1 . British visitor Joel Bennett expressed his appreciation to a restaurant owner, a lady in her 60s, for a good meal during his first trip in South Korea. Bennett, at age 23, said “gomawo” to the owner, which means “thanks” in English.    1     However, he hadn’t realized there were so many ways to say “thank you” and that he used a casual version that was considered rude to the owner.

In South Korean culture, as a person several decades younger than the owner, Bennett was expected to have used the honorific forms of the language. Korean is said to have one of the most complicated linguistic systems in the world.    2     Knowing these, you may avoid falling into Bennett’s situation.

    3     Age is not just a number here. It’s a key factor that people use to determine which form of speech style is suitable for them. So inquiring about ages doesn’t mean rudeness in South Korea. Because even the difference of one year means the different ways people should behave.

To fully understand this, you need to learn the lasting impact of the ancient culture of South Korea. Its ancient social order is centered on harmony, which is often achieved by treating the elderly with respect and looking after the young with kindness.    4       

While age plays a big part in determining speech style, it’s not a hard and fast rule.    5     Whether they are films, music, or TV shows, they make the principles easier to teach and learn.

A．He then thought he was polite to say so.

B．Nowadays, the Korean wave has swept many countries.

C．And this tradition has guided the country for over 500 years.

D．It is no surprise to be asked to reveal your age in South Korea.

E．A funny fact is that it’s difficult not only for guests but also hosts.

F．To find the right speech style, the first step is always to be patient.

G．It requires assessing people’s age, social status and level of closeness.

2 . Many people, especially the elderly, suffer from abnormal sleep. In particular, the deep sleep phases become shorter and shallower with age.

Researchers have shown that the brain waves characterizing deep sleep, so-called slow waves, can be improved by playing precisely timed sounds through earphones while sleeping. While this works well in the laboratory under controlled conditions, there has been no at-home solution that can be used for a time longer than just one night.

As part of the SleepLoop project, researchers have developed a mobile system that can be used at home and aims to promote deep sleep through auditory(听觉的) brain stimulation.

The SleepLoop system consists of a headband that is put on at bedtime and worn throughout the night. This headband contains electrodes(电极) and a microchip that can constantly measure the brain activity of the sleeping person. As soon as the sleeping person shows slow waves in the brain activity, the system will set off a short auditory signal. This helps synchronize(使……同步) the neuronal cells and enhance the slow waves. What makes the solution unique is that the sleeping person is not consciously aware of this sound during deep sleep.

It’s the first time that the researchers, led by Caroline Lustenberger, have conducted a clinical study with this device. The study involved equipping participants, between 60 and 80 years old, with the SleepLoop system, which they were required to operate in their own homes. The system is designed to function independently even for users with little technical experience. “This worked very well. We had surprisingly little data loss and the participants rated the device as user-friendly,” says Lustenberger.

The participants wore the device every night for a total of four weeks. The results showed it was indeed possible to enhance the slow waves through auditory signals during deep sleep in most participants. However, individual differences were considerable, which can be used to better predict how a given individual will respond to the auditory stimulus. The company ToSoo AG is currently working on that so that it can be competitive once it comes onto the clinical market. It’s already clear that it’ll not be freely available, but only via a doctor’s prescription. “Use of the device must be medically indicated,” a researcher says.

1. What did researchers of the SleepLoop project try to work out?

A．How to avoid deep sleep phases decreasing with age.

B．How to distinguish slow waves from other brain waves.

C．How to accurately create home sleep conditions in the laboratory.

D．How to continuously improve deep sleep by playing sounds at home.

2. What is the fourth paragraph mainly about?

A．The working principle of the SleepLoop system.

B．The advantages of the Sleep Loop system.

C．The brain activity during deep sleep.

D．The features of brain waves.

3. What can we learn about the clinical study?

A．It lasted longer than previous clinical studies.

B．It proves the new device is easy to operate.

C．It collected little data due to the participants’ advanced ages.

D．It required the participants to master basic technical knowledge.

4. What task will Tosoo AG tackle before making the device enter the clinical market?

A．Attracting more investments.

B．Reducing the cost of the device.

C．Perfecting the device’s performance.

D．Getting medical officials’ permission.

3 . New research into a little-known text written in ancient Greek shows that “stressed poetry”, the ancestor of all modern poetry and song, was already in use in the 2nd century CE, 300 years earlier than previously thought. It has been found sculpted on twenty precious stones and as a graffito (雕画) in Cartagena, Spain.

In its shortest version, the nameless four-line poem reads “They say what they like; let them say it; I dont care.” Other versions extend with “Go on, love me; it does you good.” The poem, unparalleled (绝无仅有的) so far in the classical world, consists of lines of 4 syllables (音节), with a strong accent on the first and a weaker on the third. This allows it to come into the rhythms of numerous pop and rock songs. So it became popular across the eastern Roman Empire and survives.

By comparing all of the known examples for the first time, Cambridges Professor Tim Whitmarsh noticed that the poem used a different form of rhythm to that usually found in ancient Greek poetry. As well as showing signs of the long and short syllables characteristic of traditional “quantitative” poem, this text employed stressed and unstressed syllables. The new study, published in The Cambridge Classical Journal, also suggests that this poem could represent a “missing link” between the lost world of ancient Mediterranean oral poetry and song, and the more modern forms that we know today. A lot of popular poetry in ancient Greek takes a similar form to traditional high poetics. This poem, on the other hand, points to a distinct and rich culture, primarily oral.

1. Where was the “stressed poetry” discovered?

A．In Greece.	B．In Spain.
C．In Britain.	D．In Mediterranean.

2. What does “it” in paragraph 2 refer to?

A．A syllable.	B．A strong accent.
C．The four-line poem.	D．The content of the poem.

3. What can be learned from the last paragraph?

A．A missing link between poems was found finally.

B．A lot of popular poetry in ancient Greek was then popular in the world.

C．The stressed and unstressed syllables distinguished the poem from others.

D．The ancient Mediterranean oral poetry and song was older than the poem.

4. Whats the best title for the text?

A．Ancient Greek “pop culture” discovery rewrites the history of poetry and song

B．The unparalleled poem made ancient Greek culture more attractive

C．Ancient Greek poetry lay the foundation of modern culture

D．Four syllables are still popular in modern poetry and song

4 . When you look up at the blue sky or gaze across blue ocean, you might think that the color blue is common in nature. But among all the colors found in rocks, plants and flowers, or in the fur, feathers, scales and skin of animals, blue is surprisingly scarce.

But why is the color blue so rare? The answer stems from the chemistry and physics of how colors are produced — and how we see them. Were able to see color because each of our eyes contains between 6 million and 7 million light-sensitive cells called cones (椎体). There are three different types of cones in the eye of a person with normal color vision, and each cone type is most sensitive to a particular wavelength of light: red, green or blue. Information from millions of cones reaches our brains as electrical signals that communicate all the types of light reflected by what we see, which is then interpreted as different shades of color.   

When we look at a colorful object, “the object is absorbing some of the white light that falls onto it; because its absorbing some of the light, the rest of the light that reflected has a color,” science writer Kai Kupferschmidt said.

“When you see a blue flower — for instance, a cornflower — you see the cornflower as blue because it absorbs the red part of the spectrum (光谱),” Kupferschmidt said. Or to put it another way, the flower appears blue because that color is the part of the spectrum that the blossom rejected.

In the visible spectrum, red has long wavelengths, meaning it is very low-energy compared with other colors. For a flower to appear blue, it needs to be able to produce a molecule (分子) that can absorb very small amounts of energy, in order to absorb the red part of the spectrum.

Generating such molecules — which are large and complex — is difficult for plants to do, which is why blue flowers are produced by fewer than 10% of the worlds nearly 300,000 flowering plant species.

1. What does the underlined phrase “stems from” probably mean?

A．Varies from.

B．Results from.

C．Leads to.

D．Amounts to.

2. What happens when people see a colorful object?

A．Cones divide colors into three types.

B．The colors are divided into three types.

C．Part of white light is absorbed by the object.

D．Light-sensitive cells are most sensitive to dark colors.

3. Which of the following is the feature of red light?

A．Its wavelengths are shorter.	B．It can be seen everywhere.
C．It seems more vivid than others.	D．It has low-energy relatively.

4. How can a plant make its flowers look blue?

A．To reflect most red light.

B．To blossom in the shade.

C．To avoid generating large molecules.

D．To produce molecules to absorb red spectrum.

5 . Southeast Asia is well-known for its colorful natural and historical attractions. Check out these four man-made impressive sites that are always attracting large tourists.

Golden Bridge, Vietnam

High up on Ba Na hills near Da Nang in Vietnam sits a pair of giant hands designed to look like the hands of God pulling out a strip of gold from the land. The 150-metre Golden Bridge, just opened in June, rises more than 1,400 metres above sea level and offers spectacular views of the surrounding area.

Gardens by the Bay, Singapore

Futuristic-looking giant trees and a man-made forest under a glass dome (穹顶) are part of this multi-award winning destination that opened in 2012.The giant super trees are between 9 and 16 storeys tall and you can take a walk to enjoy the view from above. A short walk away, youll come across the Flower Dome and the Cloud Forest.

Statue of Lord Murugan, Batu Caves, Malaysia

Just 12 kilometres from the capital city of Kuala Lumpur, the statue of Lord Murugan, located at the Sri Murugan Perumal Kovil at the foot of Batu Caves, was completed in 2006 and stands a little over 42 metres tall. There are three limestone (石灰岩) caves in the area. Visitors have to scale 272 steps in order to reach the entrance of the caves.

Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien Mosque, Brunei

Named after the 28th sultan of Brunei, the grand mosque was completed in 1958.The impressive building is surrounded by an artificial lagoon, where a copy of a 16th century royal ship is docked at the end of a marble bridge.

1. Where can tourists enjoy the view from above the trees?

A．Golden Bridge, Vietnam.

B．Gardens by the Bay, Singapore.

C．Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien Mosque, Brunei.

D．Statue of Lord Murugan, Batu Caves, Malaysia.

2. What should tourists do to reach the Batu Caves?

A．Climb stairs.	B．Take a small boat.
C．Walk through a forest.	D．Go across a golden bridge.

3. What do the attractions have in common?

A．They are related to religions.	B．They stand near the beach.
C．They are created by people.	D．They exist for centuries.

6 . When we want to communicate with another person, we generally use our voice, such as speaking or shouting. They are great ways to communicate, but they have some drawbacks.

For instance, if you live on a mountainside and your friend lives on another mountainside, shouting to each other isn’t always that effective. Shouting creates lots of echoes (回声) among the corners and holes of mountains, and the average outdoor range of an understandable human voice is only about 180 meters. Unless you walk over to where your friend lives to carry on a conversation at a reasonable speaking distance, or communicate by some sort of visual technique like smoke signals, there’s not much to be done except whistle (吹口哨).

Whistling is the product of air being forced through a small hole made by your lips. A whistle is different from your voice because it’s clear, and the frequency is high. The sound of a whistle can carry for over 8 kilometers and it holds its form, while a shout can become a mess because of the echoes.

For thousands of years, humans have relied on spoken language to accomplish daily, face-to-face communication most of the time. And in recent years, the coming of text messaging has also made whistled languages take a dive worldwide. Luckily, there are still over 70 groups around the world that engage in special whistled languages.

They’re most commonly found in mountainous regions where farmers need to pass messages around without walking up and down hills, and whistles are also used to communicate through the thick Amazon rainforest and are useful to Inuit at sea as well. Hunters can use whistling to communicate with each other in a way that doesn’t alarm their targets as the voice-produced language might.

Whistled languages are unique to a certain area and they are not distinct from spoken language. However, whistled language speakers around the world are found to be able to understand about 90 percent of what’s communicated. When whistled languages are still present, it signals that traditional activities are still commonly practiced and therefore the cultures behind them have been maintained.

1. What does the author want to express in the first two paragraphs?

A．Reasons for producing echoes outdoors.

B．The difficulty of living on the mountainside.

C．The necessity of adopting face-to-face communication.

D．Limitations of communicating by speaking or shouting.

2. What does the underlined part in Paragraph 4 probably mean?

A．Stay adaptable.	B．Become influential.
C．Get an improvement.	D．Experience a decline.

3. How does the author prove whistled languages useful?

A．By providing research results.	B．By listing the statistic data.
C．By giving examples.	D．By doing some questionnaires.

4. What can be learned about whistled languages?

A．They will disappear gradually.

B．They could help keep traditional cultures alive.

C．They are independent of the local spoken language.

D．They become much more complex as time goes by.

7 . The “butterfly effect” may have it all wrong. Instead of a single insect’s wing flap setting off a distant tornado weeks later, rain in sub-Saharan Africa can lead to more wing-flapping butterflies in southern Europe the next spring, a new study finds.

Orange with black and white wing tips, the painted lady is one of the planet’s most widespread butterflies, living on every continent except Antarctica and South America. Populations reach tens of millions in Europe alone. Like the monarch butterfly, the painted lady undertakes impressive annual migrations; its round-trip journeys of some 12,000 to 14,000 kilometers reach from sub-Saharan Africa to Scandinavia and back again. It is one of the longest known annual insect migrations. “But this migration is strange, with the number of immigrant insects arriving in Europe sometimes varying greatly year over year, which has confused naturalists for generations,” says ecologist Richard Fox.

Adult painted ladies only live about 2 weeks, so the butterflies’ migrations are multi-generational affairs. Experts have long suspected variations in spring numbers in the Mediterranean occur because conditions farther south have affected the breeding success of an earlier generation. To see whether that’s true, Jason Chapman and his colleagues collected 21 years’ worth of butterfly observations from West Africa to Western Europe. The researchers found that the butterflies’ spring numbers in Europe are heavily influenced by the amount of monsoon (雨季) rainfall in western sub-Saharan Africa in the previous summer and fall.

More rain there, they found, leads to flooding, which fuels plants that emerging larvae(幼虫) feast on in the winter. Wet years appear to have produced European butterfly booms in 2009, 2015, and this year. Spring plants amount in northwestern Africa can also affect the numbers of the painted ladies; the butterflies make some stops in the region on the way to Europe.

The findings help scientists know what a changing climate could mean to the insects, according to ecologist Constanti Stefanescu. “Now that researchers have taken some mystery out of the insects’ northward migration, one remaining puzzle is how they manage to survive their return journey southward at the end of the summer,” says another ecologist, Chris Thomas.

1. Which of the following agrees with painted ladies’ living habits?

A．They have a long annual migration route.

B．They are equally distributed around the world.

C．They flap their wings more frequently than other butterflies.

D．They share a migration time similar to the monarch butterflies’.

2. What drove the naturalists to carry out the study?

A．Short lifespan of the butterflies.

B．Migration route of the butterflies.

C．Returning time of the butterflies after the migration.

D．Changing populations of the immigrant butterflies in Europe.

3. How does more rain increase the population of European butterflies?

A．By making the air fresh.	B．By providing enough food.
C．By providing safe habitats.	D．By lowering the local temperature.

4. What can be inferred from the last paragraph?

A．There’s more to be learned about the painted lady.

B．It is a mystery how the painted lady survives summers.

C．It’s necessary to help the painted lady find its way home.

D．It’s hard for the painted lady to survive in its return migration.

8 . Most boyhood dreams are never realized, particularly if you grew up in the 1960s and desired to become Tarzan of the Apes. But that is not the case for young Fred Bercovitch. His dream of swinging from jungle vines (藤蔓) and communicating with chimps and elephants began when he read Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan books. These books attracted him to the jungles of Africa and eventually brought him before a United Nations conference where he advocated helping save giraffes.

Bercovitch answered the call of the wild in 1978. He flew to Kenya to live close to a group of olive baboons (狒狒), which he hoped would result in a doctoral paper about their reproduction. Denise, his classmate, accompanied him. Their two-year adventure in the wild resulted in a Ph.D. in biological anthropology (人类学) from UC, Los Angeles for Bercovitch and some astonishing stories.

It was his time at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance that brought him worldwide recognition when a study he conducted was featured as one of the Top 100 Science Stories of 2002 by the magazine Discover. As head of the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance’s Behavioral Biology Division, he documented the social habits of giraffes. “We found giraffes behaved pretty much like people who attend parties. Some talked to a few friends, some enjoyed communicating with strangers, and others were looking for pleasure together,” said Bercovitch.

To confirm that giraffes behave in the same way in the wild, Bercovitch flew to Zambia and consulted with a researcher with 30 years of data on giraffes. He ran the researcher’s data through a complex computer program and confirmed giraffes’ social preferences are the same in the wild as they are kept in a limited space.

As a professor at Kyoto University since 2010, Bercovitch has published more than 150 scientific papers in an effort to advance the understanding of animals. He wishes for a better world for humans and animals to live in, which is far less violent.

1. What was young Fred Bercovitch’s dream?

A．Saving giraffes.	B．Working for the UN.
C．Exploring the wildlife in the jungle.	D．Writing books about animals.

2. How did Fred Bercovitch complete his doctoral paper?

A．By conducting a field study.	B．By performing lab experiments.
C．By referring to previous documents.	D．By turning to biological anthropology professors.

3. What can be known about giraffes from Bercovitch’s research?

A．They are socially active.	B．They show a gift for self-defense.
C．They prefer to live in a limited space.	D．They are strict followers of social rules.

4. What would be the best title for the text?

A．The charm of the jungles of Africa	B．The key to amazing academic success
C．Fred Bercovitch’s adventure in the wild	D．Fred Bercovitch’s devotion to his childhood dream

9 . Is it cake? Is it art? Is it both? It’s the third year that the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin has hosted its Great Blanton Bake-Off (烘焙大赛), and 16 bakers delivered on the challenge to recreate any of the 21, 000 works, from Italian Renaissance paintings to Latin American prints, in the Blanton’s collections, in cake form.

Lizabel Stella, the museum’s social media and digital content manager, came up with the idea of the Bake-Off at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the museum had to temporarily close. At the time, Stella, like many in lockdown, found herself scrolling through social media more than usual, and noticed how people were turning to baking as a therapeutic (治疗的) and fun activity. “I was thinking that people couldn’t come to the museum and that people loved baking. How could I blend them together?” Stella told a reporter. Then Stella cooked up the idea.

To participate in this year’s competition, bakers accessed the museum’s online catalog to select an artwork to reimagine and entered into one of three categories: Under-18, Amateur or Professional. Then, contestants had to upload photos of their creations to either Facebook or Instagram (or both) by May 15. The museum shared the cakes with the public on World Baking Day (May 17) through social media stories, and the “virtual audience” had 24 hours to vote for their favorites. The winner of each category received gift cards from local pastry shops.

“Art can be quite conceptual. And baking is tangible — so it’s a different way to consume art,” said an American artist. “Unlike baking, art doesn’t necessarily engage all the senses — you can’t necessarily smell art, you can’t necessarily taste art, and you definitely can’t touch art. But with baking, you can do all those things and it is a nice way to bring them together.”

“The competition is about having fun at heart,” Stella explained. “We’re going through a lot of hard things right now. It’s important to remember that it’s okay to take a break — not to ignore the things that are happening, but to make time for the things that move you.”

1. What’s mainly talked about in Paragraph 2?

A．The inspiration for Stella’s novel idea.

B．Stella’s great interest in baking therapy.

C．Stella’s life during the museum’s closure.

D．The influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on Stella.

2. What are the contestants required to do in the competition?

A．To sign up for a group by their age.

B．To recreate famous artworks with cake.

C．To hand in their works on World Baking Day.

D．To advertise their works for votes on social media.

3. How did the American artist feel about Stella’s idea?

A．Suspicious.

B．Confused.

C．Appreciative.

D．Concerned.

4. What can we infer from the text about Stella?

A．She was hard-working and generous.

B．She went through many hardships.

C．She was optimistic and creative.

D．She enjoyed taking adventures.

10 . Unhealthy Coping(应对)Strategies for Uncomfortable Emotions to Avoid

Whether you’re blamed by your parents or you’ve had a rough day at the office, you may be bothered by uncomfortable emotions. Having healthy coping strategies can be key to getting through tough times. However, sometimes a strategy helps you endure emotional pain, but it doesn’t mean it’s healthy.     1    Here are some unhealthy coping strategies you should avoid:

Drinking alcohol or using drugs: Alcohol and drugs may temporarily ease your pain, but they won’t resolve your issues. They are likely to introduce new problems into your life.     2     Using those substances to cope also puts you at risk for developing a substance use disorder and it may create health, legal and financial problems, and social problems.

Venting(发泄)emotions constantly to others: It can be healthy to talk about how bad your situation is or how terrible you feel so that you can gain support, develop a solution, or see a problem in a different way. But studies show it doesn’t always help to solve your problem.     3    

Overspending: While many people say they enjoy shopping as a way to feel better, it can become unhealthy.       4    Also, spending more than you can afford will only backfire in the end and cause more stress.

Avoiding:     5    For example,if you are stressed about your financial situation, you might spend time with friends or watch TV. But if you never resolve your financial issues, your coping strategies are only masking the problem.

A．You should avoid using those strategies.

B．Owning too many possessions can add stress to your life.

C．Some coping strategies could create bigger trouble in your life.

D．Turn to your loved ones to remove your uncomfortable emotions.

E．Repeatedly talking to people about that may get you stuck in pain.

F．Alcohol, for example, is a depressant that can make you feel worse later.

G．Healthy coping strategies can become unhealthy if you use them to avoid the problem.