1 . Over the past year, several films and TV dramas have put their shooting locations into the public spotlight.
Dali in Yunnan Province
With the TV drama Meet Yourself earlier last year, Dali in Yunnan Province emerged as a highly sought-after tourism destination.
During the Spring Festival holiday, Yunnan Province received the second most tourists in the nation with a tourism profit of 38.4 billion yuan, ranking top. Among this, Dali received 4.24 million tourists, marking a remarkable 219 percent increase compared to the previous year.
Jiangmen in Guangdong Province
Thanks to the success of the hit show The Knockout, Jiangmen in Guangdong Province became an outstanding tourism destination last year.
Data reveals a remarkable 217 percent month-on-month increase in searches related to tourism in the city in February. Currently, travel bookings witness a substantial 144 percent month-on-month rise.
Taiyuan Ancient County in Shanxi Province
Full River Red has set Taiyuan Ancient County in Shanxi on fire with excitement.
From Jan. 21 to 31, the county witnessed over 400,000 tourists, a significant rise compared to the about 180,000 visitors during the previous Spring Festival holiday. Notably, one-third of these tourists were from outside Shanxi Province.
Ningbo Museum in Zhejiang Province
With the broadcast of the TV drama Three-Body Problem, Ningbo Museum has gained significant attention.
Visitor numbers rose to 50,000 during the Spring Festival, marking a remarkable 220 percent year-on-year increase. Even after the festival, there were 2,000 to 3,000 visitors daily consistently.
1. What was the impact of Meet Yourself?| A．It contributed to the tourism profits. | B．It helped Dali earn 38.4 billion yuan. |
| C．It made Yunnan a tourism destination. | D．It ranked Dali a top tourism destination. |
| A．Dali. | B．Jiangmen. |
| C．Taiyuan Ancient County. | D．Ningbo Museum. |
| A．About 23,000. | B．Over 400,000. | C．Nearly 50,000. | D．2,000 to 3,000. |
2 . I’m in a coffee shop in Manhattan and I’m about to become the most disliked person in the room. First, I’m going to interrupt the man reading quietly near the window and ask for a drink of his latte. Next, I’m going to ask the line of people waiting to pay if I can cut to the front of the queue. This is how I chose to spend my last vacation. Here’s why.
Growing up, all I ever heard about was “EQ.” It was the mid-1990s, and psychologist Daniel Goleman had just popularized the concept of emotional intelligence. Unlike IQ, which tracked conventional measures of intelligence like reasoning and recall, EQ measured the ability to understand other people — to listen, to empathize (共情), and to appreciate.
My mother, an elementary school principal, prized brains and hard work, but she placed a special emphasis on Goleman’s new idea. To her, EQ was the elixir (万能药) that separated the good students from the great after they left school. She was determined to send me into the adult world with as much of this elixir as possible.
But when I finally began my first job, I noticed a second elixir in the pockets of some of my colleagues. It gave their opinions extra weight and their decisions added impact. Strangest of all, it seemed like the anti-EQ: Instead of knowing how to make others feel good, this elixir gave people the courage to do the opposite — to say things others didn’t want to hear.
This was assertiveness (魄力). It boiled down to the command of a single skill: the ability to have uncomfortable conversations. Assertive people — those with high “AQ”— ask for things they want, decline things they don’t, provide constructive feedback, and engage in direct confrontation (对峙) and debate.
A lifetime improving my EQ helped me empathize with others, but it also left me overly sensitive to situations where I had to say or do things that might make others unhappy. While I didn’t avoid conflict, I was always frustrated by my powerlessness when I had to say or do something that could upset someone. This is my problem and I’m working on it.
1. Why did the author act that way in the coffee shop?| A．To improve a skill. | B．To test a concept. |
| C．To advocate a new idea. | D．To have a unique vacation. |
| A．She thought little of IQ. |
| B．She popularized Goleman’s idea. |
| C．She was a strict mother and principal. |
| D．She valued EQ as the key to greatness. |
| A．EQ. | B．AQ. | C．Empathy. | D．Courage. |
| A．successful leaders | B．people pleasers |
| C．terrible complainers | D．pleasure seekers |
3 . Late last year, in the days before the Dosakian election, a video featuring a well-known journalist and a key candidate circulated on social networks. However, it was absolutely fake (虚假的). The International Press Institute has called this episode in Dosakia the first time that AI deepfakes — fake images, or videos generated by artificial intelligence — have influenced a national election greatly.
Security experts consider misinformation the biggest global risk recently — more dangerous than war, and extreme weather events. A constant stream of people is wrestling with this issue. Now even economists are joining in.
Economist Iyan Smith, and others conduct a real-world experiment to see whether simple, low-cost nudges, or interventions, can be effective. Instead of focusing on the supply side of misinformation like social media platforms, they pay attention to the demand side: increasing our capacity to identify the fake information.
The economists split participants randomly into four different groups. One group was shown a video demonstrating a convincing journey of two people from two different social groups who, before interacting, express negative stereotypes (刻板印象) about the other’s group, overcoming their differences and ultimately regretting unthinkingly using stereotypes to dehumanize one another. Another group completed a personality test that shows them their cognitive traits (认知特点) causing prejudice, hoping to increase their self-awareness, and decrease their demand for misinformation. A third group did both while a control group did neither.
The economists find the simple intervention of showing the video makes the participants over 30 percent less likely to “consider fake news reliable”. But the personality test has little effect. As for participants doing both, they were about 31 percent less likely to view true headlines as reliable. In other words, they became so skeptical that even the truth became suspect.
Smith and his colleagues are far from the first scholars to fight misinformation by helping people to think more critically. University of Weymouth psychologist Lisa Kindle also advocates similar ways to help reject misinformation in the wild.
1. What does the author intend to do in the first two paragraphs?| A．Highlight the risk of AI deepfakes. | B．Discuss the global threat landscape. |
| C．Describe Dosakia’s election outcome. | D．Introduce the concept of misinformation. |
| A．The cognitive trait. | B．The short video. |
| C．The personality test. | D．The negative stereotype. |
| A．Videos reduce misinformation. | B．Deepfakes may discredit truth. |
| C．Misinformation causes dehumanization. | D．Personality tests sharpen thinking skills. |
| A．Battling Fake News | B．Deepfakes in Elections |
| C．The Spread of Misinformation | D．Expanding Thinking Capacity |
4 . Whether you live in a house, cottage, flat or rented property, we all love and treasure our homes — so protecting your property with a comprehensive home insurance policy should be a priority. But what should you consider when purchasing your next home insurance policy? Here are some key points.
VALUE YOUR VALUABLES
We all take possessions away from the home, including items such as jewelry, mobile phones, tablets, and handbags. When buying home insurance, always discuss this. A policy that provides overseas cover means you can often save money on your travel policy — since you don’t need to insure these items twice.
WATCH OUT FOR WATER
If there’s damage to your property caused by an escape of water, you may have additional costs in removing and replacing any other part of the building while accessing the source of the leak. Trace and access cover is important as it could save you a substantial amount of money should your property develop a leak.
ACCIDENTS HAPPEN
One in four home insurance policies don’t include accidental damage cover. Accidental damage cover is recommended as even the most careful person could accidentally knock their television when decorating or even while cleaning the carpet.
It may surprise you to learn comprehensive home insurance — which includes all the important levels of cover as standard—may not cost as much as you might think. Leading insurance broker Higos Insurance Services recently revealed that 66 percent of their clients have paid less than 240 for their new home insurance policy in 2023.
1. How does overseas cover benefit a client?| A．By including travel essentials in it. | B．By enlarging coverage to home repairs. |
| C．By avoiding double-insuring valuables. | D．By offering discounts on travel packages. |
| A．Property cover. | B．Overseas cover. |
| C．Accidental damage cover. | D．Trace and access cover. |
| A．Property investors. | B．Travel insurance buyers. |
| C．Home insurance seekers. | D．Personal finance enthusiasts. |
5 . Our old, artificial Christmas tree was in rough shape by the time we retired it. At least a decade had passed since my wife and I bought the tree, a medium-size fake tree with built-in lights, at a Target in Brooklyn and carried it on the subway to our tiny apartment. Over the years, we dragged that tree from apartment, jammed it onto a moving truck to Los Angeles and later packed the weathered box onto another moving truck, this time to Chicago and our current home. By the end, layers of duct tape (强力胶布) held the box together, the wear and tear of a decade of delivering holiday cheer.
Our little tree looked run down, but it was the only tree our family ever knew. It stands proud and glowing in the background of photos of me and my pregnant wife during our last Christmas in Brooklyn without children. Our oldest was born a month later during a January snowstorm. The tree shows up again in the next year’s photos, this time surrounded by holiday gifts for a boy about to turn 1. Then it appears in photos of our son and his 1-month-old brother, this time with California palm trees just outside the door. And in more recent photos, our tree lights up windows overlooking shining Chicago snow. This year, after much debate, we decided to retire our dear old tree, with its bent branches and the lights that had burned out years ago. Rather than feel depressed, we used the moment to launch a new family tradition: our first real Christmas tree.
So here’s a toast to all your family’s traditions—the old and the new. I hope you enjoy this issue, which we have filled with stories of seasonal joy and holiday cheer. Happy holidays!
1. Where is the author’s present home?| A．In Chicago. | B．In Brooklyn. | C．In California. | D．In Los Angeles. |
| A．His budget was tight. | B．He was attached to it. |
| C．It was in good condition. | D．It was environmentally-friendly. |
| A．An editor. | B．A salesman. | C．A delivery man. | D．A home designer. |
| A．The finest diamond must be cut. |
| B．Out with the old, in with the new. |
| C．Old friends and old wine are best. |
| D．All things in their being are good for something. |
6 . What Does Our Body Language Reveal
Smiling is a powerful tool in your body language collection. Perhaps you smile a lot in the hope of appearing friendly.
If you’re trying to hide nervousness you’d better avoid smiling too much, too. Also be aware that nervous people often hug themselves, rub their forehead, and shift their body weight from one foot to another to create a slight rocking motion.
If you’re trying to show that you are listening sympathetically to what someone has to say, try tipping your head slightly and nodding very slightly. This gesture implies you are listening with interest. If you’re talking to someone and a third person joins, turn your body towards them slightly to include them and make them feel valued.
To build trust quickly? Try mirroring. Adopting a similar stance (站姿) to the person you are engaged with indicates your interest and helps develop trust. Use this with caution, though.
| A．Don’t obviously copy your companion. |
| B．Our body language speaks volumes about us. |
| C．Control these habits to appear more composed. |
| D．Our body language barely overshadows our verbal communication. |
| E．Just be aware that it might make you seem less professional at work. |
| F．We tend to position our body and feet toward the person of interest to us. |
| G．By contrast, a failure to angle your body towards them implies “Unwelcome”. |
7 . My mother died of breast cancer when she was merely 50 in 1970. Afterwards, the comment repeated most often was: “You’ll need to be careful for the rest of your life because it may have been passed to you.” In 1994, the first ever breast cancer gene testing arrived. I jumped right to it and tested negative. I’m thankful for the science that has given me this preventive screening (筛查). Good for me, but is it good for everyone?
Here’s the catch. Research on genetic disease has been based mostly on European people, like me. The same went to the mapping of the human genes. The problem is that we know little about how new treatments might work for people of other races. If we diversify patients in clinical trials, we can realize the promise of personalized medicine for everyone, not just white patients. Faced with the unfair phenomena in medical research, what should we do to resolve the problem?
Not only do we need more diverse populations participating in research, but we also need diversity among biomedical researchers and medical professionals to make efforts. That makes research stronger and builds trust with diverse communities. A medical team is working on this now. They are building a diverse next generation of gene editing researchers by teaching high school and community college students from different backgrounds about promising technologies like gene editing to encourage them to become future researchers. This sort of educational outreach can also help to build trust in the medical and research communities. The team leader, John Cooper, PhD, has been outspoken about the current inequalities of delivering new technologies to all people at a fair cost.
Numerous scientists and medical leaders are working to change the situation. While science wasn’t yet far enough along to save my mother, I have harvested the benefits of advanced research and so should we all.
1. What is the function of paragraph 1?| A．To explain the cause of her mother’s cancer. | B．To show her concerns over medical inequalities. |
| C．To indicate the side effects of genetic testing. | D．To emphasize the progress in the medical field. |
| A．A previous study. | B．An urgent appeal. | C．An underlying issue. | D．A workable solution. |
| A．Conducting research on genetic diseases. | B．Delivering speeches to interested students. |
| C．Building confidence in potential medical researchers. | D．Popularizing technologies in various communities. |
| A．Supportive. | B．Dismissive. | C．Opposed. | D．Impartial. |
8 . Handwritten notes in class might seem outdated as digital technology involves nearly every aspect of learning. But a steady stream of research suggests that compared with typing, taking notes with pen and paper is still a better way to learn. And scientists are zeroing in on why.
In a recently published study, scientists found that those writing by hand had higher levels of electrical activity across many interconnected brain regions. They added 256 sensors into a hairnet, which helped monitor 36 students’ brains as they wrote or typed words displayed on a screen. When students wrote by hand, the sensors picked up widespread brain connectivity including visual regions, regions that receive and process sensory information, and the motor cortex (运动皮层) . Typing, however, resulted in minimal activity in these brain regions.
Across many contexts, studies have shown that students appear to learn better when they’re asked to produce letters or other visual items using their fingers and hands. The educational neuroscientist Sophia Vinci-Booher says the recent study highlights the clear tie between motor action and conceptual recognition: “As you’re drawing a letter or writing a word, you’re taking this perceptual (感知的) understanding of something and using your motor system to create it. That creation is then fed back into the visual system, where it’s processed again — strengthening the connection between an action and the images or words associated with it.”
The new findings don’t mean technology is always a disadvantage in the classroom. Laptops, smartphones, and other such devices can be more efficient for writing essays and can offer fairer access to educational resources. But people now increasingly tend to “offload” mental tasks to digital devices, such as by taking a photograph instead of committing information to memory, says Yadurshana Sivashankar at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. “If we’re not actively using these areas, then they are going to worsen over time, whether it’s memory or motor skills.”
1. What is the function of the sensors in the recent study according to Paragraph 2?| A．To record brain activity. | B．To activate brain waves. |
| C．To connect visual regions. | D．To process sensory information. |
| A．One’s motor system boosts his creativity. | B．One’s writing action enhances his perception. |
| C．Learning performance relies on visual memory. | D．Concrete images contributes to comprehension. |
| A．Owe. | B．Link. | C．Shift. | D．Bring. |
| A．Note-taking: the key to a good grade | B．Digital learning: beneficial or harmful |
| C．Typing vs handwriting: efficiency counts | D．Handwritten notes: conventional but effective |
9 . Bill Gates isn’t doing much light reading this summer. For his annual list of reading recommendations for the season, he’s picked four books that you can really sink into on vacation.
Upheaval, Jared Diamond
Diamond examines how people react to the different crises in their lives. Specifically, he looks at how six countries responded to big challenges, and learned how to adapt in the face of adversity. Gates writes. “I finished the book even more optimistic about our ability to solve problems than I started.”
Nine Pints, Rose George
Gates glowingly recommends this deep dive into what you ever wanted to know about the stuff in your veins (静脉). He thinks everyone should know more about this topic. “There is nothing that more people have in common than blood,” he writes.
A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles
It’s 1922 and Alexander Rostov has been sentenced to spend the rest of his life under house arrest in a Moscow hotel. Even though this book is sure to please anyone who is interested in learning more about Russia, Towles goes beyond just politics in his best-seller. “The book is technically fiction,” Gates writes.
Presidents of War, Michael Beschloss
Beschloss studies how presidents dealt with nine different US conflicts from the War of 1812 to the Vietnam War, and makes critical connections about their decisions and power as leaders. “It is hard to read about today’s conflicts without thinking about how they might connect to the past,” Gates writes.
1. Which book would most appeal to those interested in serious politics?| A．Upheaval. | B．Nine Pints. |
| C．Presidents of War. | D．A Gentleman in Moscow. |
| A．Tricks of diving. | B．Illustrations of blood cells. |
| C．A thorough study of blood. | D．A glimpse of blood function. |
| A．It’s impossible to solve all the problems. | B．It’s critical to make far-sighted decisions. |
| C．It’s difficult to understand today’s conflicts. | D．It’s necessary to connect the present to the past. |
10 . Abraham Lincoln was a typical self-made man. He obtained his license to practice law without ever having stepped foot inside a college or academy building. Books became his academy. Everywhere he went, Lincoln carried a book with him. He thumbed through page after page while his horse rested at the end of a long row of planting. Whenever he could escape work, he would lie with his head against a tree and read.
Though the young Lincoln never left America, he traveled with Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage to Spain and Portugal; accompanied Robert Burns to Edinburgh; and followed the English kings into battle with Shakespeare. As he explored the wonders of literature and the history of the country, the young Lincoln developed ambitions far beyond the expectations of his family and neighbors. It was through literature that he was able to
go beyond his surroundings and reach his destination.The volumes to feed Lincoln’s intellectual hunger did not come cheaply. The story is often recounted of the time he borrowed Parson Weems’s The Life of George Washington from Josiah Crawford, a well-to-do farmer. Thrilled by this account of the first president’s life, he took the book to his loft at night, where he read as long as he could stay awake, placing the book on a makeshift shelf between the cabin logs so he could fetch it at daybreak. During a severe rainstorm one night, the book was badly soiled. Lincoln went to Crawford’s house, explained what had happened, and offered to work off the value of the book. Crawford calculated the value of two full days’ work pulling corn, which Lincoln considered an unfair repayment. Nevertheless, he straightway set to work and kept on until all work was done. Then, having paid his debt, Lincoln wrote poems and songs teasing Josiah’s large nose. Thus Crawford, in return for loaning Lincoln a book and then overly punishing him, won a permanent place in American history.
1. What can we learn about Lincoln from the first paragraph?| A．He wasn’t academically competent. | B．He read on horseback to escape work. |
| C．He failed to obtain a valid law license. | D．He is an excellent autonomous learner. |
| A．By reading extensively. | B．With his family’s support. |
| C．Through self-employment. | D．By traveling around the world. |
| A．Stolen by a farmer. | B．Burned by a candle fire. |
| C．Damaged in a rainstorm. | D．Lost and never recovered. |
| A．Tough and helpful. | B．Diligent and generous. |
| C．Intelligent and humble. | D．Determined and sharp-tongued. |
