1 . In my early teens, I was once given a film camera as a gift . On receiving it, I jumped on my bike, headed to Wimbledon Common and took photos, just for me: photos of trees and wildlife. I was out all day. On my way home I spotted a tree lit up by street lighting and tried to capture its beauty. Rushing home, I put the spent film in a special little envelope and sent it off to a photography store, desperate to see how it would come out. I took many photos then and loved the fact that when you processed your film you got back colour photos which froze the precious moments, gently encouraging the hobby and the payments for processing.
As I grew into adulthood, that simple, deep happiness gradually faded away. One weekend when I was busy answering the work calls, my eyes caught a box in the corner of the room. I suddenly felt a sense of sadness. The stress growing over these years had pushed the camera from beside my pillow to the box in the corner. I thought I needed a change.
I took out the camera and dusted it down. It was a great joy that it still worked. I bought new film and took the camera everywhere I went. Now it is always on hand to accompany me on journeys, to allow me time to myself. Even if the day is full and busy, I can seize some moments for myself to take photos, to observe the world around me.
The wall of my room now holds all my camera equipment on display, along with photos I've taken. To me, the room represents how I’ve found happiness: by reconnecting to the younger part of myself I laid aside, by allowing room in my life for pleasure to exist, and by creating an environment that allows opportunities for delight.
1. What did the author think of taking photos as a young boy?| A．Inspiring and practical. | B．Tiring yet delightful. |
| C．Exciting and worthwhile. | D．Difficult yet engaging. |
| A．He wanted to focus on his work. | B．He was struck by sudden sorrow. |
| C．He attempted to behave like an adult. | D．He was faced with increasing pressure. |
| A．More fun in the daily routine. | B．New journeys in the wild. |
| C．Better skills of observation. | D．Different styles of photography. |
| A．Revisiting Lost Childhood Memories | B．Appreciating Beauty Behind the Lens |
| C．Escaping Teenage Sadness with Camera | D．Regaining Pleasure Through Photography |
2 . Playing with my 5-year-old child, I sometimes wonder: Why are her made-up games so terribly boring? In Learning to Imagine, psychologist Andrew Shtulman thinks it untrue that kids are uncontrolled wellsprings of imagination. On the contrary, the more we learn, the more imaginative we can become, and learning will not hold back imaginative ideas. Kids, he argues, fail to imagine obvious possibilities.
To gather evidence for this argument, Shtulman explores mechanisms (机制) for expanding imagination. Without support of others or new tools and technologies, people may reject reasonable ideas out of hand, he maintains. Lord Kelvin, for instance, famously denied the possibility of “heavier-than-air flying machines” less than 10 years before the Wright brothers created one. Abstract principles, like those so influential in science and ethics (伦理学), also boost imagination. Finally, imagination grows through exploring alternative models of the world, as in plays, fiction and so on. Across all of these examples, expanding imagination requires building closely on what people already know.
Perhaps counterintuitively (反直觉地), kids relate best to realistic stories. For instance, Walt Disney’s earliest cartoons were disorganized and strange. Only when the cartoons became “reasonably impossible” did they gain mass appeal. Many fictional worlds, from Middle Earth to Hogwarts, rely on reasonable impossibility.
Shtulman cleverly and precisely sails this vast, attractive sea. Learning to Imagine never drags or makes me get stuck on professional words. I wish, however, that there had been more focus on what these findings mean. If education does not hinder imagination, how do we develop it? Shtulman advises us to “engage with, and learn from, the collective knowledge of other people”. AI programs like GPT take that approach, educating themselves on massive data sets.
“Be like GPT” is not the most heartening message. But while humans cannot learn large amounts of data quickly and easily like AI, human imagination is shared and cooperative. That, at least, is something all of us—5-year-olds and their dads alike-have over the chatbots.
1. What’s the misunderstanding about imagination according to Shtulman?| A．It’s an inborn ability. | B．It helps broaden the mind. |
| C．Children are full of it. | D．Inventions are based on it. |
| A．Known information. | B．Realistic principles. |
| C．Gradual exploration. | D．Supportable arguments. |
| A．Improve. | B．Prevent. | C．Stress. | D．Dismiss. |
| A．A research report. | B．A personal diary. |
| C．A children’s story. | D．A book review. |
3 . I would feel ashamed every time I receive a new package (包裹) on my doorstep. I know that buying new stuff is bad for the planet. But every time I buy something, I get some happiness that’s hard to give up.
Recently a new book has given me new insights:
The best way to break the overbuying habits is not to stop buying things completely.
| A．We need that same replacement for shopping. |
| B．Whether that approach would work is up for debate. |
| C．Our brains especially like it, and release more dopamine. |
| D．My desire to keep buying things isn’t necessarily a personal fault. |
| E．In this process, dopamine is released, helping us learn how to obtain a reward. |
| F．The good feeling connected to unexpected rewards is partly why we like shopping. |
| G．A better solution may be to replace the old, long-term harmful rewards with new ones. |
4 . Tyler Quick Fan Club
Being a member of the Tyler Quick ( TQ ) fan club is so much fun! You can keep up with the latest news and take part in many exciting member events. All members will receive our New Member’s Pack. It contains a membership card, a free signed poster, and a copy of TQ’s third album Speeding Up. The New Member’s Pack will be delivered to уоur home, and will arrive a week or so after you join the fan club .
TQ is loved all around the world. You can join from any country, and you can use the membership card for one year. The TQ fan club has three types of membership: Pacer, Speeder and Zoomer.
What You Get | Pacer ($20) | Speeder ($40) | Zoomer ($60) |
| Regular emails and online magazines | ♫ | ♫ | ♫ |
| Information on dates for concerts | ♫ | ♫ | ♫ |
| TQ’s weekly video messages | ♫ | ♫ | ♫ |
| Monthly picture postcards | ♫ | ♫ | |
| A TQ fan club calendar | ♫ | ♫ | |
| Invitations to special signing events | ♫ | ||
| 20% off concert tickets | ♫ |
Check it out!
◎Join before May 10 and you’ll receive a $ 10 discount on your membership fee!
◎There is a $4 delivery fee for every New Member’s Pack.
◎At the end of your first year, you can either renew or update it at a 50% discount.
Whether you are a Pacer, a Speeder, or a Zoomer, you will love being a member of the TQ fan club. For more information, or to join, click here.
1. What do we know about the New Member’s Pack?| A．It has three items inside. |
| B．It is only given to Zoomers. |
| C．It includes TQ’ s second album. |
| D．It takes about 10 days to arrive. |
| A．Discounted concert tickets and a calendar. |
| B．Regular emails and signing event invitations. |
| C．Concert information and postcards every month. |
| D．Video messages every month and online magazines. |
| A．Become a Zoomer for $60. |
| B．Update your membership for $4. |
| C．Get a New Member’s Pack for free. |
| D．Renew your membership at half price. |
5 . Growing up in an Italian-American household was, for me, pretty special. My mother, Gina, an immigrant (移民) from Calabria, held onto so many of her family’s traditions that at times, in spite of the fact that I was living in the United States, our home felt like part of Italy.
To this day, my mother only speaks to me in Italian, and our conversations are, for the most part, in her mother tongue. And most of those conversations are about food. For us, Italian food is an important part of our lives.
My mom grew up on a farm where the fruits of their labor directly turned into the food on the table, and wasting any of it was unacceptable. Every day was “Thanksgiving” because times were tough, so how food found its way onto the table was a holy (神圣的) matter. One of the greatest lessons my mother taught me in the kitchen is to cook what you have on hand, and to never let anything go to waste.
So, when I take a perfect little arancini (意大利饭团) out of the hot oil, I am immediately transported back to my childhood. I am a little girl getting off the bus and running through the back door to the smell of the food. This small snack emblematizes so many important parts in my life about my heritage through food.
Heritage food is Sunday dinner with the family. When we recreate dishes like that, we feel a sense of pride and also a sense of continuity. Heritage food is the love we receive from our parents and grandparents, and it’s the love we in turn give to our children and grandchildren. Heritage food is food that makes you feel safe and protected wherever and whenever you eat it.
Eating arancini, and all the other recipes my mother continues to make here in the U.S. after leaving Italy, allows her to teach me who I am, where I come from, and why I should be proud of it all.
1. What can we learn about the author’s mother?| A．She is very tough on her children. |
| B．She refuses to learn to speak English. |
| C．She thinks her life in the U.S. special. |
| D．She values her family’s traditions a lot. |
| A．She enjoyed the food her mother prepared. |
| B．This holiday was very important for her mother. |
| C．Her family treasured the food that didn’t come easy. |
| D．The food was delivered to her family on Thanksgiving. |
| A．Symbolizes. | B．Balances. | C．Judges. | D．Replaces. |
| A．How childhood experiences change one’s life. |
| B．Why learning to cook is important for a mother. |
| C．How the family heritage is taught through food. |
| D．Why mothers are necessary in children’s education. |
6 .
Some festivals are held to honor the dead or to satisfy the ancestors, who might return either to help or to do harm. For the Japanese festival Obon, for example, people should go to clean graves, light incense and lamps, and play music.
Harvest and Thanksgiving festivals can be very happy events.
The most energetic and important festivals are the ones that look forward to the end of winter and to the coming of spring. In China there are dragon dances and carnivals and families celebrate the Lunar New Year together.
People love to get together to eat, drink, and have fun with each other. Festivals let us enjoy life, be proud of our customs and forget our work for a little while.
| A．Festivals can also be held to honor famous people. |
| B．The country is covered with pink snow-like cherry flowers. |
| C．People are grateful because their food is gathered for the winter. |
| D．Because they think that this will lead the ancestors back to earth. |
| E．Some Western countries have very exciting carnivals such as Easter. |
| F．Different festivals throughout the world are celebrated in different ways. |
| G．Festivals and celebrations around the world are held for different reasons. |
7 . Born in Ayrshire, in 1759 to William Burness, a poor farmer, Robert Burns was the eldest of seven children. He spent his youth working on his father’s farm, but in spite of being poor he also read a lot. His father employed a teacher for Robert and his younger brother Gilbert. At l5 Robert was the principal worker on the farm and this encouraged him to start writing. It was at this age that Robert wrote his first poem Handsome Nell.
When his father died in 1784, Robert and his brother became partners on the farm. However, Robert was more interested in the romantic nature of poetry than the hard work of farming.
However, at the point of giving up farming, his first collection Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect was published and received much praise from critics. This, together with pride of being a parent, made him stay in Scotland. He moved around the country, finally arriving in Edinburgh, where he joined the circles of the artists and writers who were called the “Ploughman Poet”.
In a matter of weeks he was changed from a local hero to a national celebrity (名人). The fame did not bring a fortune and he took up a job to make additions to the low income. While working he continued to write, contributing songs to the likes of James Johnson’s Scots Musical Museum and George Thomson’s A Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs for the voice. In all, more than 400 of Robert’s songs are still in existence.
The last years of Robert’s life were devoted to writing great poetic masterpieces such as The Lea Rig, Tam o’Shanter and A Red, Red Rose. At the age of 37, he died of heart disease caused by the hard physical work he did when he was young.
On the day of his burial tens of thousands of people came to watch and pay their respect. However, his popularity then was nothing compared to the heights it has reached since. On the anniversary (周年纪念) of his birth, Scots both at home and abroad celebrate Robert Burns with a supper — a celebration which would undoubtedly make him proud.
1. What can we learn about the childhood of Robert Burns?| A．He was born to a rich family. |
| B．He was lucky to receive education. |
| C．He worked in a factory at an early age. |
| D．He was taught by his parents and brothers. |
| A．Ctitical. | B．Doubtful. | C．Favourable. | D．Uncaring. |
| A．He went on writing while working. |
| B．He helped other writers create poems. |
| C．He moved abroad and lived a hard life. |
| D．He became the richest writer in Scotland. |
| A．The history of Scottish poetry. |
| B．The life story of a Scottish poet. |
| C．The development of English arts. |
| D．The introduction of Scottish culture. |
8 . LyricJam, a real-time system that uses artificial intelligence (Al) to produce lyrics (歌词) for live instrumental music, was created by members of the University’s Natural Language Processing Lab.
The lab, led by Olga Vechtomova, a Waterloo Engineering professor in Computer Science, worked on the creation of a system that learns musical expressions of artists and generates lyrics in their style. Meanwhile, the lyrics could reflect the moods and emotions expressed by live music.
As a musician or a band plays instrumental music, the system continuously receives the raw audio clips (音频片段), which the neural (神经的) network processes to generate new lyric lines. The artists can then use the lines to create their own song lyrics. The neural network designed by the researchers learns what lyrical themes, words and stylistic devices are associated with different aspects of music in each audio clip.
“The purpose of the system is not to write a song for the artist,” Vechtomova explains. “Instead, we want to help artists realize their own creativity. The system produces poetic lines with new metaphors and expressions, potentially leading the artists in creative directions that they haven’t explored before.”
The research team conducted a user study, inviting musicians to play live instruments while using the system.
“One unexpected finding was that participants felt encouraged by the produced lyrics to improvise (即兴创作), ” Vechtomova said. “For example, the lyrics inspired artists to take their improvisation in a new direction. Some musicians also used the lyrics to check if their improvisation had the desired emotional effect.”
Participants commented that they viewed the system as a partner and felt inspired to play their musical instruments even if they were not actively trying to write lyrics. Since LyricJam went live, plenty of users worldwide have tried it out.
1. What is special about LyricJam?| A．It combines audio clips with lyrics. | B．It can produce personalized lyrics. |
| C．It uses high-tech to perfect lyrics. | D．It is created by Olga Vechtomova. |
| A．How the system plays music. | B．How a band holds a concert. |
| C．How LyricJam functions. | D．How an artist explores music. |
| A．To challenge the creativity of artists. | B．To attract audience to the concert. |
| C．To make live concerts more entertaining. | D．To motivate artists’ inspiration. |
| A．Favorable. | B．Indifferent. | C．Critical. | D．Pessimistic. |
9 . As the daughter of immigrants (移民), Chanthaphone’s primary language at home was Lao. At 5, she learned to speak English. But she didn’t know how to read and write — let alone how to fit in at school or communicate with classmates. Mrs. Lewis, Chanthaphone’s second-grade teacher, changed everything. She taught her students that it was OK if they did not know English and it was all right for them to use words in their home language to explain how they were feeling and thinking. Chanthaphone got more and more confidence and wanted to do what her teacher did in the future.
Now, at 26, Chanthaphone is an English teacher at Fort Worth ISDs William Monnig Middle School. Like Mrs. Lewis, Chanthaphone aims to help her non-English-speaking students to gain the confidence they need to realize their potential (潜力) in life.
At the beginning of each school year, Chanthaphone shares her story with her new classes. She tells them she knows what it feels like not to want to participate in class or raise her hand. She reminds them that she once sat in their seat and felt different because of her upbringing. But she stresses that's what makes each of them special.
Her students, though, are usually not persuaded. She has to take out photos of her graduating college and tell them about her parents and what her school was like. Then it finally clicks.
In the classroom, Chanthaphone allows students to communicate in whichever way they feel most comfortable. For some, it may be raising their hands and voicing their thoughts. For others, it may be writing their thoughts on a piece of paper and handing it to Chanthaphone.
However, Chanthaphone does encourage her students to go out of their comfort zone. She wants them to work with students they don't know because teamwork and collaboration (协作) with unfamiliar people is important.
“I’ve always wanted to be the teacher who supported students and advocated for them in and outside of classroom,” Chanthaphone said. “When I get notes or see Facebook posts from parents talking about previous teachers, including me, I feel like my goal has been completed.”
1. What do you know about Mrs. Lewis?| A．She is inspiring. | B．She is ambitious. |
| C．She is knowledgeable. | D．She is demanding. |
| A．To push the students to voice their thoughts. |
| B．To make herself well known to her students. |
| C．To make a good beginning of her class. |
| D．To encourage her students to be confident. |
| A．Students’ strong curiosity. | B．Students’ mental health. |
| C．Students’ communicating ability. | D．Students’ unique talent. |
| A．You Are the Only One | B．I Was Once Like You |
| C．No One Can Say No to You | D．Hard Work Pays Off |
10 . Seattle is believed to be the first major U.S. city to stop using plastic straws (吸管) , according to Seattle Public Utilities. The eco-conscious city has been an environmental leader in the U.S., working to reduce the amount of trash that goes into landfills.
A decade ago, the city passed a law requiring that all single-use food-service items be degradable or recyclable. But straws were not included because there were no other good choices. So straws stayed, with the environmental problems.
Most plastic straws aren’t heavy enough to make them through recycling sorters and can ruin an otherwise good load of recycling. Or they end up getting blown out of trash cans and finally in the oceans, hurting marine wildlife.
Strawless Ocean says that 71 percent of seabirds and 30 percent of turtles have some kind of plastic in their stomachs. The organization says plastic can increase the death rate of marine life by 50 percent.
Now customers at stores, restaurants, food trucks have to find another way to get liquid into their mouths. Degradable paper straws are allowed under the ban. People who have a medical need to use a straw are not included.
Any law-breaking activity may result in a fine of up to $250, but city officials say they would work with businesses to make the changes. In September, 150 business took part in Strawless in Seattle, a try to reduce the use of plastic straws. In that month alone, 2.3 million plastic straws were removed from the city.
1. Why were straws kept out of the law ten years ago?| A．They were handled properly. |
| B．They caused fewer problems. |
| C．They weren’t easily replaced. |
| D．They attracted little attention. |
| A．They are difficult to recycle. |
| B．They lower turtles’ birth rate. |
| C．They destroy recycling sorters. |
| D．They are more accepted than paper ones. |
| A．It brought about lots of fines. |
| B．It received positive responses. |
| C．It had made Seattle strawless. |
| D．It affected businesses’ profits. |
| A．Seattle Bans the Use of Food-service Items |
| B．Seattle Works to Protect the Environment |
| C．Seattle Successfully Bans People from Using Straws |
| D．Seattle Becomes the First Major US City to Ban Plastic Straws |
