2 . Directions: Read the following passage. Summarize the main idea and the main point(s) of the passage in no more than 60 words. Use your own words as far as possible.

Decision fatigue

Decision fatigue occurs when people feel very tired from making too many choices. Psychologists have found that, even though we generally like having choices, having to make too many decisions in a short amount of time may lead us to make decisions that are less than ideal.

Many of us would probably guess that we’d be happier with more options (选择). However, researchers have found that this isn’t necessarily true—in some cases, we actually seem to do better when we have a more limited set of options. In one research paper, psychologists looked at the consequences of being given either many or few choices of jams. The researchers found that participants who had seen the display with more choices were much less likely to actually buy a jar of jam, compared to participants who saw the more limited display—suggesting that having too many choices may not be a good thing for consumers.

While choosing jams may seem like a relatively small choice, it turns out that people who have to make too many decisions may make poor decisions—or even put off making a decision.

Luckily, researchers have found that decision fatigue does not often happen; instead, choice overload (过量) seems to occur when the decisions we have to make are especially difficult. But if it really occurs, what can we do about it? One way to avoid decision fatigue can be to streamline (使成流线型) the choices we make and find habits and routines that work for us—instead of making new choices each day. The principle here is to limit how much of our day is spent making choices that aren’t personally important to us. Other suggestions for managing decision fatigue include making key decisions earlier in the day and knowing when you might need to take a nap and revisit a problem with fresh eyes.

4 . Directions: Read the following passage. Summarize the main idea and the main point(s) of the passage in no more than 60 words. Use your own words as far as possible.

Soft Skills—Soft or Not?

Rapidly advancing technology and its impact on education have been a subject of much debate. How can schools equip students with the skills to succeed in a changing job market? Since technology is driving many social changes, there is an opinion that governments should keep focusing on STEM subjects. These are often referred to as “hard skills”, which are prioritized in primary schools and right through to university level.

However, research from Harvard University on the global job market has shown that STEM-related careers grew strongly between 1989 and 2000 but have slowed ever since. In contrast, jobs in the creative industries, which are probably most associated with the need for soft skills, are growing rapidly. A study by Deloitte Access Economics predicts that “soft skill-intensive occupations will account for two-thirds of all jobs by 2030”.

With the rapid evolution of technology, a focus on hard skills leaves people delicate when facing change, as these skills often have a limited shelf life. According to a survey, more than one in four adults reported a mismatch between their skills and those needed for their job role. Fortunately, soft skills can solve the problem, enabling people to adapt to change more easily in their chosen field. Additionally, interpersonal interactions in the modern workplace require some level of soft skills. At a company they might be negotiating to win a new contract or networking for a new job. People use soft skills every day at work and developing them will help things in the job go smoothly.

Many universities have begun to emphasize soft skills such as critical thinking alongside hard skills. But the issue goes much deeper. Soft skills need to be handled across the entire education system so that by the time students reach university level, they are already armed with the qualities needed to further develop these skills.

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5 . Directions: Read the following three passages. Summarize the main idea and the main point(s) of the passage in no more than 60 words. Use your own words as far as possible.

Back in January, the Chinese tech giant Huawei grabbed the world's attention at the Consumer Electronics Show 2017 in Las Vegas. Richard Yu, the chief of the company's consumer division, said that Huawei shipped 139 million smartphones in 2016, an amazing number, although still far less than Samsung and Apple. More than half of Huawei's revenues come from outside China, making it one of only a few Chinese companies to have made the transition from a local business to a global brand.

What makes Huawei so successful? As with many great companies, part of the solution to this puzzle lies in the values that define the culture of the Chinese giant.

Many companies take customer-focused attitudes, but few of them truly live by it. Huawei distinguishes itself from its competitors in this regard. In an interview, Ren Zhengfei, founder and president of Huawei, mentioned an early episode in the company's history. In rural areas in China, rats often bit the telecom wires, destroying customers' connections. Multinational telecommunications companies providing service at that time did not consider this to be their problem, but rather that of the customers. Huawei, by contrast, thought it was their responsibility to solve the problem. In doing so, they developed chew-proof equipment and materials. Later on, the experience helped it gain several big orders in the Middle East, where similar problems exist.

Huawei emphasizes that the only way to obtain opportunities is through hard work. In the early years of the company, every new employee was given a blanket and a mattress. Many of them would work late into the night and then sleep in their offices. As one Huawei employee said, "The pads were to us a representation of hard work in the old days. This idea has now evolved into the spirit of trying to be the best in anything we do."

Ren and his company are also known for what they call "the power of thinking." Efforts are made to ensure regular intellectual exchanges. Executives are urged to read books outside their areas of expertise. Feedback is always invited across the company to improve ideas that will ultimately feed the vision of Huawei's future.

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7 . Directions: Read the following three passages. Summarize the main idea and the main point（s）of the passage in no more than 60 words. Use your own words as far as possible.

How Come Scientists Draw Opposite Conclusions?

One of the biggest concerns is science is bias-that scientist themselves, consciously or unconsciously, may put their thumbs on the scales and influence the outcomes of experiments. But gathering the data and running an experiment is not the only part of the process that can go awry. The methods chosen to analyse the data can also influence results even if being based on the same data-set.

A new paper, headed by Martin Schweinsberg, a psychologist at the European School of Management and Technology, in Berlin, helps shed some light on why. Dr Schweinsberg gathered 49 different researchers with each handed a copy of a data-set consisting of nearly 8,000 comments made on an online forum for chatty intellectuals. Dr Schweinsberg asked his guinea pigs to explore a seemingly straightforward hypothesis(假设)that a woman’s tendency to participate would rise as the number of other women in a conversation increased. Crucially, the researchers were asked to describe their analysis in detail by posting their methods and workflows, which allowed Dr Schweinsberg to see exactly what they were up to.

As it turned out, no two analysts employed exactly the same methods, and none got the same results. Some 29% of analysts reported that women do indeed participate more, if plenty of other women are present. But 21% concluded that the opposite was true. (The remainder found no significant difference).

The problem was not that any of the analyses were “wrong” in any objective sense. The differences arose because researchers chose different definitions of what they were studying, and applied different techniques. When it came to defining how much women spoke, some analysts plumped for the number of words in each woman’s comment. Others chose the number of characters. Still others defined it by the number of conversations that a woman participated in, irrespective of how much she actually said. The statistical techniques chosen also had an impact, though less than the choice of definitions. Some researchers chose linear-regression analysis: others went for logistic regression or a Kendall correlation.

Truth, in other words, can be a slippery customer, even for simple-sounding questions. What to do? One conclusion is that experimental design is critically important. It is recommended that scientists specify exactly how they chose to perform their analysis, allowing those decisions to be reviewed by others. It is probably not practical, he concedes, to check and re-check every result. But if many different analytical approaches point in the same direction, then scientists can be confident that their conclusion is the right one.

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8 . Directions：Read the following passage.Summarize in no more than 60 words the main idea of the passage and how it is illustrate.Use your own words as far as possible.
Hacking our senses to boost learning power

Was your school noisy or peaceful？It might not seem important，but a growing body of research suggests that sounds can have an impact on learning，performance and creativity.There is certainly some well-established research to suggest that some noises can have a harmful effect on learning.Numerous studies over the past 15 years have found that children attending schools under the flight paths of large airports lag behind in their exam results.

But general noise seems to have an effect too. Bridget Shield，a professor of acoustics at London South Bank University，and Julie Dockrell，now at the Institute of Education，have been conducting studies on the effects of all sorts of noises，such as traffic and sirens，as well as noise generated by the children themselves.When they recreated those particular sounds in an experimental setting while children completed various cognitive tasks，they found a significant negative effect on exam scores.“Everything points to a harmful impact of the noise on children's performance，in numeracy（计算能力），in literacy，and in spelling，”says Shield.The noise seemed to have an especially harmful effect on children with special needs.

Shield says the sound of"babble"---the chatter of other children，is particularly distracting in the classroom.“People are very distracted by speech---particularly if it's understandable，but you're not involved in it."This phenomenon is also known as the irrelevant speech effect，she says，adding that“it's a very common finding in open-plan offices as well."

Whether background sounds are beneficial or not seems to depend on what kind of noise it is and the volume. In a series of studies published last year，Ravi Mehta from the College of Business at Illinois and colleagues tested people's creativity while exposed to a soundtrack made up of background noises---such as coffee-shop chatter and construction-site drilling---at different volumes.They found that people were more creative when the background noises were played at a medium level than when volume was low. Loud background noise，however，damaged their creativity.

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9 . Directions: Write the summary of the passage with no more than 60 words and the original sentences in the passage are not allowed to use.

When people think of plants, they usually think of gardens, parks, or even jungles. One place that does not usually come to mind is the desert. However, some deserts contain many plants that are able to grow and survive under difficult conditions.

Deserts can reach temperatures of 50 degrees or more in the daytime and can also drop below 0 degrees at night. This is a huge temperature difference under which desert plants have to live. Besides the high and low temperatures, all deserts receive very little water in the form of rain; sometimes it doesn’t rain for months. So, how do desert plants get water when there is no rain?

There are three main ways plants survive in the desert. First, some desert plants grow without leaves. Others have developed special ways of storing whatever water they can find, such as growing a waxy leaf covering that helps keep water inside the leaf. These plants can survive for weeks or months on the water collected from just one rainfall.

A second way desert plants survive even in the most difficult conditions is by growing very long roots. These roots spread out and search for any water they can find. Once they find water, the roots suck up as much as they can and then hold it, only allowing the plant above the ground to have small amounts at a time.

The third way plants survive in the desert is by “sleeping”. Some plants can turn off almost all their processes and just remain inactive, almost as if dead, while they wait for rain. When the rain does come, they quickly drink up every drop they possibly can and burst back into activity.

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