Be Aware of the Anti-climax
Many of us work tirelessly towards our goals, We may spend our lives dreaming of the day we are admitted to our dream university, publish our first book or purchase our first home. However, more than often, when we achieve these things, it doesn’t feel quite as expected. In fact, the achievement of these goals feels anti-climactic, or a bit of a letdown.
“An anti-climax can be an unexpected by-product of a milestone achievement. Usually, the more significant the milestone, the greater the anti-climax may be,” says Rachel Vora, psychotherapist and founder of CYP Wellbeing. “The journey to achieving a milestone can be exciting and all-consuming. Therefore, when this disappears overnight, we can often feel lost and confused.”
In psychology, the belief that we’ll be happier when we achieve our goals even has a fancy scientific name. Psychologists call it “arrival fallacy (悖论)” and it plays a big part in those feelings of emptiness that can follow achieving a goal. “The term describes how fulfilling our goals and achieving our ambitions doesn’t lead to a ‘happily ever after’”, states psychologist Lee Chambers.
If you find yourself currently working toward something big that you suspect may feel like a bit of a letdown, there are steps you can take to manage and even prevent the feeling of anti-climax.
Enjoy the journey
You’d better slow down a little and come to realize that joy comes from the doing, not the completing. So instead of rushing for it to be done, take a moment to enjoy the doing.
Foresee the comedown
If you are aware of a potential upcoming anti-climax, schedule an activity to look forward to soon after the event has finished. Consider planning some time with friends and family, or attending a concert or even a cooking class. This can act as a reminder that other aspects of life can be just as fulfilling.
Normalize the experience
The key is to normalize feelings of low mood, confusion, and self-doubt around anti-climaxes, which are something many people experience. Connecting with others may also be beneficial. It can help to engage with friends and influencers online who share similar experiences to feel less isolated (孤立的) with your own emotions.
1. According to the passage, how do people often feel after they make great achievements?2. What does “arrival fallacy” refer to?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
To deal with your anti-climax, you’d better stay away from those who share similar experiences with you.
4. Suppose you have just been admitted to your dream university. What will you do to deal with the anti-climax? (In about 40 words)
2 . In science, advances are a daily occurrence, but true breakthroughs are rare. What does it take to achieve world-changing scientific breakthroughs? Some are the result of a lucky accident, combined with curiosity. Scientists traveling down one road suddenly find reason to switch to another road, one they never planned to travel — a road that may well lead nowhere.
Whichever road scientists who achieve lifesaving breakthroughs travel, they often endure disinterest, like Fleming, who discovered penicillin due to lucky accidents and curiosity, or repeated skepticism and rejection, like Karikó, who made all mRNA vaccines possible with 20 years of persistence and resilience. By bringing their dreams to life, they were rewarded with fame and wealth and something even more valuable.
Of course, the obsession (执念) with an unlikely dream fails to pay off for many scientists.
Ultimately, scientific breakthroughs are possible only if a society is willing to invest in dreamers, recognizing that not all investments will lead to major breakthroughs.
| A．Some scientists are addicted to their crazy ideas. |
| B．Their ideas, though brilliant, in the end are proved wrong. |
| C．But they refuse to give in and struggle to find more financial support. |
| D．Because of them, millions of people around the world never got sick or died. |
| E．Other major breakthroughs originate from scientists pursuing a specific idea. |
| F．But sometimes the road leads to major breakthroughs like X-ray and vaccines. |
| G．However, the investments leading to breakthroughs bring a greater economic return. |
3 . If you’ re reaching for the last piece of pizza at a party, and meanwhile see another hand going for it, your next move probably depends on how you feel and whom the hand belongs to. Your little sister — you might just grab the pizza. Your boss — you probably will give up. But if you’re hungry and feeling particularly confident, you might go for it.
Now researchers have made progress in understanding how mammals’ brain encodes social rank and uses this information to shape behaviours — such as whether to fight for that last pizza slice. They discovered that an area of the brain called the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) was responsible for representing social rank in mammals; changes to a mouse’s mPFC affect its dominance (支配) behaviour. But it was unknown how the mPFC represented this information and which neurons (神经元) were involved in changing dominance behaviour.
In the new study, Professor Kay Tye let groups of four mice share a cage, allowing a social hierarchy (等级) to naturally develop — some mice became more dominant and others more subordinate. As soon as the mice were paired up, he discovered, the activity of their mPFC neurons could predict — with 90 percent certainty — the rank of their opponent.
“We expected animals might only signal rank when they are in a competition,” says co-researcher Nancy. “But it turns out animals walk around with this representation of social rank all the time.”
When the researchers next asked whether the activity of the mPFC neurons was associated with behaviour, they found something surprising. The brain activity patterns were linked with slight changes in behaviour, such as how fast a mouse moved, and they also could predict — a full 30 seconds before the competition started — which mouse would win the food reward.
The winner was not always the more dominant, but the one engaged in a “winning mindset”. Just as you might sometimes be in a more competitive mood and be more likely to snatch that pizza slice before your boss, a subordinate mouse might be in a more “winning mindset” than a more dominant mouse and end up winning.
The areas of the mPFC associated with social rank and “winning mindset” are next to one another and highly connected. Signals on social rank impact the state of the brain involved in “winning mindset”. In other words, a subordinate mouse’s confidence and “winning mindset” may partially decrease when faced with a dominant one.
“This is further evidence to suggest that we are in different brain states when we are with others compared to when we’re alone,” says Tye. “Regardless of who you’re with, if you’re aware of other people around you, your brain is using different neurons.”
1. The author writes Paragraph 1 in order to ________.| A．tell an interesting story | B．present a typical example |
| C．introduce a major topic | D．provide a convincing proof |
| A．The mPFC neurons. | B．The researchers. |
| C．The brain activity patterns. | D．The changes in behaviour. |
| A．mPFC neurons change dominance behaviour. |
| B．Brain activities can influence social hierarchy. |
| C．Dominant opponents boost “winning mindset”. |
| D．Social rank and “winning mindset” affect behaviour. |
| A．Those eager to win may succeed. | B．When alone, we are more confident. |
| C．Social rank guides competitive behaviour. | D．“Winning mindset” establishes dominance. |
4 . Absence of evidence is not the same thing as evidence of absence. But if you try to find the difference and keep failing to get it, you can be forgiven. And so it is with the complicated subject of explicit (明确的) grammar teaching in schools, and its link with improved writing ability.
A recent study, like nearly all previous studies on this subject, found that teaching kids how to label the bits and pieces in a sentence does not make them better writers. Other observers may begin to wonder whether the National Curriculum, which since 2014 has made grammar such a central part of its English programme, might have gone down a blind alley.
The promoter of the curriculum, a former secretary of education, Michael Gove, insisted on the insertion of personal preference into the grammar curriculum, notably the subjunctive form, “If I were”. Mention of his name alone wrinkles many teachers’ noses — partly because some of them were hardly prepared to teach the new material themselves after decades in which grammar was largely absent from classrooms.
In reflection, it seems unsurprising that learning to underline a modal verb, such as “can”, “should” and “may”, does little to help students use them effectively in their own writing. These words are anyway grasped by tiny children without the need to know what they are called. This may lead to the conclusion that the teaching of grammar should be shelved altogether. However, it shouldn’t be abandoned, though it should be reformed.
There are practical reasons for teaching and learning grammar. One is that an explicit knowledge of it will make learning a foreign language easier. If you did intuit (直觉上知道) how to make subordinate clauses in your mother tongue, getting to grasp them in a foreign language in later years is simpler if you know how to define and spot them.
For grammarians keen on the jobs of the future, the field of natural language processing is booming. Technological talents have invented programs for automated translation, speech recognition and other services that are actually usable, even if far from perfect. These tools may rely more on knowledge of AI than of grammar, but linguistic expertise (专门技能) still matters.
Grammar could still be taught better. One small study showed improvement in some students when concepts were linked concretely to writing tasks. Therefore, the science of how words combine to make meaning is fascinating as well as fundamental.
1. What do many teachers think of Michael Gove’s idea?| A．They are in support of his claim. |
| B．They show disagreement with his idea. |
| C．They have no comments on his philosophy. |
| D．They are prepared to teach the new materials. |
| A．Mother tongue grammar contributes to foreign language learning. |
| B．Grammar is taught better in writing than in other areas of teaching. |
| C．Natural language processing is strongly supported by grammarians. |
| D．Grammar knowledge is no longer needed with the development of AI. |
| A．Grammar — To Teach or Not to Teach |
| B．How Could Grammar Be Taught Better |
| C．Why Learn Foreign Language Grammar |
| D．Mother Tongue Grammar — Important or Not |
5 . Chemists have spent the past century trying to make plastics that will break down in seawater. As it is, most plastics appear to take centuries to fully degrade in the ocean. But that may change. Scientists have just designed a new plastic that can break down in seawater within weeks, not decades or more.
Back in the 1930s, scientists created a now-popular plastic out of corn and potato starch (淀粉). It’s known as polylactide, or PLA. It’s a polymer (聚合物), which is a molecule made by linking many building blocks — called monomers — into a long string. Scientists had hoped PLA would quickly break down in the environment. And in some places, like compost pits (堆肥坑), it does. But not in seawater. Even after three years in ocean water, PLA remains largely unchanged.
Timo Rheinberger is a PhD student at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. His work on polymers has focused on boosting PLA’s breakdown. As part of that work, he became part of a team that just added some RNA-inspired breaking points to PLA. They put those breaking points in places where monomers in the PLA molecules are linked.
They weakened the links that joined up to 15 percent of a PLA’s monomers. Then, they soaked their samples in artificial seawater and measured how fast these tweaked versions of PLA broke down. The expected final product of PLA’s breakdown was a small molecule called lactic acid. So, they tested for that too.
As the team had hoped, seawater attacked the weakened links between monomers, splitting the polymer chain apart. The more breaking points the researchers added to the polymer, the faster the PLA broke down.
When they weakened 15 percent of PLA’s monomer links, the polymer broke down entirely within just two weeks. When they weakened only 3 percent of the links, the breakdown took about 2 years. This suggests the team can design how quickly PLA will break down in water by adjusting how many weakened links it has.
Mehlika Karamanlioglu teaches biomedical engineering at Istanbul Gelisim University. She, too, has studied environmental breakdown of PLA. “It’s a new approach,” she says of the Dutch technique. Theirs is also “a preliminary study,” Karamanlioglu says. So, more testing must follow. Scientists want to know how the strength of the new PLA compares to old PLA.
Rheinberger agrees. “You need a lot of material to start those studies,” he adds. And so far, his team has made only small amounts of the modified PLA.
Karamanlioglu notes the Dutch team also tested the breakdown of its PLA in artificial seawater. “I wonder if they checked [the water] for pollution,” she adds. If there were microbes (微生物), those microbes may have produced molecules called enzymes that sped up the PLA’s degradation.
1. What can we learn about PLA from the passage?| A．Lactic acid prevents the breakdown of PLA. |
| B．PLA breaks down faster in artificial seawater. |
| C．PLA’s breakdown relies on that of monomers. |
| D．Compost pits are the best places for PLA’s breakdown. |
| A．Systematic. | B．Comparative. | C．In-depth. | D．Early-stage. |
| A．Supportive. | B．Doubtful. | C．Optimistic. | D．Cautious. |
| A．Mehlika is confident about the application of the new PLA. |
| B．The cleanness of water also affects the breakdown of PLA. |
| C．The new PLA has better strength than the old PLA. |
| D．The new PLA have been produced in large amounts. |
The Power of Determination
Your quest for success and happiness begins with right intentions. It culminates (达到顶点) when you reach your chosen goals. What sustains your effort in between is your determination. What carries you towards your goals is your determination. It means the firmness of purpose or intention.
If there is one gift that you can give to yourself in your life to be what you want to be, it is the power of determination. Without it you are a mere passive spectator in the drama of your life. If there is one quality that makes a difference between a winner and a loser or a leader and a follower, it is the power of determination. Without it, you may dream wild dreams, but you will not accomplish much in life. If you have determination, nothing can stop you and deter you from following your course of action to achieve your goals or realize your dreams.
Obstacles may arise and obstruct your progress. They may delay your success, disturb you temporarily, and may even mislead you, but they cannot withstand the power of determination. It is the power that you generate within yourself to remain committed to your path and conviction, and march towards your cherished goals. Before you take up any project or goal, you should know whether you have the determination to stick to your plans and reach your goals. Your determination has to arise from within and derive its reinforcement from your thinking and beliefs rather than circumstances. Only then will you be able to sustain your effort, even when the going gets tough. Determination is your inner strength. Like the hardwood inside a tree, it gives you the power to stand tall and face the winds of turmoil.
With determination, you can crush the mountains of fear and doubts in you. You can find your way through the most difficult situations. Determination does not mean you will be insensitive to the reality of the situation. A determined person is also an adaptable and flexible person. He is not interested in being tough for toughness sake, but to overcome obstacles and reach his goals. Hence, he remains open-minded about possibilities and opportunities, but firm in his commitment and convictions. Discipline and determination go together. If you have them, you become unstoppable.
1. According to the passage, what is determination?2. What would happen if one does not have determination?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
With determination, you can crush the mountains of fear and doubts in you, and you will not make changes.
4. How does being determined benefit you? (In about 40 words)
7 . It was 2005 and scientists in Cape Town made a shocking discovery. Their tracking data showed a great white shark moving from South Africa to Australia and back again in a near straight line. It was the fastest transoceanic return migration ever recorded and it was carried out with near pinpoint accuracy. Today, it’s well known that sharks make yearly returns such as this to specific locations, but how exactly they do it has escaped consensus.
A group of scientists from Florida State University has taken on the question and concluded that sharks have an internal, GPS-like navigation system that allows them to read the Earth’s geomagnetic field. To conduct the research, the team first got 20 juvenile bonnethead sharks in St George Sound off the Florida Panhandle, and placed them in a small pool surrounded by copper wire. The wire allowed the researchers to create a custom magnetic field in the centre of the pool. Exposed to the magnetic field from the capture location, the sharks swam in random directions at leisure; but when exposed to the geomagnetic field that would be found 600 kilometres south of that spot, they swam north in a “homeward orientation”.
Researchers have suspected that sharks and sawfish detect magnetic fields since the 1970s, but the exact mechanism by which they do so, and the prevalence of this skill in nature has proven elusive, partly because it’s so difficult to study. “We’ve known for some time that sharks have the ability to detect the magnetic field, but this is the first time it has been tested successfully,” says Bryan Keller, a scientist at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “We expect these abilities are also observed in other species, like the great white, which migrate 20,000 kilometres out and back to the same spot.” The results mean that some sharks can be added to the growing list of animals that navigate by magnetic sensation, which includes sea turtles, lobsters and birds.
With the shark navigation system now demonstrated, scientists want to understand the mechanism behind it. Two theories have emerged: some researchers believe that it depends on an iron mineral called magnetite; others believe it’s based on a magnetic-field-sensing molecule in the retina (视网膜) of the eye called cryptochrome. Both theories, or a combination of the two, are plausible. Magnetite has been isolated from many animal tissues, while evidence from studies in birds suggests that they sense the inclination of the magnetic field using cryptochrome molecules in their retinas; the direction of the field is transmitted by the optic nerve to the brain, which allows them to “visualize” north and south. But scientists don’t yet know the precise location of the cryptochrome receptors, or the brain centres that process the information on the magnetic field. There’s more work to do to truly understand these masterful navigators.
1. Scientists in Cape Town discovered sharks could ______.| A．migrate fast and accurately | B．navigate by magnetic system |
| C．detect magnetic fields precisely | D．swim in a straight line perfectly |
| A．lost the navigation system | B．could not detect magnetic fields |
| C．sensed their home magnetic field | D．were exposed to a strange magnetic field |
| A．unique | B．unattainable |
| C．complex | D．superior |
| A．the evolution | B．the application |
| C．the advantages | D．the mechanism |
8 . When teaching, always assume the worst! No, that’s not some world-weary call to pessimism, but actually a positive strategy for supporting students in the classroom. Consider the problems that can arise when you don’t do this, and instead take as your starting assumption that things are probably, basically okay:
Teacher: Did you get on all right with the homework questions?
Student: Er, yes…
Teacher: Are there any you want to go through?
Student: Er, no—it’s fine…
What’s going on here? The student clearly feels that “yes” is the expected answer to the first question, but having said that, they’re then more or less forced into answering “no” to the second. Any problems they might have experienced are buried, and consequently go unresolved.
A much better approach is to assume the worst, to the point of setting up failure as the starting point. Then, if necessary, the student can be in the happy position of bringing you good news, which gives the impression of placing them in a more powerful position. Let’s imagine that same exchange again:
Teacher: Those homework questions were hard. Did you manage any of them?
Student: Yes, I did the first one, but I couldn’t do any of the others.
Teacher: Okay—do you want to go through the others?
Student: Yes, please.
This time, we’ve made it easy for the student to admit their difficulties. There’s no pretense (借口) around everything being fine when it isn’t, and no shame in the student admitting to having problems, as that’s clearly the teacher’s starting assumption.
It takes no longer to frame things this way round, but makes it so much easier for the student to be honest. Paradoxically, it’s also much more positive in that the student is constantly exceeding the teacher’s expectations— “You managed question one? Well done! Now, let’s look at the others…”
Every counsellor knows that if they ask a client “Did you have a good week?”, they’re more likely to get a positive response, because it’s a leading question that doesn’t communicate a strong interest in hearing the truth. Instead, a more neutral question like “How was your week?” is much more likely to elicit an honest response.
The same applies in the classroom. We want to avoid fakery and being told what we want to hear. Instead, we have to probe for the problems, the difficulties, the things that make no sense to the student, and make it easy for them to tell us those things.
1. Which question is preferred according to the author?| A．Did you manage any of the hard questions in the homework? |
| B．Did you get on all right with the homework questions? |
| C．Do you have any questions you want to go through? |
| D．Do you think the homework questions are hard? |
| A．promote communications | B．should be based on honesty |
| C．reveal different assumptions | D．ought to make others happy |
| A．parents | B．teachers | C．students | D．researchers |
For many students, having classes online makes them easily distracted. They face challenges when learning online.
A main source of distraction is digital technology. While electronic devices are required for online learning, they easily steal attention for long periods of time. Most students will hold their phones or leave them on their desks while studying. There is no doubt that during this time a text message from a friend can start a conversation that results in totally ignoring an assignment. Students might open new tabs to watch a fun video or scroll through social media threads. To overcome this challenge, students are encouraged to put all devices out of sight while working and build a solid timetable.
In addition to electronic devices, background noises can be a huge obstacle when it comes to online learning. In fact, sitting in a silent environment often emphasizes background noises even more. Television, family members, pets running in the house, or siblings listening to loud music can all be sources of interruption. Even weather can be a distraction! Imagine a strong wind blowing through the trees or a loud thunderstorm with rain. All these noises can end up disrupting students and affecting their study. A pair of headphones can minimize noise and help students stay on task.
Indeed, where and how we study can be a source of distraction as well. Some students wear comfortable pajamas while lying on their beds with laptops to watch class lectures. This can be a problem for concentration because humans mentally associate the bed with resting. Likewise, kitchens raise even more problems! Thinking about food frequently can disturb studying or cause a student to miss part of the class. This problem can be solved by trying to slowly train the brain to separate school time from resting and eating time. Also, a student can grab a light snack before class starts or even before starting an assignment.
Different students face different challenges at home. Students need to figure out ways to ensure they stay on track to achieve their academic goals.
1. According to the passage,what can students do to overcome distractions caused by digital technology while learning online?2. Why do kitchens raise problems for students studying at home?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement,then underline it and explain why.
To avoid being disturbed by background noises, students could sit in a silent environment or wear a pair of headphones.
4. Please briefly introduce how online learning benefits you.(In about 40 words)
10 . Website copywriting involves writing text and copy for websites.
Almost all websites require some type of website copywriting. The material on a website is important not only to attract customers, but also to raise page ranks and create search engine traffic. This means that website copywriting can be somewhat different from regular writing because writers must write for two audiences.
Search engine optimization (SEO) can sometimes be important in website copywriting. SEO refers to the process of creating copy that is tailored toward catching the attention of popular search engines.
An understanding of keywords and search engine behavior are important for SEO when writing copy for the web.
Website copywriters often have to have both a writing background and a marketing background. A person who is acting as a website copywriter for a site usually needs to be able to write active prose that inspires action. They also need to be able to drive traffic to the site, so that customers can see the products for sale.
Being able to write effective sales copy may also be essential for website copywriting.
| A．The type of copy that is required varies depending on the type of website. |
| B．Online companies may offer informational articles about products and services. |
| C．Website copywriters have to be familiar with basic grammar, style, and structure rules. |
| D．Internet copywriting also involves the composition of short headlines or advertisements. |
| E．Theoretically, the higher the SEO, the higher the number of readers that will be directed to the website. |
| F．Website copy not only serves the overall function of the website, but needs to capture the attention of readers. |
| G．This means copy for a website may have to contain certain keywords that people search when looking for something. |
