1 . As biologist Nicola Foster and her colleagues guided a remote-controlled monitor through the coral reefs (珊瑚礁) of the Indian Ocean’s Chagos Archipelago, they saw corals full of color near the surface. But nearly 300 feet below, in the darker and colder waters of what oceanographers call the “twilight zone,” some corals had turned terrible white, leaving them vulnerable (脆弱的) to disease and death.
“It wasn’t something we were expecting to see,” says Foster, who studies deeperwater coral ecosystems called mesophotic reefs. Mesophotic reefs would seem to be protected from rising sea-surface temperatures that white n higher-up corals. But this team’s 2019 observations show the deepest instance of bleaching (变白) ever recorded — suggesting similar reefs are more vulnerable than previously believed.
Bleaching often happens when warming water boosts corals to remove the colorful algae (水藻) that live in their tissues and help to sustain them. Although surface waters weren’t typically warm when Foster and her team took their measurements, the twilight zone waters neared 84 degrees Fahrenheit (华氏度) — far above the 68-to 75-degree range in which mesophotic corals are used to.
The researchers realized that bleaching is related to the timing of the Indian Ocean Dipole. This phenomenon shifts the region’s surface winds and ocean currents, says study co-author Phil Hosegood. Wind and waves shake the upper ocean, keeping it relatively warm and uniform in temperature. But the 2019 dipole deepened this well-mixed upper layer; the thermocline (the slice of ocean that separates warm upper waters from the cold depths) had become deeper than normal. Then, those corals were exposed to temperatures that are normally found at the surface.
This observation suggests mesophotic reefs elsewhere could also be bleaching. Fortunately, the corals in this study had largely recovered their color by 2022, Foster notes. But each bleaching stresses the corals and, if extended, can starve them. Future Indian Ocean Dipole patterns are likely to be more severe, Hosegood says, noting that data suggest “that these natural cycles are becoming increased with climate change.”
1. What are the first two paragraphs mainly about?| A．Corals in twilight zone become vulnerable because of bleaching. |
| B．Corals normally found at the surface were found in twilight zone. |
| C．Mesophotic reefs are much more vulnerable than higher-up reefs. |
| D．Mesophotic reefs and higher-up reefs need different temperature. |
A． | B． |
C． | D． |
| A．excited | B．worried | C．curious | D．hopeful |
2 . When fighting sugar dependence, avoiding added sugar in the diet is key, which sounds simple — right? It certainly does, but things become a bit more complicated once we introduce alternative sweeteners into the mix.
Alternative sweeteners are everywhere.
Now that we know some of the common types of alternative sweeteners, let’s take a deeper dive into the problem with them. Research in animals has shown that removing calories from foods that taste sweet can interrupt the ability to control energy intake.
The other interesting thing about alternative sweeteners is that our brains don’t recognize them as “fake (假的)” sugar.
So what do I recommend? In order to fully put a definite end to sugar dependence, reducing your intake of alternative sweeteners should be the goal.
| A．The taste profile of alternative sweeteners varies. |
| B．We can’t forget about the ever-so-popular sugar alcohols. |
| C．There are countless alternative sweeteners on the market. |
| D．Our brain senses something sweet and thinks it is real sugar. |
| E．They may help reduce the calorie content of good-tasting foods and drinks. |
| F．Artificial sweeteners may also cause one’s body to prefer sweeter-tasting foods. |
| G．Alternative sweeteners are referred to as “low-calorie” or “no-calorie” sweeteners. |
3 . 
If you have ever seen a snowflake design on jewelry or a bag, chances are it was based on one of Wilson Bentley’s more than 5,000 photomicrographs of snow crystals (晶体).
At first, though, Bentley did not have any way to share his enjoyment of the delicate hexagons (六边形) other than to draw them. He spent hours outside or inside his unheated storeroom with a microscope. He would pick up a snow crystal and transfer it to a microscope slide. There, he flattened it with a bird feather. Then, holding his breath, he observed the crystal and hurried to draw what he saw before it turned forever into thin air.
A few years later, Bentley began his pursuit to photograph a snow crystal. He attached a microscope to a camera. Time after time, his negatives appeared blank. The following winter, he finally figured out that too much light was reaching the camera. His solution was to place a metal plate with a tiny hole in the center beneath the stage of the microscope. It cut down the stray (杂散的) light and allowed only the light waves carrying the image to reach the camera.
On January 15, 1885, at the age of 19, Bentley finally photographed a snowflake! He spent many hours over the next 45 years in his tiny darkroom developing negatives.
Bentley lived his entire life on his childhood farm. He farmed for a living. To his friends and family, he was kind, gentle, and funny “Willie”. But to scientists, he was the untrained researcher who became a snow crystal pioneer. He wrote for science journals. He not only photographed snow crystals but also became an authority on dew (露水) and frost. He kept a detailed daily log of local weather conditions throughout his life. He developed a method to measure the size of raindrops too.
Bentley never made more than a few thousand dollars from his work. It had been a labor of love, and he was satisfied to be able to share the beauty of his snow crystals with the world. And today, he is remembered as Snowflake Bentley.
1. Why did Bentley draw the snow crystals?| A．To design products. | B．To become an artist. |
| C．To share his pleasure. | D．To research the weather. |
| A．improved the microscope | B．changed the negatives |
| C．turned down the light | D．invented a camera |
| A．He lived a successful but boring life. | B．He was laughed at for lack of training. |
| C．He earned a lot of money from his photos. | D．He was not only an artist but also a scientist. |
| A．Practice makes perfect. | B．Intelligence is the key to success. |
| C．Love and devotion makes a person. | D．Chances are for those who are prepared. |
4 . Is your teen time really that different from that of your parents or grandparents?
Weak. Easy to be angry. Addicted to their phones. Are these what come to mind when we think of the teens of this generation (一代人)? While there may be a little of truth to this thought, there might be more to the teens of this generation than what is generally seen.
Never before have the lives of any generation been as connected with mobile technology and social media as the teens of this generation. It follows then that there will be some problems resulting from this new age of technology. The popular use of social media has led to a world in which teens are responsible to join. Compared to the parents or grandparents who were likely less connected, these teens are “busy” in their social circles. It is no wonder then that the health of this generation’s teens has been damaged.
Moreover, the teens today are more independent. This is quite different from the more village spirit or community thought of the parents’ and grandparents’ times. Gone is the relationship among neighbours who are friendly with one another and quick to offer a helping hand when they see another in need. In its place, we have teens who may not even know who lives in the unit next to theirs, much less offer a friendly nod or wave when they happen to cross streets with a neighbour.
Yet, the influences of technology on the teens of this generation are not all bad. The very connectedness that social media brings about has led to an opening of minds and a development of dialogue among people of various cultures and backgrounds. Using social media means that one can know those people and their different ways of life. The parents or grandparents of this generation probably did not have the same chance to get to know people outside of their social circles at their age, so they may have fixed ideas of people different from them. The teens of this generation, on the other hand, has the chance to use this technology to learn more about and try to understand the various things out there. As a result, this might be why the teens of this generation are generally more open-minded than their parents and grandparents.
All in all, the teens of this generation are different in many ways from their elders. Every generation is a product of the events of their time and this generation therefore is different from past generations, with the changes around them at the same time.
1. Which statement is correct according to the passage?| A．Most old people may not know their next-door neighbors. |
| B．People usually think the new generation is stronger and calmer. |
| C．Social media and technology may bring some influences to teens. |
| D．The new generation may have fixed ideas of people different from them. |
| A．Broken. | B．Relieved. |
| C．Increased. | D．Developed. |
| A．Brave and smart. |
| B．Open and independent. |
| C．Friendly and confident. |
| D．Responsible and patient. |
| A．The new generation is better because of their age. |
| B．Technology has bad influences on the old generation. |
| C．People use social media to learn different people. |
| D．The use of social media brings some benefits to the new generation. |
| A．How Does the New Generation Change the Culture? |
| B．How Are Teens Today Different from Past Generations? |
| C．What Are the Weaknesses of the Old and New Generation? |
| D．What Are the Influences of Technology on the New Generation? |
5 . Li Jing, 29, is a native of Cuijiaba, a small town in Hubei Province. She was one of the first people from her community to go for higher education. After graduation, she worked in Wuhan first, and then she changed her decision last year to return to her village.
“I want to be a part of my hometown’s development and bring about real changes to our villagers while realizing my own personal value,” Li said.
After returning to her hometown, Li received strong support from her family, while there were some villagers who questioned her decision. She decided to show her love to the hometown through action.
Her job included a great deal of communication with the villagers mainly to increase potato production. “We regularly hold meetings in the village square, where we share ideas on potato planting skills, selling methods, market changes and more,” Li said.
To increase sales outside the village, the young workforce in the village chose to go into the world of livestreaming(直播). This new marketing method has produced satisfying results. Together with other methods like doing online business on websites and apps, the money that a family can get from potato sales in a year has risen sharply from 1,000 yuan to the present number of 20,000 yuan, according to Li.
However, the road to success is not always easy. “At first, some people were not willing to accept the new ideas,” Li said. But Li didn’t force them. Instead, she chose to communicate with effort. Li and her workmates would also search online for other villages’ success stories about the application of livestreaming, and shared them with villagers. She knew communications took a lot of time and energy, but she believed it’s all worth it. Li said, “True smiles on the faces of the villagers are the best gifts for me.”
In the near future, Li hopes to continue helping her villagers raise their potato production and earn more money. Her long-term goal is to help rural areas further develop and integrate(结合) with the city. She said hopefully, “We will continually find ways to bring happiness to the villagers and the long-term development to the countryside.”
1. Li Jing returned to her hometown mainly to ________.| A．work in the government |
| B．bring great changes to her family |
| C．realize her dream of being a farmer |
| D．contribute to the local development |
| A．turned to her family for help |
| B．defended herself at meetings |
| C．took action to help the villagers |
| D．immediately went back to cities |
| A．putting up ads on TVs |
| B．taking up livestreaming |
| C．producing satisfying results |
| D．communicating with other villagers |
| A．Promising. | B．Doubtful. | C．Challenging. | D．Fearful. |
| A．All good things come to an end. |
| B．Where there is a will, there is a way. |
| C．You cannot eat your cake and have it. |
| D．A single flower does not make a spring. |
6 . Flow is a cognitive (认知的) state where one is completely immersed (沉浸) in an activity — from painting and writing to yoga and surfboarding.
The process of flow was discovered and coined by the Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. In the 1960s, Csikszentmihalyi studied the creative process and found that, when an artist was in the course of flow, they would insist on their task strictly, regardless of hunger or exhaustion.
One of Csikszentmihalyi’s key points about flow is that a person needs to push oneself out of their comfort zone to stimulate it. Because it’s a dynamic state, one has to constantly adjust the skill level, challenge, and complexity required for the activity.
Flow can also be a tool for better emotion regulation (调节). When a person is in a state of flow, there is little need for doubts or anxieties about oneself or the world in general.
However, pushing yourself to find the flow state can backfire. In fact, trying too hard or wondering whether you are in this state in itself goes against flow. We lose the balance between tension and skill level if we concentrate too much on the task.
| A．Even the uncertainties of life fall away. |
| B．People may not realize it but anyone can find flow. |
| C．Ask yourself if a certain task will fulfill a goal of yours. |
| D．Flow can sometimes be viewed as a forerunner for peak performance. |
| E．He also found that the artist would highlight the process and not the end result. |
| F．As you practice a skill, your level of mastery will change as will the feeling of flow. |
| G．It involves intense focus, creative engagement and the loss of awareness of time and self. |
7 . I love a group text—a grext, if you’ll permit me—but lately, the huge number of them competing for my attention has felt out of control. By the time I wake up, the notifications have already started rolling in; as I’m going to bed, they’re still coming. In between, I try to keep up, but all it takes is one 30-minute meeting before I’ve somehow gotten 100 new messages. I scroll up and up, trying to find where I left off, like I’ve lost my place in a book that keeps getting longer.
For better or for worse, we might be in the Age of the Group Chat. One study found that less than 2 percent of participants had only one-on-one chats on social media. 42 percent said that group chats can feel like a part-time job. Other studies have found that group chats can contribute to group bond and shared fun. A group text can be like a reminder that you’re part of something. Some researchers call this “ambient virtual presence”: Even when you’re alone, you’re not alone. This is like bats and dolphins producing a continuous sound and use the resulting echo (回声) to sense what’s around them.
But taking in too many signals can create a “waterfall type of effect,” where messages keep flooding in and adding up. Eventually, you’re underwater. Adding to the disorder, without a standard rule, people have very different ideas about group norm and what degree of responsiveness is required—which can cause real tension.
Fear of that tension can make wordless or even leaving a chat feel dispiriting. And anyway, you might not want to miss out. The desire isn’t to exit the room so much as to break a window. If group messaging is like echolocation, then disconnecting means lost.
Ultimately, most of us do want connection, even if it involves some duties; we’ll take quantities of messages when we’re busy if it means we can reach out when we’re hurting. A general advice is to give up grexts that are carrying on but that don’t really interest you. But when you can’t, you’ll just have to accept that belonging takes some effort. That’s the nature of relationships, right?
1. The author uses his experience in Paragraph 1 to _______.| A．introduce the topic | B．predict the ending |
| C．highlight an opinion | D．illustrate an argument |
| A．Lonely people prefer group chats. | B．Bats and dolphins have group chats. |
| C．Group chats offer a sense of belonging. | D．Group chats create a few part-time jobs. |
| A．Group chat needs a standard rule. |
| B．Group chat gives us more fear than joy. |
| C．Group chat helps promote strong connection. |
| D．Group chat is just a way to maintain relationships. |
There’s a difference between being nice and being kind. Being nice involves being polite and pleasing to others. If you’re people pleasing, you’re placing an expectation on the person you’re being nice to that they respond to you in a certain way. Being kind is less self-serving. On the one hand, kindness involves being generous without expecting anything in return. The other half is the purpose behind the action. A kind person is acting out of sympathy and genuine concern for another.
The difference is intentionality, said Dr. Catherine Franssen, an associate professor of psychology at Longwood University in Virginia, noting that a kind person tries to really understand what someone else is going through.
Practicing kindness rather than niceness allows people to develop deeper genuine connections with others, said Franssen. The more you do it, the easier it will get to relate to others and build more meaningful relationships in all aspects of life.
The warm feeling you get from performing an act of kindness is your brain releasing a ton of feel-good chemicals. Franssen said being kind boosts production of serotonin, a neurotransmitter (神经传递素) involved in mood, including happiness. Kindness also releases dopamine, a brain chemical in charge of reward and pleasure. It’s the reason why doing one act of kindness feels so good that you want to do another.
Being kind gives the same health benefits, regardless of how big or small the gesture. Acts of kindness might feel strange and out-of-character at first. However, this feeling goes away the more you keep practicing. Soon enough, it becomes so familiar you’ll notice the benefits on yourself and others.
1. What does being kind involve?2. Why do you get warm feeling when showing kindness?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
> The more you practice niceness, the easier you will connect with others and establish more meaningful relationships in all aspects of life.
4. In your daily life, what can you do to show kindness? (In about 40 words)
How can we gain benefits from feedback practices while reducing their disadvantages? There are some ways to help you.
Feedback works best for the people whose main goal is self-improvement. It should be given in a developmental approach and future-focused, highlighting areas in which the recipient (接收者) can improve, and offering clear, actionable strategies.
First, we should consider using terms besides “feedback”. Some studies have suggested replacing “feedback” with terms such as “advice”, which often contain more practical information. Offering feedback as advice encourages recipients to focus on improving their future performance.
Next, focus on the advantages. Excellence in teaching is often influenced by our own feelings, with lots of effective approaches for any given topic. Research suggests we improve ourselves when others focus on our advantages. A key to effective feedback is highlighting existing patterns of excellence.
Then, we must learn how to give feedback. Delivering feedback can be challenging, especially if the person receiving the feedback is the person who has the same social position as you or the information could be sensed as critical (批评的). To avoid such situations, reducing unpleasant messages may help.
Receiving feedback, as well as giving it, is a skill. Therefore, helping teachers build skills around receiving practice-based information, feedback, or advice, such as listening with an open mind, thinking critically about the information, asking for specific advice and “making a thoughtful choice” about the quality and effectiveness of the feedback, can improve the whole process.
Finally, focus on the “what” of feedback. While much attention is given to the “how” of feedback delivery, the real value lies in the “what” of feedback, that is the richness of its information. “High information” feedback should include two important points: checking the correctness of the teacher’s approach when there is only one correct method and offering information to fill gaps in understanding and guide the recipient towards a desired approach.
We know that feedback is quite important for teachers’ professional development. After reading the information above, with established effective feedback methods, we can make the feedback process more effective and useful for more teachers in ways that finally improve students’ learning.
1. Whom does the feedback work best for? (不多于10个单词)2. How can we encourage recipients to focus on improving their future performance? (不多于7个单词)
3. What is a key to effective feedback? (不多于7个单词)
4. How can we avoid challenging situations when giving feedback? (不多于6个单词)
5. What does this passage mainly talk about? (不多于8个单词)
10 . For many of us, the desire to speak a foreign language is overshadowed by the idea that it’s a long journey or that there’s no practical reason to learn. However, research has shown that speaking two languages has many advantages in this connected world today. Businesses with people around the world need someone who is not only capable of communicating in another language but also culturally aware and open-minded. Many companies prefer the people who are able to speak more than one language since they have faced more difficult situations in their language learning than the people who only speak one language, thus they desire to deal with more challenges in the work.
While creativity can be a difficult thing to measure, researchers have attempted to measure creative ability in a number of ways. One of the tools that are most widely used to understand creativity is a test known as the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT). The TTCT was first introduced in 1962 by Ellis Paul Torrance and measures one’s divergent (发散的) thinking in some key areas.
Divergent thinking is how well and how quickly your mind can solve problems. A study conducted by the University of Mashhad collected the TTCT results of the people who speak only one language and the people who have learned two languages and clearly showed that the second of the two groups performed better.
Some reasons for this could be that people who speak two languages are often faced with situations where they must consider various things, which can have an effect on problem-solving ability.
Language allows you to express your thoughts to other people, but what if there are no words to express what you’re thinking and feeling? Understanding a second language can allow you to express something you may not be able to with only one language.
Because language is linked to culture, you will find that by speaking more than one language you have a better understanding and appreciation of other cultures. This allows you to establish stronger connections with people from other cultural backgrounds. Nelson Mandela once said: “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.” Communicating in someone’s native language is not only a great way to show respect, but also helps you develop a deeper personal connection that goes beyond just being understood.
1. What does the underlined word “overshadowed” in Paragraph 1 most probably mean?| A．Reduced. | B．Encouraged. | C．Controlled. | D．Strengthened. |
| A．show no interest in new ideas | B．communicate more with others |
| C．receive more money for their work | D．want to perform more difficult tasks |
| A．Its results can tell us how creative we are. |
| B．It can be used to develop divergent thinking. |
| C．It trains our minds to solve problems quickly. |
| D．It offers us measures to handle different situations. |
| A．Understanding what they said. | B．Speaking their native languages. |
| C．Teaching them our native languages. | D．Expressing thoughts in our native languages. |
| A．Benefits of Leaning a Second Language |
| B．Importance of Understanding Other Cultures |
| C．TTCT: A Useful Tool for Language Learning |
| D．Second Language: An Advantage in Your Work |
