1 . You’ve heard that plastic is polluting the oceans — between 4.8 and 12.7 million tonnes enter ocean ecosystems every year. But does one plastic straw or cup really make a difference? Artist Benjamin Von Wong wants you to know that it does. He builds massive sculptures out of plastic garbage, forcing viewers to re-examine their relationship to single-use plastic products.
At the beginning of the year, the artist built a piece called “Strawpocalypse,” a pair of 10-foot-tall plastic waves, frozen mid-crash. Made of 168,000 plastic straws collected from several volunteer beach cleanups, the sculpture made its first appearance at the Estella Place shopping center in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Just 9% of global plastic waste is recycled. Plastic straws are by no means the biggest source (来源) of plastic pollution, but they’ve recently come under fire because most people don’t need them to drink with and, because of their small size and weight, they cannot be recycled. Every straw that’s part of Von Wong’s artwork likely came from a drink that someone used for only a few minutes. Once the drink is gone, the straw will take centuries to disappear.
In a piece from 2018, Von Wong wanted to illustrate (说明) a specific statistic: Every 60 seconds, a truckload’s worth of plastic enters the ocean. For this work, titled “Truckload of Plastic,” Von Wong and a group of volunteers collected more than 10,000 pieces of plastic, which were then tied together to look like they’d been dumped (倾倒) from a truck all at once.
Von Wong hopes that his work will also help pressure big companies to reduce their plastic footprint.
1. What are Von Wong’s artworks intended for?| A．Beautifying the city he lives in. | B．Introducing eco-friendly products. |
| C．Drawing public attention to plastic waste. | D．Reducing garbage on the beach. |
| A．To show the difficulty of their recycling. |
| B．To explain why they are useful. |
| C．To voice his views on modern art. |
| D．To find a substitute for them. |
| A．Calming. | B．Disturbing. |
| C．Refreshing. | D．Challenging. |
| A．Artists’ Opinions on Plastic Safety |
| B．Media Interest in Contemporary Art |
| C．Responsibility Demanded of Big Companies |
| D．Ocean Plastics Transformed into Sculptures |
2 . The older I get, the more I understand how my teachers have transformed my life.
On a recent Sunday afternoon, I went to see Mr. C at Roxbury Park in Beverly Hills. His love of life has not dimmed despite the fact that his legs no longer work like they used to. He visited some of his former students while he was in town. At Beverly Hills High School, Mr. C taught ancient history, coached football and golf, and risked his life teaching driver’s training on Saturday mornings from 1964 to 1988. The gray and hobbled students lined up one after another to thank their favorite teacher. One called him a rock star. Another was grateful for helping him when he couldn’t say so. It was a beautiful tribute, especially in these times of catastrophic teacher shortages.
Spending that Sunday in the park with Mr. C was nothing short of magic. It was a reminder of all that is promising and possible in public education, including a teacher whose rare emotional honesty could be appreciated and honored decades later. It also brought to mind Maya Angelou’s saying “People will forget what you said and did, but never forget how you make them feel.” He made me and others in the park feel heard and seen.
Mr. C changed my perception of myself. Rather than seeing myself as a loser cheerleader who couldn’t compete with the smart kids, I realized how much I loved learning. His history class was so interesting. In his classes about the Persians, Greeks, and Romans, extra credits can be earned for creativity. During earthquake drills, we counted on Mr. C to scream his head off in mock terror.
It should come as little surprise that I’d value the role of teachers in my life. Both of my parents taught; so did my siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins. I, too, have become a teacher and I try to follow in Mr. C’s footsteps. Some days, I fantasize what it would be like to go on a teacher tour, reaching out to my mentors to express my deep gratitude for all they’ve given me. Seeing Mr. C sparked that fantasy again. When I finally worked up my courage to thank him, knowing a floodgate of tears would open, he said to me with his typical modesty: “You were doing me more good than I was doing you.”
1. What does the underlined word “tribute” mean in Paragraph 2?| A．enthusiasm | B．admiration | C．devotion | D．commitment |
| A．To make a suggestion. |
| B．To introduce a celebrity. |
| C．To show respect to an educator. |
| D．To interpret the influence of education. |
| A．Enjoyable. | B．Intolerant. | C．Incompetent. | D．Patient. |
| A．A reunion. | B．A rock star. | C．A surprise. | D．A great teacher. |
3 . In August, Jason M. Allen’s piece “Theatre D’opéra Spatial” — which he created with Al image generator Midjourney — won first place in the emerging artist division’s “digital arts photography” category at the Colorado State Fair Fine Arts Competition. The definition for the category states that digital art refers to works that use “digital technology as part of the creative process”.
Allen’s award-winning image has led to debates about what, exactly, it means to be an artist and whether AI can truly make art. “It felt bad for the exact same reason we don’t let robots participate in the Olympics,” one Twitter user wrote. “This is the literal definition of ‘pressed a few buttons to make a digital art piece’,” another tweeted.
Yet while Allen didn’t use a paintbrush, there was plenty of work involved, he said. First, he played around with phrasing that led Midjourney to generate images of women in elegant dresses and space helmets, in an attempt to mix Victorian-style costuming with space themes. Over time, with many slight changes to his written prompt (提示符), he created 900 different versions of what led to his final image. Then he improved its resolution through Gigapixel AI and finally had the images printed.
Allen is glad the debate over whether AI can be used to make art is attracting so much attention. “Rather than hating on the technology, we need to recognize that it’s a powerful tool and use it for good so we can all move forward,” Allen said.
Cal Duran, one of the judges for the competition, said that while Allen’s piece included a mention of AI, he didn’t realize that when judging it. Still, he sticks by his decision to award it first place. “I think the AI technology may give more opportunities to people who may not find themselves artists in the conventional way,” he said.
1. Why has Jason’s work led to debates?| A．It was a copy of a photograph. |
| B．He challenged the older artists. |
| C．It was created with the help of AI. |
| D．He broke the rule of the competition. |
| A．Cooperative. |
| B．Energy-consuming. |
| C．Straightforward. |
| D．Imagination-lacking. |
| A．It is a double-edged sword. |
| B．It attracts conventional artists. |
| C．It strikes art judges as no surprise. |
| D．It may open a new world to artists. |
| A．A trend to be AI artists. |
| B．An AI-generated art contest. |
| C．Responses to a winning AI artwork. |
| D．Curiosity about an image generator. |
4 . Ramirez Castañeda, a Colombian biologist, spends her time in the Amazon studying how snakes eat poisonous frogs without getting ill. Although her findings come in many shapes and sizes, she and her colleagues have struggled to get their biological discoveries out to the wider scientific community. With Spanish as her mother tongue, her research had to be translated into English to be published. That wasn’t always possible because of budget or time-and it means that some of her findings were never published.
“It’s not that I’m a bad scientist,” she says. “It’s just because of the language.”
Castañeda is not alone. There is plenty of research in non-English-language papers that gets lost in translation, or is never translated. A research looked through more than 400, 000 peer-reviewed papers in 16 different languages and found 1, 234 studies providing evidence on biodiversity conservation which, because they weren’t in English, may have been overlooked. These included Japanese-language findings on the effectiveness of relocating the endangered Blakiston’s fish owl, the largest owl species.
Some experts argue that for the sake of the bigger picture, scientific knowledge should converge (转换) into one common language. Science is very globalised and becoming more so, so the use of a global language is enormous for that.
Of course, scientists can work with an English partner, or use a translator-but this ultimately strengthens the cycle of dependency on the global north, leading to inequality in international influence. The specific meanings of words can also pose a problem in translation. For example, it is difficult to find in English one single word to describe forest snakes and frogs in the work Castafieda does with indigenous (土著的) communities in the Amazon.
“So we’re losing observations for science, too, ” says Castañeda. “For me, it’s not possible to just have everything translated into English. We need multilingual (多语种的) science, and we need people that feel comfortable doing science in their own languages. It could be possible to switch to a world where, say, Chinese, English and Spanish are the three languages of science, just as English, French and German were the languages of science in the 19th century.”
1. What prevented Castañeda’s discoveries from being more widely known?| A．Poor management. | B．Opposition from her colleagues. |
| C．Her bad reputation. | D．The language barrier. |
| A．Inefficient wildlife conservation. |
| B．A knowledge gap in the scientific world. |
| C．A growing interest in non-English papers. |
| D．Inadequate job opportunities for translators. |
| A．The urgency to protect rare species. |
| B．The need to adopt one global language. |
| C．The challenges in translating scientific texts. |
| D．The biodiversity on the South American continent. |
| A．A potential solution. | B．A theoretical model. |
| C．A popular belief. | D．A global trend. |
5 . At a museum in Vietnam, Lena Bui’s film Where Birds Dance Their Last reflected on the beauty and vulnerability of Vietnamese feather farms after Bird Flu. During a festival in Rwanda, Ellen Reid’s audio experience Soundwalk was shared in a hopeful discussion about music, parks and mental health. These are a few of the things I have helped bring to life over the years, working at the intersection of scientific research, the arts and advocacy to support science in solving global health challenges.
Science is key to addressing these issues. But it isn’t the only key. To achieve its potential and for its advances to be implemented and reach all who could benefit, science depends on trust and good relationships. People might not always see science as relevant, trustworthy or meaningful to their lives. There are reasons why some see science as having a chequered past, from nuclear weapons to eugenics, and are therefore uninterested in, or suspicious of, what it proposes. Others feel excluded by the incomprehensibility of hyper specialist knowledge.
In its capacity to build upon and test an evidence base, science is powerful, but researchers and funders haven’t been as good at ensuring this evidence base responds to the needs and interests of diverse communities, or informs policy makers to take action. Science might be perceived as distancing itself from the personal, the poetic and the political, yet it is precisely these qualities that can be most influential when it comes to public interest in atopic or how a government prioritizes a decision.
A moving story well told can be more memorable than a list of facts. This is where the arts come in. Artists can give us different perspectives with which to consider and reimagine the world together. They can redress the proclaimed objectivity in science by bringing stories —subjectivities —into the picture, and these can help foster a sense of connection and hope.
In 2012, I set up artist residencies in medical research centres around the world. Bui was attached to the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Vietnam. The head of the research team was delighted, finding that Bui, as a Vietnamese artist, had license to be in, and to share useful insights from, villages where infectious disease researchers weren’t welcome. Six years later, I led Wellcome’s Contagious Cities program, which established artist residencies worldwide to support locally led explorations of epidemic preparedness. The recent pandemic made this work more noticeable, and has informed our Mindscapes program which is currently sharing experiences of mental health through the work of artists.
With pandemic, climate and mental health crises upon us, rising inequality and what feels like an increasingly broken world, never has there been more need to build and nurture hopeful and imaginative spaces to grow human connection and shared purpose for the common good. Science and the arts can work hand in glove to achieve this.
1. The author lists two works in Paragraph 1 mainly to ______.| A．reveal the gap between science and art | B．prove his competence in both science and art |
| C．introduce successful science-related artworks | D．show that science can be promoted in art forms |
| A．Recent and remote. | B．Good and bad. |
| C．Usual and unusual. | D．Peaceful and scary. |
| A．Policy-makers base their decisions on science. | B．Researchers popularize science effectively. |
| C．Science is well received among the public. | D．The arts help people build connections. |
| A．The Value of the Arts to Science | B．Where Do Science and the Arts Meet? |
| C．A New Way to Fight Pandemic—the Arts | D．Which Matters More, Science or the Arts? |
6 . Most glitter(小发光物品), which is made up of tiny pieces of plastic, is a huge danger to the environment. “Everyone talks about the mountain of plastic floating in the ocean. You can grab empty bottles from the water, but with tiny pieces, it’s impossible,” says Victor Alvarez, a chemical engineer who sells an eco-friendly alternative to glitter.
In the early 2,000s, Alvarez worked for Mercedes-Benz in Germany, where he became fond of any technology that protected the environment. A few years after leaving Mercedes-Benz, he founded Blue Sun International in Miami, which makes specialty ingredients for the skin and hair care industries.
Glitter is a popular ingredient in cosmetics, such as eye shadows and lipsticks. So Alvarez began researching an alternative that didn’t contain plastic to make his products safer for the environment. That’s when he came across Ronald Britton Ltd., a company which had developed a plastic-free, biodegradable product called Bioglitter. It is made from regenerative cellulose(纤维素) sourced from hardwoods, primarily eucalyptus(桉树). Alvarez worked with the company to become the first retailer to sell Bioglitter in America. In 2018, he formed Today Glitter in order to sell the biodegradable glitter directly to consumers through its website.
Today Glitter sells two kinds of biodegradable glitter Bioglitter Sparkle and Bioglitter Pure. Both are almost plastic-free and can biodegrade in a short time. Meanwhile, they are as shiny as regular glitter. All these products are third-party tested by TÜV, an international organization that provides testing and certification for compostable (可降解的) and biodegradable products.
Despite its benefits, the hardwoods needed to make biodegradable glitter cause it to cost about twice as much as conventional glitter. A small glass container that contains just 6 grams of Bioglitter costs $10, while the same amount of regular glitter could cost at least half that amount. Alvarez expects the price will come down over time. He also expects the company’s sales to cross $1 million next year. But more importantly, Alvarez says, his main goal is to effect a meaningful change.
1. While at Mercedes Benz, Alvarez .| A．developed a way to grab glitter in the sea | B．became interested in the environment |
| C．attempted to live a plastic-free life | D．created a kind of harmless glitter |
| A．It is a plastic-free ingredient for eye shadows. |
| B．It will soon be on sale in the American market. |
| C．It is very difficult to break down in the wild. |
| D．It was invented by Blue Sun International. |
| A．To show Bioglitter Sparkle and Bioglitter Pure are popular. |
| B．To stress it provides a broad range of testing services. |
| C．To prove Today Glitter’s products are eco-friendly. |
| D．To explain many plastic products are low-quality. |
| A．The complex process of making glitter. | B．How to expand its overseas market. |
| C．How to attract potential investors. | D．The high cost of raw materials. |
7 . Technology seems to discourage slow, immersive reading. Reading on a screen, particularly a phone screen, tires your eyes and makes it harder for you to keep your place. So online writing tends to be more skimmable and list-like than print. The cognitive neuroscientist Mary Walt argued recently that this “new norm” of skim reading is producing “an invisible, game-changing transformation” in how readers process words. The neuronal circuit that sustains the brain’s capacity to read now favors the rapid absorption of information, rather than skills developed by deeper reading, like critical analysis.
We shouldn’t overplay this danger. All readers skim. Skimming is the skill we acquire as children as we learn to read more skillfully. From about the age of nine, our eyes start to bounce around the page, reading only about a quarter of the words properly, and filling in the gaps by inference. Nor is there anything new in these fears about declining attention spans. So far, the anxieties have proved to be false alarms. “Quite a few critics have been worried about attention span lately and see very short stories as signs of cultural decline,” the American author Selvin Brown wrote. “No one ever said that poems were evidence of short attention spans.”
And yet the Internet has certainly changed the way we read. For a start, it means that there is more to read, because more people than ever are writing. If you time travelled just a few decades into the past, you would wonder at how little writing was happening outside a classroom. And digital writing is meant for rapid release and response. An online article starts forming a comment string underneath as soon as it is published. This mode of writing and reading can be interactive and fun. But often it treats other people’s words as something to be quickly harvested as fodder to say something else. Everyone talks over the top of everyone else, desperate to be heard.
Perhaps we should slow down. Reading is constantly promoted as a social good and source of personal achievement. But this advocacy often emphasizes “enthusiastic”, “passionate” or “eager” reading, none of which adjectives suggest slow, quiet absorption.
To a slow reader, a piece of writing can only be fully understood by immersing oneself in the words and their slow comprehension of a line of thought. The slow reader is like a swimmer who stops counting the number of pool laps he has done and just enjoys how his body feels and moves in water.
The human need for this kind of deep reading is too tenacious for any new technology to destroy. We often assume that technological change can’t be stopped and happens in one direction, so that older media like “dead-tree” books are kicked out by newer, more virtual forms. In practice, older technologies can coexist with new ones. The Kindle has not killed off the printed book any more than the car killed off the bicycle. We still want to enjoy slowly-formed ideas and carefully-chosen words. Even in a fast-moving age, there is time for slow reading.
1. What is the author’s attitude towards Selvin Brown’s opinion?| A．Favorable. | B．Critical. | C．Doubtful. | D．Objective. |
| A．advocacy of passionate reading helps promote slow reading |
| B．digital writing leads to too much speaking and not enough reflection |
| C．the public should be aware of the impact skimming has on neuronal circuits |
| D．the number of Internet readers is declining due to the advances of technology |
| A．Comprehensive. | B．Complicated. | C．Determined. | D．Apparent. |
| A．Slow Reading Is Here to Stay |
| B．Digital Technology Prevents Slow Reading |
| C．Screen vs. Print: Which Requires Deep Reading? |
| D．Reading Is Not a Race: The Wonder of Deep Reading |
8 . Saying farewell to someone you love, even for a night, can be difficult, much less saying goodbye for a lifetime or forever in death. Juliet bid Romeo adieu (再见) for the evening with the words, “Parting is such sweet sorrow.” Sweet sorrow is an oxymoron. But this seeming contradiction is true in the context of relationships.
Relationships are based on feelings, emotions, and passion. Deep friendships and loving relationships are measured by the level of emotional attachment. Emotions intensify over time. People spend time with the people they like. The more one person likes another person, the closer the relationship becomes. Each person in the relationship receives an emotional benefit from knowing the other person.
Saying goodbye means separating from the people who make up a significant part of your emotional identity. Separation, even a temporary absence, from the people you have a deep emotional connection with can cause sorrow because you will no longer be able to enjoy their company.
The sweet side of saying goodbye is the emotional fulfillment of being in a close relationship. The time spent together is emotionally rewarding, especially if that person is seen as a soulmate. Humans are social beings. We seek the love and comfort of other people. Loneliness devastates the human condition and leads to sadness. Sad people will do anything they can to find fulfilling relationships. Likewise, happy people will do anything they can to maintain or enhance relationships. Herein lies the essential point of the emotional problem.
The more intense relationships become, the more devastating the emotional loss that is felt upon separation. The exhilaration of relationships cannot be truly measured without experiencing the overwhelming loss of a deep emotional connection.
Enjoy the company of the person you are with as long as you can; knowing the pain you will feel at the end of the relationship is the true measure of the relationship. If it doesn’t hurt to say goodbye, perhaps it wasn’t worth saying hello.
1. Which of the word group can create the same effect as “sweet sorrow”?| A．icy cold | B．clicking sound | C．deafening silence | D．endless speech |
| A．Saying goodbye is unavoidable in our daily life. |
| B．The companion of close friends can lessen sorrow. |
| C．A person’s identity is connected with relationship. |
| D．Separation is the sorrowful part of saying goodbye. |
| A．Making more communication with others. |
| B．Building deep emotional connections with others. |
| C．Comforting friends with love and intense feelings. |
| D．Being a thoughtful person by standing in others’ shoes. |
| A．Sweet sorrow is very common in close relationships. |
| B．The pain of separation is the measure of relationships. |
| C．Human beings are eager to get emotional fulfillment. |
| D．Happiness is meaningless without sadness to compare it. |
9 . Cancer-fighting genes in elephants could help tackle one of the biggest killers of people, according to research. Despite their large bodies and long lifespans, elephants are much less likely to die from cancer than humans, with death rates of less than 5 percent.
The paradox has puzzled scientists because more cells lead to greater replications (复制), which increases the possibility of the body failing to detect damaged DNA or a faulty cell that can result in tumors(肿瘤). Elephants live for almost as long as humans and weigh up to five tons.
However, a group of British and European scientists say they have taken a big step towards solving Peto’s paradox, named after the British epidemiologist Sir Richard Peto. Elephants, they say, carry a much larger more diverse group of tumor-fighting proteins.
The findings, published last week in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, raise hopes that the cancer fighting genes in elephants could be the key to tackling cancer, which kills about 167, 000 Britons yearly. Cells keep dividing throughout an organism’s life, each carrying the risk of producing a tumor. One of the body’s weapons is a gene called p53 known as the “guardian of the genome”, which hunts cells with faulty DNA. It encourages the cell to repair itself or self-destruct, keeping the cell from combining with others and producing tumors.
Humans have two versions of p53 but elephants have 40, said the researchers. Biochemical analysis and computer simulations also showed that an elephant’s p53 genes are structurally slightly different, providing a much larger anti-cancer toolkit. The researchers suspect that while faulty cells might be able to skirt two p53 versions, they cannot combine with other cells as easily in the face of dozens.
The findings will open the way for research on how p53 genes of elephants are activated and on medical treatment for humans.
1. What has puzzled scientists?| A．Few elephants end up dying from cancer. | B．Elephants live long and weigh enormously. |
| C．More cells lead to higher chances of tumors. | D．A larger body is less likely to discover faulty cells. |
| A．How many Britons die each year. | B．How the anti-cancer gene works. |
| C．How the research was carried out. | D．What the findings have been applied to. |
| A．Strengthen. | B．Detect. | C．Escaped. | D．Cure. |
| A．Scientists find elephants live longer than humans. | B．P53 genes play essential role in preventing cancer. |
| C．Elephant genes could be key to fighting cancer. | D．Groundbreaking treatment for cancer is on the way. |
10 . In July 1915, severely tortured by his poor health, James Murray, one of the early editors of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), defined one final word. After his 36 years’ dedication to the dictionary, his hard labour had taken a toll, knowing he would not see the project complete.
The poetic quality of Murray’s final days is one of the many memorable tales in The Dictionary People. Beginning in 1857, the OED was a huge crowdsourcing project - “the Wikipedia of the 19th century” - comprising 3, 000 people. The idea was to create a “descriptive” dictionary that tracked words’ use and meaning over time, unlike its “prescriptive”18th-century predecessor by Samuel Johnson, which told readers how to say and use words. Volunteers read widely, mailing in examples of how “rare, old-fashioned, new, strange” words were used. What is surprising about this fairly random method is that it worked.
The origin story of Sarah Ogilvie’s book is almost as improbable as that of the dictionary itself. Ms Ogilvie, a former scholar who served as an editor for the OED, went into the documents of Oxford University Press and came across an old notebook. It had belonged to Murray and contained the names and details of the dictionary volunteers, most of whom had previously been unknown. The Dictionary People is her work of detective scholarship, bringing the lives behind the names to readers.
Ms Ogilvie’s book is full of intriguing stories. The presentation of the book is unconventional, too, taking its structure from the work it describes. There are 26 alphabetical chapters, each celebrating a group of contributors ( memorably, “K” is for “kleptomaniac” people who desire to steal). This is a clever arrangement, though it sometimes means that broader issues emerge only in pieces.
Essentially, this is a story about ordinary people. It is concrete proof of those who, to cite dictionary-helper George Eliot, “lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs”.
1. What does the underlined expression “taken a toll” in paragraph 1 mean?| A．Paid off. |
| B．Proved in vain. |
| C．Worn out the passion. |
| D．Had a harmful effect. |
| A．It serves as an example of dictionary editing. |
| B．It provides precise directions for word usage. |
| C．It is a cooperative work of many volunteers. |
| D．It was edited with the help of Samuel Johnson. |
| A．The story behind Sarah Ogilvie’s book. |
| B．The detective methods of Sarah Ogilvie. |
| C．Legends of the early OED editors. |
| D．Murray’s role in editing the OED. |
| A．A review of a book. |
| B．A biography of an editor. |
| C．An essay on dictionary editing. |
| D．An introduction to a dictionary. |
