1 . Suppose you come across two doctors. One is handsome while the other looks plain. Who would you trust with your surgery? Most people would probably want to get treated by the handsome one. And most people are likely to be wrong about that.
When you look at the sun, you sometimes see it clearly. But sometimes you’ll see it shining way bigger than its actual shape. That circle of light called a halo makes it look bigger. This effect, known as the halo effect, also happens when a person, product, or company shines like the sun. Then we don’t see them clearly and associate all sorts of unrelated qualities to them.
The halo effect was once studied by the psychologist Edward Thorndike, who asked flight commanders to evaluate their pilots in various distinct aspects such as physical appearance, intelligence, and leadership. He found that the pilots who got high scores for their physical appearance, also got rated high on intelligence and leadership skills — a link that seemed wrong. It appears that the commanders were unable to evaluate specific qualities independently of others. They thought of their pilots in broad terms, either “good” or “bad”, and allowed this general feeling to influence the specific qualities they credited to their pilots. Some pilots profited from their halo.
The halo effect also explains why some teachers give better-looking students higher grades. One study looked at the grades of 4,500 pupils, who were sorted by volunteers into three groups: below-average, average, and above-average looking. The researchers then compared students’ grades between classes taken in conventional classrooms with those taken online where there was no face-to-face interaction. The researchers found that students who were rated as good-looking earned significantly lower grades in online courses compared to conventional classrooms.
Since the physical appearance of good-looking people seems to naturally make them also appear intelligent, strong, and trustworthy, here is one good rule. If you meet with an accident and have to choose between two equally qualified doctors, ignore their halo and choose the less handsome one. He might have worked twice as hard to gain the same reputation and is likely better at his job.
1. What is the purpose of the second paragraph?| A．To explore a natural wonder. |
| B．To spread scientific knowledge. |
| C．To explain a psychological tendency. |
| D．To interpret social rules at the workplace. |
| A．In a general way. | B．With common sense. |
| C．From a specific aspect. | D．By an objective criterion. |
| A．They were fairly treated by their teachers. |
| B．They were less attentive in online courses. |
| C．They probably had natural learning abilities. |
| D．They were overvalued in conventional classes. |
| A．It relieves appearance anxiety. |
| B．It leads to inaccurate judgments. |
| C．It causes trust crisis among people. |
| D．It intensifies workplace competition. |
2 . A China plane struck a bird after taking off in Chengdu, Sichuan, and had to immediately return to the airport last October, and it wasn’t the first accident between an aircraft and a bird last year.
In fact, more than 20,000 wildlife strikes with aircraft were reported worldwide in 2023 — the vast majority of those animals being birds. The strikes can also include run-ins with bats or creatures on the ground, such as deer or turtles. Expanding wildlife populations, increases in number of aircraft movements, and a trend toward faster and quieter aircraft all have contributed to the increase in wildlife strikes.
Bird strikes are a hazard not just to commercial airplanes, but to all sorts of aircraft. However, historical data shows that damage is reported in a small percentage of incidents. Last year, 95% of the global strikes involved some kind of damage — and only 5% of those caused “substantial” damage.
Some of the most disturbing types of strikes can happen when one or more birds go into a plane’s engine, which might cause a lot of damage to the aircraft. The pilot would need to return to the airport or find a safe place to land.
In last October’s China plane incident, the Beijing-bound flight was able to land normally in Chengdu after taking into account what the airline described as security concerns. Senior captain Chen Jianguo said pilots are trained on how to respond if they have a bird strike in flight. The pilot in this case did exactly what he was trained to do.
“There are lots of things that are being used by airports to try to manage the habitat and birds around the airport,” said Chen Jianguo. Airports need to manage bird habitats to reduce or get rid of trees and plants that shelter birds, or address wetlands that can attract birds. Collecting data on what kinds of birds are involved in strikes is equally important so the risks can better be managed. Many airports also use audible signals to scare birds away, such as the sounds of fireworks.
1. What is a cause of the increase in wildlife strikes?| A．The poorly designed aircraft. |
| B．The growing number of birds. |
| C．The destruction of wildlife habitats. |
| D．The absence of environmental awareness. |
| A．Danger. | B．Delay. | C．Accident. | D．Reminder. |
| A．They are a rare occurrence. |
| B．They usually damage engines. |
| C．Most of them cause slight damage. |
| D．Most of them involve one single bird. |
| A．Ways to study bird behavior. |
| B．Measures to drive birds away. |
| C．Efforts to restore bird habitat. |
| D．Attempts to take care of birds. |
3 . More than half of Americans have felt the influence of extreme heat on health, according to a survey. That percentage is even higher in California, where heat is the top problem, reported by 71% of those surveyed. “California does have low levels of air conditioning in homes, maybe because it has cool wind in many parts, but when an extreme heat event comes and there’s no cool air available, you are in trouble,” said David Eisenman, a health researcher. “So you are seeing this higher number.”
Luz Rivas from Los Angeles grew up in a home without air conditioning. “Families like mine have suffered from heat for years,” said Rivas. On hot days, her mother used to take her to the mall to cool down. “Now that these heat waves are getting longer, methods used in the past aren’t going to work as well,” Rivas added.
The California Environment Protection Agency will create a heat wave ranking system to give public warnings. It’s supposed to help the public, especially those outdoor workers, know the seriousness of the heat wave and then learn what they should do. The idea is backed up widely. Many health researchers point out the health risks of heat are worse for outdoor workers, saying that in summer, there’s an 8% increase in deaths on the hottest days.
Lawmakers of California are also considering making indoor cooling a housing right. It can especially help renters like Minerva Contreras, a mother of two living near Bakersfield. Her neighbourhood has seen many days with temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. “It’s very difficult because it’s like not being able to breathe,” said Contreras. Indoor cooling standards are valued by renters but may face a serious fight, and many house owners think the standards fail to consider the variety of climates in the state. For now, the cost of keeping cool for renters mostly falls on them. Contreras doesn’t hold much hope that California will pass cooling standards, saying, “But I would like it very much.”
1. What can we learn about Californians?| A．They are more affected by hot weather. |
| B．They can be more adapted to hot weather. |
| C．They are more concerned about their health. |
| D．They always have a bigger demand for air conditioning. |
| A．It is a marketing strategy. | B．It is worthy of a try. |
| C．It has gained popularity. | D．It is not as useful as before. |
| A．To have pity on outdoor workers. |
| B．To prove the necessity of the system. |
| C．To tell outdoor workers to work harder. |
| D．To warn people to fight against the heat outside. |
| A．Amusing. | B．Challenging. | C．Shocking. | D．Puzzling. |
4 . ChatGPT, launched in November, 2022, has attracted over 100 million monthly users in just two months, which is considered the fastest-growing consumer app.
ChatGPT can write emails, computer code, even academic papers and poems.
So is ChatGPT a benefit or a trouble?
According to a survey covering more than 100 educators and over 1,000 students, one-third of the educators said they believe ChatGPT should be banned in schools and universities, while the rest supported students having access to it. The attitude of most students sees a distinct difference.
As a result, the observed value and usefulness of ChatGPT seem to outweigh the risks. What we should focus on has shifted to better deal with the chatbot and its development.
| A．The answers varies greatly across the world. |
| B．It is undoubtedly a shocking achievement. |
| C．Also, it has succeeded in passing different kinds of exams. |
| D．By comparison, others regard it as a blessing rather than a curse. |
| E．They admitted having sought help from ChatGPT to complete their homework. |
| F．The worry is that ChatGPT could change the basic training structure of higher education. |
| G．It is widely discussed whether and to what extent AI should be involved in a scientific article. |
5 . Want to know what is coming soon to a cinema near you? Probably not a 1.5-hour-long movie, as in the old days. On October 20th comes Killers of the Flower Moon. At nearly three and a half hours, its length is nearly double that of the average film last year. Even movie fans struggle to concentrate for that long and some viewers even nod off. Afterwards there is a mad dash for the toilets. When does watching a film become such a slog?
The Economist analyzed over 100,000 feature films released internationally since the 1930s, the start of Hollywood’s golden age, using data from IMDb, a movie database. The average length of productions rose by around 24%, from one hour and 21 minutes in the 1930s to one hour and 47 minutes in 2022. For the ten most-popular titles, the average length grew to around two and a half hours in 2022, nearly 50% higher than in the 1930s.
One driver of this trend is that studios want to squeeze the most out of their costly intellectual property (知识产权), but they are competing with streaming platforms for eyeballs. The hope is that a spectacular, drawn-out “event” movie will draw audiences away from the small screen and into cinemas. This approach has often paid off: Avengers: Endgame Marvel’s three-hour superhero masterpieces, was the highest-grossing (票房最高的) film in 2019. Last year long movies series made up most of the highest-grossing films in America.
Another explanation for longer films has to do with directors’ growing influence. Who would dare tell the likes of Mr. Nolan to cut out his masterpieces? Moreover, streaming platforms, which do not have to worry as much about the length because viewers can pause whenever they like, may attract big names by promising them sufficient fund and creative freedom. Netflix funded and released three-hour The Irishman in 2019, a film that would have benefited from a decisive editor, Irish or otherwise.
1. The underlined part “a slog” in paragraph 1 refers to a(n)___.| A．pleasure | B．effort | C．conflict | D．feast |
| A．The average length affects the popularity of films. |
| B．Great advances have been made in film industry. |
| C．Hollywood starts a golden age of feature films. |
| D．The average duration of movies has stretched. |
| A．Competition for the target audience. | B．Thirst for more classic productions. |
| C．Influence of streaming platforms. | D．Preference for decisive editors. |
| A．Movie Enthusiasts | B．Movie Marathons |
| C．Movie Production | D．Movie Influence |
6 . Here are five common mistakes distance learners make.
Choosing the wrong school.
Putting off things. Many students never finish their degrees because they lack the self-discipline and motivation to sit down and get their work done on a daily basis.
Failing to connect with their peers and professors.
Scaring potential employers. More and more people are recognizing the validity (有效性) of online education.
| A．Paying too much. |
| B．Paying no attention to online resources. |
| C．However, be aware that it is not completely accepted by all people. |
| D．Many students attend an online course feeling as if it is very easy. |
| E．Selecting the right school is the biggest difficulty that distance learners face. |
| F．If you often put off your work, set some specific goals for yourself and stick to them. |
| G．One of the most rewarding experiences in education is learning through teamwork. |
7 . Housing officials say that lately they are noticing something different: students seem to lack the will, and the skill, to deal with ordinary conflicts. “We have students who are mad at each other and they text each other in the same room,” says a teacher. “So many of our conflicts are because kids don’t know how to solve a problem by formal discussion.”
And as any pop psychologist will tell you, bottled emotions lead to silent discontent (不满) that can boil over into frustration and anger. At the University of Florida, emotional conflicts occur about once a week, the university’s director of housing education says, “Over the past five years, roommate conflicts have increased. The students don’t have the person-to-person discussions and they don’t know how to handle them.” The problem is most dramatic among freshmen; housing professionals say they see improvement as students move toward graduation, but some never seem to improve, and they worry about how such students will deal with conflicts after college.
Administrators guess that reliance on cell phones and the Internet may have made it easier for young people to avoid uncomfortable encounters. Why express anger in person when you can vent (发泄) in a text? “Things are posted on someone’s wall on Facebook like: Oh, my roommate kept me up all night studying,” says Dana Pysz, an assistant director at the University of California, Los Angeles. “It’s a different way to express their conflict to each other, consequently creating even more conflicts as complaints go public.” In recent focus groups at North Carolina State University, dorm residents said they would not even deal with noisy neighbors on their floor.
Administrators point to parents who have fixed their children’s problems in their entire lives. Now in college, the children lack the skills to attend to even modest conflicts. Some parents continue to interfere (干涉) on campus.
1. What is the main reason for many roommate conflicts?| A．Students are not good at reaching an agreement about the problems. |
| B．Students are not satisfied with each other. |
| C．Housing directors are not responsible for them. |
| D．Students are not strong-willed. |
| A．Students, especially freshmen, should bottle up their dissatisfaction. |
| B．Students in Florida sit down and have a person-to-person talk once a week. |
| C．Not all students are able to handle conflicts by the time they graduate. |
| D．The number of conflicts among roommates has decreased in the past five years. |
| A．Disapproving. | B．Indifferent. | C．Supportive. | D．Unclear. |
| A．They should be involved in their children’s life on campus. |
| B．They should deal with their children’s problems in their whole lives. |
| C．They should constantly contact the administrators of the college. |
| D．They should teach their children the skills to tackle the conflicts. |
8 . In the race to catch up with the changing time, we are forgetting how to live without the support of our phones, laptops, and tablets.
The first thing you need to do to unplug is to turn off your phone notifications. As soon as we hear a notification drop on our phones — whether it is something of importance or not — we are attracted to check it. When you’re not working and are not required to call, text, or return an email, turn off your phone (or put it on silent mode).
I know it’s hard to stay away from your phone when it keeps buzzing with incoming texts, calls, and emails.
One of the best ways that I believe can help you disconnect is being in nature.
| A．Keep track of how much time you’re spending on your phone. |
| B．This way you won’t be tempted and keep getting distracted. |
| C．Take a walk in the park near you or your garden without your phone. |
| D．When feeling bored, we often look for our phones to overcome our boredom. |
| E．Here are some simple ways you can disconnect and unplug for a more mindful living. |
| F．Therefore, setting a boundary on what to reply, and when to reply should be important. |
| G．Disconnecting from technology can be very helpful for quality time with your beloved ones. |
9 . Survivor bias (偏见，偏差), occurs when you tend to assess successful outcomes and disregard failures. This sampling bias paints a more promising or even misleading picture of reality.
Survivor bias is a sneaky problem that tends to slip into analyses unnoticed. For starters, it feels natural to emphasize success, whether it’s entrepreneurs, or survivors of a medical condition. We focus on and share these stories more than the failures.
Think about the famous college dropouts who became highly successful, such as Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates. These successful examples might make you think a college degree isn’t beneficial. However, that’s survivor bias at work! These famous individuals are at the forefront of media reports. You hear more about them because they are extraordinary. You’re not considering the millions of other college dropouts that aren’t rich and famous. You need to assess their outcomes as well.
Survivor bias has even occurred in medical studies about severe diseases. Younger, healthier, and more fit patients tend to survive a disease’s initial diagnosis more frequently. Hence, they are more likely to join medical studies. On the contrary, older, weaker patients are less likely to survive long enough to participate in studies. Consequently, these studies overestimate successful disease outcomes because they are less likely to include those who die shortly after diagnosis.
Undeniably, successful cases are usually more visible and easier to contact than unsuccessful cases. However, focusing on the high-performing successes and disregarding other cases introduces survivor bias. After all, you’re leaving out a significant part of the picture as it’s harder to collect data from the less successful members of a population. Incomplete data can affect your decision-making process. Put simply, survivor bias produces an inaccurate sample, causing you to jump to incorrect conclusions.
To minimize the impact of survivor bias, you should find ways to draw a representative sample from the population, not just a few of successful samples. That process might call for more expense and effort, but you’ll get better results.
1. What writing technique is used in Paragraphs 3 and 4?| A．Making comparisons. | B．Giving examples. |
| C．Describing facts. | D．Analyzing data. |
| A．You will take all factors into account before making a final analysis. |
| B．You will overestimate the failure rate so you may quit your project. |
| C．You will only have partial data and reach an incorrect conclusion. |
| D．You will be more likely to survive in unfavorable circumstances. |
| A．People tend to lose sight of the overall statistics. |
| B．People are unwilling to read unsuccessful stories. |
| C．Doctors don’t have enough expense to collect abundant samples. |
| D．The media should be responsible for kids’ dropping out of school. |
| A．Leave out the famous historic cases. |
| B．Collect a wide enough range of samples. |
| C．Focus on those most mentioned examples. |
| D．Select some successful and inspiring tales. |
10 . Recently, research on how a new virtual (虚拟的) reality (VR) experience educated primary children about the fire disasters was done. It was developed by the University of South Australia, aiming to educate children to learn how to be safer in a fire.
Focusing on children aged 10-12 years old, the new VR experience presents a situation where children are tasked to look after a friend’s dog just before a fire event begins to spread. They participate in a series of problem-solving activities to help save and protect themselves and the dog.
The findings showed that more than 80 percent of children reported that they felt more confident to calmly assess the situation and make wise decisions to protect themselves from a fire. This isl especially important considering that 91 percent of participants originally lacked any knowledge of fires, and that 67 percent had said that they were too young to make safety decisions in a fire.
The researchers believed such immersive (沉浸式的) VR experiences had real potential (潜力) to attract and educate the young. “As children born in digital times, they are interested in such technology and they can experience events realistically yet within the safe environment.” said Delene Weber, one of the researchers. “Well-designed VR can provide a chance for children to apply newly-acquired knowledge, strengthen their learnt concepts, and enable immediate reaction—all incredibly valuable learning tools.”
Meanwhile, because children have fewer life experiences, aren’t as physically strong, and are less likely to have learned much about fire safety, they’re often most at risk. Yet the ability for children to contribute to fire safety at their household should not be underestimated (低估).
“Children do not need to be passively attacked by disasters and with purpose-built virtual reality experiences such as these, we can help children understand the risks and realize they can help,” said Weber.
1. How does the new VR experience try to educate children?| A．By introducing a virtual friend to them. | B．By finding the causes of a fire event. |
| C．By letting them solve virtual problems. | D．By guiding them to ask a dog for help. |
| A．Many children found it hard to adapt to them. |
| B．They helped children deal with fire postively. |
| C．They benefited children with knowledge of animals. |
| D．Most children had a misunderstanding about them. |
| A．Doubtful. | B．Indifferent. | C．Disapproving. | D．Supportive. |
| A．VR experiences educate kids to survive a fire | B．VR experiences make learning easier for kids |
| C．VR education appeals to the young generation | D．VR technology makes no sense in fighting a fire. |
