1 . Search “toxic parents”, and you’ll find more than 38, 000 posts, largely urging young adults to cut ties with their families. The idea is to safeguard one’s mental health from offensive parents. However, as a psychoanalyst (精神分析学家), I’ve seen that trend in recent years become a way to manage conflicts in the family, and I have seen the severe impacts estrangement (疏远) has on both sides of the divide. This is a self-help trend that creates much harm.
“Canceling” your parent can be seen as an extension of a cultural trend aimed at correcting imbalances in power and systemic inequality. Today’s social justice values respond to this reality, calling on us to criticize oppressive and harmful figures and to gain power for those who have been powerless. But when adult children use the most effective tool they have—themselves—to gain a sense of security and ban their parents from their lives, the roles are simply switched, and the pain only deepens.
Often, what I see in my practice are cases of family conflict mismanaged, power dynamics turned upside down rather than negotiated. I see the terrible effect of that trend: situations with no winners, only isolated humans who long to be known and feel safe in the presence of the other.
The catch is that after estrangement, adult children are not suddenly less dependent. In fact, they feel abandoned and betrayed, because in the unconscious, it doesn’t matter who is doing the leaving; the feeling that remains is “being left”. They carry the ghosts of their childhood, tackling the emotional reality that those who raised us can never truly be left behind, no matter how hard we try.
What I have found is that most of these families need repair, not permanent break-up. How can one learn how to negotiate needs, to create boundaries and to trust? How can we love others, and ourselves, if not through accepting the limitations that come with being human? Good relationships are not the result of a perfect level of harmony but rather of successful adjustments.
To pursue dialogue instead of estrangement will be hard and painful work. It can’t be a single project of “self-help”, because at the end of the day, real intimacy (亲密关系) is achieved by working through the injuries of the past together. In most cases of family conflict, repair is possible and preferable to estrangement—and it’s worth the work.
1. Why do young people cut ties with the family?| A．To gain an independent life. | B．To follow a tendency towards social justice. |
| C．To restore harmony in the family. | D．To protect their psychological well-being. |
| A．Response. | B．Problem. | C．Bond. | D．Division. |
| A．Break down boundaries. | B．Accept imperfection of family members. |
| C．Live up to their parents’ expectations. | D．Repair a family item that has broken up. |
| A．To advocate a self-help trend. | B．To justify a common social value. |
| C．To argue against a current practice. | D．To discuss a means of communication. |
2 . Architects often spend months or even years perfecting a design to express their ideas more clearly, convey additional information, or outline the right proportions for a building. However, the urgent issue of climate change is placing new demands on their work. For example, in July, Super Typhoon Doksuri battered China, affecting more than 2.66 million people in Fujian Province alone.
Green architecture that conserves energy and reduces carbon dioxide emissions offers a solution, and concerted efforts have been made in diverse research fields over the past three decades to minimize heat loss. In addition, new buildings have to be tailored to the needs of people’s lifestyles.
Ren Jun, a professor at Tianjin University’s School of Architecture, who designed the first near-zero energy house in China in December 2019, said, “You can construct low-energy, environmentally-friendly houses, but if the interior design and environmental quality don’t meet residents’ requirements, these properties won’t be suitable to live in.”
The near-zero energy house, located-in Banbidian village in Beijing’s southern district of Daxing, won the International Design Award in the United States in January last year. The 400-square-meter property, which stands at the entrance to the village, runs on solar power gathered from rooftop panels, with the addition of a small amount of power from the grid (电网).
Ren said the first obstacle to conserving energy in the property was heat retention, which he attempted to achieve by keeping the indoor temperature at a certain level. The property is divided into five areas: a solar garden in the front yard, a central lounge, a water courtyard, a sponge zone, and a back room. For the exterior walls, Ren used three types of insulation (隔热层), including plastic foam, each about 25 centimeters thick.
Ren also looked for ways to deal with emissions at the house. He decided to install a ventilator, which pipes air that is polluted and replaces it with fresh air from outside in every room at the property.
Ren said it would take three to five years before more ultralow or near-zero energy buildings appeared in Chinese cities.
1. Which is not an important factor for designing green houses?| A．Energy consumption. | B．Carbon emission. |
| C．People’s lifestyle. | D．Architecture style. |
| A．The house consumes little electricity. |
| B．The house is deliberately designed to keep heat. |
| C．The house is equipped with many intelligent facilities. |
| D．The house is the first International Design Award-winning building in China. |
| A．He designed the house in five stories to trap heat in it. |
| B．He applied 75 centimeters of plastic foam to exterior walls. |
| C．He tailored the interior design to the demand of local people. |
| D．He installed a ventilator to cut down carbon dioxide emissions. |
| A．Green Homes Offer Hope amid Climate Change |
| B．Green Houses Feature Near-Zero Energy Consumption |
| C．Ren Jun Won the International Design Award |
| D．China Strives for Low Carbon Strategy with Green Houses |
3 . Virtual reality is quickly becoming the new technological frontier. Tech companies everywhere seem to be racing to get their foot in the VR door. However, virtual reality has a set of challenges and hurdles that it must overcome in order to work well. It should be noted that VR is heavily dependent on being very fast, very accurate and very good-looking. If it isn’t, the viewer will feel motion sick or disconnected from the world that VR is trying to create.
Now that we can actually build VR headsets that begin to meet these requirements, we are seeing a rising interest in VR. As it rises, so does the interest in creating new media to be experienced in using virtual reality. Journalism is a medium built on relevance. Journalists should always be finding new ways to tell stories and deliver content. It is a goldmine for storytelling. What better ways to tell a story to someone than to put them right in the center of it?
Virtual reality is a powerful tool for journalists. The consumer isn’t just reading or watching something play out; they’re experiencing it. The immersive nature of VR allows for people to connect with the subject matter on a much deeper level than just reading about it. The experience is emotional, speaking more to our instinct than our intellect. The possibilities for storytelling here are legion, and any storyteller wanting to do something more interesting than their peers should surely be considering the sheer power of VR.
The question of virtual reality, though, is not how powerful it is. That is immediately apparent. The question of VR is one of viability and availability. Telling stories must be easy to do, and access to those stories must be readily available. This is the biggest challenge that VR faces. If the tools to tell a story with VR aren’t easy to pick up and learn, VR will fail. If VR technology isn’t both top-of-the-line and affordable, VR will fail.
Accessibility was one concern for Thomas Hallaq, assistant professor of journalism and mass communications, who said that current VR technology, is pretty exclusive right now. Despite that, he said he doesn’t think the exclusivity of this technology will be a problem in the long run.
“I think it’s very promising,” Hallaq said. “We’re seeing more technology become accessible, and more people having access to that technology. Just look at smartphones.” Like radio, TV and the Internet before it, virtual reality will change the way we tell stories.
1. Why is VR considered a powerful tool for journalism?| A．Because it is an exclusively new tool. |
| B．Because it is very powerful and popular. |
| C．Because people can experience the story in person. |
| D．Because it is very fast, accurate and good-looking. |
| A．How powerful and interesting it can be. |
| B．Whether people will have easy access to it. |
| C．Whether qualified VR headsets can be built. |
| D．What new ways people will find to deliver content. |
| A．Optimistic. | B．Neutral. | C．Pessimistic. | D．Concerned. |
| A．The Wide Popularity of Virtual Reality |
| B．The Future Development of Virtual Reality |
| C．Challenges and Hurdles of Virtual Reality |
| D．Virtual Reality is the Future of Storytelling |
4 . Have you ever thought about what determines the way we are when we grow up? Remember the TV program Seven Up? It started following the lives of a group of children in 1963. We first meet them as wide eyed seven year olds and then catch up with them at seven year intervals (间隔): nervous 14 year olds, serious 21 year olds and then grown ups.
Some of the stories are inspiring, others sad, but what is interesting in almost all the cases is the way in which the children’s early hopes and dreams are shown in their future lives. For example, at seven, Tony is a lively child who says he wants to become a sportsman or a taxi driver. When he grows up, he goes on to do both. How about Nicki? She says, “I’d like to find out about the moon.” And she goes on to become a space scientist. As a child, soft spoken Bruce says he wants to help “poor children” and ends up teaching in India.
But if the lives of all the children had followed this pattern, the program would be far less interesting than it actually was. It was the children whose childhood did not prepare them for what was to come that made the program so interesting. Where did their ideas come from about what they wanted to do when they grew up?Are the children influenced by what their parents do, by what they see on television, or by what their teachers say?How great is the effect of a single important event? Many film directors, including Stephen Spielberg, say that an early visit to the cinema was the turning point in their lives. Dr Margaret McAllister, who has done a lot of research in this area, thinks that the major factors are parents, friends, and the wider society.
1. What does the text mainly discuss?| A．New ways to make a TV program interesting. |
| B．The importance of television programs to children. |
| C．Different ways to make childhood dreams come true. |
| D．The influence of childhood experiences on future lives. |
| A．different groups of people at different periods of their lives |
| B．different groups of people at the same period of their lives |
| C．the same group of people at different periods of their lives |
| D．the same group of people at the same period of their lives |
| A．Many people’s childhood hopes are related to their future jobs. |
| B．There are many poor children in India who need help. |
| C．Children have different dreams about their future. |
| D．A lot of people are very sad in their childhood. |
| A．going to a movie at an early age helps a child learn about society |
| B．a single childhood event may decide what one does as a grown up |
| C．parents and friends can help a child grow up properly |
| D．films have more influence on a child than teachers do |
5 . The Assassin’s Creed series has been about building immersive (沉浸) and accurate historical worlds. As their newest game releases Assassin’s Creed Origins, they have also released their Discovery Tours. These tours give players a chance to walk the streets of ancient Egypt, explore Alexandria and the pyramids, and learn about wildlife and geography. For students, experiencing the ancient world in this interactive way can be more interesting and effective than just reading a textbook or watching a documentary about what they are studying.
Assassin’s Creed is not the only game series that can be educational either. What is important about the role of historical games is the level of choice. When watching a film, students are passive receivers of the content. However, when playing a game, students have an active role to play in history. A focus on choices and consequences is an important element of teaching and understanding history, so historical games can be a valuable teaching tool even if they aren’t completely historically accurate. They have the power to immerse students in faraway worlds and allow them to think critically about the cause and consequence, think about why historical events unfolded in the way they did, and even think about possible alternative outcomes. All of these are critical for historical thinking processes. No longer do students need to rely only on reading textbooks or on instructors for knowledge.
When carrying this out in your class, remember that not all students enjoy playing video games, but they can still be a valuable leaning tool. The instructor also needs to be an active facilitator (促进者) and take note of teachable moments. A video game is not going to teach a class; it requires an awesome instructor to make everything come together. With the power of video games, ancient worlds no longer need to be limited to the pages of a textbook.
1. What does the underlined phrase “this interactive way” in Paragraph 1 refer to?| A．Reading a textbook. | B．Playing a new game. |
| C．Walking an ancient street. | D．Watching a documentary. |
| A．Why it gains popularity. | B．How it came into being. |
| C．How it benefits teaching. | D．Why it is different from the film. |
| A．The teachers. | B．The players. | C．The designers. | D．The audiences. |
| A．A vivid description of ancient architecture. | B．A detailed explanation of a social problem. |
| C．An online advertisement for a stylish trend. | D．An account of a new history learning method. |
6 . One overlooked benefit of lab-grown food is that it may help the UK deal with the crisis in housing affordability. As farming is replaced by precision fermentation (发酵) , the significant amount of land currently used for livestock farming(including parts of the green belt) will be freed up for development in places that people actually want to live.
However, we’d take a different lesson from the promise of lab-grown meat. Free-market environmentalism and harnessing the power of innovative technologies — supported by market-based measures like a border-adjusted carbon tax — can successfully tackle the problem of man-made climate change without fundamentally uprooting the way we run society. Saving the planet doesn’t have to cost us the earth.
It is important to acknowledge that certain types of livestock farming may have issues with sustainability and climate change. But it is not true of all farming systems; and the issues that do exist are being dealt with using the latest research into genetics and biotechnology-for example, recent research has shown that certain types of seaweed can reduce methane emissions from cattle to close to zero.
Farmer data also shows that increased sales of milks have not seen a corresponding reduction in dairy sales.
The global food system, consumer choices and climate change are incredibly complex issues, and anyone who proposes simple solutions is almost certainly not in possession of all the relevant facts and data. Livestock are an important part of humanity’s future food needs.
1. Why does lab-grown food help Britain to solve the housing affordability crisis?| A．As farming is replaced by precision fermentation, the level of agricultural development is improved. |
| B．The significant amount of green belts are used for development in places that people actually want to live. |
| C．Lab-grown food is more environmentally friendly and beneficial to human health. |
| D．A large amount of land used for livestock farming will be freed up for residence. |
| A．Free-market environmentalism can change the way society operates. |
| B．Adjusting carbon tax can successfully solve the problem of climate change. |
| C．Adopting the power of innovative technologies is useful for saving the earth. |
| D．Saving the earth requires changing the way society operates. |
| A．obtain | B．exploit | C．inherit | D．develop |
| A．global food issue is so complex that there are no complete research data. |
| B．sustainability and climate change are common problems in agricultural systems. |
| C．some kinds of seaweed can make the amount of methane emitted by cattle ineffective. |
| D．the sales of substitute dairy products increased, and the sales of dairy products decreased accordingly. |
7 . Researchers at the University of Washington created a new web app, Self-Talk with Superhero Zip, aimed to help children develop skills like self-awareness and emotional management.
At first, some parents were wary: In a world of Siri and Alexa, they are skeptical that the makers of such technologies are putting children’s welfare first.
In Self-Talk with Superhero Zip, a chatbot guided pairs of siblings through lessons. The UW team found that, after speaking with the app for a week, most children could explain the concept of supportive self-talk and apply it in their daily lives. And kids who’d engaged in negative self-talk before the study were able to turn that habit positive.
The UW team published its findings in June at the 2023 Interaction Design and Children conference. The app is still a prototype (雏形) and is not yet publicly available. Previous studies have shown children can learn various tasks and abilities from chatbots. Yet little research explores how chatbots can help kids effectively acquire socioemotional skills.
“There is room to design child-centric experiences with a chatbot that provide fun and educational practice opportunities,” said senior author Alexis Hiniker, an associate professor in the UW Information School. “Over the last few decades, television programs like ‘Sesame Street,’ ‘Mister Rogers,’ and ‘Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood’ have shown that it is possible for TV to help kids cultivate socioemotional skills. We asked: Can we make a space where kids can practice these skills in an interactive app? We wanted to create something useful and fun— a ‘Sesame Street’ experience for a smart speaker.”
The length of these effects isn’t clear, researchers note. The study spanned just one week and the tendency for survey participants to respond in ways that make them look good could lead kids to speak positively about the app’s effects.
“Our goal is to make the app accessible to a wider audience in the future,” said lead author Chris (Yue) Fu, a UW doctoral student in the iSchool. “We’re exploring the integration of large language models — the systems that power tech like ChatGPT — into our prototype and we plan to work with content creators to adapt existing socioemotional learning materials into our system. The hope is that these will facilitate more prolonged and effective interventions.”
1. What can we learn about Self-Talk?| A．It encouraged kids to engage in positive talking. |
| B．It could help kids explain complicated concepts. |
| C．It could be already downloaded from UW’s website. |
| D．It was welcomed by parents like Siri and Alexa. |
| A．The primary function. | B．The promising prospect. |
| C．The new-found popularity. | D．The historical background. |
| A．Larger amounts of kinds of languages. | B．More characters with different background. |
| C．New technology adopted like ChatGPT. | D．Longer studies in more natural settings. |
| A．Adapt socioemotional material and reform the education system. |
| B．Explore powerful technology and improve its effectiveness. |
| C．Promote socioemotional learning and provide ongoing support. |
| D．Combine large language models and lengthen its service time. |
8 . The recent floods in Pakistan have sub-merged a third of the country and left more than 1,100 people dead. It is not the only part of the world to have suffered extreme weather this year. Early on, Australia was hit with unheard-of rain and heat. By the summer, east Africa was suffering its fourth year of drought. Meanwhile, temperature records were broken in cities across Europe, and rivers there ran drier than at any point for 500 years. A 70-day heatwave across much of China saw temperatures regularly exceeding 40℃, with the country’s two largest lakes dropping to their lowest recorded heights.
Attributing (把……归因于) any single weather event to climate change is a complicated business. Part of the difficulty reflects the complex mechanisms of Earth’s climate, where continuous warming is the background against which many other patterns play out.
One of the most powerful sources of natural climate variability is the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a phenomenon in which the climate all around the tropics moves into one of two extreme states. When the trade winds blow more weakly across the Pacific than usual, the warm water remains in the eastern Pacific, causing more rainfall in that part of the world, an event known as an El Nino. When the winds blow particularly strongly, more warm water gathers in the western Pacific, and more cold water comes up from the depths off the coast of South America, known as La Nina.
What is happening in Pakistan is likely to be a disastrous combination of multiple factors. A hotter planet means there is more moisture (湿气) in the air, leading to more extreme rainfall and greater risks of flooding. This means La Nina-caused rainfall can be unusually deadly. Global warming also has an indirect effect, as high temperatures experienced in the Himalayas earlier this year sped up the melting of glaciers (冰川) and overloaded rivers. It is also possible that air pollution in the area, which complicates air-circulation patterns, may have a role to play as well.
A pressing concern is the impact the increased flooding and severe droughts will have on a world where resources are already sapped by a rapid running of disasters. “We’re already not coping and it’s only getting worse,” says Maarten, director of the climate centre for the International Red Cross.
Equally fraught are questions of responsibility. Whether or not specific disasters were made more likely to occur by ENSO, climate change is doubtless playing a role in increasing their severity. This implicates richer countries most responsible for historic pollution, which have thus far largely been spared the worst consequences of their emissions.
1. The author lists a range of extreme events at the beginning to _________.| A．predict the ending | B．raise the issue behind |
| C．highlight an opinion | D．illustrate an argument |
| A．Loss of ice due to the greenhouse effect. |
| B．Harmful gases let off into the atmosphere. |
| C．Trade winds blowing more weakly across the Pacific. |
| D．More moisture in the air caused by high temperatures. |
| A．conserved | B．consumed | C．shared | D．destroyed |
| A．Urgent priority should be given to climatic change. |
| B．Specific disasters are undoubtedly linked to La Nina. |
| C．Governments have taken measures to deal with the current situation. |
| D．Richer countries have taken the responsibility for the environment. |
9 . When Richard Oswald was growing up in northwestern Missouri in the 1950s, his dad had a firm rule: Don’t plant corn until mid-May. But that rule has become a relic of the past. In Rock Port, a small farming community near the Nebraska border, the growing season now begins more than a month earlier.
That’s not surprising. Across much of the US, winter is not as cold as it used to be. The four warmest Januaries on record have all occurred since 2016. In Missouri, winters are about 4 degrees hotter on average than in 1970-and farmers are starting to feel the effects.
As the planet continues to warm, cold winter weather will become less common, said Amy Butler, a re-search scientist studying climate variability. “However, less cold does not mean never cold.” Butler said. In the past decade, Liz Graznak’s organic vegetable farm near Columbia, Missouri, has endured increasingly extreme swings in weather. “We don’t get a couple of inches of snow; we get 18 inches of snow all at once and then in five days, it’ s 70 degrees again.” Graznak said. “We don’t get a couple of inches of rain; we get a 12-inch downpour in the span of 24 hours. That’s devastating(毁灭性的)to a vegetable farm.”
To help protect her crops, Graznak has built four large greenhouses on her property in just over a decade. Inside, she’s able to grow delicate, high-value crops, including flowers, lettuce and spinach.
But these greenhouses come at a steep cost. Nearly seven years ago, Graznak spent more than $18,000 to build a greenhouse and since then, the price has more than doubled. “When I think about these costs, in my brain, I say, ‘OK, how many heads of lettuce is that?’” She said. “I know I can sell a head of lettuce for $4, so how many heads of lettuce do I have to sell to be able to pay for that greenhouse? And that’s a lot of lettuce.”
1. What does the author want to show by telling Richard Oswald’s story?| A．New farmers should learn to farm on their own. |
| B．New farmers aren’t as experienced as old ones. |
| C．Following traditional farming rules is essential. |
| D．Climate change is changing farming rules. |
| A．Many extreme weather events. |
| B．A winter without any cold days. |
| C．Less snow and rain on the whole. |
| D．More stable temperature than before. |
| A．The profits of her farm have increased. |
| B．She has lost hope in the future of farming. |
| C．The cost of farming has greatly increased. |
| D．Budgeting is important in modern farming. |
| A．Farmers in the US are troubled by floods |
| B．Farmers are worried about the future of farming |
| C．Farmers are feeling climate change’s effect in the US |
| D．Farmers are turning to greenhouses due to climate change |
10 . There are close to 7, 000 languages spoken on Earth. However, it’s estimated that by the end of this century, up to 50% of them may be lost.
It’s commonly thought that majority languages tend to be valued for being useful and for promoting progress, while minority languages are seen as barriers to progress, and the value placed on them is seen mainly as sentimental (感情用事的). But is sentimentality really the only motivation for preserving language diversity?
Speakers of endangered languages often live in remote areas with unique landform. It is quite common for these languages to distinguish between hundreds more types of plants and animals than those known to modern science. For example, in Southeast Asia, some tribes have discovered the medicinal properties of over sixty-five hundred plant species. This has led to many of landmark achievements in medicine.
It was once believed that the limits of one’s language defined the limits of one’s thought. This theory, called the Sapir-Wharf hypothesis (假说), has been largely rejected in favor of the improved version, which assumes that the language we speak does not set the limits of our thoughts, but it does direct our focus in certain ways. For example, English is a tense-based language. It’s nearly impossible to talk about doing something without specifying the time — i. e. I went to the party(past), I’m going to the party(present), or I’ll go to the party (future). This differs from Chinese, where it’s perfectly reasonable to say, “I go to the party” without defining the “when”. Thus, part of the richness of language is that it allows us to organize the world in so many unique ways.
Some languages categorize the world in ways so different from our own that they are difficult to conceptualize (概念化). The United States employed native Navajo speakers to create a system of message coding during the Second World War. The Japanese were never able to break it, and the “code talkers” are often cited today as having helped decide the outcome of the war.
As we’ve already seen, minority languages are valuable for many practical reasons. In conclusion, I’d say the short answer is yes — dying languages are certainly worth saving!
1. What do people tend to think of minority languages?| A．Valueless. | B．Time-honored. | C．Informal. | D．Stable. |
| A．We can discover drugs in a much safer way. |
| B．We don’t have to rely on modern medicine. |
| C．We can acquire a broad knowledge of nature. |
| D．We can learn how to protect plants and animals. |
| A．To correct the Sapir-Wharf hypothesis. |
| B．To prove the value of minority languages. |
| C．To show wars’ role in preserving a language. |
| D．To explain ways to conserve some languages. |
| A．Are majority languages worth valuing? |
| B．Are we willing to save dying languages? |
| C．Should endangered languages be saved? |
| D．Is the future of minority languages bright? |
