1 . The British accent of Cary Gran has finally been revealed after a fellow actor tracked down a secretly tape recording of the Bristol-born big screen superstar.

Jason Isaacs, who plays Cary Grant in a coming ITV biopic (传记片), said that although setting his mind on figuring out the actor’s real accent, he had become upset by the absence of interviews with Cary Grant.

The star, whose death aged 82 in 1986 brought to an end one of the 20th century’s greatest screen careers, rarely spoke in public and would always adopt a mid-American accent for the cameras

Isaacs, 60, said this week that after some “detective work”, he found out about an interview Cary Grant gave to a student from the University of Iowa months before his death. The student’s classmate secretly recorded the interview in which Cary Grant spoke about his hatred (厌恶) of being approached by fans. The secret recording reveals Cary Grant’s true accent.

At the launch of the ITV drama Archie-after Cary Grant’s birth name Archibald Leach — Isaacs said that when he landed the role, “the first thing I did was look for interviews of Cary Grant.” Isaacs added; “He didn’t want to be seen and he didn’t want to be known. There was nothing at all. Only the films. And that’s not what he spoke like. His accent changed a lot in the films.

Isaacs said of listening to the tape: “I felt like I’d finally made a real connection with him and that’s the voice you hear on screen in Archie. It’s more English than he is in the movies. People think they remember Cary Grant’s voice but what they remember is Tony Curtis in Some Like It Hot.”

The ITV biopic focuses on Grant’s troubled family relationships. Jennifer Grant, Grant’s daughter, said her father had rarely spoken about his childhood. “Sadly I think there was so much shame wrapped up in it,” Jennifer Grant said.

1. Why did Jason Isaacs attempt to get a recording of Cary Grant?

A．To recreate his accent for real.

B．To show sincere respect to him.

C．To get the role of Cary Grant easily.

D．To make the film more profitable.

2. What can we infer about Cary Grant from Paragraph 4?

A．He acted as a detective.

B．He worked in a university.

C．He hated being recorded secretly.

D．He disliked having his life disturbed.

3. Whose voice is familiar to the audience?

A．Cary Grant.

B．Tony Curtis.

C．Jason Isaacs.

D．Jennifer Grant.

4. What kind of person is Jason Isaacs?

A．Generous.

B．Ambitious.

C．Determined.

D．Knowledgeable.

3 . How to Make Exercise a Habit

The new year is a time when it seems like everyone makes goals to work out and get fit. But by the third week of January, that all seems to go out the window. I’ve seen this happen almost every year: my workout classes are packed with fresh faces.     1     So I will share some tips on how to make exercise a habit, helping you stay healthier in the long run.

Focus on the routine and not the results

These days it feels like everyone is looking for a quick fix or fast results, particularly when it comes to health and fitness.     2     Focus on creating and enjoying the habit. Try scheduling your works alongside one of the other routines you already have in place.

    3    

Everyone seems to want to set big goals of working out 4 times a week with 60-minute sessions. But realistically, if you’re not used to this, it will just be overwhelming and lead you to quit. Given this, doing workouts even as small as5-10 minutes is a good place to start.

Forget the “all or nothing” view

When it comes to exercise, the all or nothing approach does not serve you. Say you plan a workout for today, but say things get crazy at work and you miss your scheduled time. Well that doesn’t mean you’ve failed.     4     Even if you miss your workout, that doesn’t mean you’ve given up. Just remember your results are from your every effort, not matter how small.

Find joy in your workouts

    5     Don’t let yourself be boxed into a certain type of workout just because it’s trendy or everyone is doing them. A workout that suits you will promote your drive and enjoyment.

A．Life happens sometimes.

B．Start with mini workouts

C．Build yourself workout time-zone

D．But in reality, it takes time for results to show.

E．Explore until you find a workout that feels like fun.

F．There is something magical that makes your plan work.

G．But after just a few weeks, they return to the regular number of people.

4 . HOW TO OVERCOME A CREATIVE BLOCK

I’m sitting at my desk, staring at a blank document, hoping my fingers will start typing and a brilliant story will appear on my screen. Even though I feel fortunate to usually be full of ideas, I still face creative blocks times — when I feel uninspired.

    1    . Different emotions may lead to creative blocks. One is the so-called “inner critic”, a voice we all have within when we are feeling anxious. There’s no room for mistakes when this is in charge, so we end up feeling frozen.     2    . As a way of people-pleasing, and avoiding conflict or a negative reaction from other people, it can produce negative self-talk. If we feel insecure, we may not feel safe to express ourselves through art or craft.

Fortunately, there are steps we can take to breakthrough these blocks.

Working with our inner critic

We work with our inner critic by teaching it more compassionate (有同情心的) ways of speaking to us.     3    . The best way to do this is to imagine whether you would say the same things you say about yourself to a love done. It’s unlikely that you’d say: “You’re not good enough, what a failure!” Then we can think of a kinder response such as: “You’ve learned so much from this, what do you think you’ll do differently next time you have ago?”

    4    

We can try other creative and mindful activities to help reduce anxiety, and boost yourself-esteem (自尊). It could be singing along to your favourite music, doing some weeding, going out for a walk in nature, taking photographs on a lunchtime stroll, or having interesting conversations with friends. Then you’ll feel ready to get your creativity on the go again.

Next time you’re feeling a creative block, remind yourself that it’s OK to just get something written, or painted, or crafted and that you don’t need to share it with anyone. It’s all about making a start.     5    .

A．Filling your creativity cup

B．Talking to someone you trust

C．We’d better be mindful of our loved ones

D．Perfectionism maybe another contributor

E．Creativity is like a muscle and gets easier once you get doing

F．Such a problem can be solved by understanding the causes of them

G．We must identify its comments as something separate from ourselves

5 . For young children, impulse (冲动) control and self-regulation at school can affect how well they are learning. A team of researchers based in Germany and Switzerland wanted to test whether self-regulation could be taught in a way that was easily integrated (融入) into the curriculum. In their paper published in Nature Human Behaviour, researchers detail an experiment that took place during a full school year with a follow-up three years later.

Self-regulation can be defined as the ability to regulate attention, emotion and behavior to pursue individual goals, according to the authors.

In this study, researchers trained teachers to deliver a training module for first graders that helped them think through processes like overcoming obstacles (障碍) to reach a goal. The module was taught over five weeks, each lesson being about 50 minutes.

For example, in one story, a character named Hurdy thinks about climbing to the top of a mountain and identifies the obstacles in his path. He overcomes the obstacles and thinks about how he achieved his goal while enjoying the views at the top. There’s another similar story specifically about reading.

Some first-grade classes were taught this module, called the “mental contrasting with implementation (实施) intentions” (MCII), while others received their regular curriculum without this module.

Students who had been taught the MCII module showed improvement in academic skills like reading. They performed better on reading tests, had better reading ability and were better at finding careless mistakes based on a teacher’s assessments. The effect was smaller early after the module but trended upwards six months and about a year after they were taught the MCII module. These students were also more likely to be admitted into an advanced secondary school track three years later.

There were some caveats to the study, one being that some of the teachers were not blinded to whether the students received the MCII training or not. This could have affected their assessments of the students’ abilities. There may have also been differences in the teachers’ abilities in teaching the module material.

1. Why are the stories mentioned in paragraph 4?

A．To tell interesting stories.	B．To show different teaching methads.
C．To show how MCII works in real life.	D．To give background information on MCII.

2. What is the sixth paragraph centred on?

A．The research findings.	B．The research purpose.
C．The research process.	D．The research participants.

3. What does the underlined word “caveats” in the last paragraph probably mean?

A．Conditions.

B．Challenges.

C．Limitations.

D．Exceptions.

4. Where is the text probably taken from?

A．A travel brochure.

B．A scientific journal.

C．A health magazine.

D．A personal blog.

6 . At Countryside High School in Clearwater, Fla. , 16-year-old Sage Waite is already taking a class in cybersecurity, and she’d welcome one that’s in the works on cyber disinformation.

“For the longest time, I didn’t actually know what disinformation was,” said Waite, who’s in the 11th grade. “There was always the idea that things could be wrong in what you’re hearing and what you’re being told. But the idea of misinformation and disinformation wasn’t in my day-to-day.” This past year, she says, has been an eye-opener. “My friends and I definitely started looking into stuff more and doing more research after that,” she said.

A new program on “digital literacy,” with a focus on topics like disinformation, is in the pipeline, thanks in part to Mike McConnell, who is now working to fight false information aimed at young people. “We need to understand this so we can appreciate what's happening to us, and be able to not only understand it, but also to navigate through it,” McConnell said. “That’s what I call digital literacy.”

McConnell is executive director of Cyber Florida, which is based at the University of South Florida in Tampa. The group works with kids throughout the state at universities, high schools, and even those in younger grades. Cyber Florida helped set up the cybersecurity program now being taught at many Florida schools. The new project, Cyber Citizenship, is even more ambitious. “We think if we can do this for Florida, we can spread it across the nation,” he said.

The expanded program now in the works aims to make digital literacy something all Florida students get, at several grade levels, before they finish high school.

There’s no date yet for the cyber disinformation classes in Florida, but computer teacher Jason Felt says it can’t come soon enough and he is ready to embrace it.

“The Internet is a wonderful tool. It’s connected us in a way that’s never really been seen before. But it’s a blessing and it’s also a curse.”

Teaching students the difference, he says, is a huge challenge.

1. What can we learn about the class that Sage Waite is taking from the first two paragraphs?

A．It receives a cold welcome.	B．It aims to form a bond.
C．It focuses on technologies.	D．It has a positive impact.

2. What is digital literacy according to MeConnell?

A．The specific strategies for protecting privacy.	B．The inborn capacity to track fake information.
C．The general skills of maintaining cybersecurity.	D．The overall ability to handle online information.

3. What is the vision of Cyber Citizenship?

A．To outperform Cybersecuritiy.	B．To take the lead in the world.
C．To reach a wider range of students.	D．To make a substantial profit.

4. What is Jason Felt’s attitude towards the cyber disinformation classes?

A．Welcoming.

B．Unclear.

C．Opposed.

D．Prejudiced.

7 . When you teach a child how to solve puzzles, you can either let them figure it out through trial and error, or you can guide them with some basic rules and tips. Similarly, incorporating (合并) rules and tips into AI training — such as the laws of physics — could make them more efficient and more reflective of the real world. However, helping the AI assess the value of different rules can be a tricky task.

Researchers report that they have developed a framework for assessing the relative value of rules and data in “informed machine learning models” that incorporate both. They showed that by doing so, they could help the AI incorporate basic laws of the real world and better navigate scientific problems like solving complex mathematical problems and optimizing experimental conditions in chemistry experiments.

“Embedding human knowledge into AI models has the potential to improve their efficiency and ability to make inferences, but the question is how to balance the influence of data and knowledge,” says first author. Hao Xu of Peking University. “Our framework can be employed to evaluate different knowledge and rules to enhance the predictive capability of deep learning models.”

Generative AI models like ChatGPT and Sora are purely data-driven — the models are given training data, and they teach themselves via trial and error. However, with only data to work from, these systems have no way to learn physical laws, such as gravity or fluid dynamics, and they also struggle to perform in situations that differ from their training data. An alternative approach is informed machine learning, in which researchers provide the model with some underlying rules to help guide its training process.

“We are trying to teach AI models the laws of physics so that they can be more reflective of the real world, which would make them more useful in science and engineering. We want to make it a closed loop (闭环) by making the model into a real AI scientist,” says senior author Yuntian Chen of the Eastern Institute of Technology, Ningbo.

1. How did the author introduce the topic of the text?

A．By assessing basic rules.	B．By comparison of similarity.
C．By explaining laws of physics.	D．By analysis of human learning.

2. What does the underlined word “embedding” in Paragraph 3 mean?

A．Planting.

B．Stressing.

C．Employing.

D．Revealing.

3. What makes generative AI models underperform?

A．They’re dependent too much on data.

B．They’re inflexible to carry out new tasks.

C．They struggle to learn new things.

D．It’s tough for them to deal with familiar situations.

4. What is the text mainly about?

A．Informed machine learning may be an alternative to generative AI.

B．Helping the AI assess the value of different rules can be a tricky task.

C．Generative AI models can be more reflective of the real world in the future.

D．Balancing training data and human knowledge makes AI more like a scientist.

8 . If you work in a white-collar job in an office, it is likely that you will wear a uniform. Why do you need to wear one?

For employers who require it, there are several arguments in favour of uniforms. They help ensure a level of professionalism in appearance. They project a brand identity, from the red coats of Virgin Atlantic crew to the “Browns” uniform of UPS delivery drivers. They may have useful job-specific features.

A study by Robert Smith of Tilburg University and his colleagues asked people to imagine being on the receiving end of poor service when ordering a pizza. They were then shown pictures of the uniformed or non-uniformed employee. The person without a uniform who had treated them badly was circled. In this sense, if corporate clothing is a symbol of good service, the authors suggest that it may be a good idea not to give it to inexperienced workers, because, to some extent, it’s a representative of a profession.

Uniforms can also affect the psychology of employees. In 2012, Hajo Adam, a professor in Columbia Business School, coined the term “enclothed cognition (认知)” to describe the effect that specific clothes have on the way that people think and feel. Questions have been raised over the validity of enclothed cognition, but a new meta-analysis by Messrs Adam and Galinsky, along with Carl Blaine Horton of Columbia Business School, concludes that the phenomenon is real.

The obvious objection to uniforms, at least from people who do not wear them, is that they limit individuality and autonomy. But employees who do not have to wear a formal uniform often gravitate towards a costume anyway. Some coders (编码人员) seem to be under an unspoken duty to wear T-shirts. The combination of shirt, trousers and Patagonia gilet (马甲) is known as the “midtown uniform” for finance types in New York. Bosses build brands by wearing the same outfit day after day. Therefore, you may not be required to wear a uniform when you head off to work. You may still be in uniform.

1. Why is Virgin Atlantic crew mentioned in Paragraph 2?

A．To emphasize the need for uniforms in all industries.

B．To highlight the importance of job-specific features in uniforms.

C．To provide an example of how uniforms establish a brand image.

D．To discuss the variety of uniform styles across different professions.

2. What can we infer about uniforms from Robert Smith’s study?

A．They mean professional.

B．They impress customers.

C．They guarantee quality service.

D．They symbolize the corporate image.

3. What does the underlined word “validity” mean in Paragraph 3?

A．The variety of the coined term.

B．The state of being logical and true.

C．The context of questions being raised.

D．The complexity of the phenomenon.

4. What is the author’s attitude towards uniforms?

A．Opposed.

B．Dismissive.

C．Approving.

D．Doubtful.

10 . “When we think of curiosity, we often think of the need for immediate answers,” said Abby Hsiung, Ph. D. , a postdoctoral researcher at the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences and lead author of a new research paper. “But we found that when people were more curious, they were actually more pleased to wait.”

“When we watch TV shows or football games, we’re watching that information develop over time, uncertain about how it’s all going to end,” said Hsiung. “I wanted to know if higher curiosity would push people to seek, or to avoid getting an immediate ‘spoiler’ (剧透).”

Hsiung drew inspiration from short cooking videos that are popular on social media. “These videos caught my attention because even though they’re so short, they manage to develop a description and suspense (悬念), so that you’re attracted and curious about how the pizza will all come together.” So Hsiung got out her digital paintbrush and made a lot of 30-second animated line drawing videos that, like the cooking videos, eventually ended up as something highly recognizable, like a hamburger or a dog.

More than 2,000 adults from across the U. S. then watched 25 of these short line drawing videos online. Participants in Hsiung’s study were asked along the way how curious they were, how they felt, and to guess what the drawing would become. Viewers also had a spoiler button to skip ahead to see the final drawing. Hsiung and her team were surprised to find that when people were curious, they refused to hit the spoiler button and kept watching the drawings unfold. It was when people were less curious that they tended to go for an instant answer.

The study also found that curiosity increased at different stages of watching these videos. “We saw higher curiosity during moments when it seemed like the drawing could turn into anything and also when participants were starting to really home in on a single answer,” said co-author Jia-Hou Poh, Ph. D. , a postdoctoral researcher at the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences.

1. What is the popular belief concerning curiosity?

A．It fuels the urge for answers.	B．It leads to endless patience.
C．It stresses the need to wait.	D．It brings the pleasure of waiting.

2. What inspired Hsiung to use her research approach?

A．The evolution the TV shows displayed.	B．The fantasy the short cooking videos shared.
C．The way the short cooking videos developed.	D．The popularity the short cooking videos achieved.

3. What were participants required to do?

A．Make drawings to take a shortcut.	B．Answer some questions while watching.
C．Press the spoiler button to finish the task.	D．Hunt for an answer as quickly as possible.

4. Which can be a suitable title for the text?

A．The influence of patience on curiosity	B．Curiosity delays eagerness for the answer
C．Curiosity arises from the patience of waiting	D．The way to hold back the urge for an answer