaimed land now allows for regular flooding, which has renewed riverbed habitat and created an urban oasis. In California’s Central Valley, scientists want to find ways to move unpolluted storm water into subsurface valleys that make ideal aquifers (含水层).     3    

While some people are exploring new ways to manage water, others are leaning on ancient knowledge. Researchers in Peru are now studying old-style methods of water storage, which don’t require dams, in hopes of ensuring a steady flow of water to Lima—Peru’s populous capital that’s periodically affected by water shortage.     4     “Decision makers come from a culture of concrete,” Gies writes, “in which dams, pipes and desalination factories are standard.”

Understanding how to work with, not against, water will help humankind weather this age of drought and flood that’s being worsened by climate change.     5     Instead, we must learn to live within our water means because water will undoubtedly win.

A．Controlling water, Gies convincingly argues, is a false belief.

B．Instead of trying to control water, they ask: What does water want?

C．It seems that water is cooperative and willing to flow where we direct it.

D．These old-style underwater concrete techniques pave the way for the construction of dams.

E．To further understand the whole ecosystem, they believe effective water control requires effort.

F．The study may help convince those who favor concrete-centric solutions to try something new.

G．Feeding groundwater supplies will in turn sustain rivers from below, which helps to maintain water levels and ecosystems.

6 . “Just think positively!”

“It could be worse.”

“You should look at the bright side!”

We’ve all heard (and maybe used) these phrases without much thought. But they could be contributing to a culture of toxic(有毒的) positivity. For those new to this term, it might sound like an oxymoron(矛盾修辞法). How can positivity be toxic? Isn’t it supposed to be helpful, or “positive”, as the name suggests?     1    

“Toxic positivity is when somebody avoids all negative thoughts or feelings, pretending everything is going well when it is not,” explains Melissa Dowd, a therapist at PlushCare, a virtual health platform for primary care and mental health services.Whitney Goodman, the author of Toxic Positivity describes toxic positivity as the “endless pressure to be happy and positive, no matter what the circumstances are.”     2     It’s also something we can cause other people to experience.

Expressing toxic positivity to others may look like offering them a simple solution to a complicated problem that we know nothing about, or not allowing people around you to appropriately express negative emotions.

Toxic positivity causes us to suppress our emotions, which can make them worse.     3     “Although it can be helpful to look on the bright side when facing challenges,” Dowd says, “not coping with negative feelings in a healthy way in the moment can lead to those feelings resurfacing later in different areas of your life or as a form of anxiety.”     4     “If I feel like you’re going to dismiss me, I’m going to stop sharing how I’m feeling,” Goodman adds.

    5     If you’re using toxic positivity against yourself, Goodman suggests remembering it’s OK if you’re upset about something. It’s valid if something annoys you. “Allow ourselves and other people to share when they’re going through a difficult time,” she says. Dowd adds that it’s essential that “we all learn to cope with and process our emotions in a healthy way as opposed to avoiding how we feel” as life’s stressors continue to rise. For example, instead of simply saying “Just think positively,” we’d better say “Sometimes bad things happen. How can I help?”

A．Are there ways to avoid toxic positivity?

B．Toxic positivity also disrupts connection.

C．It can harm people who are going through difficult times.

D．This can come up in different situations when we are dealing with pressure.

E．They become more intense and can cause long-lasting health concerns in the future.

F．Experts say constant forced positivity can lead to the opposite, and have a negative effect.

G．This is what we may bring on to ourselves by not allowing negative thoughts and feelings.

7 . “Assume you are wrong.” The advice came from Brian Nosek, a psychology professor, who was offering a strategy for pursuing better science.

To understand the context for Nosek’s advice, we need to take a step back to the nature of science itself. You see despite what many of us learned in elementary school, there is no single scientific method. Just as scientific theories become elaborated and change, so do scientific methods.

But methodological reform hasn’t come without some fretting and friction. Nasty things have been said by and about methodological reformers. Few people like having the value of their life’s work called into question. On the other side, few people are good at voicing criticisms in kind and constructive ways. So, part of the challenge is figuring out how to bake critical self-reflection into the culture of science itself, so it unfolds as a welcome and integrated part of the process, and not an embarrassing sideshow.

What Nosek recommended was a strategy for changing the way we offer and respond to critique. Assuming you are right might be a motivating force, sustaining the enormous effort that conducting scientific work requires. But it also makes it easy to interpret criticisms as personal attacks. Beginning, instead, from the assumption you are wrong, a criticism is easier to interpret as a constructive suggestion for how to be less wrong — a goal that your critic presumably shares.

One worry about this approach is that it could be demoralizing for scientists. Striving to be less wrong might be a less effective motivation than the promise of being right. Another concern is that a strategy that works well within science could backfire when it comes to communicating science with the public. Without an appreciation for how science works, it’s easy to take uncertainty or disagreements as marks against science, when in fact they reflect some of the very features of science that make it our best approach to reaching reliable conclusions about the world. Science is reliable because it responds to evidence: as the quantity and quality of our evidence improves, our theories can and should change, too.

Despite these worries, I like Nosek’s suggestion because it builds in cognitive humility along with a sense that we can do better. It also builds in a sense of community — we’re all in the same boat when it comes to falling short of getting things right.

Unfortunately, this still leaves us with an untested hypothesis (假说): that assuming one is wrong can change community norms for the better, and ultimately support better science and even, perhaps, better decisions in life. I don’t know if that’s true. In fact, I should probably assume that it’s wrong. But with the benefit of the scientific community and our best methodological tools, I hope we can get it less wrong, together.

1. What can we learn from Paragraph 3?

A．Reformers tend to devalue researchers’ work.

B．Scientists are unwilling to express kind criticisms.

C．People hold wrong assumptions about the culture of science.

D．The scientific community should practice critical self-reflection.

2. The strategy of “assuming you are wrong” may contribute to ______.

A．the enormous efforts of scientists at work	B．the reliability of potential research results
C．the public’s passion for scientific findings	D．the improvement in the quality of evidence

3. The underlined word “demoralizing” in Paragraph 5 means ______.

A．discouraging

B．ineffective

C．unfair

D．misleading

4. The tone the author uses in talking about the untested hypothesis is ______.

A．doubtful but sincere	B．disapproving but soft
C．authoritative and direct	D．reflective and humorous

8 . To a chef, the sounds of lip smacking, slurping and swallowing are the highest form of flattery (恭维). But to someone with a certain type of misophonia (恐音症), these same sounds can be torturous. Brain scans are now helping scientists start to understand why.

People with misophonia experience strong discomfort, annoyance or disgust when they hear particular triggers. These can include chewing, swallowing, slurping, throat clearing, coughing and even audible breathing. Researchers previously thought this reaction might be caused by the brain overactively processing certain sounds. Now, however, a new study published in Journal of Neuroscience has linked some forms of misophonia to heightened “mirroring” behavior in the brain: those affected feel distress while their brains act as if they were imitating the triggering mouth movements.

“This is the first breakthrough in misophonia research in 25 years,” says psychologist Jennifer J. Brout, who directs the International Misophonia Research Network and was not involved in the new study.

The research team, led by Neweastle University neuroscientist Sukhbinder Kumar, analyzed brain activity in people with and without misophonia when they were at rest and while they listened to sounds. These included misophonia triggers (such as chewing), generally unpleasant sounds (like a crying baby）, and neutral sounds. The brain’s auditory (听觉的) cortex, which processes sound, reacted similarly in subjects with and without misophonia. But in both the resting state and listening trials, people with misophonia showed stronger connections between the auditory cortex and brain regions that control movements of the face, mouth and throat, while the controlled group didn’t. Kumar found this connection became most active in participants with misophonia when they heard triggers specific to the condition.

“Just by listening to the sound, they activate the motor cortex more strongly. So in a way it was as if they were doing the action themselves,” Kumar says. Some mirroring is typical in most humans when witnessing others’ actions; the researchers do not yet know why an excessive(过分的) mirroring response might cause such a negative reaction, and hope to address that in future research. “Possibilities include a sense of loss of control, invasion of personal space, or interference with current goals and actions,” the study authors write.

Fatima Husain, an Illinois University professor of speech and hearing science, who was not involved in the study, says potential misophonia therapies could build on the new findings by counseling patients about handling unconscious motor responses to triggering sounds—not just coping with the sounds themselves. If this works, she adds, one should expect to see reduced connected activity between the auditory and motor cortices.

1. It can be learnt from the new study that ______.

A．misophonia sufferers can’t help imitating the triggers

B．people with misophonia are more likely to flatter chefs

C．the brains of people with misophonia overreact to sounds strongly

D．misophonia sufferers tend to have similar annoying activities in their brains

2. Compared with people without misophonia, people with misophonia ______.

A．suffer less severely at the resting state	B．own markedly different brain structures
C．react more negatively at a mirroring response	D．lose control of their facial movements easily

3. What might be the significance of the study?

A．Improving speech and hearing science.	B．Developing a treatment for misophonia.
C．Drawing people’s attention to misophonia.	D．Promoting human brain structure research.

9 . “I can’t connect with your characters.”

I kept hearing the same feedback and was unable to understand why and not sure what to do. I was a character-driven writer. How could I mess up the one thing I was supposed to be good at? I was determined to convince my agent that these characters were real. After all, I knew they were real. My main character Lotus had lived inside me for years. I just needed to clarify her on the page.

I wrote and edited for a year, trying to respond to this agent’s feedback. But Lotus’ personality began to disappear. I tried to have her make “better” decisions, wear smarter fashion, and have more friends, as my agent said she acted “immature” and was “isolated”. And when this agent ultimately parted ways with me, I felt like I had failed. Now with time and distance, I realize I tried to fit Lotus into a neurotypical style to please my agent. And as a result, Lotus lost her Lotus-ness.

When that agent discouraged me from writing Lotus as autistic(自闭的), he said that would make Lotus seem more “vulnerable(脆弱的)” or an “obvious victim”. I didn’t want Lotus to seem vulnerable. Lotus’ autism is what makes her powerful, I tried to explain. But from a neurotypical perspective, Lotus’ autism could only be seen as a weakness.

Unsure of how to convince my agent of the strength and power autistic women hold, I began to write Lotus as “neurotypical”. And I failed miserably. After all, what do I know about being neurotypical? My whole life, autism was my default. Not being diagnosed until 2020, I assumed the way I saw the world was “normal”.

My current agent encourages me to write from my neurodivergent(神经多样性的) experience. With this invitation, I revisited Lotus and saw her the way I first wrote her. And when I did, the characters and the entire narrative began to make more sense.

Identifying my characters as neurodivergent not only gives me joy as a writer, but it has produced my strongest writing. For so long, I’ve combatted the advice to “write what I know”, in part because I didn’t know what I actually knew. I didn’t know I was neurodivergent. But as I mine the specificity of my lived experience, my writing is stronger. There is a power to our lived experience. It’s not a limitation on our craft, but a swinging open of the gates.

1. How did the author feel when receiving the repeated response from the first agent?

A．Confused.

B．Convinced.

C．Determined.

D．Disappointed.

2. Lotus’ personality got lost because ______

A．Lotus no longer lived inside the author	B．the author attempted to please the agent
C．the agent failed to sympathize with Lotus	D．Lotus was considered childish and lonely

3. What do we know about the author?

A．She regretted parting with the agent.

B．She owed her success in life to autism.

C．She was aware of her autism in the early years.

D．She was empowered by her autistic experience.

4. What has the author learned from her own experience?

A．Stick to your dream despite discouragement.

B．Be true to yourself and write from your heart.

C．Giving in to authority is the barrier to success.

D．Everyone is born an original instead of a copy.

10 . At my first lesson in Chinese calligraphy, my teacher told me plainly: “Now I will teach you how to write your name. And to make it beautiful.” I felt my breath catch. I was curious.

Growing up in Singapore, I had an unusual relationship with my Chinese name. My parents are ethnically Chinese, so they asked fortune tellers to decide my name, aiming for maximum luck. As a result, I ended up with a nonsense and embarrassing name: Chen Yiwen, meaning, roughly, “old”, “barley (薏米)” and “warm”.

When I arrived in America for college at 18, I put on an American accent and abandoned my Chinese name. When I moved to Hong Kong in 2021, after 14 years in the States, I decided to learn calligraphy. Why not get back in touch with my heritage? I thought.

In calligraphy, the idea is to copy the old masters’ techniques, thereby refining your own. Every week, though, my teacher would give uncomfortably on-the-nose assessments of my person. “You need to be braver,” he once observed. “Have confidence. Try to produce a bold stroke(笔画).” For years, I had prided myself on presenting an image of confidence, but my writing betrayed me.

I was trying to make sense of this practice. You must visualize the word as it is to be written and leave a trace of yourself in it. As a bodily practice, calligraphy could go beyond its own cultural restrictions. Could it help me go beyond mine? My teacher once said to me, “When you look at the word, you see the body. Though a word on the page is two-dimensional, it contains multitudes, conveying the force you’ve applied, the energy of your grip, the arch of your spine.” I had been learning calligraphy to get in touch with my cultural roots, but what I was really seeking was a return to myself. Now I have sensed that the pleasure out of calligraphy allows me to know myself more fully.

During a recent lesson, my teacher pointed at the word I had just finished, telling me: “This word is much better. I can see the choices you made, your calculations, your flow. Trust yourself. This word is yours.” He might as well have said, “This word is you.”

1. What did the author initially think of her name “Chen Yiwen”?

A．It was lucky so she gladly accepted it.	B．She felt proud of its symbolic meaning.
C．She understood the intention but still disliked it.	D．Its strange pronunciation made her embarrassed.

2. The author decided to learn calligraphy to ______.

A．pick up a new hobby	B．reconnect with her origin
C．gain insights into a new culture	D．fit in with local community

3. From the teacher’s words, the author learns that calligraphy ______.

A．reflects the creator’s spirits	B．comes from creative energy
C．highlights the design of strokes	D．depends on continuous practice

4. What does the author intend to tell us?

A．Appreciate what our culture offers.	B．Find beauty from your inner self.
C．A great teacher leads you to truth.	D．We are the sum of what we create.