2 . It’s no secret that reading good news feels a lot better than reading bad news. Like, would you rather bite into a lemon, or sip on a fresh glass of lemonade?

    1    The world is full of problems and conflicts and we need to stay informed and alert (警觉的) to what’s going on around us. While reading traditional, more negative news is important, consuming good news is also part of staying informed.     2    And it also brings meaningful benefits, like reduced stress and anxiety, higher rates of engagement, community building skills, and inspiration for creating a better world. Plus, knowing what to look for in the good news landscape is a key part of improving our media literacy skills and being thoughtful news consumers.

In fact, good news, known as solutions journalism, is becoming more popular, as publishers and news stations discover the benefits of sharing positive stories. Good Good Good is one of them.     3     A team of reporters and editors there work daily to deliver stories that make readers feel hopeful and equipped to do more good with possible solutions.

“If it bleeds, it leads.” has long been a saying used in the media to describe how news stories about violence, death and destruction draw readers’ attention.       4     The thing is, however, there’s also good stuff out there—the delightful and kind parts of humanity. “Beautiful stories are happening worldwide.    5    When you do find them, the world can suddenly feel like a very different place. Good news is a vital part of how we learn about the world and solving the world’s problems.” Hervey, one of Good Good Good’s editors said.

A．Share good news with people around you.

B．It’s just that we don’t hear as much about them.

C．But the “bad news” has its place in the world.

D．It provides a more balanced view of the world.

E．And so, negative news stories are everywhere on news media.

F．Heartwarming stories make you cry and feel good.

G．The news media company is devoted to providing good news intentionally.

3 . One of the curious things about social networks is the way that some messages, pictures, or ideas can spread like wildfire while others that seem just as catchy or interesting barely register at all.

Before you go deep into the puzzle, consider this: If you measure the height of your male friends, for example, the average is about 170 centimeters. You are 172 and your friends are all about the same height as you are. Indeed, the mathematical concept of “average” is a good way to capture the nature of this data set.

But imagine that one of your friends was much taller than you. This person would dramatically skew the average, which would make your friends taller than you, on average. In this case, the “average” is a poor way to capture this data set.

Exactly this situation occurs on social networks. On average, your coauthors will be cited more often than you, and the people you follow will post more frequently than you, and so on.

Now Lerman from University of Southern California has discovered a related paradox, which they call the majority illusion. They illustrate this illusion with an example. They take 14 nodes linked up to form a small network. They then color three of these nodes and count how many of the remaining nodes link to them in a single step.

In one situation, the uncolored nodes see more than half of their neighbors as colored. This is the majority illusion — the local impression that a specific feature is common when the global truth is entirely different.

So how popular is it in the real world? It’s found out that the majority illusion occurs in almost all network scenarios. “The effect is largest in the political blogs network, where 60% of nodes will have majority active neighbours, even when only 20% of the nodes are truly active,” says Lerman.

It immediately explains many interesting phenomena. For a start, it shows how some content can spread globally while other similar content does not — the key is to start with a small number of well-connected early adopters fooling the rest of the network into thinking it is common. The affected nodes then find it natural to follow the trend. A real spread finally comes into being.

But it is not yet a marketer’s charter. For that, marketers must first identify the popular nodes that can create the majority illusion for the target audience. These influencers must then be persuaded to adopt the desired behavior or product, which is essential to the prospect of the marketing plan.

1. The phrase skew the average in the passage most probably refers to the action of ________.

A．hiding the real average to be unrecognizable to others

B．producing an average against the general feature of data

C．working out the common feature suggested by the average

D．ignoring the average because of the frequency by which it is reviewed

2. Which of the following statements is TRUE according to the passage?

A．Majority illusion rarely has impacts except in political blogs field.

B．The majority illusion on social networks relies on that people you follow post more than you.

C．The essence of successful opinion spread is to initiate the trend with well-connected sharers.

D．The spread scale of ideas on networks mainly depends on the quality of content.

3. To guarantee the success of marketing promotion, it’s vital to ________.

A．thoroughly understand the concept of majority illusion

B．accurately figure out who is the powerful person to affect others

C．definitely decide who are the target audience for the promotion

D．successfully convince the influencers to practice certain action

4. What is most probably the title of the passage?

A．The social network vision that tricks your mind.

B．Who is stealing your network identity?

C．Minority network opinion spread, curse or blessing?

D．Have you been misled during the last political voting?

7 . As you read this, pause to reflect on your recent interactions. As a politician, husband, and father, I encounter various spoken language styles: analytical or chatty, formal or informal, pointed or gentle, cooperative or decisive. Talk is the currency of politics. It is our way of negotiating, debating, and persuading. Talk is also the currency of learning-how we develop our ideas, deepen our thinking and share our feelings.

That’s why I want speaking skills, sometimes called “oracy”, to play an important part in Labor’s plans for a reformed school curriculum (课程).

Employers value speaking skills equally with reading and writing. The ability to speak well and express yourself should be something every child should master. But the curriculum doesn’t allow us to provide this. This is short-sighted. An inability to express your thoughts fluently is a key barrier to getting on and doing well in life.

Oracy is in part about good public speaking and debating skills, but in reality, it’s about teaching young people to make strong arguments, choose wise words, understand their audience, form meaningful social connections, and use facial expressions and body language to convey their message. Above all else it’s about finding your voice. To work out who you are and what you believe. If reading opens up a world of imagination and possibility, then speaking and listening opens up a lifetime of empowerment-a chance for those who feel invisible in their own country to be heard. It is about the confidence to speak out, to call out injustice or harm.

And the other side of speaking is listening, which can also be taught. Listening, truly listening, develops tolerance and understanding. And as parents we can play our part. We’ve all been there, at mealtimes, silent as we all stare at our devices. Our job, all of ours, is to get off our screens and give young people, and adults, the gift of listening.

So, oracy―speaking and listening―needs to be placed firmly at the heart of school life.

1. How does talk help a politician?

A．It deepens his wishful thinking.

B．It enhances his analytical skills.

C．It strengthens persuasive power.

D．It provides emotional support.

2. Why does the author suggest a reform in the British school curriculum?

A．Employers underestimate the value of speaking.

B．Academic pressure makes students poor-sighted.

C．Spoken language is regarded as least important.

D．Oracy should deserve more attention at school.

3. How does the author illustrate his argument in paragraph 4?

A．By sharing different opinions.

B．By clarifying the definition.

C．By describing personal experiences.

D．By employing the concept.

4. What are parents advised to do?

A．Set a good example for their children.

B．Balance screen time and mealtime.

C．Have oral face-to-face communication.

D．Disconnect from the virtual world.

8 . Schools in the US and elsewhere are announcing bans on the recently released AI — powered ChatGPT out of fear that students could use the technology to complete their assignments. However, bans may be practically impossible given how difficult it is to detect when text is composed by ChatGPT. Is it instead time to rethink how students are taught and evaluated?

Educators are starting to question what it means to assess student learning if an AI can write an essay or paper similar to, or even better than, a student would — and the teacher can’t tell the difference. Many teachers believe the time-honored learning tradition will be destroyed from the ground up by Chat GPT. The Los Angeles Unified School District in California first blocked the use of ChatGPT on networks and devices in December 2022.

However, removing technology from the classroom can mean undesirable consequences, such as creating more obstacles for students with disabilities, says Trust. Additionally, restricting the use of ChatGPT on school networks and devices can’t stop students from using ChatGPT at home and in libraries.

It is also unclear if anti-cheating software can reliably detect AI-assisted writing. OpenAI is working to develop a digital watermark that can help teachers and academics spot students who are using ChatGPT to write essays. Open AI’s attempts to watermark AI text, however, hit limits.

Instead of worrying about how ChatGPT could enable cheating, educators should ask what motivates students to cheat in the first place and work on developing relationships of trust, says Jesse Stommel at the University of Denver in Colorado.

“Talk to students really frankly about what ChatGPT’s capable of, what it’s not,” says Stommel. “Have students use it to write an essay about Jane Austen and gender dynamics, and then have them read that essay and peer review it and think about what ChatGPT gets right and wrong.”

1. What does the author suggest schools do?

A．Adjust teaching and assessment.

B．Meet different demands from students.

C．Prohibit the use of ChatGPT in classrooms.

D．Break with the traditional teaching method.

2. What is paragraph 2 mainly about?

A．Dark future of ChatGPT.	B．Educators’ worrying concern.
C．Crisis of traditional learning.	D．Difficulty in telling AI’s writing.

3. What is the author’s attitude toward OpenAI’s watermark technology?

A．Amused.

B．Hopeful.

C．Shocked.

D．Doubtful.

4. What can be inferred from Jesse Stommel?

A．AI helps students tell right and wrong.

B．Students should write about famous writers.

C．Educators should guide students to use AI properly.

D．The trust between teachers and students is hard to form.

9 . We are often so attracted by the promises of modern digital life that we fail to notice its danger. It’s that feeling of losing control that we get a dozen times a day, from when we get distracted (分心) with our phones in a discussion to when we can’t appreciate a private moment without sharing it with virtual audience.

In my first attempt to get control over my technology use, I set my phone to vibrate rather than ring. Soon after, another problem appeared. The act of continually checking the phone became a habit. I knew then that using only tips to permanently reform digital life is difficult. We should go past the notification settings (通知模式) on our devices or apps and consider the more essential topic of why we use so many apps in the first place. What all of us who are struggling with these challenges need is a technology usage philosophy, something that explains from the ground up which digital tools we allow into our lives, why, and under what conditions.

Cal Newport, a professor of computer science, defines Digital Minimalism (极简主义) as a “philosophy of technology use in which you focus your online time on a small number of carefully selected activities that strongly support the things you value, and then happily miss out on everything else.”

To do so, however, we cannot passively allow the tools and apps provided by the internet age to control how we spend our time or how we feel. Instead, we must take steps to draw the positive aspects of these technologies while sidestepping the negative aspects.

1. What does “its danger” in the first paragraph refer to?

A．Feeling depressed.

B．Getting distracted in a discussion.

C．Giving up private moments.

D．Losing control of your digital life.

2. Why does the author mention his own experiences?

A．To make a comparison.

B．To explain a phenomenon.

C．To bring in a better solution.

D．To clarify misunderstandings.

3. Which of the following will digital minimalists agree to?

A．Ignoring the side effect of digital tools.

B．Devoting your screen time to valuable things.

C．Spending more time selecting information.

D．Getting away from entertainment apps.

4. What’s the text mainly about?

A．Reforms in life.

B．Technology challenges.

C．Apps and social media sites.

D．Technology usage philosophy.

10 . Science reporting on climate change does lead Americans to adopt more accurate beliefs and support government action on the issue, but these gains are fragile, a new study suggests. Researchers found that these accurate beliefs fade quickly when people are exposed to coverage skeptical of climate change.

“It is not the case that the American public does not respond to scientifically informed reporting when they are exposed to it,” said Thomas Wood, associate professor of political science at the Ohio State University. “But even truly accurate science reporting recedes from people’s frame of reference very quickly.”

Results showed that accurate science reporting didn’t persuade only politicians and people who initially rejected human-caused climate change also had their opinions shifted by reading accurate articles. The study involved 2,898 online participants who participated in four waves of the experiment during the fall of 2020.

In the first wave, they all read authentic articles in the popular media that provided information reflecting the seientifie views on climate change. In the second and third waves, they read either another scientific article, an opinion article that was skeptical of climate science, or an article on an unrelated subjeet. In the fourth wave, the participants simply were asked their beliefs about the science of climate change and their policy attitudes.

To rate participants’ scientific understanding. the researchers asked after each wave if they believed that climate change is happening and has a human cause. To measure their attitudes, researchers asked participants if they favored government action on climate change and if they favored renewable energy.

“What we found suggests that people need to hear the same accurate messages about climate change again and again. If they only hear it once, it recedes very quickly,” Wood said. It was significant that accurate reporting had positive effects on all groups, including those who originally rejected climate change. But it was even more encouraging that it affected attitudes.

1. What does the underlined word “recedes” in paragraph 2 mean?

A．Increases.

B．Graduates.

C．Disappears.

D．Strikes.

2. What does paragraph 4 mainly tell us?

A．The research object.	B．The research result.
C．The research purpose.	D．The research procedure.

3. Why did researchers ask participants the second question?

A．To survey the government’s satisfaction rate.

B．To make an assessment on their attitudes.

C．To teach them scientific understanding.

D．To measure action on climate change.

4. What can be the best title for the text?

A．Science Report Of Climate Change Can Affect Minds

B．Online Participants Joined In A Four-Wave Experiment

C．Accurate Science Reporting Don’t Persuade Only Politicians

D．People Should Hear Accurate Messages About Climate Change