1 . Parrots are prey animals, which means that other predators (捕食者) in the wild, such as hawks or snakes, are looking to make them into a meal. This one factor influences parrots’ behavior in your house more than any other.
Parrots are most easily hurt when feeding on the ground. Membership in a group plays an important function in ensuring their safety and improving their chances of survival from attacks by predators. The most common predators of parrots include hawks, snakes, cats, monkeys, and bats. Some predators make attacks only during the day while others hunt in the night.
As prey animals, parrots are constantly watching out for danger and they instinctively (本能地) react to risks. Their first choice is to take flight. However, if this is not possible, they will fight with their powerful beaks to defend themselves.
Because their biggest enemy is the hawk, parrots are especially reactive to quick movements from above and behind. For this reason, it is wise to avoid quick, sudden movements near your bird. This is a built-in reaction not subject to logic or reason. Simple and relatively harmless household objects can draw extreme fear responses from a bird. For example, a balloon may represent a hawk or a vacuum hose (吸尘器软管) may be the same as a snake in your bird’s mind.
As prey animals, parrots are often frightened by exposure to new household items or strangers. It is important to expose your bird to safe experiences and changes starting at a very young age to build flexibility and improve their adaptability. Variety in diet and toys, travel, and exposure to new people and places all help to make your bird more flexible and adaptable to change.
1. What is important for parrots to better survive from attacks in the wild?| A．Living in a group. | B．Growing beautiful feathers. |
| C．Feeding on the ground. | D．Avoiding coming out at night. |
| A．To attack back. | B．To get away. |
| C．To protect the young. | D．To play dead. |
| A．It may explode suddenly. | B．It may be in a strange shape. |
| C．It may have a strong color. | D．It may move around quickly. |
| A．To explain wild parrots’ behavior. | B．To give advice on raising a parrot. |
| C．To call for action to protect animals. | D．To introduce a study on bird ecology. |
2 . Four Ways to Beat the Monday Blues
For most workers and students, Monday may be the toughest day.
Make a list
Instead of focusing on the boring or difficult tasks that lay ahead of you, think about all the good to come.
Get enough sleep
Put on the clothes you like
Though this may seem of little importance, don’t underestimate (低估) the power of a set of clothes. In fact, psychologists conclude that there is a strong link between clothing and mood.
Do easier tasks
After a weekend of fun and relaxation, it might be best to keep Monday’s schedule a little lighter than other days. This doesn’t mean sitting around and being buried in your sadness. It means that instead of facing the most complex task on a Monday, you can put some time into easier tasks.
| A．Pay attention to your dressing. |
| B．Sleep has a huge effect on our mood. |
| C．Since there is no way to skip Monday, face it bravely! |
| D．List some things that you are currently looking forward to. |
| E．A tight schedule of the new week can hang over you on Monday. |
| F．Putting less pressure on yourself is a good way to beat the Monday Blues. |
| G．It suggests we should choose clothes that we connect with happiness, even when feeling low. |
3 . An Austrian company Tec-Innovation recently showed smart shoes that use ultrasonic sensors (超声波传感器) to help people suffering from vision impairment to discover obstacles(障碍) up to four meters away.
Known as InnoMake, the smart shoe aims to replace the decades-old walking stick that millions of people around the world depend on to get around as safely as possible. The currently available model relies on sensors to detect obstacles and warns the wearer through shaking and a loud alert sounded on a bluetooth-linked smartphone. That sounds impressive enough, but the company is already working on a much more advanced version that incorporates cameras and artificial intelligence to not only detect obstacles but also their nature.
“Not only is the warning that I am facing an obstacle relevant, but also the information about what kind of obstacle I am facing. Because it makes a big difference whether it’s a wall, a car or a staircase.” Markus Raffer, one of the founders of Tec-Innovation, told TechXplore.
”Ultrasonic sensors on the toe of the shoe detect obstacles up to four meters away. The wearer is then warned by vibration and/or acoustic signals. This works very well and is already a great help to me personally.” Raffer, himself visually impaired, added.
The current version of the InnoMake shoe is already available for purchase on the Tec-Innovation website, for €3,200 per pair.
The advanced system is integrated in the front of the shoes, in a waterproof and dustproof case. It is powered by a heavy-duty battery that can last for up to one week, depending on use. The battery can be charged in just three hours, using a USB cable.
The next step for Tec-Innovation is to use the data collected by its system to create a kind of street view navigation map for visually impaired people.
“As it currently stands, only the wearer benefits in each case from the data the shoe collects as he or she walks. It would be much more sustainable if this data could also be made available to other people as a navigation aid,” computer scientist Friedrich Fraundorfer explained.
1. Who are interested in the smart shoes?| A．The deaf people. | B．The injured people. |
| C．The blind or sight-impaired. | D．The sick people. |
| A．Combined. | B．Separated. | C．Benefited. | D．Allowed. |
| A．Why the smart shoes are developed. | B．What the smart shoes can do. |
| C．How the smart shoes work. | D．How the data are collected. |
| A．A science report. | B．A fashion magazine. |
| C．An educational column. | D．A news report. |
4 . Learning Chinese could be one of the most important decisions you ever make. Chinese is becoming the language to learn in the 21st century. With the world’s largest population and a rapidly growing middle class, China stands to become the engine of the world’s economy in the coming years. This will make learning Chinese very important for people in many industries, or for those of us who wish to visit China or learn from its culture and history.
There is an ongoing effort to modernize the writing system and standardize the language. An increasing number of people learning Chinese are learning the Mandarin, so unless you absolutely need to learn another dialect (such as Cantonese), be sure you are studying Mandarin.
For native English speakers Chinese is one of the most difficult and most different languages to learn. The vocabulary is wholly unfamiliar and unlike anything we know. In addition, in the Chinese tone system, words are spoken in rising or falling tones, which help to distinguish between them. Furthermore, there is the Chinese writing system — a collection of thousands of individual ideograms (表意文字), or symbols, which represent a word or an idea. These ideograms have no phonetic value — that is to say, we can’t tell how the word is pronounced by how it is written. There is a method to present written Chinese in a phonetic script called pinyin. If you are learning Chinese, you’ll be working with this pinyin system, but the beauty of the traditional writing system shouldn’t be passed up. All these factors make learning Chinese difficult for us. Yet, for a determined learner, there’s always a way to overcome it.
1. Learning Chinese is becoming more and more important, because ________ .| A．Chinese engines are very welcome |
| B．China has the world’s largest population |
| C．there are more and more rich people in China |
| D．China has become important to the world economy |
| A．the author thinks Chinese is as difficult as English |
| B．the author is interested in the Chinese language and its culture |
| C．foreign languages can play a great role in industrial development |
| D．as long as the pinyin system is learned well, one can learn Chinese well |
| A．the difficulties of learning Chinese | B．the advantages of learning Chinese |
| C．the Chinese tone system | D．the Chinese writing system |
| A．The sources of Chinese characters. | B．The importance of learning Chinese. |
| C．The advice on how to learn Chinese. | D．The difficulties of learning other languages. |
5 . Toy kitchen is hugely popular with young children. It can be a great base for creative and imaginative role playing for children and their parents.
Solo (独自的) freestyle play is what a child plays on their own with the toy kitchen. It is a source of amusement for parents to see their children imitate (模仿) many of their sayings and phrases during this sort of play. You may discover some phrases you didn’t know you had! Children will often cook and create food for their toys to eat. Joining in freestyle play while allowing the child to take charge is fun for the child as well as adults. There are many ways to turn this type of play into something more educational. Parents can demand a certain number of vegetables on their plate and the child can use their knowledge of what’s a fruit and what’s a vegetable, as well as their counting skills to carry out this simple task.
You can also play the sorting game. Asking a child to sort out the fruit and vegetables into different piles is fun and will get easier for the child each time. Always reward children with praise when they do well, and encouragement when they don’t do quite well.
Counting is an obvious game. You can start the basics of maths in the kitchen play with adding, subtracting (减) and even dividing! Your child can use the toy food to work out sums and enjoy counting! They will be picking up good basic number skills during this type of play.
You can also bring up healthy eating subjects asking them which fruit is their favorite and asking which ones they want to try for their next snack. This type of game can continue in the supermarket and be used as a method of introducing new foods to their diet.
1. Games using a toy kitchen can develop children’s ________.| A．health and habit | B．creation and imagination |
| C．counting skills and honesty | D．number skills and good manners |
| A．it difficult for children to sort out the fruit and vegetables |
| B．it fun for children to cook and create food for themselves to eat |
| C．some words and expressions you forgot using before |
| D．children pick up good basic number skills by using the real food |
| A．enriching healthy eating | B．training working ability |
| C．counting | D．sorting |
| A．Parents. | B．Teachers. | C．Children. | D．Experts. |
6 . Nicole Latham is a 21-year-old law student from University of Leeds. When she’s not studying for her degree, Nicole competes in weightlifting competitions. She also does a good job in karate.
On top of gym and martial arts, Nicole is also in and out of the doctor’s office. She was diagnosed(诊断) with multiple sclerosis(MS),a rare disease, a year ago. The first attack happened while she was preparing for her A-Levels, a hugely stressful time for many students. And at the time, all she thought about was: stress. But it turned out to be vertigo(眩晕) and likely the first MS attack.
Nicole carried on preparing for her exams. She sat with one eye closed to improve her vision which was damaged from her vertigo experience. That was when she decided to act and head back to the doctor’s office. She took loads of medicines, but no progress was made. Feeling something might be going wrong, she immediately went to the hospital for further examinations.
Following an MRI scan, she was diagnosed with MS. After this first attack and her MS diagnosis, Nicole didn’t experience another for a few years. But in August 2021, she had another.This attack made her left hand shake for two months. Despite the obvious challenge caused by the disease in daily life, she didn’t let it get in her way. And her goal was to show other young people with disabilities that they could live their lives and still enjoy an active lifestyle.
Today, Nicole uses her page not only to spread awareness of MS, encouraging people not to miss symptoms(症状), as she did at first, but also to show people they can live a full and satisfying life with MS. She wants to show the highs as much as the lows.
1. How did Nicole react when the first attack happened?| A．She went to the hospital immediately. |
| B．She turned to taking more exercise. |
| C．She took a break from studying. |
| D．She paid no attention to it. |
| A．Relieved. | B．Worried. |
| C．Curious. | D．Inspired. |
| A．Rome was not built in a day. |
| B．Prevention is better than cure. |
| C．Strength comes from a strong will. |
| D．All things are difficult before they are easy. |
| A．Nicole Latham: Always be Ready to Help |
| B．Meet N icole Latham — a T alented Athlete |
| C．Nicole Latham: Never Let Anyone Down |
| D．Meet Nicole Latham — a Fighter Suffering from MS |
7 . You know the feeling — you have left your phone at home and feel anxious, as if you have lost your connection to the world. “Nomophobia” (无手机恐惧症) affects teenagers and adults alike. You can even do an online test to see if you have it. Last week, researchers from Hong Kong warned that nomophobia is infecting everyone. Their study found that people who use their phones to store, share and access personal memories suffer most. When users were asked to describe how they felt about their phones, words such as “hurt” (neck pain was often reported) and “alone” predicted higher levels of nomophobia.
“The findings of our study suggest that users regard smartphones as their extended selves and get attached to the devices,” said Dr Kim Ki Joon. “People experience feelings of anxiety and unpleasantness when separated from their phones.” Meanwhile, an American study shows that smartphone separation can lead to an increase in heart rate and blood pressure.
So can being without your phone really give you separation anxiety? Professor Mark Griffiths, psychologist and director of the International Gaming Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University, says it is what is on the phone that counts — the social networking that creates Fomo (fear of missing out).
“We are talking about an Internet-connected device that allows people to deal with lots of aspects of their lives,” says Griffiths. “You would have to surgically remove a phone from a teenager because their whole life is ingrained in this device.”
Griffiths thinks attachment theory, where we develop emotional dependency on the phone because it holds details of our lives, is a small part of nomophobia. For “screenagers”, it is Fomo that creates the most separation anxiety. If they can’t see what’s happening on WeChat or Weibo, they become panic-stricken about not knowing what’s going on socially. “But they adapt very quickly if you take them on holiday and there’s no Internet,” says Griffiths.
1. Which of the following may Dr Kim Ki Joon agree with?| A．We waste too much time on phones. |
| B．Phones have become part of some users. |
| C．Addiction to phones makes memories suffer. |
| D．Phones and blood pressure are closely linked. |
| A．We worry we may miss out what our friends are doing |
| B．We fear without phones we will run into a lot of trouble |
| C．We are accustomed to having a phone on us |
| D．We need our phones to help us store information |
| A．Approved of. | B．Relied on. | C．Opposed to. | D．Determined by. |
| A．In a research report. |
| B．In a science textbook. |
| C．In a popular science magazine. |
| D．In a fashion brochure. |
8 . Tom Sawyer Play Is an Adventure
A 35-minute hand-clapping, foot-stomping musical version of a Mark Twain favorite returns with this Tall Stacks festival.
“Tom Sawyer: A River Adventure” has all the good stuff, including the fence painting, the graveyard, the island and the cave. It is adapted by Joe McDonough, with music by David Kisor. That’s the local stage writing team that creates many of the Children’s Theatre of Cincinnati’s original musicals, along with the holiday family musicals at Ensemble Theatre.
This year Nathan Turner of Burlington is Tom Sawyer, and Robbie McMath of Fort Mitchell is Huck Finn.
Tumer, a 10th-grader at School for Creative and Performing Arts, is a familiar presence on Cincinnati’s stages. He is a star act or of Children’s Theatre, having played leading roles in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “The Wizard of Oz,” and is fresh from Jersey Production “Ragtime”.
McMath is a junior at Beechwood High School. He was in the cast of “Tom Sawyer” when it was first performed and is a Children’s Theatre regular, with five shows to his credit. This summer he attended Kentucky’s Governor’s School for the Arts in Musical Theatre.
Note to teachers: Children’s Theatre has a study guide demonstrating how math and science can be taught through “Tom Sawyer.” For downloadable lessons, visit the official website of Children’s Theatre.
1. Who wrote the music for “Tom Sawyer: A River Adventure”?| A．David Kisor. | B．Joe McDonough. |
| C．Nathan Turner. | D．Robbie McMath. |
| A．They study in the same school. | B．They worked together in ”Ragtime“. |
| C．They are experienced on stage. | D．They became friends ten years ago. |
| A．Research funding. | B．Training opportunities. |
| C．Technical support. | D．Educational resources. |
9 . Aron Ralston was a pretty normal guy, but he always had an extremely adventurous desire to travel and see the world. During his childhood, his family moved to Denver, Colorado, a place offering many opportunities to climb mountains, explore, and eventually become the adventurer he’d always wanted to be. Back in 2003, Ralston was climbing in the remote, mountainous area of Southwestern Utah, when the unthinkable happened: Aron got stuck in a crevice (裂缝) in the rocks and pinned by a big stone that weighed over 360 kilograms. The weight of the rock crushed his arm, and he was pinned by it. Aron took photos of his bad situation (which was going to get a lot worse), hoping rescue teams (救援队) would know where he was and came to remove the rock so that he could get out and home safe.
But rescuers never came. Aron waited for them for days till he lost his hope. He knew he had to do something. He was 18 meters above the floor of the valley where he was pinned in, and he had a pocketknife. He made what must have been one of the most difficult decisions of his life: to cut his own arm in order to survive. Aron cut the lower part of his arm off, having to wrench (扭动) his forearm against the big stone to break the bones, and then got himself down to the bottom of the valley, where he would begin to walk and search for help. Luckily, help arrived in the form of a helicopter (直升机) that spotted him, covered in blood. Aron had tied off the wound to keep himself from bleeding to death pretty successfully and would eventually make it out alive.
Ralston went on to become an inspiring speaker and continued to travel and climb mountains—he didn’t let an incident that forced him to cut his own arm off, stop him from doing what he really loved.
1. What can be inferred about Aron’s getting stuck?| A．It was unavoidable. | B．It resulted from his being lost. |
| C．It was unexpected. | D．It was caused by a moving stone. |
| A．To send them to rescuers for help. | B．To keep a record of his adventure. |
| C．To remind his friends of the danger. | D．To tell the doctors about his wound. |
| A．He waited for the rescue to come. |
| B．He cut the stone using his pocketknife. |
| C．He moved off the stone using all his might. |
| D．He cut his lower part of his arm and broke the bones. |
| A．His cruelty and anger. | B．His effort and bravery. |
| C．His talent and creativity. | D．His calmness and determination. |
10 . A team of psychologists led by Dr. Karen McComb at the University of Sussex in the UK have discovered an effective way for humans to communicate with cats through slow blinking (眨眼睛), similar to how cats interact with each other.
Dr. McComb and her team conducted two experiments to study this phenomenon. In the first study, owners were instructed by researchers Tasmin Humphrey and Andrew Wood to slowly blink at their cats from a distance while being recorded. Humphrey and Wood found the cats were more likely to respond with slow blinking of their own compared to when no interaction took place.
To follow up on these findings, McComb, Humphrey, and Wood designed a second experiment without considering the exsisting relationship between humans and cats. Researchers, including McComb, performed the same slow blinking action. Like in the first experiment, the cats in this study also responded more favorably to slow blinking by returning the gesture and more readily approaching an extended hand, according to Humphrey’s analysis.
The slow blink expression involves partially closing the eyes briefly, copying a relaxed, friendly facial expression in humans. McComb notes that for cats, it appears to signal good intentions as constant staring could be seen as threatening. Wood says that cats may have developed this language to acknowledge humans who react positively to the signal. Being able to effectively communicate acceptance in this subtle cat way seems to strengthen the bond between cats and their owners, McComb adds.
McComb, Humphrey and Wood hope their findings can provide insight into cat behavior and thinking. They also aim to apply this knowledge of cross-species communication to evaluate cat health in various places like veterinary (兽医的) clinics and shelters, according to Humphrey. A deeper understanding of how cats interpret and respond to humans can improve our ability to properly care for household and outdoor cat populations, McComb concludes.
1. How was the second experiment different from the first one?| A．It recorded the interactive behavior of cats. |
| B．It required cat owners to blink from a distance. |
| C．It studied how cats communicate with each other. |
| D．It focused on how cats react to strangers’ slow blinking. |
| A．To attract their owners’ attention. |
| B．To show friendliness to other animals. |
| C．To respond to humans’ positive reactions. |
| D．To send out a signal for help to their partners. |
| A．Improving cat behavior and habits. |
| B．Assessing health conditions of cats. |
| C．Developing ways to treat cats’ diseases. |
| D．Helping cat owners train their cats quickly. |
| A．Humans can communicate with cats by blinking slowly. |
| B．Extending hands to cats can strengthen the bond with them. |
| C．Cats respond favorably to humans’ friendly facial expressions. |
| D．Understanding cat signals improves humans’ ability to care for them. |
