There is certainly evidence that actors experience a blending of their real self with their assumed characters. For instance, Benedict Cumberbatch said, “My mum says I’m much more impatient with her when I’m filming Sherlock.”
A recent finding doesn’t involve acting, and it indicates that merely spending some time thinking about another person seemed to rub off on the volunteers’ sense of self led by Meghan Meyer at Princeton University. Across several studies, these researchers asked volunteers to first rate their own personalities, memories or physical attributes, and then to perform the same task from the perspective of another person. For instance, they might score the emotionality of various personal memories, and then rate how a friend or relative would have experienced those same events.
After taking the perspective of another, the volunteers scored themselves once again: the consistent finding was that their self - knowledge was now changed—their self-scores had shifted to become more similar to those they’d given for someone else. For instance, if they had initially said the trait term “confident” was only moderately related to themselves and then rated the term as being strongly related to a friend’s personality, when they came to rescore themselves, they now tended to see themselves as more confident.
“By simply thinking about another person, we may adapt our self to take the shape of that person” said Meyer and her colleagues. By roleplaying or acting out the kind of person we would like to become, or merely by thinking about and spending time with people who embody the kind of attributes we would like to see in ourselves, we can find that our sense of self changes in desirable ways.
“As each of us chooses who to befriend, who to model, and who to ignore” write Meyer and her colleagues, “we must make these decisions aware of how they shape not only the fabric of our social networks, but even our sense of who we are.”
1. Why did Benedict become much more impatient when filming Sherlock?2. What does the underlined sentence in Paragraph 2 mean?
3. Please decide which part of the following statement is false, then underline it and explain why.
After taking the perspective of another, the self-knowledge of volunteers was changed—their self-scores reached a higher level than before.
4. How would you make use of the finding? (about 40 words)
2 . Recent research suggests that if an argument gets resolved, the emotional response tied to it is significantly reduced or almost completely erased.
There is a difference between arguing and fighting. Arguing is that you and your opponent present your concerns and discuss the feelings and issues related to those concerns.
Moreover, the older you are, the more likely you will come to a resolution after an argument.
It is easier to avoid a discussion, but risking talking about it may eventually lead to a better outcome.
| A．It will do great harm to our mental health if not treated properly. |
| B．In other words, resolving an argument cuts your negative feelings by half. |
| C．Unfortunately, we are always unaware of the importance of the art of talk. |
| D．You can engage in an argument respectfully without stirring up (激起) anger. |
| E．This may be because more life experience usually leads to more defined priorities. |
| F．Discussing your issues and resolving them instead of stuffing them down can improve your emotional health. |
| G．Thus, it may be worth bringing up issues with your friends, family members or classmates rather than holding them back. |
3 . Scientific papers are the record keepers of progress in research. Each year researchers publish millions of papers in more than 30,000 journals. The scientific community measures the quality of those papers in a number of ways, including the perceived quality of the journal (as reflected by the title’s impact factor) and the number of citations a specific paper accumulates. The careers of scientists and the reputation of their institutions depend on the number and authority of the papers they produce, but even more so on the citations attracted by these papers.
Citation cartels, where journals, authors, and institutions collaborate secretly to increase citation numbers, have existed for a long time. In 2016, researchers developed an algorithm (算法) to recognize suspicious citation patterns, including groups of authors that intentionally cite one another and groups of journals that cite each other frequently to increase the impact factors of their publications. Recently, another expression of this aggressive behavior has emerged: so-called support service consultancies that provide language and other editorial support to individual authors and to journals sometimes advise contributors to add a number of citations to their articles.
The approach of electronic publishing and authors’ need to find outlets for their papers resulted in thousands of new journals. The birth of bullying journals wasn’t far behind. These journals can act as milk cows where every single article in an issue may cite a specific paper or a series of papers. In some instances, there is absolutely no relationship between the content of the article and the citations. The odd part is that the journal that the editor is supposedly working for is not profiting at all—it is just providing citations to other journals. Such practices can lead an article to generate more than 150 citations in the same year that it was published.
What consequences can this type of citation bring? In one example, an individual—acting as author, editor, and consultant—was able to use at least 15 journals as citation providers to articles published by five scientists at three universities. The problem is rampant in Scopus, a citation database, which includes a high number of the new “international” journals. In fact, a listing in Scopus seems to be a standard to be targeted in this type of citation control.
Scopus itself has all the data necessary to detect this phenomenon. Red flags include a large number of citations to an article within the first year. And for authors who wish to stay clear of citation cartel activities: when an editor, a reviewer, or a support service asks you to add inappropriate references, do not oblige and do report the request to the journal.
1. What can we learn about the support service consultancies?| A．They recommend journals to their clients. | B．They list citation patterns for their clients. |
| C．They ask authors to include extra citations. | D．They advise contributors to cite each other. |
| A．boost citation counts for certain authors | B．help scholars publish articles at low cost |
| C．instruct first- time contributors in citation | D．increase the readership of new journals |
| A．excessive | B．limited | C．inclusive | D．manageable |
| A．Take legal actions to deal with the citation control. |
| B．Seek professional advice to make progress in research. |
| C．Demand an apology when you are asked to edit an article. |
| D．Reveal their misconduct if an editor wants you to cite improperly. |
4 . As a historian who’s always searching for the text or the image that makes us re-evaluate the past, I’ve become preoccupied with looking for photographs that show our Victorian ancestors smiling—what better way to break the image of 19th-century prudery (假正经)? I’ve found quite a few, and—since I started posting them on Twitter —they have been causing quite a stir. People have been surprised to see evidence that Victorians had fun and could, and did, laugh. They are noting that the Victorians suddenly seem to become more human as the hundred-or-so years that separate us fade away through our common experience of laughter.
Of course, I need to admit that my collection of’ Smiling Victorians’ makes up only a tiny percentage of the vast catalogue of photographic portraits created between 1840 and 1900, the majority of which show sitters posing miserably and stiffly in front of painted backdrops, or staring absently into the middle distance. How do we explain this trend?
During the 1840s and 1850s, in the early days of photography, exposure times were unbearably long: the daguerreotype photographic method (producing an image on a silvered copper plate) could take several minutes to complete, resulting in blurred images as sitters shifted position or adjusted their uncomfortable positions. The thought of holding a fixed smile as the camera performed its magical duties was too much to consider, and so blank stare and facia expression became the norm.
But exposure times were much quicker by the 1880s, and the introduction of the Box Brownie and other portable cameras meant that, though slow by today’s digital standards, the exposure was almost immediately done. Genuine smiles were relatively easy to capture by the 1890s, so we must look elsewhere for an explanation of why Victorians still hesitated to smile.
One explanation might be the loss of dignity displayed through a cheese smile. “Nature gave us lips to hide our teeth,” ran one popular Victorian maxim, given the fact that before the birth of proper dentistry, mouths were often in a shocking state of uncleanliness. A flashing set of healthy and clean, regular’ pearly whites’ was a rare sight in Victorian society, the preserve of the super-rich (and even then, dental cleanness was not guaranteed).
A toothy smile (especially when there were gaps or blackened teeth) lacked class: drunks, tramps, and music hall performers might smile as wide as Lewis Carroll’s gum-exposing Cheshire Cat, but it was not a becoming look for properly educated persons. Even Mark Twain, a man who enjoyed a heart y laugh, said that when it came to photographic portraits there could be “nothing more damning than a silly, foolish smile fixed forever”.
1. According to Paragraph 1, the author’s posts on Twitter ________.| A．changed people’s impression of the Victorians. |
| B．highlighted social media’s role in Victorian studies. |
| C．re- evaluated the Victorian’s belief of public image. |
| D．illustrated the development of Victorian photography. |
| A．The author’s collections mirror 19-century social conventions. |
| B．The author’s collections show effects of different exposure times. |
| C．The inherent social sensitiveness kept Victorians from smiling for pictures. |
| D．Victorians’ unhealthy dental conditions kept them from smiling for pictures. |
| A．Why did the Victorians start to view photographs? |
| B．Why did most Victorians look serious in photographs? |
| C．What made photography develop in the Victorian period? |
| D．How did smiling in photographs become a post-Victorian norm? |
5 . In the 1960s, while studying the volcanic history of Yellowstone National Park, Bob Christiansen became puzzled about something that, oddly, had not troubled anyone before: he couldn’t find the park’s volcano. It had been known for a long time that Yellowstone was volcanic in nature — that’s what accounted for all its hot springs and other steamy features. But Christiansen couldn’t find the Yellowstone volcano anywhere.
Most of us, when we talk about volcanoes, think of the classic cone (圆锥体) shapes of a Fuji or Kilimanjaro, which are created when erupting magma (岩浆) piles up. These can form remarkably quickly. In 1943, a Mexican farmer was surprised to see smoke rising from a small part of his land. In one week he was the confused owner of a cone five hundred feet high. Within two years it had topped out at almost fourteen hundred feet and was more than half a mile across. Altogether there are some ten thousand of these volcanoes on Earth, all but a few hundred of them extinct. There is, however, a second less known type of volcano that doesn’t involve mountain building. These are volcanoes so explosive that they burst open in a single big crack, leaving behind a vast hole, the caldera. Yellowstone obviously was of this second type, but Christiansen couldn’t find the caldera anywhere.
Just at this time NASA decided to test some new high-altitude cameras by taking photographs of Yellowstone. A thoughtful official passed on some of the copies to the park authorities on the assumption that they might make a nice blow-up for one of the visitors’ centers. As soon as Christiansen saw the photos, he realized why he had failed to spot the caldera: almost the whole park — 2.2 million acres — was caldera. The explosion had left a hole more than forty miles across—much too huge to be seen from anywhere at ground level. At some time in the past Yellowstone must have blown up with a violence far beyond the scale of anything known to humans.
1. What puzzled Christiansen when he was studying Yellowstone?| A．Its complicated geographical features. | B．Its ever-lasting influence on tourism. |
| C．The mysterious history of the park. | D．The exact location of the volcano. |
| A．The shapes of volcanoes. | B．The impacts of volcanoes. |
| C．The activities of volcanoes. | D．The heights of volcanoes. |
| A．Hot-air balloon. | B．Digital camera. |
| C．Big photograph. | D．Bird’s view. |
| A．Success comes to those with curiosity. | B．First impression cannot always be trusted. |
| C．Nature’s wonder is beyond imagination. | D．One is never too old to learn. |
Hangzhou, the capital city of East China’s Zheijiang province, is one of the seven ancient capitals of China. As a core city of the Yangtze River Delta, Hangzhou
The “Chinese Miao Art Exhibition”
Shenzhen and Hong Kong
9 . Many years ago, I bought a house in the Garfagnana, where we still go every summer. The first time we stayed there, we heard the chug chug-chug of a motorbike
What we discovered is that it’s unwise to judge what you eat only by its
It’s good to eat things at the correct time, when they’re
| A．making | B．searching | C．squeezing | D．feeling |
| A．choice | B．comment | C．promise | D．gesture |
| A．thrilled | B．moved | C．worried | D．bored |
| A．more | B．good | C．new | D．easy |
| A．returned | B．sold | C．tried | D．mixed |
| A．appearance | B．quality | C．origin | D．price |
| A．vivid | B．happy | C．short | D．vague |
| A．clean | B．check | C．count | D．pack |
| A．on view | B．on sale | C．in season | D．in need |
| A．finished | B．stored | C．found | D．grown |
10 . I entered this world with Poland syndrome, a disease that prevented the formation of my right arm and muscles. My parents believed playing with Lego could enhance my
This early creation sparked my drive for further
As the years passed, my creations evolved from MK-1 to the more advanced and comfortable MK-V. One day, a couple with their eight-year-old son, who lost both arms in an accident, reached out to me after learning about my story. Short of money, they couldn’t afford well-functioning prosthetics. “Daniel,” the father
It would be a challenging task, but I responded with a “yes”. Without any delay, I
I rushed to the boy’s home and
| A．stability | B．mobility | C．flexibility | D．reliability |
| A．learned | B．attempted | C．managed | D．struggled |
| A．effort | B．investment | C．application | D．exploration |
| A．picking up | B．setting up | C．pulling up | D．rolling up |
| A．unstable | B．expensive | C．inconvenient | D．clumsy |
| A．gratefully | B．desperately | C．hurriedly | D．earnestly |
| A．embarked on | B．set off | C．figured out | D．carried on |
| A．secured | B．placed | C．guaranteed | D．stuck |
| A．encounter | B．engrave | C．engage | D．envelop |
| A．awe | B．dedication | C．fun | D．boredom |
