1 . A speech in a play by Shakespeare can be as short as a word or as long as several hundred. But what is the most common length?
Staying away from Shakespeare himself for a moment, we can take Ben Jonson’s play Volpone (1606) and count the number of speeches and their lengths. The most common length is four words. The next most common length is five words. Of the other 16 Jonson’s plays, 12 also have a speech length mode (模式) of four. It was not just Jonson; it was everybody. After 1602, four-word speeches were the most common kind across all the early modern plays that survived.
The London theatre industry took off in the late 1580s and early 1590s and we see a concentration of speech length modes of nine or ten. After 1602, the mode of four predominated. If we look just at Shakespeare’s plays, we find him doing what everyone else did: changing from favoring nine-word speeches to favouring four-word speeches around 1597-1602 and never going back.
Our suggestion is that the playwrights (剧作家) learned progressively from one another how to represent more closely the speech lengths of everyday exchanges and found that audiences responded well to these. They started to focus less on strict writing rules and more on the liveliness of everyday speech.
Another way to think of this is offered by the Russian literary scholar Boris Yarkho. He put forward an “index (指数) of liveliness” — the ratio of the number of speeches to the total number of lines in a play. He researched the works of the 17th-century French playwright Pierre Corneille and found that his comedies have a higher index because of their shorter speeches. The move from a mode of nine words to a mode of four represents the shortened average speech, and thus a move to livelier drama in Yarkho’s terms.
Nevertheless, we have no record of any dramatist or playgoer reflecting on the shortening of average speech lengths; our only knowledge of it comes from counting the words in the plays for ourselves.
1. What happened in English plays around the 1600s?| A．Their storylines were about famous writers. | B．They were influenced by a poetic writing style. |
| C．They featured different storytelling techniques. | D．Their speeches were generally shorter in length. |
| A．Remained unique. | B．Took the leading position. |
| C．Disappeared slowly. | D．Played an educational role. |
| A．To challenge traditional writing rules. | B．To stand out by applying their unique style. |
| C．To avoid being affected by social values. | D．To create realistic and acceptable speeches. |
| A．It saved actors the trouble of memorizing their lines. |
| B．It reflected people's preference for serious dialogues. |
| C．It helped present dramas in an active and pleasant way. |
| D．It made the characters express their feelings effectively. |
2 . Adaptations are the currency of the movie industry. It’s common to see that the latest hit movie or thrilling drama is inspired by a novel, video game, or perhaps even a comic book. The journey of the page being adapted to the screen has been covered a lot. But little is the process spoken about in reverse.
The most well-known version of a film making its way into the publishing industry is through the classic novelization. Movie novelizations went through a popular period before the Internet existed. Fans wanted to keep learning more about the fictional worlds they had stepped. into and needed to experience the story again in a new way. They couldn’t simply google it, nor could they immediately get the production on tape. Therefore, the novelization was a great solution.
Novelizations were usually written by authors who were not in the movie-making process. Instead, they would receive the most complete version of the screenplay to hand and would begin to write their adaptation based on that document. Although changes could be made, there were times where a novelization didn’t actually reflect what happened on the screen because scenes could be cut or replaced and the novelizations were left outdated. But there’s also an advantage. The novelizations were a small piece of movie-making history in their own right. Massive films like Star Wars, ET, Back To The Future, and Alien all received their own page adaptation. It was a completely unique experience before the films were even available to watch. For a time, they were everything for cinema lovers.
Regardless of the influences on the tales, movie adaptations provide a creative outlet for new concepts to be developed. That’s a wonderful idea. which should be encouraged for those movies that never got a chance to continue on their path.
1. What does the underlined phrase “in reverse” in paragraph 1 mean?
| A．Equally. | B．Oppositely. | C．Similarly. | D．Completely. |
| A．They took the place of productions on tape. |
| B．They were adapted from up-to-date novels. |
| C．They satisfied fans’ curiosity in a different way. |
| D．They created a fictional world for people to first step in. |
| A．Its choosing the wrong story. |
| B．Its missing the point of the screenplay. |
| C．Its cutting and replacing movie scenes. |
| D．Its failing to match the original movie. |
| A．Novel-based Movies. | B．Fast-developing Industries. |
| C．Film-to-book Adaptations. | D．Well-known novelizations. |
3 . Running is often tiring and a lot of hard work, but nothing beats the feeling you get after finishing a long workout around the track.
But while it’s long been believed that endorphins (内啡肽) —chemicals in the body that cause happiness—are behind the so-called “runner’s high”, a study suggested that there may be more to this phenomenon than we previously knew.
According to a recent study published by a group of scientists from several German universities, a group of chemicals called endocannabinoids (内源性大麻素) may actually be responsible for this familiar great feeling.
To test this theory, the scientists turned to mice. Both mice and humans release high levels of endorphins and endocannabinoids after exercise. After exercising on running wheels, the mice seemed happy and relaxed and displayed no signs of anxiety. But after being given a drug to block their endorphins, the mice’s behavior didn’t seem to change. However, when their endocannabinoids were blocked with a different drug, their runners’ high symptoms seemed to fade.
“The long-held notion of endorphins being responsible for the runner’s high is false. Endorphins are effective pain relievers, but only when it comes to the pain in your body and muscles you feel after working out,” Patrick Lucas Austin wrote on science blog Lifchacker.
Similar studies are yet to be carried out on humans, but it’s already known that exercise is a highly effective way to get rid of stress or anxiety. The UK’s National Health Service even prescribes (开药 方) exercise to patients who are suffering from depression. “Being depressed can leave you feeling low in energy, which might put you off being more active. Regular exercise can improve your mood if you have depression, and its especially useful for people with mild to moderate (中等的) depression,” it wrote on its website.
It seems like nothing can beat that feeling we get after a good workout, even if we don’t fully understand where it comes from. At least if we’re feeling down, we know that all we have to do is to put on our running shoes.
1. What did scientists from German universities recently discover?| A．Working out is a highly effective way to treat depression. |
| B．The runner’s high could be caused by endocannabinoids. |
| C．Endorphins may contribute to one’s high spirits after running. |
| D．The level of endorphins and endocannabinoids could affect one’s mood. |
| A．To find what reduces the runner’s high symptoms. |
| B．To see the specific symptoms of the runner’s high. |
| C．To identify what is responsible for the runner’s high. |
| D．To test what influences the level of endocannabinoids released. |
| A．Effect. | B．Goal. | C．Opinion. | D．Question |
| A．They can help ease depression symptoms. |
| B．They are the best way to treat depression. |
| C．They only work for those with serious depression. |
| D．They can help people completely recover from depression. |
4 . Just being intelligent (聪明的) doesn’t mean someone will be successful. And just because someone is less intelligent doesn’t mean that person will fail. That’s one take-home message from the work of people like Angela Duckworth, who works at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
Like many other scientists, Duckworth wondered what makes one person more successful than another. When digging deeper, Duckworth found that the people who performed best shared a quality independent of intelligence. They had what she now calls grit (毅力). Duckworth developed a set of questions to test it. She calls it her “grit scale (量表).”
In one study of people 25 and older, she found that as people age, they become more likely to stick with a project. She also found that git increases with education. People who finished college scored higher on the grit scale than people who quit before graduation. People who went to graduate school after college scored even higher.
She then did another study with college students. Duckworth wanted to see how intelligence and grit influenced performance in school. So she compared scores on college-entrance exams, which measure IQ, to school grades and scores on the grit scale. Students with higher grades tended to have more grit. That’s not surprising. Getting good grades takes both smarts and hard work.
But some people counter that this grit means success. Among those people is Marcus Crede, a professor at Iowa State University in Ames. He recently pooled the results of 88studies on grit. Together, those studies tested nearly 67, 000 people. And grit did not predict success, Crede found.
However, he thinks grit is very similar to someone’s ability to set goals, work toward them and think things through before acting.
“Study habits and skills, test anxiety and class attendance are far more strongly connected to school grades than grit,” Crede says. “We can teach students how to study well. We can help them with their test anxiety,” he adds. “I’m not sure we can do that with grit.”
1. What can we know from the first two paragraphs?| A．Intelligence determines success. | B．Not all smart people will succeed. |
| C．Duckworth redesigned a grit scale. | D．Grit decides how intelligent one might be. |
| A．Lifestyle. | B．Family. | C．Personality | D．Education. |
| A．Comment. | B．Disagree. | C．Recognize. | D．Warn. |
| A．Grit can hardly be taught. | B．Grit can be improved eastly |
| C．Grit is strongly related to test anxiety. | D．Grit has nothing to do with school grades. |
5 . This is the time of year when many gardeners are harvesting tomatoes. Gardening expert Jessica Damiano recently reported about the many pictures of strangely shaped tomatoes sent to her from fans of her gardening advice.
Not every tomato on an affected plant will be deformed (改变形状), however. What are the possibilities? Under the right conditions (temperatures that are too hot or even too cold), this could affect one or two tomatoes per plant, depending on where they are in the development process and what the (weather) conditions are, said Timothy McDermott, a professor at Ohio State University. The possibility of one of your tomatoes developing a locule oddity (怪异) is about one in a thousand, McDermott said.
And, when harvesting your crop, remember:
| A．select the good-looking ones. |
| B．Any tomato can grow an extra locule. |
| C．the funny-looking tomatoes taste just as good! |
| D．What causes the unusual appearance of tomatoes? |
| E．Unless otherwise diseased, they are perfectly good for eating. |
| F．She said people sometimes question if the tomatoes are okay to eat. |
| G．Provide shade for your plants when temperatures are predicted to remain above 32℃. |
6 . It’s often said that we human beings can dream in a foreign language. Could dreaming in a foreign language improve our memory? Does dreaming in a foreign language mean we are making progress in learning that language?
Before we look at multilingual (多语言) dreams, first we need to look at sleep. The connection between sleep and language can be applied to how we learn any language, including our native language. Even adults still learn about one new word every two days in their first language. But, if we are going to remember that new word better, what matters is that we need to connect it with what we have learned. And in order to do that, we “need to have some sleep”, says Gareth Gaskell, a professor at the University of York.
It’s during sleep that the integration (整合) of old and new knowledge happens. At might, one part of our brain — the hippocampus — takes whatever new information it receives during the day and passes it on to other parts of the brain to be stored. The role that dreams play in this night-time learning process is still being studied, but “it’s entirely possible that during multilingual dreams, the brain is trying to connect the two languages”, says Marc, a researcher at a university in Bern, Switzerland.
So having multilingual dreams could mean that our brain is trying to remember a new word or phrase. However, it could also have an emotional (情感) significance. Danuta, a professor of psycholinguistics at the University of Silesia in Poland, suggests that multilingual dreams can express “fears or wishes” around learning a foreign language, including the wish to be a local speaker or to be accepted within a certain community.
We clearly still have a lot to learn about multilingual dreams, but one thing seems certain: if you’re trying to learn a new language, you can sleep on it.
1. Why does the author mention questions in paragraph 1?| A．To compare different ideas. | B．To introduce the main topic. |
| C．To present different types of dreams. | D．To discuss the human language ability. |
| A．The other new words. | B．The native language. |
| C．The gained knowledge. | D．The speaking practice. |
| A．They may influence people’s sleep quality. | B．They can reflect language-learning feelings. |
| C．They are the best option to learn a language. | D．They help to clear up the useless information. |
| A．A novel. | B．A diary. | C．A guidebook. | D．A magazine. |
7 . If English means endless new words, difficult grammar and sometimes strange pronunciation, you are wrong. Haven’t you noticed that you have become smarter since you started to learn a language?
According to a new study by a British university, learning a second language can lead to an increase in your brain power. Researchers found that learning other languages changes grey matter density (灰质密度). This is the area of the brain which processes (加工) information. It is similar to the way that exercise builds muscles. The study also found the younger people learn a second language, the greater the effect is.
A team led by Dr. Andrea Mechelli, from University College London (UCL), took a group of Britons who only spoke English. They were compared with a group of “early bilinguals” who had learnt a second language before the age of five, as well as a number of later learners.
Scans showed that grey matter density in the brain was greater in bilinguals than in people without a second language. But the longer a person waited before mastering a new language, the smaller the difference was.
“Our findings suggest that the structure of the brain is changed by the experience of learning a second language,” said the scientists. It means that the change itself increases the ability to learn.
Professor Dylan Vaughan Jones of the University of Wales, has researched the link between bilingualism and maths skills. “Having two languages gives you two windows on the world and makes the brain more flexible.” he said. “You are actually going beyond language and have a better understanding of different ideas.”
The findings were matched in a study of native Italian speakers who had learnt English as a second language between the ages of two and thirty-four. Reading, writing, and comprehension were all tested. The results showed that the younger they started to learn, the better. “Studying a language means you get an entrance to another world,” explained the scientists.
1. Why does the writer mention “exercise” in the second paragraph?| A．To make people believe language learning is helpful for their health. |
| B．To suggest language learning is also a kind of physical labor. |
| C．To prove that one needs more resources when he/she is learning a language. |
| D．To tell us that learning a language can train your brain effectively. |
| A．The ability of learning a second language is changing all the time. |
| B．The earlier you start to learn a second language, the higher the grey matter density is. |
| C．The experience of learning a second language has a bad effect on brain. |
| D．There is no difference between a later second language learner and one without a second language. |
| A．early learning of a second language helps in studying other subjects |
| B．learning a second language is the same as studying maths |
| C．Italian is the best choice for you as a second language |
| D．you’d better choose the ages between 2 and 34 to learn a second language |
| A．Language learning is closely connected with maths study. |
| B．Man has a great ability of learning a second language. |
| C．Studying a foreign language can improve man’s ability to think. |
| D．The study done by the researchers from UCL is failed finally. |
8 . It was raining like nothing before when Ehdaa Bujeldain, an English teacher living with her family in the mountains of Derna in eastern Libya , heard a loud noise that sounded like an explosion (爆炸). Later they learned that a dam (大坝) in Derna had broken down under the pressure of running water. For the next four days, they had no power or internet, and it was only recently that they started to fully understand of the damage caused by the floods.
“Half of the city has been destroyed. My mom’s relatives, my friends, my coworkers ——they are all gone. Now we, the survivors, are just ghost s in shells,” says Bujeldain, whose sadness can be easily told from her blank expression.
Five days have passed since the terrible flooding in Derna, Libya’s Red Crescent organization estimated that 11,300 people have died, while the city’s mayor believes the number of deaths could be as high as 20,000.
Derna is a coastal city with a seasonal river called the Wadi Derna. Despite the abnormally heavy rain, people living near the river had little warning before the floodwaters came rushing in on that terrible morning. United Nations aid chief Martin Griffiths described the scale of the flood as “appalling” (令人惊骇的) and blamed the flood partly on sudden climate change.
Now international aid teams are arriving in Derna, but they face challenges due to damaged roads, lack of access to power, water, and fuel. Tarhoni, doctor of the rescue team, warns that the most difficult weeks lie ahead. “One disaster is done and there is another to come,” he says. “The thousands and thousands of people who lost everything these people now need comfort, they need company, they need psychological support.”
1. What do we know about Bujeldain’s family from paragraph 1?| A．The explosion they heard led to the destruction of the dam. |
| B．Bujeldain saved her family from the floods with her bravery. |
| C．Bujeldain immediately recognized the outbreak of the floods. |
| D．For several days, they didn’t fully realize the seriousness of the floods. |
| A．They run out of energy and are very tired. |
| B．They feel lucky as they are safe and sound. |
| C．They are completely saddened and shocked. |
| D．They are sorry for the loss of their homeland. |
| A．The absence of warning. | B．The extraordinary rainfall. |
| C．Unexpected climate change. | D．The damage to environment. |
| A．Addressing mental problems. |
| B．Providing immediate medical care. |
| C．Conducting climate change research. |
| D．Rebuilding roads and access to resources. |
9 . Tomatoes are common in daily life. Cathie Martin, a British scientist, has been working on developing purple tomatoes for years. Though the color is unusual, now this special kind of tomatoes, which has gained approval from the US government, has very high levels of antioxidants(抗氧化剂).
Antioxidants, also known as AOS, are found naturally in plants like blueberries and red cabbage. Scientists believe AOS may help prevent heart disease and help fight against diseases like diabetes. But tomatoes naturally only have a small amount of AOS in them. Martin wanted to see if she could create tomatoes with lots of AOS by changing the DNA of a tomato plant.
A plant developed from specially created DNA is known as a GMO. After adding two genes(基因) from a plant called snapdragon, Martin soon found her plants were producing small purple tomatoes with lots of AOS. Martin and other scientists further tested the tomatoes on mice that were likely to get cancer. The mice that were fed the purple tomatoes lived about 30% longer than those fed normal tomatoes. Though that’s good news, experiments on mice don’t always predict what effects on humans will be like. We need to see more experiments about it.
GMOs were first allowed in America in the late 1990s. But GMO products weren’t popular with customers. Many people were scared by the idea that the foods weren’t natural or safe. There’re still questions about the effects of GMO crops on the environment. However, scientists deny these claims.
Even so, many people still have concerns about them. Because of these concerns, most GMO products created over the last 20 years have focused on helping farmers rather than attracting customers.
Anyway, on September 7, 2022, the US approved the purple tomatoes, which is the first time it has approved a GMO plant designed to target human health.
1. What makes purple tomatoes really special?| A．Their medical value. | B．Their delicious flavor. |
| C．Their proper size. | D．Their pleasant color. |
| A．Supportive. | B．Doubtful. | C．Concerned. | D．Opposed. |
| A．The environment affects GMO foods. |
| B．The customers do not like GMO foods. |
| C．GMO products are used to help farmers. |
| D．Scientists think GMO products are safe. |
| A．Different DNA can benefit plant growth. |
| B．Tomatoes with changed DNA are approved. |
| C．Scientists are changing DNA of crops. |
| D．Human health depends on changed DNA. |
10 . When the company OpenAI developed its new artificial intelligence (AI) program, ChatGPT, in late 2022, educators began to worry. ChatGPT could create text that seemed like a human wrote it. How could teachers discover whether students were using language created by an AI chatbot to cheat on a writing task?
As a linguist who studies the effects of technology on how people read, write and think, I believe there are other more pressing concerns besides cheating. These include whether AI, more generally, threatens student writing skills, the value of writing as a process, and the importance of regarding writing as a tool for thinking.
As part of my research on the effects of AI on human writing, I surveyed young adults in the U.S. about some issues related to those effects. One participant said that at some point if you depend on predictive text, you’re going to lose your spelling abilities. Enter “Was Rom” into a Google search and you’re given a list of choices like “Was Rome built in a day”. Type “ple” into a text message and you’re offered “please” and “plenty”. These tools complete our sentences automatically, giving us little chance to think about our spelling, and continuously asking us to follow their suggestions.
Evan Selinger, a philosopher, worried that predictive texting reduces the power of writing as a form of mental activity and personal expression. “By encouraging us not to think too deeply about our words, predictive technology may change how we deal with each other,” Selinger wrote. “We give others more algorithms (算法) and less of ourselves. Automation can stop us thinking and the resulting text didn’t feel like mine anymore.”
I asked ChatGPT whether it was a threat to humans’ motivation to write. The bot responded: “There will always be a demand for creative, original content that requires the unique viewpoint of a human writer.” It continued: “Writing serves many purposes beyond just the creation of content, such as self-expression, communication, and personal growth, which can continue to encourage people to write even if certain types of writing can be automated.”
I was glad to find the program had seemingly admitted its limitations.
1. What is the author’s main concern about ChatGPT?| A．Whether it will lead to students’ cheating. |
| B．Whether it will shape students’ writing style. |
| C．How students will make use of it at school. |
| D．What effects it will have on students’ writing. |
| A．Give us more creative ideas. | B．Make us write like a machine. |
| C．Encourage us to think more deeply. | D．Make us tend to ignore grammatical mistakes. |
| A．Writing will become completely automated. | B．Robots will work with humans in writing. |
| C．Robot writing will become more creative. | D．Human writing will still matter a lot. |
| A．What impact will AI bring to writing? | B．What is the future of modern literature? |
| C．How to improve writing with AI’s help? | D．How to apply AI technology to education? |
