1 . The UK is experiencing a boom in book clubs, according to new data from event listing companies. Book club listings on the ticketing site Eventbrite increased by 350% between 2019 and 2023. Between 2022 and 2023 alone, book club listings on the site rose by 41%. Another event listing site, Meetup, reported a 14% increase in the number of RSVPs to book clubs between January 2023 and January 2024, compared with a 4% increase in RSVPs for all UK-based events.
Victoria Okafor, who co-runs the book club Between2Books, said the heightened interest in reading may be partly the result of a general “shift in hobbies”, as GenZ (the generation around 00s) turned to other ways to spend their free time. Besides, during the global health crisis period, many people were forced to slow down and pick up or reignite hobbies, and online book clubs provided a platform to connect with others.
Social media may be helping with the visibility of book clubs, too, said Okafor. “People may come across your page accidentally, but from there people have the knowledge to attend should they wish. I think this makes a big difference compared to just hearing things from word of mouth.”
Many of the book clubs listed on Eventbrite carry specific themes — Sheffield Feminist Book Club, Bring Your Baby Book Club, and Modern Chinese Literature Online Book Club.
Okafor’s club, Between2Books, focuses on books by writers traditionally excluded (排除) from the classics. She thought she began seeking out such stories “embarrassingly late”. “Reading authors of color brought back a joy to my reading that came from not only seeing elements of myself and culture reflected in novels but also reading stories that could be funny or empowering as opposed to the accounts of struggle that can often surround stories of people of color,” she said. “The variety of books makes reading and discussion so rich and I think that’s what attenders are drawn to.”
1. How is paragraph 1 mainly developed?| A．By giving examples. | B．By listing figures. |
| C．By analyzing causes. | D．By presenting theories. |
| A．Return. | B．Reward. | C．Regain. | D．Reconnect. |
| A．The influence of social media. | B．The recommendation of old generations. |
| C．GenZ having a stronger thirst for knowledge. | D．Some people shifting the focus of their lives. |
| A．The diversity of books. | B．The reputation of writers. |
| C．The humor of the works. | D．The suggestion of the organizer. |
2 . I was ten years old when I started watching lawn tennis. Having developed interest in tennis, I started following and gaining knowledge about the game. The play of the 100th seed was the best according to me until I asked my father who is the number 1 ranked player in the world, to which he replied — Roger Federer.
That was it! I watched his play at Wimbledon and really couldn’t stop admiring this personality. His silky smooth movement, flawless serve, unreachable powerful forehand, amazing footwork—all of it was pretty amazing. I started playing tennis because of him; he was undoubtedly my role model. I followed his career off the tennis court and learned things about him that really made me a better person in life.
There is a feeling of joy in each stroke that Federer plays and a feeling of excitement in each thing he does whether it is giving an interview, doing a press conference, practicing on court or mere signing the tennis balls for fans. There is never a dull moment when he is around, which inspires everyone to be happy and joyous in life in whatever they do. One of the most important things about him which inspires me is his sense of humor.
Federer first congratulates his opponents and never shies from telling them they played wonderfully well, and that luck was on his side today or that he had a good day, instead of attributing the victory to his hours of hard work and training. He always looks for opportunities to praise others.
Another admirable thing about Federer is his love for the game. It teaches me that it’s great to do what you love. You can excel in any profession if you love it from your heart; it then becomes no more a profession but a thing of joy from which you can get satisfaction and fulfilment each day you practice it. It is no more a duty but a sense of fulfilment（成就）.
He is the most respected player in the game and everyone feels privileged to play against him, and some don’t even mind losing to him! This kind of respect is not gained in a few days but in many years by achieving perfectionism both on and off the court, by inspiring and motivating generations to come and becoming a part of history, by not just getting awards on the court but also by being a good man. Federer’s energy motivates me to keep moving on and on in my life, fighting difficulties with a smile and cherishing good moments as well as not so good.
1. How did the author initially know Federer?| A．By watching the play of the 100th seed player. |
| B．By following a Wimbledon tournament. |
| C．By participating in a tennis camp. |
| D．By requiring his father. |
| A．Federer’s optimistic and humorous features. |
| B．How Federer reacted when being interviewed. |
| C．The influence Federer has on his fans. |
| D．How Federer achieved victories through hard exercise. |
| A．We should never cares about losing a game. |
| B．We’d better keep a good relationship with anyone. |
| C．We should treasure both good and not-so-good moments in life. |
| D．We can learn to handle challenges brought by our opponents. |
| A．The Significance of Following a Model | B．An Inspiring Legend: Roger Federer |
| C．The Way to Gain the Sense of Fulfilment | D．The Privilege of Being a Tennis Star |
3 . Seven years ago, my wife bought me a terrific birthday present. For $70, she
My
I
We need to
And who doesn’t need to have
| A．sold | B．offered | C．guaranteed | D．rented |
| A．use | B．access | C．storage | D．entrance |
| A．comment | B．difference | C．charge | D．way |
| A．measure | B．decorate | C．design | D．operate |
| A．initial | B．risky | C．heavy | D．wise |
| A．responsibility | B．qualification | C．ambition | D．experience |
| A．occupied | B．divided | C．beloved | D．possessed |
| A．lecturers | B．strangers | C．farmers | D．competitors |
| A．harvest | B．irrigate | C．grow | D．classify |
| A．waste | B．collect | C．earn | D．invest |
| A．habit | B．value | C．room | D．time |
| A．calm down | B．appeal to | C．connect with | D．believe in |
| A．doubt | B．curiosity | C．care | D．dignity |
| A．fun | B．money | C．fame | D．fortune |
| A．tolerant | B．specific | C．positive | D．convenient |
4 . This week I saw a video of a mountain climber lying on the back of the Sherpa guide who helped rescue him.
Gelje says he was
Gelje stopped the climb of his own client. Then he rescued the
“We
A helicopter met them to lift the
We don't know how the Malaysian climber
| A．urging | B．sponsoring | C．guiding | D．contacting |
| A．hanging onto | B．spreading out | C．checking on | D．passing down |
| A．foot | B．sea | C．climate | D．zone |
| A．destinations | B．directions | C．reaches | D．ranges |
| A．wander | B．die | C．multiply | D．dry |
| A．freezing | B．missing | C．appealing | D．demanding |
| A．supported | B．dragged | C．pressed | D．comforted |
| A．conversation | B．activity | C．rescue | D．operation |
| A．lied | B．relaxed | C．wrapped | D．lifted |
| A．tears | B．pain | C．need | D．turns |
| A．injured | B．frightened | C．committed | D．trapped |
| A．found | B．ensured | C．exposed | D．behaved |
| A．cliffs | B．caves | C．mountains | D．rivers |
| A．protect | B．caution | C．approach | D．save |
| A．extraordinary | B．important | C．selfless | D．available |
5 . In America, the “Big Dig”, a highway project that resulted in a mess of traffic in the centre of Boston for years, came in five times over its initial budget. Even the Germans get huge projects wrong. Conception to operation of Berlin Brandenburg Airport has taken 30 years, with seven missed opening dates. The airport ended up costing $8.2 billion. However, the original estimate was about $2.7 billion.
Huge projects like Berlin Brandenburg Airport are the subject of an amusing new book called How Big Things Get Done by Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner. Mr. Flyvbjerg sets up a database of over 16, 000 projects and data analysis reveals that only 8.5% of the projects meet their initial estimates on cost and time, and 0.5% of them achieve what they set out to do on cost, time and benefits.
Over-optimistic time and cost estimates originate from both psychological and political perceptions: the reliance on intuition (直觉) rather than data, and a problem that Mr. Flyvbjerg calls “strategic misrepresentation”. This is when budgets are intentionally reduced in order to get things going. And once the projects are under way, they will not be stopped, because money spent on them will thus be wasted.
Mr. Flyvbjerg speaks highly of Pixar’s methodical approach to developing and testing films in great detail before they go into production. He also tells the story of how Frank Gehry’s well-developed architectural models helped ensure the success of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. Narrowing down the producing window of a project before it is actually carried out reduces the probability of unexpected events.
Big customized projects are particularly likely to run into trouble. However, the more a project can be divided into standardized processes, the better its prospects are. Projects run into problems for specific reasons as well as general ones: Britain’s trouble is not something that China has to worry about, for instance. But the iron law is that if you plan strictly and standardize where possible, you are less likely to dig yourself into a hole.
1. How does the author introduce the topic of the passage?| A．By making a contrast. | B．By giving an explanation. |
| C．By presenting examples. | D．By showing an experience. |
| A．Projects’ success rates can be estimated. |
| B．Projects’ desired outcome can’t be achieved. |
| C．Most projects suffer overspending and delays. |
| D．Most projects lack comprehensive data analysis. |
| A．Failures in decision-making. | B．Methods of reducing massive costs. |
| C．Strategies for getting work done. | D．Reasons behind inaccurate estimates. |
| A．Planning thoroughly in advance. |
| B．Analyzing specific and general reasons. |
| C．Focusing on efficiency of projects. |
| D．Drawing lessons from former experiences. |
6 . If you look at the dynamic “Global Temperatures” map on NASA’s website, you can see the historic temperature change over time across the planet as the timeline goes from 1880 to the modern day. By 2019, the entire planet is in red, orange, and yellow colors, indicating temperatures much higher than the historical average in every country and human inhabitance.
If the timeline went to 2023, the map would look even worse. That’s because the summer of 2023 was the hottest ever, according to ocean monitors. July was the hottest month in recorded history. Next July could be worse. Unless we do something quickly, we face dealing with more and more dangerous and expensive natural disasters in the future.
Forest fires sent smoke from Canada across the North American continent, causing New York City to have the worst air quality in its recorded history. Heavy rainstorms fell on Vermont and the Northeastern United States in just a couple of days in the middle of July, which exceeded the amount that area would usually receive in two months and caused extreme damage to homes and businesses. Around the same time, flash flooding in Bucks County, Pennsylvania — north of Philadelphia — killed nearly a dozen people.
Erich Fischer, a researcher specializing in climate studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, is concerned that natural disasters could get much worse in the future—and in ways we cannot predict. He called for a “strike for climate justice,” which actually took place on Sept. 15, 2023. “The strategy needs to be twofold (双重的) . We need to decrease carbon emissions as much as realistically possible. That is already happening with people using electric cars and other green technologies. At the same time, we also need to find ways to predict the risk of natural disasters ahead of time,” said Erich Fischer.
1. Why does the writer mention the data on NASA’s website in paragraph 1?| A．To explain a concept. | B．To introduce a topic. |
| C．To provide a solution. | D．To make a prediction. |
| A．The severity of natural disasters. | B．The worst air quality in New York City. |
| C．The extreme damage by flash flooding. | D．The cause of the forests fires in Canada. |
| A．He advocated a twofold strategy. |
| B．He suggested forbidding carbon emissions. |
| C．He required people to use more electric cars. |
| D．He emphasized the awareness of climate changes. |
| A．The Hottest Month in History | B．Natural Disasters in the World |
| C．Extreme Weather Could Get Worse | D．Green Technology Would be Needed |
7 . Chinese researchers have revealed the anti-cancer characteristic of neutrophils (中性粒细胞) — a type of white blood cells—and the related molecular regulation mechanism, providing new insights into cancer diagnosis and treatment. The discovery, made by researchers at the Shanghai Institute of Immunity and Infection under the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Fudan University, was published in Cell on Tuesday.
Neutrophils are the most abundant white blood cells in the human body. As the first line of defence against infections, they play a key role in anti-infection immunity. The researchers collected neutrophils from 143 patients with 17 different types of cancer and analyzed them. They revealed that neutrophils can adopt at least 10 highly specialized and distinct functional states related to inflammation (炎症) , blood vessel formation and—most excitingly—presenting antigens (抗体) to activate powerful cancer-killing T cells.
“We were surprised to find such complexity and different roles within neutrophils, which have been ignored for so long,” said Zhang Xiaoming, a researcher at the Institute. “What is especially remarkable is their newly discovered capacity to act as antigen-presenting cells, gathering T cells against cancer. In addition, the abundance of antigen-presenting neutrophils is associated with improved condition across many cancer types revealed in this study,” he said.
“This completely changes how we perceive neutrophils in the context of cancer,” said Gao Qiang, a professor at Fudan University. “Now we know we could employ the diverse hidden identities of neutrophils to strengthen the effectiveness of immunotherapy (免疫疗法). We’re thrilled to further explore the potential benefits of these newly uncovered mechanisms in clines.”
The study emphasizes the value of single-cell sequencing approaches to reveal new functional dimension even within seemingly well-understood immune cells. Tapping into the hidden potential of neutrophils may provide new insights into cancer diagnosis and treatment.
1. How was the anti-cancer function of neutrophils discovered?| A．By referring to previous research. |
| B．By collecting and analyzing data. |
| C．By seeking guidance from experts. |
| D．By observing patients with inflammation. |
| A．Getting together T cells when needed. |
| B．Preventing the formation of antigens. |
| C．Speeding up the blood flow. |
| D．Distinguishing different types of cancer. |
| A．Positive. | B．Doubtful. | C．Worried. | D．Unclear. |
| A．Blood Cells Successfully Fight Against Severe Cancer |
| B．China Makes Great Progress in Fighting Against Diseases |
| C．Further Research Is Needed to Fight Against Cancer |
| D．Researchers Discover New Cancer-fighting Mechanism |
8 . Imagine a horizontal line. The very left is marked one thousand and the very right is marked one billion. On this line, where would you add a marker to represent one million? If you said somewhere in the middle, you answered the same as the roughly 50 percent of people who have done this exercise in a number line study. But the answer is actually much closer to one thousand since there are one thousand millions in one billion.
This error makes sense because “our human brains are pretty bad at comprehending large numbers,” says Elizabeth Toomarian, an educational neuroscientist at Stanford University. Our brain is built to understand how much of something is in its environment. But comprehending the national debt or imagining the size of our universe? “We certainly can use our brains in that way, but we’re recycling these sorts of evolutionarily (进化地) old brain architectures to do something really new,” she says. In other words, it’s not our fault that we have trouble wrapping our heads around big numbers.
So what can we do about the struggle to understand big numbers? It is suggested to use metaphors, analogies (类比) and visualizations. These techniques bring big numbers down to a more comprehensible scale (比例) and ideally make it relevant to something in our daily lives. For example, it may be difficult for most people to accurately place the extinction of the dinosaurs on a timeline between the Big Bang and humans because the first two both seem to be placed to the distant path. But when conceptualizing (概念化) these events using a “calendar”, it becomes easier. The Big Bang occurred at 12 a.m. on January 1st on the calendar. Dinosaurs were only present for roughly the last week of the year. And humans only emerged in the last eight sends December 31st, at 12:59:52 p.m. It’s clear now that dinosaurs are much closer to humans than the Big Bang on a timeline.
These metaphors and analogies are important if people are to really weigh the costs and benefits of events in their lives. The concept not only applies to long-term decisions, but public policies.
1. Why does the author mention the example in the first paragraph?| A．To introduce the topic. | B．To explain the main idea. |
| C．To make a summary of the text. | D．To make comparisons with other topics. |
| A．The lack of conceptual techniques. |
| B．The unwillingness to learn something new. |
| C．Our low ability to evaluate and compare. |
| D．Our inborn nature due to evolutionary factors. |
| A．Making them related to each other. |
| B．Wrapping our heads around them. |
| C．Using techniques to put them to a smaller scale. |
| D．Applying a calendar to present them. |
| A．How to make long-term decisions. |
| B．How metaphors and analogies help solve public problems. |
| C．How to weigh the costs and benefits in our life. |
| D．How important public policies are in our life |
The Yingge dance is a combination of opera, dance and wushu. Typically, the dance
On Chinese New Year, a Yingge team
The dance team’s commitment
So far, the Yingge dance
10 . When it comes to happiness, our present selves habitually get deprived (剥夺).
When we are doing these, it’s as if we put true happiness in a package addressed to us at some future time when circumstances will be just right for it to happen. Yet, the package keeps getting lost.
What causes this? How can we avoid this result? We should know the reason why we make such choices and why our future selves seem like strangers to us is partially due to the abstractness of tomorrow. The solution is to make the future more vivid and create an emotional connection between the present and future selves. Here are several ways to strengthen the connection.
Visualize the best version of yourself.
Imagine yourself in old age. Looking back at now, what do you wish you would have done more or differently with your time?
Once you do such things, you will make choices that will benefit both your present self and future self.
| A．Start a conversation between the selves. |
| B．What will your future self thank you for? |
| C．We often put feeling happy to the future us. |
| D．Learn to communicate with others through letters. |
| E．What impression did you leave on those around you? |
| F．This can make what you do today for the future more worthwhile. |
| G．As a result, we are left without enjoyment of the moment in front of us. |
