1 . Socially, few things are more annoying than someone repeatedly checking their phone in the middle of your conversation with them. Soon enough, you’re having unhappy thoughts, thinking of their way like, I’m boring you; you’re more concerned with whoever’s on that phone than me; you don’t care about me. None of that is necessarily true, but this is: “If someone is engaged in a great conversation, they wouldn’t care about their phones,” says Leslie, a psychologist and researcher at NYU.

Do you sometimes wonder: What should I have said to a rude person like this? What if we have to talk to such maddening persons? Experts have advice about how to deal with this.

Whether you say something or not, remember that the cell-addict’s annoying habits aren’t about you. “It’s rude, for sure, but sometimes we mistake the behavior for more than what it is,” says Leslie. “It’s possible that they are facing something tough and merely experiencing nervousness or anxiety,” he adds. It’s also possible that their partner is stuck with a flat tyre (轮胎) or their kid is sick in hospital. The point is that you don’t know.

So before you become angry at the cell-addict’s open rudeness, focus instead on building a better conversation than whatever’s going down on Instagram. You might never be able to achieve this, given the power of today’s social media, so if you’re close enough to a person, Leslie advises you to directly ask them: “What’s on that thing that’s so interesting?” Chances are that they will apologise at once and quickly put the phone away. But if the answer is something real, talk about it. Better yet, you can avoid the situation in advance by saying something like, “I’m really interested in catching up properly, so how about we leave our phones in the car?” If they indeed have that flat tyre or sick kid, at least you won’t have to assume that it’s because your stories are boring.

1. Why do people often check their phones according to Leslie?

A．They are anxious about something.

B．They are enjoying the conversation.

C．They are bored with the conversation.

D．They are interested in what’s on the phone.

2. What could be a reason for the cell-addicts’ annoying habits according to Leslie?

A．They may be nervous or anxious.

B．They are being rude intentionally.

C．They are avoiding the conversation.

D．They are disinterested in social interactions.

3. What is a better way to deal with the rudeness?

A．Talking about something real.

B．Asking the other person directly.

C．Avoiding the situation in advance.

D．Asking the other person for explanation.

4. What’s the main idea of the text?

A．What is a cell-addict.

B．How to deal with a cell-addict.

C．Why people repeatedly check their phones.

D．When to cut in appropriately during a conversation.

2 . Pullman is a superb writer and Seagull is a brilliant communicator. They had a debate after Seagull posted a question on his social media platform: “When you were trying to create an environment for learning, what were your best pieces of classical music to listen to?” He received hundreds of suggestions — and one negative reply, from Pullman: “That’s not what classical music is for. Treat it with respect.”

That did it! Everyone — professional musicians, students, teachers — weighed into the argument, and the majority supported Seagull and were criticizing Pullman.

It’s easy to see why people are annoyed. We all want classical music to be as accessible as possible, especially to the young. If some of them are using Bach or Schubert as a tool to help them study, what’s the problem? They may also develop an attachment to classical music.

So is Pullman ridiculous and supercilious by objecting to classical music being used as background music? At first sight, his idea seems stuffy and extreme. By suggesting that classical music should be “treated with respect” and not used as background music, Pullman seems to be closing classical music of to millions of people.

It’s worth pointing out, however, that he isn’t the first to express concerns about classical music being devalued by becoming too commonplace in today’s technologically shaped world. In Benjamin Britten’s 1964 speech, the composer expressed exactly the same worries as Pullman. Britten suggested, “The true musical experience demands some preparation, some effort, a journey to a special place, saving up for a ticket, some homework perhaps”. In short, it demands as much effort from listeners as from composers and performers.

I don’t agree with such an extreme viewpoint, but I do think it touches on a reality. You will never fully grasp the beauty of classical music if you half-hear it only in the background. That doesn’t necessarily matter. Music can be enjoyed on many levels. What Pullman and Britten are really saying is that, in a drive for “accessibility”, we shouldn’t deny the emotional and intellectual complexity underpinning (构成) much classical music.

1. What did Seagull’s posting result in?

A．Great admiration for Seagull.

B．Public criticism of classical music.

C．A discussion about learning environments.

D．An argument over the role of classical music.

2. What does the underlined word “supercilious” in paragraph 4 probably mean?

A．Self-important.

B．Open-minded.

C．Impatient.

D．Considerate.

3. Why is the Benjamin Britten’s 1964 speech mentioned?

A．To show his affection for classical music.

B．To introduce young people to classical music.

C．To demonstrate classical music is demanding.

D．To support Pullman’s idea over classical music.

4. Which word best describes the author’s attitude to Pullman’s idea?

A．Favorable.

B．Doubtful.

C．Objective.

D．Uninterested.

3 . Millions of shipping containers are sitting empty at ports all over the world. And they’ve been a treasure for architects Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano.

The two were in San Francisco recently for the opening of an exhibition at Hosfelt Gallery focused on their use of shipping containers as building materials.

The Italian “starchitects” got into the shipping container building game in the 1990s and people like shipping container buildings not only because they look interesting but also because they seem to solve a problem — finding a use for the millions of used steel shipping containers across the planet. They’re used in projects like Photoville in New York City, which transforms the containers into mini art galleries, and Monarch Village, a development for formerly unhoused people in Lawrence, Kansas. “Shipping containers are great for building with because they are modular (模块化的), movable and durable,” said California architect Douglas Burnham.

But there also exist many challenges, a significant one of which is temperature control. Those steel boxes get very cold inside in winter — and very, very hot in summer.

Joe Carroll lived in an eye-catching shipping container home designed by LOT-EK for five years. Carroll said that he appreciated many things about LOT-EK’s approach. “It’s about designing structures that are unique looking, not just a row of cubes (立方体),” said Carroll. But Carroll also said his energy bills were sky high. “There was no heat or solar energy,” he said. “We didn’t have any of that in the home.” All that heating and cooling takes not only money but environmental resources.

So what should we do with them? Critics say the most environmentally friendly use of all these unused steel shipping containers is to recycle them. “The highlight of these containers is, ‘Well, we’re saving them.’ But it doesn’t make any sense,” said San Francisco-based architect Mark Hogan of Open Scope Studio, who has publicly shared his concerns about shipping container housing. “You’d be much better off recycling the container into steel and then build out of steel studs — like the normal way you’d build a building.”

1. What was the focus of the exhibition at Hosfelt Gallery?

A．Traditional building materials.

B．Artistic paintings and sculptures.

C．Architecture photography collection.

D．Shipping containers in building projects.

2. What does paragraph 3 mainly talk about?

A．Advantages of shipping container buildings.

B．Representative projects of LOT-EK architects.

C．Ideal locations for shipping container complexes.

D．Procedures of building shipping container projects.

3. Why is Joe Carroll mentioned in paragraph 5?

A．To show the cost-effectiveness of the home.

B．To emphasize the high energy consumption.

C．To illustrate the unique design of the structure.

D．To prove the convenience of heat and solar resources.

4. What is Mark Hogan’s attitude towards shipping container housing?

A．Favorable.	B．Unconcerned.
C．Curious.	D．Critical.

5 . 假定你是学生会成员李华，最近学生会委托你们在附近社区就腾讯公司(Tencent Company)微信用户的浏览爱好做了一次调查。你打算根据图示给你校英文网站写一篇文章：
内容包括：
1.简单介绍微信能给你带来什么；
2.微信朋友圈浏览爱好比例分析；
3.简单给与评论；
4.参考词汇：朋友圈We Chat Moments；受访者respondents；文本text。

注意：1.续写词数应为80左右；
2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。

A survey on WeChat Moments

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6 . BRICS (金砖国家) grouping major emerging (新兴的) economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa is to more than double its members with the admission of six more countries This historic expansion, which was announce data press conference during the 15th BRICS Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, involves Argentina, Egyptl, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and their membership will take effect from Jan 1.2024.

Observers said that the expansion bears witness to BRICS’ charm and vitality, helps improve the voices of the Global South, and mirrors the resolve of the group and the wider developing world to safeguard global equity (公平) and justice and promote peace and development.

Seventeen years since its establishment, BRICS has witnessed fruitful cooperation results in economic, political and cultural areas, and continues to prosper in a spirit of openness, inclusiveness and win-win cooperation. The BRICS countries have written a wonderful story of the joint development of countries with different systems, cultures and regions, which has become a flagship of South-South cooperation.

Experts believe the expansion will represent a historic and new starting point for BRICS cooperation.

Mohammad Jamshidi, the Iranian president’s deputy chief of staff for political affairs, posted his celebrations to Iran’s accession to BRICS, calling it a “historic move”.

BRICS’ expansion in a well-studied manner “would increase its strength and effectiveness and improve its regional and international role, in a way that contributes.to achieving greater and faster development rates,” said Abdel-Sattar Eshrah, secretary-general of the Cairo-based Egyptian-Chinese Business Council. “It would create many opportunities for joint cooperation among BRICS members in various fields,” the Egyptian business leader said, adding that BRICS’ expansion is to increase the abilities of its members to address economic, financial and political crises and challenges.

Filipe Porto, a researcher at the Federal University of ABC and a member of the Brazilian Foreign Policy Observatory, said although the five founding member states have very different national conditions, the spirit of win-win cooperation has kept the BRICS mechanism (机制) dynamic and drawn interest from more countries.

The rise of emerging economies, represented by BRICS nations, is fundamentally changing the global landscape. With the historic expansion, the BRICS inechanism will have a greater voice in driving global governance reforms toward a more just an id equitable direction, filling the world with greater certainty and stability, said experts.

1. Which of the following can replace the underlined word “resolve” in paragraph 2?

A．Limitation.

B．Freedom.

C．Determination.

D．Appointment.

2. What does the third paragraph chiefly tell us?

A．The benefits BRICKS has brought.

B．The management of BRICKS.

C．The regulations of BRICKS.

D．The founding of BRICKS.

3. What makes the BRICS mechanism dynamic and appeal to more countries?

A．Exhibiting strong leadership skills,

B．Creating win-win opportunities,

C．Driving global governance reforms.

D．Making the world have greater stability.

4. Which can serve as the best title for the news report?

A．Why BRICS is recovering

B．History of BRICKS’ development

C．BRICS grouping major emerging economies

D．BRICS shines brighter after historic expansion

7 . AI agents are prediction engines using the web as their memory. They do no more than predict which words are more likely to follow any other word or group of words in a given language. When you ask ChatGPT a question, it analyzes it into words and their sequence, returning answers that match those sequences opposite. It might sound like a simple trick, and it is, yet the secret sauce is the size of the database the AIs use to perform it.

Of the very various mix of content used to train ChatGPT, 60 percent was information collected from websites, blogs or social media. Another 20 percent was content shared on Reddit and evaluated relatively highly by the users. The rest was books typically found in the public field (mostly older and general purpose), with a bit of Wikipedia (3 percent) mixed in for good measure.

AI’s store for each word the probability that any other word will follow it. The quality and value of these predictions depend very much on how often and on how many circum- stances the software encounters any two (or more words) in the neighborhood, how long a sentence goes, and which sentence might follow another. When put together, these predictions favour the most influential texts of a given culture, which shaped generations upon generations of English language teachers and the students they educated.

ChatGPT speaks like a parrot because its delivery is not automatically adjusted. More re- search and engineering are needed to adjust the tool to each request’s real-life intentions and consequences. In academic learning, these situations should be the pre- and post-stages of the research process: finding arguments and packaging them for public consumption.

In their current forms, ChatGPT and its siblings (姐弟) are like those three-year-olds who can recite entire stories read to them only once. But turning a three-year-old into a learned Person takes 20 years of labour—some, structured education. It is time to stop reading Al agents stories and send them to a real school.

1. Which determines the accuracy of AI predictions?

A．Words.

B．Network.

C．Database.

D．Questions.

2. How does the author support the theme of Paragraph 2?

A．By listing data.	B．By giving examples.
C．By making comparisons.	D．By quoting experts’ arguments.

3. What does the third paragraph mainly focus on?

A．Users of AI.	B．Words’ frequency.
C．AI’s cultural nature.	D．The length of a sentence.

4. What is the best title for the text?

A．How a ChatGPT works	B．Where a ChatGPT is found
C．A ChatGPT needs packaging	D．A ChatGPT has a long way to go

8 . A GIF of the Wicked Witch (巫婆) of the West from “The Wizard of Oz” saying “I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too!” played behind Economics Professor Michael Rizzo as students gathered in Wegmans Hall on Oct. 30 to hear him argue against the opinion that the Earth is going through a climate disaster.

“I’m curious to see how many people will misunderstand the point of my talk, which is about addressing the issue of disaster and not at all the issue of whether climate change is happening, or even the mechanics of it,” he said in an interview with the Cambus Times.

The talk included Rizzo stating his biggest fear—that he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know about climate change. The talk, he said, was assembled from everything he’s read, and, to him, things don’t look so bad, but he knows he hasn’t read everything.

First-year Aidan Lieberman, who attended the talk after hearing about it in Rizzo’s Prin- ciples of Economics class, thought the professor tried to fit too much into his time, but he agreed with the points that he could follow, saying “they seemed to make sense.”

“I was only able to follow a few of the points he was making, ” Lieberman said. “My biggest takeaway is that humans will be able to manage the effects of climate change as they become more severe. ”

Rizzo said he wanted students to leave the talk understanding that the rhetoric around climate “disaster” often comes more from how information is reported rather than the science it- self. Addressing issues of climate change, he stressed, requires a careful understanding that takes lots of research to achieve-research that he found students weren’t doing before coming to him with disagreements.

1. Why is the “The Wizard of Oz” saying mentioned?

A．To explain the dog is vital for the witch.

B．To prove students misunderstood the talk.

C．To suggest students made no sense of the talk.

D．To show the earth is facing a climate challenge.

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

A．Pieced.

B．Differed.

C．Separated.

D．Reserved.

3. How does Aidan feel about Rizzo’s lecture?

A．Doubtful.

B．Opposed.

C．Positive.

D．Unclear.

4. What does Rizzo suggest doing in the last paragraph?

A．Being creative.	B．Doing more research.
C．Reporting objectively.	D．Focusing on the information.

9 . Handwriting is a fine motor skill that none of us is born with; it needs to be taught and practiced. It is also a skill that benefits us by stimulating our brain: We remember information better when we write it down by hand, research shows.

But for many of us, handwriting can feel difficult as we turn to smartphones, other devices and even robots for many of our hand tasks. The problem isn’t only that we’re less likely to use handwriting. Technology has changed the way we use our hands. The more time we spend on our devices, the greater the probability of problems with our hands and wrists, such as pain, weakness and nerve changes.

“The hand-brain connection is stronger when we write something by hand instead of typing it,” said Paula Heinricher, an occupational therapist. “Although we might be able to take more notes on a keyboard than by hand, there’s research that shows when you write by hand, there is a deeper brain connection and a deeper understanding, so you remember that information longer.”

The ability to write quickly and legibly (易辨认地) also has a critical link with academic performance. A 2013 study found that children who had good handwriting skills in preschool performed better in reading and math in second grade. And in a 2019 study of 141 first-graders in four schools in Italy, children who were taught handwriting developed better reading and writing skills compared with a control group.

But devices aren’t the only one to blame. In general, we’re not engaging in as many fine motor activities as in the past. With key less entry, for instance, many of us no longer turn a key to unlock our car or the front door; instead, we push a button or tap out a code. So handwriting, a fine motor activity, is becoming a little less used in daily life. However, even as we continue to use technology and devices, we can enhance our handwriting muscles with a few strategies.

1. What can be learned about handwriting?

A．It is a natural ability.

B．It is practiced less often.

C．It has lost its appeal.

D．It causes nerve changes.

2. Which best describes the impact of handwriting according to Paula Heinricher?

A．Short-lived.

B．Unpredictable.

C．Irresistible.

D．Far-reaching.

3. What do the studies in paragraph 4 imply about handwriting?

A．It contributes to learning.

B．It strengthens students’ speaking ability.

C．It improves quickly with training.

D．It is popular among researchers.

4. What might the author continue talking about?

A．Advancements in science and technology.

B．Similar research done by scientists.

C．Significance of excellent handwriting.

D．Measures for improving handwriting.

10 . A new research from the University of Michigan stated, “People tend to have one of three beliefs about the meaning of work and which category you fall into largely depends on your parents.” Workers who are job-oriented (有工作倾向的) are those just trying to make a living who much prefer the activities they pursue outside of the office. Career-oriented adults value the social status and fame that comes with professional achievement. Calling-oriented people do work that they are passionate about because they want to have a positive impact on the world.

In the first study into how these orientations originate, researchers found that how teenagers perceive their parents’ work habit is central to the development of their own work attitudes. It’s not a straightforward transfer of values. People who perceive their father to have a strong career-orientation are more likely to be career-oriented themselves-but career-determined mothers have no effect on their kids’ work orientation. The researchers owed this to generational gender norms. When the study’s participants were teenagers, mostly in the1980s, men were more commonly employed outside of the home and were more likely than women to hold “career” jobs with opportunity for advancement. Mothers do have a notable effect on whether children have a job-orientation mentality. Teenagers who are close to their mothers are less likely to view work as just a job when they grow up, probably because they’ve been raised to value social, rather than instrumental life experiences.

Having both parents display the same work ethic (行为准则) has a strong influence, but only in the case of calling-oriented offspring (子女). As the society nowadays favors money and professional achievement, a child with two calling-oriented parents is more likely to have the confidence to ignore these societal pressures and pursue her dreams. Children can affect their parents’ work ethic, too. Allowing people to bring their children into the office has been shown to boost efficiency and productivity and could help raise that next generation of career-oriented workers.

1. What motivates calling-oriented people to do work they like?

A．To achieve social status and fame.	B．To pursue activities outside the office.
C．To believe they can earn them much money.	D．To make a positive contribution to the world.

2. What is crucial in shaping the work attitudes of teenagers?

A．Peer pressure.	B．Personal preferences.
C．Educational background.	D．Awareness of parents’ work habits.

3. Why are children close to mothers less likely to be job-oriented?

A．Because mothers value social life experiences.

B．Because mothers focus on instrumental life experiences.

C．Because mothers tend to have a stronger career orientation.

D．Because mothers emphasize the importance of work as just a job.

4. What is the main idea of the passage?

A．The influence of societal pressures on work beliefs.

B．The preferences of workers in different occupations.

C．The impact of parental work habits on teenagers’ attitudes.

D．The relationship between money and professional achievement.