1 . Not Waving but Drowning
Stevie Smith (1902-1971)
Nobody heard him, the dead man, but still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought, and not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking, and now he's dead.
It must have been too cold for him, his heart gave away, they said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always （Still the dead one lay moaning）.
I was much too far out all my life, and not waving but drowning.
‘Not Waving But Drowning’ by Stevie Smith describes the emotional situation of a speaker whose true sufferings go unnoticed by all those around her. The poem begins with the speaker stating that there is a dead man who is not really dead. He is not dead because his story has more to offer to the world. His death came at the hands of apathy (冷漠). The speaker knows this to be true as she is struggling out in the ocean waters. She’s trying desperately to get someone’s attention but all the onlookers believe her to be “waving” rather than “drowning”. Then the speaker criticizes the emotionless reaction of the beach-goers by describing their words regarding the dead man. They see him, attempt to recall something about his life, and then declare him dead without ceremony They believe that it must have been “too cold” for him and that his heart gave out. The speaker continues to say that it has always been “too cold” for her. She has always been too far out to the sea to make people understand her, especially now when she needs understanding the most.
On the surface the poem is about a man who drowns because his movements are mistaken for friendly waving. Taken less literally, however, it speaks to the pain of being misunderstood and the frequent failure of communication between human beings, closely related to which is its potential suggestion of mental illness. That is, the poem can be taken as an extended metaphor (暗喻) for the specific pain of diseases like depression, which makes the man feel like “drowning” yet unable to effectively ask for help. It’s worth noting here that Smith herself struggled with depression for much of her life, and her own experience likely informed the poem. The man’s mistaken gestures, in this reading, indicate the divide between appearance and reality, between how people dealing with such illness are feeling inside and how the world sees them or how they present themselves to the world.
1. What’s the first paragraph mainly about?| A．An introduction of the poet. | B．The explanation of the poem’s content. |
| C．The appreciation of the poem's images. | D．An analysis of the poem's creation background. |
| A．Casually. | B．Definitely. | C．Formally. | D．Violently. |
| A．His inner desire for death. | B．His misleading gestures for help. |
| C．His being drowned for so long a time. | D．His failed communication with people around. |
| A．People usually believe what they see. |
| B．People can't turn a blind eye to whoever is in trouble. |
| C．People should re late to what those in need truly need. |
| D．People with mental illnesses must help themselves out. |
Food takeaway rider who finds respite from his daily work stress in writing poetry publishes his second collection in as many years, Chen Nan reports.
In 2019, Wang Jibing, a food delivery rider living and working in Kunshan, East China’s Jiangsu province, had an unpleasant experience due to the wrong address left by a customer. Wang searched three buildings and climbed 18 floors before he finally managed to deliver the food to the customer, who rudely scolded Wang for arriving late.
Wang was sad and frustrated. As a husband and father of three children, who shoulders the majority of the financial responsibility in his family, he had to swallow the insult.
“If I argued with him, he would give me negative feedback and the company would have imposed a fine on me. I had no choice but to apologize repeatedly,” recalls Wang, 54, who makes about 6,000 yuan ($823) a month by delivering food.
On his way home that day, Wang wrote a poem, Man in a Hurry, expressing his feelings.
“Wind is born from air in a hurry. A knife is forged from the wind in hurry… Man in a hurry has no four seasons. He only has one stop after another. His world is about the name of a place,” he wrote.
Since then, Wang has been writing poems inspired by his daily life, including a poem New Temple, which was conceived after he delivered food to construction workers repairing an old temple, and Forgive, based on his observation of a young couple fighting.
1. respite from his daily work stress2. shoulders the majority of the financial responsibility
3. swallow the insult
4. imposed a fine on
5. What does writing poetry mean to Wang Jibing?
6. What do you think Wang Jibing is like?
3 . Boredom has, surprisingly, become quite interesting to academics lately. In early May, London’s Boring Conference celebrated seven years of delighting in dullness. At this event, people flocked to talks about weather traffic jams, and vending-machine sounds, among other sleep-inducing topics.
What, exactly, is everyone studying? One widely accepted psychological definition of boredom is “the unpleasant experience of wanting, but being unable, to engage in satisfying activities.” But how can you measure a person’s boredom level and compare it with someone else’s?
In 1986, psychologists introduced the Boredom Proneness Scale, designed to measure an individual’s overall tendency to feel bored. By contrast, the Multidimensional State Boredom scale, developed in 2008, measures a person’s feelings of boredom in a given situation.
Boredom has been linked to behavior issues including inattentive driving mindless snacking excessive drinking, and addictive gambling. In fact, many of us would choose pain over boredom.
One team of psychologists discovered that two-thirds of men and a quarter of women would rather have electric shocks than sit alone with their thought for 15 minutes. Researching this phenomenon, another team asked volunteers to watch boring, sad, or neutral films, during which they could have electric shocks. The bored volunteers shocked themselves more and harder than the sad or neutral one did.
But boredom isn’t all bad. By encouraging self-reflection and daydreaming, it can encourage activity. An early study gave participants abundant time to complete problem-solving and word-association exercises. Once all the obvious answers were exhausted, participants gave more and more inventive answers to fight boredom. A British study took these findings one step further, asking subjects to complete a creative challenge (coming up with a list of alternative uses for a household item). One group of subjects did a boring activity first, while the others went straight to the creative task. Those whose boredom pumps had been prepared were more productive.
In our always-connected world, boredom may be a hard-to-define state, but it is a fertile one. Watch paint dry or water boil, or at least put away your smartphone for a while, and you might unlock your next big idea.
1. When are people likely to experience boredom, according to an accepted psychological definition?| A．When they can’t do what they want. |
| B．When they experience unpleasant things. |
| C．When they are engaged in some routines. |
| D．When they don’t enjoy what they are studying. |
| A．Great determination. | B．Mental health. |
| C．Huge pain. | D．Harmful conduct. |
| A．Volunteers prefer watching a boring movie to sitting alone deliberating. |
| B．Many volunteers are unable to resist boredom longer than fifteen minutes. |
| C．Male volunteers are more immune to the effects of boredom than females. |
| D．Mary volunteers choose to hurt themselves rather than endure boredom. |
| A．Unlock one’s smartphone. | B．Stop worrying and think big. |
| C．Spare some time to be bored. | D．Look around oneself for inspiration |
4 . 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. |
5 . Apps are becoming increasingly popular nowadays, and for good reasons. They can help you out in just about every area of your life, like keeping fit, communicating with friends and even learning a language.
Any seasoned language learner will tell you that the beauty of mastering a foreign language is the world which it opens up to you. This is a world of diverse sources of information, from newspapers and books to TV, radio, music and even real people. Would you limit yourself to one medium in your native language? Probably not, so why do so in your new language?
Establish your purpose and plan your habits
Do you want to be fluent in weeks or are you in it for the brain training? The good apps are designed to help you arrange your studies around your timetable.
Make it social
If I may speak sincerely, the combination of apps, the language school, Jim, evenings out, and a choice book or two proved extremely effective.
| A．I recommend it. |
| B．Learn from diverse sources. |
| C．Remember that an app is just a tool. |
| D．I don’t mean that you post your progress online. |
| E．I encourage you to use apps as often as you can. |
| F．The best apps adapt themselves according to your behavior. |
| G．However, you need to know how to use them properly to really benefit. |
6 . You've decided your child is spoiled(惯坏的), and you want to do something about it. Is it too late? Not necessarily. Here are four tips from an expert forgetting your child to be have well.
Don't overreact(反应过度) to crying. When children don't get what they want, their natural behaviour is to cry. If you react every time your child cries, you maybe denying(拒绝给予) him or her an important chance to learn something.
Prepare for a fight. At the beginning, children's demands will increase when they find out parents are not going to give them the new toys they want. When it happens, be careful not to give in just because the child shouts.
Stick with the program. Your child will probably be upset when you begin making changes.
| A．Rather, wait until the child calms down. |
| B．That's not necessarily a bad thing. |
| C．Start out making changes slowly. |
| D．Cut down on rewards. |
| E．Don't try to reason with him or her about the situation. |
| F．There is little doubt that things will get worse before they get better. |
| G．As a parent you need to know when to comfort a child and when to simply walk away. |
7 . When people think of a typical mineral mine, it’s probably underground. It’s unlikely that the picture of plants and soft greenery would cross their minds. Now, new explorations into phytomining (植物采矿) may change that viewpoint. Instead of traditionally mining metals from rocks, phytomining uses plants as an alternative source for them. Using plants to extract metals can have significant environmental benefits over rock mining.
Phytomining was first studied in 1983, but it hasn’t yet been adopted by the metals industry. In 2004, Indonesian soil scientist Tjoa took her research to Sorowako, a small town in Indonesia with one of the largest nickel (镍) mining areas, to look into plants that continued to live after years of mining. She brought samples back to her lab and found that these super plants were more than just surviving — they were growing.
The plants were absorbing and storing nickel from the soil. Large amounts of metals kill most plants, but these, known as hyper-accumulators (超富集植物), were learning to adapt. If these plants were storing metal, that meant science could find a way to extract the minerals for use and quite frankly, scientists easily did. When the shoots are harvested and burned, the metals are separated from the plant material in the ashes.
Tjoa returned to Sorowako and spent years searching for new hyper-accumulator species. After a plant is considered a possibility, there’s a simple test paper that turns pink when placed against the leaf of a hyper-accumulator plant. Two local Indonesian plants were found but there are many others still to be discovered.
Tjoa’s research caught the attention of Bijasksana, a professor of rock magnetism. Together they designed an experiment to understand magnetic susceptibility (磁化率) when plants accumulate more nickel. Their research led to the discovery of two new species of hyper-accumulators. Besides, this research serves as the basis for the potential that plants can give to the mining industry, offering great advantages to our ecosystem and toward building a more sustainable future.
1. Why did Tjoa go to Sorowako in 2004?| A．To work with the local government. | B．To study the plants surviving mining. |
| C．To improve the soil of the small town. | D．To research into underground mining. |
| A．They are rich in metals. | B．They are free of minerals. |
| C．They are very easy to discover. | D．They are too fragile to survive. |
| A．Helping more plants to survive. | B．Testing out the mining industry. |
| C．Improving the extraction efficiency. | D．Finding more hyper-accumulators. |
| A．New Creative Mining Way Meets Challenges. |
| B．Plants Can Act as Sources of Many Metals. |
| C．Scientists Can Extract Minerals from Plants. |
| D．Phytomining Replaces Traditional Mining. |
8 . Farmers and hunters are calling for an extension (延期) to the Victorian duck hunting season, saying certain species are doing great harm to crops and waterways and need to be controlled. This season runs from 8:00 am today and will end in 20 days, down from the usual 12 weeks, with a bag limit of five listed game ducks per day.
Wayne Shields grows leafy greens on the Mornington Peninsula and he said the decision to reduce the duck hunting season would take its toll on farmers. “The wood ducks are the ones causing all of the damage; the black ducks are no problem around here. The wood ducks come in at night and they just clean me out completely and they’ve done it a number of times over a number of years,” he said.
Mr. Shields and his wife, Natasha, run Peninsula Fresh Organics and he said there was nothing he could do to stop the invasion (入侵). “I nearly went broke a few years ago. Back then I was planting 10,000 lettuce (生菜) a week and they would quite happily eat 10,000 lettuce a week.” Due to the damage caused by the wood ducks, Mr. Shields said there should be a year-round open season on the wood ducks and farmers should be allowed to shoot birds.
Professor Richard Kingsford, Director of the Centre for Ecosystem Science at UNSW, said although the wood ducks ate crops, extending the duck season may not achieve what farmers wanted. He is calling on the government to invest more in research to address the threat certain species of waterbirds caused for some farmers, so other nonlethal (非致命的) ways to destroy the birds can be found.
1. How is this year’s duck hunting season different?| A．It is put off. | B．It is cut short. |
| C．It is about five species. | D．It takes place mainly on farms. |
| A．Make way for. | B．Keep an eye on. |
| C．Cause damage to. | D．Take control of. |
| A．The invasion of the black ducks. |
| B．The difficulty of keeping business. |
| C．The negative influence of the hunting season. |
| D．The daytime trouble caused by the wood ducks. |
| A．Scientifically managing them. |
| B．Encouraging hunters to catch them. |
| C．Extending the duck hunting season. |
| D．Using deadly ways to drive them away. |
9 . The Oxford dictionary defines the word “success” as “an accomplishment of an aim” and “attaining fame, social status (地位) or wealth”. Is this how we measure success in life? If you are rich, you’ll have people say “you have everything” or “you’re already successful in life” or a similar statement that means you have money and are well settled. There are many people who feel this way, while there are many who feel that success is not just having a lot of money.
The thing is, your concept of success is connected to your beliefs and values, and if your values tell you that success in life means money, then there is nothing that will change your mind. On the other hand, if your value system says that having money, stability, peace, happiness and contentment in your life are equally important, then you have an entirely different idea of success in life. There are a lot of people in this world that are wealthy. However, they are unhappy. There are a lot of people who do not make a lot of money, but are happy with what they have.
There are different kinds of people in the world, and each one has a different view on what being successful really is about. Here are a few common opinions about success.
●Success in life means having money.
●Success in life means winning games or competitions.
●Success in life means achieving your goal.
●Success in life means getting the job you wanted.
●Success in life means owning a nice house, a good car and having all the costly comforts life has to offer.
●Success in life means being famous.
●Success in life means having influence, power and control.
●Success in life means being free from insecurities, fears and wants.
The one thing that is common to the statements above is that they include accomplishment, attainment and fulfillment (履行). Another thing is that it’s something you yearn for or that gives you an unspoken advantage over others.
1. Why is the definition of success in the Oxford dictionary mentioned in Paragraph 1?| A．To make practical suggestions. |
| B．To lead in the topic for discussion. |
| C．To clarify the exact meaning of success. |
| D．To compare different ideas about success. |
| A．One’s value system matters a lot. |
| B．One should be grateful for what he has. |
| C．Success determines one’s beliefs and values. |
| D．Happy people are more likely to obtain success. |
| A．Choose. | B．Lack. | C．Desire. | D．Achieve. |
| A．What is the concept of success? |
| B．How can success be achieved in life? |
| C．Can success really bring money in life? |
| D．Does success in life mean having money? |
10 . Kindness is seen as a true strength, and the success of civilizations relies on kindness. As parents and teachers, we also teach children from a young age to “be kind to one another” and “treat others the way you want to be treated.”
In addition to being helpful to our interpersonal relationships, research has shown that kindness can even contribute to our well-being. According to the Mayo Clinic, when we perform acts of kindness, the pleasure center in our brain is activated, releasing the stress-reducing hormone (激素). Individuals who volunteer on a regular basis report greater life satisfaction. And what is even greater is that kindness rarely stops with just one person. There can be a positive contagion (扩散) effect, where other people are motivated to be nice if they receive a random act of kindness. The question then arises: Could kindness be harmful to us when it has such clear benefits? Let’s think about this in the workplace or in an organization.
You are the new person on the team and you want to be well-liked and respected by your colleagues. You are a kind person and tell your team, “Let me know how I can help you; I’m always available to help.” Though you may truly mean this, there are unfortunately people in this world who can see your kindness as a weakness. This can lead to you being taken advantage of by others.
Let’s fast forward a year. You have been in your position now for one year, and you are working with the same team. You are noticing that your colleagues continue asking for your help over and over again. In fact, the only time they communicate with you is when they need something. You have been so helpful to your colleagues and there has rarely been any return from them.
In a very broad sense, it is advantageous to be kind to others, and your kind acts will be appreciated and, perhaps, paid forward. However, you need to be willing to say “no”. Recognize when your plate is already too full. When people ask you a favor, assess if you have the time, energy, and attention to give to them. To truly be kind, sometimes you need to be more comfortable saying “no” to others and saying “yes” to yourself.
1. What has the Mayo Clinic found concerning kindness?| A．It does good to our mind. |
| B．It reduces hormone levels. |
| C．It adds years to people’s life. |
| D．It leads to the success of civilizations. |
| A．Grateful. | B．Bored. | C．Disappointed. | D．Energetic. |
| A．When you’re too full to eat anything. |
| B．When your kind acts get appreciated. |
| C．When you should ask others a favor. |
| D．When you’re physically and mentally tired. |
| A．Your kindness counts for your well-being! |
| B．Are we tiring ourselves with kindness? |
| C．Why are random acts of kindness important? |
| D．Never underestimate the power of kindness at work! |
