1 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. alert                    B. connected             C. correspond             D. dismiss             E. embarrassed F. invaluable             G. judgement             H. piloted                    L. respectful             J. urge                    K. wellbeing

Are you listening? But are you really listening?

You’d think we’d be very good at listening, but do we deeply listen? Sometimes we quickly    1    another’s opinion if it doesn’t fit neatly with our own. The British Council has launched a project Crossing Divides aimed to train young people to listen and understand other people with very different perspectives.

Practicing deep listening means tuning into empathy(同理心), resisting the    2    to judge people who are distinct from oneself. It develops important skills that will make anyone a better listener: empathy, silence and becoming aware of our    3    .

The project was    4    in Lebanon, where it helped local people find common ground with each other, in a society divided by bitter years of conflict. People taking part in the project said they felt that they were being heard, helping them to feel recognized and understood, which opened communication between communities. All the participants greatly improved their listening skills, which proved    5    in their working and personal lives.

They have also had a chance to be listened to and heard, which research shows can improve    6    . This is because we all feel accepted, valued and more    7    to others when we sense that we are being truly listened to, and the person listening to us doesn’t have to agree with us for those benefits to be enjoyed.

The project is also an opportunity for participants to feel the benefit of stepping outside their own “echo chamber (回声室)”. Echo chambers are created by our natural tendency to seek out people and opinions, in person and online, that we agree with, so we mainly see and hear information and opinions that    8    to our own. Not surprisingly this leads us to think our views are definitively correct, so we become    9    or even angry when we encounter perspectives that our worldview suggests arc wrong, because they don’t agree with our own echo chamber.

So, training young people with deep listening skills can encourage many more people to take part in challenging and    10    conversations. Scott McDonald, the organization’s CEO said: “The deep listening training gets to the heart of what we do by providing opportunities for people to step out of their echo chambers, to cross divides, and build trust and understanding.”

3 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. technical     B. attributed     C. confined     D. observations     E. sensation     F. totaling     G. anticipatory H. consistent     I. precisely     J. suspicious     K. attached

For centuries, people have described unusual animal behavior just ahead of seismic (地震的) events: dogs barking endlessly, cows halting their milk, toads leaping from ponds. A few researchers have tried to prove a link, but most such attempts have relied largely on anecdotes and single     1    .

Now researchers at the University of Konstanz, along with a multinational team of colleagues, say they have managed to     2     measure increased activity in a group of farm animals prior to seismic activity. During separate periods     3     about four months in 2016 and 2017, the researchers     4     these highly sensitive biologgers and GPS sensors, which can record accelerated movements in any direction, to six cows, five sheep and two dogs living on a farm in an earthquake-prone area of northern Italy to keep track of the activities and the nervousness of animals. “Only now can we do continuous biologging,” says study co-author Martin Wikelski. “Because the     5     possibilities are finally there.”

The paper’s statistical analysis showed animals’ activity significantly increased before magnitude 3.8 or greater earthquakes when they were housed together in a stable — but not when they were out to pasture (吃草). Wikelski says this difference could be linked to the increased stress some animals feel in     6     spaces. Analyzing the increased movements as a whole, the researchers claim, showed a clear signal of     7     behavior hours ahead of tremors.

Besides, it showed that the farm animals appeared to anticipate quakes anywhere from one to 20 hours ahead, reacting earlier when they were closer to the origin and later when they were farther away. This finding is     8     with a hypothesis that animals somehow sense a signal that spreads outward. It holds that in the days before an earthquake, shifting tectonic plates (地壳板块) squeeze rocks along a fault line, causing the rocks to release minerals that force ions into the air, and then the animals react to this novel     9    .

Not involved with the new study, Wendy Bohon, a geologist from Washington, D.C., is     10     of the air ionization idea. Heiko Woith, a geologist at GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences, says the time frame was still too short and points out that limited data collection in many studies makes it impossible to determine whether a measured signal was related to a quake or was simply noise.

4 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A.normally     B. boost     C. sustain     D. gains   E. assessing   F. substantially G. efforts        H. mixed       I. surprising       J. anticipate            K. assigned

Your Social-Media Detoxes (脱瘾治疗) Probably Aren’t Helping You

We’ve all heard the supposed benefits of unplugging from digital devices, even for 24 hours. Such breaks are said to     1     self-confidence, reduce social competitiveness and fears of missing out, and make room for more-enriching, in-person interactions. Yet studies exploring those effects have produced     2     results. So a global research team set out to systematically test the idea that social media detoxing delivers meaningful psychological     3    .

The researchers recruited 600 undergraduate students in three places: the United States, the United Kingdom, and Hong Kong. All participants were randomly     4     to keep away from social media on either the first or the second day of a two-day experiment. On the other day, they were to interact with digital platforms as they     5     would. Each evening they answered survey questions aimed at    6     various aspects of well-being. Contrary to the researchers’ expectations, the one-day detox made no noticeable impact on positive or negative emotions, self-confidence, or daily satisfaction. When it did have an effect, it decreased daily satisfaction and social relatedness, although the changes were not significant once the analysis was adjusted to control for gender. Just as     7    , people didn’t use the time freed up from looking at screens for other forms of socializing. In fact, they reported     8     lower levels of face-to-face, phone, and email interactions on their detoxing days.

Even short social-media breaks can be hard to     9     — indeed, only half the participants in the experiment did what was required and these results suggest that they may not be worth the     10    . “We did not find any evidence that social media detoxing for one day had significant positive impacts on psychological well-being,” the researchers write.

5 . 选词填空

1. __________ join a club to improve your social skills?
2. If you __________ online games, it’s really hard to quit.
3. For some adults, a low salary __________ enjoy an easy life.
4. It is __________ for newcomers to feel anxious and uncertain.
5. More people would __________ cycling if conditions were right.
6. The book is intended for __________ and young __________.
7. It’s hard to change your __________, even harder to keep it changed.
8. At senior high school you should __________ your studies and make progress.
9. Good traditions of the family have been handed down from one __________ to the next.
10. __________ you to follow your teacher’s advice and pay attention to the vocabulary.

6 . 根据句意选择正确短语并用其正确形式填空

feel at home with        complain about        base on        end up          around the corner suffer from        in harmony with        catch up on        reflect on          lead to in memory of        regardless of        in turn        take to doing

1. I need some time to ________ the possible reasons for my failure.
2. She will go to see a doctor because she has been ________ serious headache recently.
3. We built this museum ________ this fearless fighter.
4. The conclusion ________ facts so it is reliable.
5. Theory is based on practice and ________ serves practice.
6. With Spring Festival just ________, you should start your festive cooking now.
7. The club welcomes all new members ________ age.
8. People like to ________ how children spend so much time on computer games.
9. Cooking together gives us a chance to relax and ________ each other’s days.
10. If you fool about with matches, you’ll ________ getting burned.

7 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. attraction       B. waiting       C. mystery       D. unique             E. simply            F. originally G. stable            H. popularity       I. donating       J. searching       K. interfere

There’s a rarely-visited, dusty corner of the world where something magical happens. The place, which looks like Mars with its red rock landscape, is the Tatacoa Desert, in Colombia.

Tatacoa is located in the region of Huila, south of the country’s capital Bogotá. Although Tatacoa, with its protruding cacti and red rippled rocks, is called a desert, it is in fact a dry tropical forest. But the exciting, and very     1    , feature of this desert, is what happens above it, at night.

Thanks to its remote location — it’s almost 30 miles and an hour’s drive over bumpy winding roads to the nearest town — Tatacoa has no light pollution to     2     with the night sky.

Up to 88 constellations (星座) are visible on a clear night, as well as both hemispheres — something that happens nowhere else in the world.

The warm and dry climate helps with stargazing; a     3     atmosphere, which happens in dry spots or places of high elevation, decreases something called scintillation, which is when a star’s light rises and falls rapidly. It’s why stars twinkle, which looks beautiful but isn’t so great for astronomers.

Not only is Tatacoa a natural wonder, but the DIY observatory that’s run by a Colombian man named Javier Fernanda Rua Restrepo has become a star     4     too. In fact, this humble building attracts stargazers from all over the world, from China to Iceland to Australia. And Restrepo has also become well-known in astronomer circles, with a few scientists     5     their own telescopes to support the grassroots observatory.

The Colombian, who is     6     from Cali, fell in love with the stars thanks to his father’s interest in astronomy and science, and first visited Tatacoa in 1997, to try to see the Comet Hale-Bopp. He stayed for a couple of days before heading back to his hometown. But within a month, he returned to Tatacoa — and never left, camping out for weeks on end     7     for the night to come so that he could watch the stars.

At first Restrepo had worked at the Colombian government’s observatory, which he helped staff for 15 years. But after budget cuts meant he lost his job, he figured he would     8     build his own.

In 2015, Restrepo opened the doors to his observatory — Tatacoa Astronomia — with just one telescope. Now, as Colombia has grown in     9     as a tourist destination, hundreds flock to Restrepo’s star party, which he holds once a year in July.

Tatacoa Astronomia is only open on starry nights, and Restrepo remains the sole employee. But that doesn’t distract from the intimacy and the specialness of the place. The structure sits on a small patch of land that Restrepo bought himself, and is cordoned (隔离) off by tarpaulin (油布) to add an extra sense of     10     and intrigue (阴谋) for visitors.

“The stars… they put my life into its tiny perspective,” he says, “and they constantly remind me there are greater things out there.”

8 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. objected       B. choices       C. inequality       D. combination          E. paid        F. respond G. personality          H. fade       I. reduce       J. inherited       K. environmental

What makes us happy?

You probably know the type of personality in some people: they seem to be hopeful in almost everything. Are they simply born happy? Is it the product of their environment? Or does it come from their life decisions?

If you are familiar with genetics research, you will have guessed that it is a     1     of all three. A 2018 study of 1516 Norwegian twins suggests that around 30% of the differences in people’s life satisfaction is     2    . Much of this seems to be related to personality traits.

To put this in context, the heritability of IQ is thought to be around 80%, so     3     factors clearly play a role in our happiness. These include our physical health, the size and strength of our social network, job opportunities and income. It seems that the absolute value of our salary matters less than whether we feel richer than those around us, which may explain why the level of       4     predicts happiness better than GDP.

Interestingly, many important life     5     have only a little influence on our happiness. Consider marriage. A 2019 study found that, on average, life satisfaction does rise after the wedding, but the feeling of happiness tends to     6     over middle age.

Parenthood is even more complex. For decades, social scientists have found that people with children at home are significantly less happy than those without. More recent research, however, suggests that there are important regional differences.

Analyses show that these differences can be almost completely explained by variations in       7     parental leave, flexible working hours, affordable childcare and holiday leave, which together     8     the potential for work-family conflict. The effects of these policies may play out across generations. In addition to the legacy of their genes, parents’ own emotional well-being will influence the family vigour, which will, in turn, shape the     9     of their children.

Our life satisfaction, then, is shaped by our genes, health, economic prospects, relationships and the culture around us. While many of these things may be beyond your control, there is now good evidence that certain psychological strategies will help you to     10     to your circumstances in the happiest way possible.

9 . Direction: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. maintaining               B. effectively               C. developed               D. wonders        E. positioned F. overcome        G. flexibility       H. established       I. exploring       J. remotely       K. respectively

Workcations: The travel trend mixing work and play

“After working from home for over a year, I needed a change in atmosphere,” says Vedika Bhaia, a Kolkata-based marketing entrepreneur and content creator. Last summer, she and a friend went on a 15-day trip through India’s Parvati Valley,     1     the natural environment while balancing a full workload on a laptop.

Though she was used to working     2     , Bhaia says the ‘work-from-anywhere’ mentality (思维模式)created by the pandemic pushed her to take a trip that combined work and leisure. “I knew travelling would do       3     for my mental health. It would help me     4     the creative block I was having as well,” she says.

The popularity of workcations may seem to conflict with the firmly     5     idea that we should keep work and play apart – after all, better awareness of work-related mental health stressors has left us more conscious than ever of the importance of     6     boundaries between our professional and personal lives. Yet experts argue that the adaptability we’ve developed during the pandemic has     7     us well to enjoy a break that combines work and play. And given the benefits workers see in them – like more chances to explore new places while fulfilling our day-to-day responsibilities – workcations are likely to become a practice lasting well beyond the pandemic.

Of course, there may well be some people who prefer to commit fully to either work or play, rather than combine the two activities. Rachel Fu, professor of tourism, says that whether people enjoy the workcation experience will depend on “a variety of individual personalities and behavioural choices”; some may feel they are only on holiday if they are totally free from work, for example. But Fu suspects that many white-collar workers have     8     the skills needed to pull off workcations during the pandemic. “Our behaviours have been forced to change,” she says. “Home is school, home is where we work. We have all been trained to switch: ‘OK, now we have a Zoom meeting’. I think after the past two years, we can switch from one thing to the next very     9     . ”

Given the level of interest from workers now accustomed to staying productive in multiple environments, workcations look like a practice that’s here to stay. “As long as you deliver, many companies don’t care where you’re working from,” says Fu. Accommodating workers will be in companies’ interests; it’s already clear that     10     will be key to keeping workers, especially as the new generation of workers, in particular, value the ability to work from anywhere.

10 . 请选择合适词，并用其恰当形式填空，每个词仅用一次，所给词中有两个多余的词。

identity, maintain, perform, admit, exhibit, acknowledge, press assist sb. with, catch one’s eye, experiment with, result in, do sb. a favor

1. Jack ________ that it was his fault(过错)to miss the deadline.
2. Instead of going to supermarkets, today we just need to ________ a button and then the orders will arrive the next day.
3. Nowadays many students ________ their friendships through online communication.
4. According to the research, too much screen time will ________ shortsightedness.
5. Avatars are digital ________ that you use to communicate and express yourself on the Internet.
6. The beautiful book ________ as soon as I entered the book store.
7. I’m fed up with ________ repetitive tasks and I wish I could do something more creative.
8. Our company ________ new energy cars in the past 15 years and hopefully, we can make a contribution to a more eco-friendly economy.
9. The audience were amazed by the sportsmanship which ________ by all the athletes.
10. More employers will be needed to ________ us ________ the development of new equipment.