1 . High school life, especially in the senior year, is a rollercoaster of emotions filled with challenges and pressures. The constant demand for academic excellence, combined with the expections of college applications, and managing extracurricular (课外的) activities can lead even the best students to feel the weight of stress. However, it’s not only possible but essential to find moments of joy and strategies to reduce the pressure efficiently.

Understanding the nature of stress is the primary step. Stress isn’t just a state of mental unrest; it’s a physiological response.     1     The body notices any form of demand, challenge, or threat and reacts by preparing for a “fight-or-flight” response. This is an ancient survival process that equips us to deal with threats, whether they’re a challenging exam or a physical danger.

Interestingly, not all stress is harmful. We often overlook the distinction of different stress. Acute (急性的) stress, in contrast to the chronic (长期的), can act as a force.     2     It pushes us to our limits, motivates us to meet deadlines, and often results in that rewarding feeling of accomplishment.

However, long exposure to stress leads to chronic stress. This kind of stress, if left unchecked, can cause various health issues ranging from mental health problems like anxiety and depression to physical ailments like high blood pressure and even heart diseases.

To reduce the effects of stress, mindfulness and meditation have proven effective. Even on a busy day, sparing just a few moments to focus on one’s breathing or practicing guided meditation can significantly reduce stress levels.     3     These practices help in grounding an individual, bringing a momentary escape from the chaos (混乱).

Pursuing hobbies or activities that one is passionate about can also be a good way. Whether it’s painting, reading, playing a musical instrument, or engaging in sports, these activities not only divert the mind but also release endorphins, the body’s natural mood lifters.

Another aspect is communication.     4     Sharing burdens, discussing worries, or just talking about one’s day can offer a fresh perspective and often lightens the load. Schools offer services, and there are numerous helplines available to assist students in distress.

So, with the weight of expectations, deadlines, and too many responsibilities, remember to prioritize mental well-being.     5     Every individual deserves moments of relaxation and happiness.

A．When channeled correctly, stress can be our friend.

B．This response is a swift, automatic sequence designed for survival.

C．Prioritizing self-care isn’t a luxury (奢侈品); it’s a necessity.

D．Every challenge, it approached with a positive mindset, can be an opportunity for growth.

E．Seeding external help or just talking to a friend can be incredibly therapeutic.

F．They attach us to the present, clearing the mental disorder and lifting the spirit.

G．These parts often provide processes adjusted to individual needs.

2 . How We Talk about Fear Matters

Lately, there seems to be plenty to fear in the world. How we talk about what we fear might offer clues to how we perceive that emotion socially and culturally.

Get the root of fear.

    1    . In Anglo Saxon times, “fear” primarily referred to sudden danger. The root of the word dates back to “pēr” from Indo-European about 6,000 years ago. This root suggests that fear developed from a sudden (frightening) experience you passed through.

Figure out the emotional meaning of fear.

Whether emotions are viewed positively or negatively varies from culture to culture.    2     . For instance, in English, the word “anxious” can be used to mean “worried” or “eager”. But the word meaning “anxious” just means “regret” in Dargwa. Therefore, many English speakers may not view anxiety as negatively as Dargwa speakers.

Find out a fearful pattern.

In looking at such patterns across the major language families, researchers found that the word “fear” was often associated with anxiety, envy and grief in Indo-European languages. But in Austronesian languages, “fear” more often was associated with surprise.     3     .

    4    

How we talk about fear changes how we react to it. When we talk about what frightens us, it may be useful to disrupt associated meanings. In addition, how our language categorizes an emotion seems to impact whether we perceive those emotions negatively or positively.

In conclusion, fear is something that can be changed by cultural and linguistic experience.    5     . Perhaps Roosevelt was right when he in famously said “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

A．Talk more about fears

B．Change our perception of fear

C．The word fear has a long history in English

D．There seemed a fearful pattern across the major language families

E．This is based on what people have learned to associate with emotion words

F．It opens the door to potential ways to change how we talk about and react to it

G．This makes speakers of the latter languages associate this emotion with a less negative sense

3 . Have you ever bought a new car and started noticing the exact color and model of car everywhere? Has that type of car just become popular in your city? Were they there before? Or are you just going crazy?

You’re not going crazy. The reason you are now just noticing them is what psychologists call “priming”. Basically, the cars were always there. You just didn’t recognize them consciously. However, when that certain model of car becomes part of your conscious thinking, you start “automatically” recognizing all of the other cars that are the same, because you are already “primed” to do so.

The priming effect takes many forms. In one study, students were asked to walk around a room for 5 minutes at a rate of 30 steps per minute, which was about one-third their normal pace. After this brief experience, the participants were much quicker to recognize words related to old age, such as forgetful, old, and lonely. Reciprocal priming effects tend to produce a coherent reaction: if you are primed to think of old age, you would tend to act old, and acting old would reinforce the thought of old age. This research shows that the way we think influences the way we act, and the way we act influences the way we think.

A similar conclusion was reached by the American psychologist William James a century ago, but he emphasized the effect on feeling. “Actions seem to follow feeling, but really actions and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not. Thus the path to cheerfulness, should our cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there.”

So, that’s it. If you want to be happy, just sit up and act happy. Based on these scientific findings, we can adopt certain priming effects to help make ourselves consistently happier.

One thing we have in common is our ability to think, and thus feel. Pleasant thoughts have been proven to produce the chemicals that make us feel happy, particularly thoughts and feelings of gratitude. When we purposefully go through and think about the things we’re grateful for and deliberately feel as much gratitude as we can, we are flooding our mind with the “happy chemicals”. Furthermore, by consciously thinking, feeling and expressing gratitude, we will not only be happier in the moment, we will be “primed” to recognize the things in our life to appreciate. Each time this happens, the “happy chemicals” will be produced. Do this every day and we will become consistently happier. This makes up for the momentary happiness we gain from eating chocolate or buying new clothes. More than that, combining thoughts of gratitude with happy acts like smiling and laughing will have a supplementary positive effect on our state of mind.

1. Which of the following is an example of the priming effect?

A．Walking much faster after attending a lecture about old age.

B．Donating money to the poor after seeing pictures of cute cats.

C．Learning about various types of cars after purchasing the first car.

D．Completing SO_P as SOUP rather than SOAP after seeing the word EAT.

2. What does the underlined word “reciprocal” in Paragraph 3 probably mean?

A．Related.

B．Two-way.

C．Well-rounded.

D．Opposite.

3. What will the author probably agree with?

A．Eating or shopping leads to consistent feelings of happiness.

B．Our will has greater control over emotions than over actions.

C．Happy chemicals make us think about the things we’re grateful for.

D．Practicing gratitude frequently prepares us for long-term happiness.

4. Which of the following would be the best title for the passage?

A．Prime Yourself to Be Happier

B．Share Happiness to Enhance Wellbeing

C．Why Gratitude Is Important in Psychology

D．How Happy Chemicals Affect People’s Thoughts

4 . If you are of the “no regrets” school of life, you might think that all this regret is a recipe for unhappiness. But that isn’t the case. True, letting yourself be overwhelmed by regret is indeed bad for you. But going to the other extreme may be even worse. To extinguish your regrets doesn’t free you from shame or sorrow; it consigns you to make the same mistakes again and again. To truly get over our guilt requires that we put regret in its proper place.

As uncomfortable as it is, regret is an amazing cognitive feat. It requires that you go back to a past scenario, imagine that you acted differently to change it, and with that new scenario in mind, arrive at a different present — and then, compare that fictional present with the one you are experiencing in reality.     1     You would remember your own pettiness and irritability, and then imagine yourself showing more patience, being kind instead of hurtful at key moments. Then you would fast-forward to today and see how your relationship could be flourishing instead of languishing.

    2     Pink says they come in four basic varieties, and an instance of regret may involve just one or a combination. Wishing you’d been kinder to your partner is an example of a connection regret, in which you lament behavior that harmed an important relationship, such as spoiling a romance or neglecting your bond with relatives before they died.

Many connection regrets overlap with moral regrets, which can come about after you violate your own values. For example, you may pride yourself on being a loving person, and thus regret not living up to this image in the relationship you harmed. Moral regrets can also involve just yourself.     3    

Pink’s other two categories of regrets involve life choices. Foundation regrets are those in which you did something that affected the course of your life in a way you don’t like. A classic example is wishing you had stayed in school.     4    . They are all about inaction and forgone opportunities. This is what you feel when you kick yourself for not taking a chance, as in wishing you had just gone up to that attractive person and introduced yourself.

    5     Regret is implicated in depression and anxiety, and excessive regret can adversely affect your hormones and immune system. In 2013, researchers asked one group of participants in an experiment to describe “your most burdensome regret” right before going to bed; this group took 61 percent longer to get to sleep than a group told to think about a typical day.

But regret doesn’t have to be left unmanaged. The trick is not to remove the bad feeling; it’s to acknowledge it and use it for learning and improvement. Instead of letting the specter of your failed relationship make you miserable, by simply wishing it had tuned out differently you can be honest with yourself about what went wrong and use that knowledge to enjoy better relationships in the future.

A．Not all regrets are the same of course.

B．Meanwhile, boldness regrets are the opposite.

C．Regret may hurt, but obsessing over them is destructive.

D．Your regret can teach you to become smarter and more successful — if you let it.

E．Unanalyzed and unmanaged, any variety of regret can be poison for your well-being.

F．Maybe you regret not living up to your commitment to your health when you ate a whole pizza or skipped the gym.

G．For example, if today your relationship with your partner has soured, your regret might mentally take you back to last year.

5 . The Science of Recreational Fear

From peek-a-boo to Halloween haunted houses, research shows that recreational fear can teach us to face scary situations. The “paradox of horror” is that being scared, under the right circumstances, can be fun.     1    

Having fun with fear is an “extremely important tool for learning,” said Mathias Clasen, director of the Recreational Fear Lab at Aarhus University in Denmark. “We learn something about the dangers of the world. We learn something about our own responses: What does it feel like to be afraid? How much fear can I take?”

Horror movies have gotten more popular. And in one survey of more than 1,000 Americans, conducted by Clasen, 55% described themselves as horror fans.     2     Many people who would not consider themselves fans of fear enjoy true-crime podcasts and novels featuring violence and murder. Others may enjoy nature documentaries about top predators (捕食性动物) such as sharks and bears.

Even babies like being a little spooked (惊的). Peek-a-boo is “an infant jump scare,” Clasen said.     3     “I don’t think I’ve yet come across a person who did not enjoy some kind of recreational fear,” he said.

    4     It is a combination of an adrenaline (肾上腺素) rush and an opportunity to learn about dealing with scary situations in a safe environment, researchers say. When we are afraid, our endocrine system releases adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol to help prepare our body for physical action. We know the “Halloween” movie Michael Myers is not real, but our brain still responds as if he were a burning threat. One brain imaging study found that watching horror movies activates threat-response brain regions such as the amygdala (扁桃腺), prefrontal cortex and insula as if the danger were real.

After this rush, many people experience an uplifted mood. One study examined how 262 adults felt before and after they entered an extreme haunted house.     5     Brain recordings before and after showed that those whose mood improved had a smaller neural response to subsequent stressors, which is associated with the post-haunt high.

A．So why do we like it?

B．Fifty percent of people said they felt better after the visit.

C．And recreational fear, as it is rightly named, could benefit us, too.

D．Playing with fear helps us learn what our body does under pressure.

E．Horror, though, is not the only genre of what people find scary fun, he said.

F．We define recreational fear broadly as a mixed emotional experience of fear and enjoyment.

G．Classic childhood games of tag and hide-and-seek are just like the real scenes of predator vs. prey.

6 . Finland was known as a rather quiet country. Since 2008, the Country Brand Delegation (国家品牌代表团) has been looking for a national brand that would make some noise to market the country as a world-famous tourist destination. In 2010, the Delegation issued a “Country Brand Report,” which highlighted a host of marketable themes, including Finland’s famous educational system. One key theme was brand new: silence. As the report explained, modern society often seems intolerably loud and busy. “Silence is a resource,” it said.

Silence first appeared in scientific research as a control or baseline, against which scientists compare the effects of noise or music. Researchers have mainly studied it by accident, as physician Luciano Bernardi did in his study of the physiological (生理学) effects of music. “We didn’t think about the effect of silence,” he said. Bernardi observed two dozen test subjects while they listened to six musical tracks. He found that the impacts of music could be read directly in the bloodstream, via changes in blood pressure, carbon dioxide, and circulation in the brain. “During almost all sorts of music, there was a physiological change with a condition of arousal (兴奋),” he explained.

This effect made sense, given that active listening requires attention. But the more striking finding appeared between musical tracks. Bernardi and his colleagues discovered that randomly added stretches of silence also had a great effect, but in the opposite direction. In fact, two-minute silent pauses proved far more relaxing than either “relaxing” music or a longer silence played before the experiment started. The blank pauses that Bernardi had considered irrelevant, in other words, became the most interesting object of study. Silence seemed to be heightened by contrasts, maybe because it gave test subjects a release from careful attention. “Perhaps the arousal is something that concentrates the mind in one direction, so that when there is nothing more arousing, then you have deeper relaxation,” he said.

This finding is reinforced by neurological (神经系统的) research. Relevant research shows when our brains rest quietly, they integrate external and internal information into “a conscious (意识的) workspace.” Freedom from noise and goal-directed tasks, it appears, unites the quiet without and within, allowing our conscious workspace to do its thing to discover where we fit in.

Noora Vikman, a consultant on silence for Finland’s marketers, knows silence well. Living in a remote and quiet place in Finland, she discovers thoughts and feelings that aren’t detectable in her busy daily life. “If you want to know yourself, you have to be with yourself, and discuss with yourself, and be able to talk with yourself.”

1. Why does the author mention the Country Brand Report in Paragraph 1?

A．To present how Finland viewed silence.

B．To highlight the need of noise in Finland.

C．To explain why Finland issued the brands.

D．To indicate the authority of the Delegation.

2. What can be inferred about Luciano Bernardi’s discovery?

A．It challenged the calming effect of music.

B．It emphasized the role of silence between sounds.

C．It illustrated the loss of attentiveness after silence.

D．It stated brains’ information processing in the quiet.

3. As for Noora Vikman’s attitude to silence, the author is ________.

A．doubtful

B．supportive

C．disapproving

D．unconcerned

4. Which would be the best title for the passage?

A．Silence: A Limited Resource	B．Silence: A Misunderstood Tool
C．Silence: The Unexpected Power	D．Silence: The Value by Contrasts

7 . 阅读下面短文，根据题目要求用英文回答问题。

Compassion involves feeling another person’s pain and wanting to take steps to help relieve their suffering. The word compassion itself derives from Latin and means “to suffer together.” It is related to other emotions such as sympathy and empathy, although the concepts have some key differences. Empathy refers more to the general ability to feel the emotions of others. Compassion, on the other hand, is what happens when those feelings of empathy are accompanied by the desire to help. The difference between sympathy and compassion is that the former responds to suffering with sorrow and concern while the latter responds with warmth and care.

Compassion often comes in one of two forms, which vary depending on where these feelings are directed. Your experience of compassion may be either directed toward other people, or it may be directed inwardly toward yourself. On one hand, compassion is a process of connecting by identifying with another person. When you experience compassion for other people, you feel their pain and want to find a way to relieve their suffering. These feelings motivate you to take action to make the situation better. Self-compassion involves treating yourself with the same kindness that you would show to others. You will treat failures without defensiveness, and no longer beat yourself up you’re your mistakes. You will feel understanding, mindful, and accepting of yourself and your imperfections.

While some people are compassionate by nature, experts also suggest that there are steps you can take to cultivate a greater sense of compassion for both yourself and others.

Bring your attention to the situation. The first component of compassion is to become more aware of what other people are experiencing. Imagine yourself in their shoes. Being able to see things from another person’s perspective can help you gain a sense of compassion for their situation.

Let go of judgment. Focus on accepting people for who they are without criticizing or blaming the victim. Compassionate people tend to accept people as they are and avoid judgement.

Practice mindfulness. Mindfulness is a practice of focusing on the present, becoming more aware of your own thoughts, and observing these thoughts. Research suggests that mindfulness-based interventions can be effective for improving self-compassion.

1. According to the passage, what is the difference between compassion and empathy?
_________________________________________________________________
2. Generally, how many forms does compassion have and what are they?
_________________________________________________________________
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
➢ Compassionate people like making judgement of other people, and some of them are compassionate by nature.
_________________________________________________________________
4. Do you think the sense of compassion is important in your life? Why or why not?(In about 40 words)
_________________________________________________________________

8 . Imagine a friend has just asked how you’re feeling. “I’m fine,” you protest. You’re clearly anxious but respond in this way, unable to express how it is you really feel. Try as you might, you can’t quite understand your emotions, and truth to be told, you’re not sure whether you really want to.

Research shows that being aware of your emotions is hugely beneficial and people with high emotional awareness have better social and emotional functioning. “Emotional awareness is being able to identify and make sense of not only our own emotions but those of others, ”explains Rachel Vora, psychotherapist and founder of CYP Wellbeing. “It’s absolutely essential in maintaining good mental health. When we are able to identify and reflect on our emotional responses, we can understand how this influences our behaviours and in turn, change the way we respond to challenging situations.”

Of course, finding out how we feel can often prove difficult. It’s the very reason we turn to general phrases like ‘I feel blue’ or I’m not myself today’. It’s not always easy to put a finger on exactly what’s wrong, without digging a little deeper. Vora says this is often because on some level we don’t want to know how we really feel. “We can often try to numb or suppress because they feel overwhelming or distressing and this can often lead to a lack of emotional awareness as we feel disconnected from ourselves,” she explains.

Without emotional awareness, we can also develop emotional blind spots: unhealthy thoughts, behaviours and coping mechanisms that are hidden from our view. Perhaps you lash out or withdraw when you feel overwhelmed or go into criticism and self-doubt when you receive negative feedback. Unless you take time for self-reflection, you’ll remain unaware of these habits and continue to repeat the same destructive patterns again and again. Vora says tuning into your emotions and honestly reflecting on how you feel is the key. “When we do this, we are more able to work with our emotions and put strategies in place to improve our mood,” she points out. “By identifying our emotional blind spots, we can feel more in control of our emotions, and also how we respond in challenging situations.”

1. Why can’t you express your true feeling according to paragraph 1?

A．You want to keep it a secret.	B．You are absent-minded at that time.
C．You are unable to grasp your feeling.	D．You are unwilling to share it with your friend.

2. How does emotional awareness benefit us?

A．It’s easy for us to respond politely.	B．It can identify our emotional responses.
C．It can contribute to our mental health	D．We can identify our emotions and those of others’.

3. What can be inferred from paragraph 3?

A．People tend to lie to their friends.

B．People often doubt about themselves.

C．People should communicate with each other frequently.

D．People sometimes avoid their true feelings consciously.

4. What is Vora’s suggestion according to the passage?

A．Thinking over what is your true feeling.	B．Hiding you from the negative feedback.
C．Criticizing bravely when you are anxious.	D．Remaining unaware of the destructive patterns.