1 . Almost every day, we learn of disasters of one form or another through the media. These include not just major disasters that affect large areas for a long time. A severe storm, an electric power breakdown, or a house fire can bring a personal disaster to an individual. This brochure aims to help you develop your personal preparedness plan.
I Stockpiling food and drink● Drinking is more important than eating. Keep about 14 liters of liquid per person in stock for each week. ● No experiments. Your supplies should mainly consist of food and drink that you normally have. ● Ensure that your supplies can be stored for long periods of time without refrigeration and that most of them can be eaten cold. Ⅱ Emergency pack● The aim of a disaster supplies kit should be to help you to cope with the possibility of having to exist for a few days outside of your house. Don't take more for each family member than could be conveniently contained within the confines of a rucksack (帆布背包). A rucksack is more practical than a suitcase, as it allows you to have both hands free. ● The emergency rucksack should contain these items: —First aid materials, personal medication —Sleeping bag or blanket —Hygiene products for a couple of days Ⅲ Electric power breakdown● Keep a supply of torches and candles, as well as spare batteries, matches or lighters in the house. Remember that batteries do not last indefinitely. Regularly use the batteries up and replace them. ● You can prepare smaller meals on a camping stove, one that can be operated through the use of charcoal (木炭) or gas. Ⅳ Keep up-to-date in an emergencyFloods or heavy snowfalls may lead to parts of the population getting cut off from the outside world. Information and warnings are important for survival. Those who are trapped can often only be reached by radio, television or the Internet. However, television and the Internet only work when there is electric power, which could fail. This leaves just the radio as the main warning device. Ⅴ About usThe Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (BBK) was established in2004 as a central organizational unit for civil security in Germany. The BBK is your reliable partner for emergency preparedness and self-help. You can find further information on our website. |
1. The brochure is provided in order to _______.
| A．inform people about recent disasters |
| B．provide tips on how to survive in a disaster |
| C．encourage people to stockpile food and drink on a regular basis |
| D．promote the Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance |
| A．A laptop. | B．A television. | C．A mobile phone. | D．A battery-powered radio. |
| A．a charity that collects donations for disaster victims |
| B．a non-profit organization that provides disaster relief globally |
| C．an international organization that coordinates disaster response efforts |
| D．a government agency that prepares people for emergencies in Germany |
2 . Creativity is commonly thought of as a personality trait that resides within the individual. We count on creative people to produce the songs, movies, and books we love, to invent the new gadgets that can change our lives, and to discover the new scientific theories and philosophies that can change the way we view the world. Over the past several years, however, social psychologists have discovered that creativity is not only a characteristic of the individual, but may also change depending on the situation and context. The question, of course, is what those situations are: what makes us more creative at times and less creative at others?
One answer is psychological distance. According to the Construal Level Theory (CLT) of psychological distance, anything that we do not experience as occurring now, here, and to ourselves falls into the “psychologically distant” category. It's also possible to induce a state of “psychological distance” simply by changing the way we think about a particular problem, such as attempting to take another person’s perspective, or by thinking of the question as if it were unreal and unlikely. In this new paper, by Lile Jia and colleagues at Indiana University, scientists have demonstrated that increasing psychological distance so that a problem feels farther away can actually increase creativity.
Why does psychological distance increase creativity? According to CLT, psychological distance affects the way we mentally represent things, so that distant things are represented in a relatively abstract way while psychologically near things seem more concrete. Consider, for instance, a corn plant. A concrete representation would refer to the shape, color, taste, and smell of the plant, and connect the item to its most common use—a food product. An abstract representation, on the other hand, might refer to the corn plant as a source of energy or as a fast-growing plant. These more abstract thoughts might lead us to contemplate other, less common uses for corn, such as a source for ethanol, or to use the plant to create mazes for children. What this example demonstrates is how abstract thinking makes it easier for people to form surprising connections between seemingly unrelated concepts, such as fast-growing plants (corn) and fuel for cars (ethanol) .
In this most recent study, Jia examined the effect of spatial distance on creativity. Participants performed a creative generation task, in which they were asked to list as many different modes of transportation as possible. This task was introduced as having been developed either by Indiana University students studying in Greece (distant condition) or by Indiana University students studying in Indiana (near condition) . As predicated, participants in the distant condition generated more numerous and original modes of transportation than participants in the near condition.
1. What can we learn about psychological distance?| A．It brings more abstract concepts into our mind. |
| B．It builds uncommon connections in our mind. |
| C．It enables us to know more uses of common things. |
| D．It makes problems easier to be solved. |
| A．Distant condition is related to people’s creative ability. |
| B．It makes students in Indiana list more modes of transportation. |
| C．It enables people to generate more abstract ideas. |
| D．It helps one to take another person’s perspective. |
| A．Formation of Abstract Thoughts | B．Formation of Connections among Concepts |
| C．Ways to Create Psychological Distance | D．An Easy Approach to Promote Creativity |
3 . We now live in an age of instant images and emoji, when 10,000 copies of a picture can be spread around the world in seconds by sliding a finger half an inch across a phone screen. This would have been unbelievable and unimaginable 20 years ago. But it is in the world of hand-copied manuscripts (手稿) 1,000 years old or more that the digital revolution has had some of its most profound and obvious beneficial effects. What may have taken three years to write out can today be printed out in three seconds. There are now tens of thousands of once unique documents which have been digitized and placed online for anyone to access all around the world, and this is a vast, democratizing wonder.
Take the Parker Library in Cambridge, which contains the scholarly works during the Reformation (宗教改革时期) and collected by Matthew Parker. It has been digitized in a project with Stanford University, and in 2018 the site was opened to all comers to browse after 10 years behind scholarly paywalls. What is astonishing is not just the texts themselves, but the pictures: the illuminations (插图) on some of the manuscripts show off the fertility and vividness of the medieval imagination.
Digitized collections of these sorts cannot entirely substitute for real libraries. To touch with your own hand a parchment (羊皮纸) from a medieval monk is an experience no screen can offer, but it is one which must always be restricted to a lucky few. There are some things so old and fragile that even being looked at may damage them. The caves at Lascaux had to be closed to protect the paintings from the breath of tourists and replaced by a virtual display.
Yet in some ways these copies are better than the originals. Reproductions of a high enough quality make obvious de tail that’s invisible to the native eye. What’s more, digital collections can be gathered on one screen from across the globe. The International Dunhuang Project reunites on screen tens of thousands of Buddhist scrolls and artifacts in western China. What is possible with this one collection should fairly soon be possible with all the scholarly digitized manuscripts of the world. The hope is to bring them under one system of classification so that they can quickly be searched and sorted no matter where they came from and where they now are stored.
The world may always prefer cat gifs to ancient manuscripts, but the translation from parchment to pixels (像素) reminds us of the humanistic optimism with which the web came into the world, and shows that much of it was not misplaced at all.
1. By mentioning the Parker Library, the author intends to _______.| A．condemn the behavior of Matthew Parker as immoral |
| B．demonstrate the worth and value of its distinctive documents |
| C．describe the measures and effects of digitizing the manuscripts |
| D．display the fertility and vividness of the medieval imagination |
| A．prevent the paintings from being damaged | B．carry on the restoration of the paintings |
| C．show the wonder effect of virtual display | D．reduce the number of tourists |
| A．collecting much more valuable materials | B．quickly finding and sorting documents |
| C．consulting materials from all over the world | D．saving time and energy of searching documents |
| A．The Impact of Digital Revolution Era |
| B．The New Era of Traditional Manuscripts |
| C．Accessibility of Old Manuscripts All Around the World |
| D．Digital Revolution Brings Manuscripts To life |
4 . Everyone carries a shield（屏障）. Our shields protect what we don’t want others to see, from our embarrassing secrets to our unpredictable feelings.
Since shields encourage us to hide negative parts of ourselves, we can start to believe that we aren’t worth showing. We might fear how our friends will judge our struggles or how our families will view our ambitions.
However, we have to remember that we aren’t perfect, nor should we expect to be. We need to find and cure the wounds underneath our shields, but that means we have to let down our guard. We may even have problems we haven’t admitted to ourselves.
Knowing this takes bravery and patience, so it’ll be hard.
| A．This is not a bad thing. |
| B．We need to be understood. |
| C．We shouldn’t expect to do any of it without help. |
| D．In short, we have the power to change this phenomenon. |
| E．Hence we decide to hide ourselves underneath our masks. |
| F．If you can’t trust your partner, it won’t be easy to let them in. |
| G．Maybe we’re hiding something from a friend or scared to admit an error. |
5 . As most of you know, the first year of university is always the hardest to adapt to. The addition of taking care of yourself, making new friends, learning how to get around campus, and school can sometimes be too much to bear.
I would like to attend medical school after my four-year undergraduate. It is well-known that medical schools are very competitive and require extremely high marks. I had always known that I was meant for medical school and worked hard all throughout high school. I engaged in life sciences and knew that I wanted to do a double major in neuroscience (神经科学) and psychology, but of course, I wasn’t so fond of the preconditions to get to that stage. I had to take math and physics in my first year.
So after the choke I call the first term, I looked back on my grades and found that I had never seen numbers like this before. I really didn’t even think they were possible. I had heard that medical schools liked to see an upward trend, so I was discouraged and hurt, but tried not to think about it. Having your grades taken away from you when that was all you had was a huge thing I had to overcome — I defined my worth by how “smart” I was and getting past that mindset was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
After I saw my grades, I realized the mistake I made taking a bunch of unnecessarily challenging courses. At the end of my second term, my grades weren’t as high as I wanted them to be, but I accepted it. I knew that there were reasons for the differences between individuals, but I still saw a huge improvement in my marks from the first term. I had enjoyed my time in my second term and even though I wasn’t where I wanted to be, it had nothing to do with my place in the university. It was very eye-opening and taught me what I needed to do in order to achieve MY best — not what everyone else considered to be the best.
I’m now taking a summer school course and my marks are incredibly better than what I was getting during my first year of school. Though I had a rough start, I’m sure my lessons and new attitude will carry me much farther than just to medical school.
1. The author wanted to take a double major because she ______.| A．liked the two majors better |
| B．was preparing herself for her goal |
| C．tried to prove her academic ability |
| D．decided to challenge herself in university |
| A．Satisfied. | B．Surprised. | C．Calm. | D．Angry. |
| A．accepted the grades and did nothing |
| B．tried to learn more necessary courses |
| C．viewed learning from a different angle |
| D．focused on learning medical knowledge |
| A．A fresh start leads to more challenges. |
| B．Hard work will pay off sooner or later. |
| C．Stick to your plan and you will succeed. |
| D．Proper adjustment will take you farther. |
6 . The only words you need to say after receiving a compliment (赞美) are “thank you”. But you know that's easier said than done.
There are many reasons why you have a hard time accepting compliments.
You have to listen carefully to compliments. It's not always obvious if you're being complimented for something only others can observe. If you are five foot six inches tall, and weigh seventy pounds, I would say you are slim. But if you are comparing yourself to someone who is shorter, and weighs five pounds less than you, you might call yourself plump. In this extreme example, the outside perspective is more accurate than the internal one.
If you're still struggling to accept a compliment, you don't just have to take someone at their word. It can be hard to accept an opinion when it's the opposite of yours, so call in reinforcements. Ask someone else what they think.
| A．They will be the tie breaker. |
| B．You can check with someone else instead. |
| C．The causes are complicated but the path to accepting compliments is simpler. |
| D．How honest are you with your friends and family when they ask for your opinion? |
| E．When someone is trying to pay you a compliment, they are speaking subjectively. |
| F．When someone pays you a compliment, they are speaking about something that is observable. |
| G．Similarly, when I call you smart or funny, I'm commenting based on my definition of smart or funny, that's how I see you. |
“I know I should do it, but exercising makes me feel miserable. I’m out of breath, hot and sweaty, and it just hurts. ” Does this sound familiar? You’re not alone.
About 97 percent of us think that getting enough exercise is important for health. One study of 3, 500 adults who used a fitness tracker found that less than 4 percent actually met the goal of 150 minutes of moderate activity per week.
Aside from health, what are your motivations for exercising? A 2024 study of 489 young Spanish adults found that men exercise to improve their self-image, while women are more likely to be motivated by weight loss or reducing body fat. The findings suggest that there’s a relationship between intrinsic motivation and level of physical activity, but how do you get intrinsically motivated if exercise makes you feel miserable?
Here are a few suggestions to help you overcome your bad feelings about exercise:
First, recognize that most habitual exercisers experience some discomfort with their workout. The trick for you is to limit the discomfort while exercising. Your exercise should be physically challenging, but if you’re really struggling, dial it down. Ease up, go slower, use less weight, take a break, or stop sooner; whatever it takes so that you can feel the effort you’re making but you’re not overwhelmed by it. You’re not being a quitter as long as you complete the exercise and do it again the next time.
Second, pair exercise with something that you enjoy. Get earbuds so you can listen to music or a favorite podcast. You can also give yourself a reward for finishing the workout. For example, you could only watch a favorite program on days that you’ve exercised.
Third, do the activity with a friend. If you set a routine exercise schedule with your friend, you’ll go, even if you don’t feel like doing so. You wouldn’t want to disappoint your friend, would you?
Maybe instead of hating exercise, you can dislike it less and take pride in doing it and enjoying its effects.
1. How many of the people involved in the study actually get enough exercise?2. What do the findings of 2024 study suggest?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
Even the most habitual exercisers experience some discomfort with their workout, so the more physically challenging, the more effective your exercise would be.
4. What other ways can make you dislike exercise less? Why? (In about 40 words)
8 . Women experience a “gender tenure gap”, lasting in CEO roles at publicly listed companies for shorter periods than men, according to new research which may support the idea that female leaders are subject to a “ glass cliff ” where they are set up to fail.
The concept of the glass cliff is that women are more likely to be appointed as leaders when an organization is in a time of crisis, so that their position is seen as more precarious than male counterparts.
Researchers at the University of Exeter found in 2005 that women were more likely to be appointed as board members after a company’s share price had performed badly. Professor Ryan told the Observer that the Russell Reynolds analysis was “ robust and added to the body of work in this area”.
“If women are more likely to take on leadership roles in times of crisis, then it follows that their time in office is likely to be stressful, more heavily scrutinised and shorter in tenure. This reduced tenure could be for a number of reasons—because there is often higher turnover in times of crisis, because they are judged as not performing well, even though poor performance was in train before their appointment, or because when things start to turn around, men come back into leadership roles.” she said.
Chief executive roles have a very low turnover, she said, which makes progress harder. “I think men can enjoy a greater followership—support within the organization. They can suffer big setbacks and rise again. Women who have been CEOs tend to go off to an alternative career.
However, she said that there was cause for optimism. The number of women on FTSE 350 boards is now 41%, up from 9.5% in 2011, and appointing women is “now the norm”. Russell Reynolds also found in a survey of 1,500 leaders worldwide that there were no significant differences in how women and men were perceived by the people who worked for them, showing that they were equally effective as leaders, although women were seen as being better at coaching and development.
1. What does the underlined word “precarious” probably mean?| A．Dangerous. |
| B．Profitable. |
| C．Essential. |
| D．Available. |
| A．“gender tenure gap” can be found in the majority of companies. |
| B．Male leaders are less likely to be appointed as board members. |
| C．Woman leaders in times of crisis tend to be shorter in tenure. |
| D．Female leaders are generally not performing well during their appointment. |
| A．Women leaders are destined to eliminate glass cliff in the future. |
| B．Nowadays woman leaders differ hugely from man leaders in followership. |
| C．Man leaders are superior to woman leaders in every aspect. |
| D．Woman leaders are no less competent than man counterparts. |
Children learn best when the significant adults in their lives—parents, teachers, and other family and community members—work together to encourage and support them. This basic fact should be a guiding principle as we think about how schools should be organized and how children should be taught. Schools alone cannot address all of a child’s developmental needs: the meaningful involvement of parents and support from the community are essential.
The need for a strong partnership between schools and families to educate children may seem like common sense. In simpler times, this relationship was natural and easy to maintain. Teachers and parents were often neighbors and found many occasions to discuss a child’s progress. Children heard the same messages from teachers and parents and understood that they were expected to uphold the same standards at home and at school.
As society has become more complex and demanding, though, these relationships have all too often fallen by the wayside. Neither educators nor parents have enough time to get to know one another and establish working relationships on behalf of children. In many communities, parents are discouraged from spending time in classrooms and educators are expected to consult with family members only when a child is in trouble. The result, in too many cases, is misunderstanding, mistrust, and a lack of respect, so that when a child falls behind, teachers blame the parents and parents blame the teachers.
At the same time，our society has created artificial distinctions （区别）of the roles that parents and teachers should play in a young person’s development. We tend to think that schools should stick to teaching academics and that home is the place where children’s moral and emotional development should take place.
Yet children don’t stop learning about values and relationships when they enter a classroom, nor do they cease learning academics— and attitudes about learning —when they are at home or elsewhere in their community.
These days, it can take extraordinary efforts to build strong relationships between families and educators. Schools have to reach out to families, making them feel welcome as full partners in the educational process. Families, in turn, have to make a commitment of time and energy to support their children both at home and at school.
1. What is important when it comes to children’s education?2. Why is it hard for parents and teachers to build a strong partnership nowadays?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
Families and schools should join hands to support students’ development, and they should be aware that there is a clear division of their responsibilities in the education of children.
4. What are your suggestions on how to get parents involved in school affairs?
10 . Lying is something that most of us are expert at. We lie at ease, in ways big and small, to strangers, co-workers, friends, and loved ones. Our capacity for dishonesty is as fundamental to us as our need to trust others, which ironically makes us terrible at detecting lies. Being deceitful is woven into our very fabric, so much so that it would be truthful to say that to lie is human.
The universality of lying was first documented systematically by Bella DePaulo, a social psychologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Two decades ago DePaulo and her colleagues asked 147 adults to write down for a week every instance they tried to mislead someone. The researchers found that the subjects lied on average one or two times a day. Most of these untruths were not offensive, intended to hide one’s inadequacies or to protect the feelings of others. Some lies were excuses—one subject blamed the failure to take out the garbage on not knowing where it needed to go. Yet other lies—such as a claim of being a diplomat’s son—were aimed at presenting a false image. While these were minor crimes, a later study by DePaulo and other colleagues involving a similar sample indicated that most people have, at some point, told one or more “serious lies”—making false claims on a college application, for example.
That human beings should universally possess a talent for deceiving one another shouldn’t surprise us. Researchers speculate that lying as a behavior arose not long after the emergence of language. The ability to control others without using physical force likely gave an advantage in the competition for resources and mates, similar to the evolution of deceptive strategies in the animal kingdom, such as camouflage (伪装).“Lying is so easy compared to other ways of gaining power,” notes Sissela Bok, an ethicist at Harvard University who’s one of the most prominent thinkers on the subject. “It’s much easier to lie in order to get somebody’s money or wealth than to hit them over the head or rob a bank.”
As lying has come to be recognized as a deeply-rooted human trait, social science researchers and neuro-scientists have sought to explain the nature and roots of the behavior. Researchers are learning that we tend to believe some lies even when they’re obviously contradicted by clear evidence. These insights suggest that our tendency to deceive others and our weakness to be deceived, are especially consequential in the age of social media. Our ability to separate truth from lies is under unprecedented threat.
1. What can we learn about the study by Bella DePaulo and her colleagues?| A．They made adults write the instances where they misled someone one or two times a day. |
| B．The subjects tended to lie to hide their own feelings and present a different image. |
| C．Lying was first documented systematically by Bella DePaulo and her colleagues. |
| D．Bella DePaulo and her colleagues made more than one study to show most people lied. |
| A．meaningless | B．useless | C．harmless | D．endless |
| A．most human beings possess a talent for deceiving because of the emergence of language |
| B．animals also use deceptive strategies in order to gain an advantage in the competition |
| C．human beings universally have both talents for deceiving others and detecting lies |
| D．social media will be able to help human beings to tell truth from lies in the future |
| A．A Surprising Discovery of Lies |
| B．Lying: A Deeply-rooted Human Trait |
| C．The Nature and Root of Deception |
| D．On Human Weakness in Spotting Lies |
