One of the basic expectations the public have of doctors is honesty. But what would you think if I told you that research has shown that 70 percent of doctors admitted to lying to their patients? It is inexcusable, surely? Extremely unprofessional and uncaring; a clear break of the doctor-patient relationship. Some of the lies told included reassuring patients that their wives or husbands were still alive, when in fact they were dead. This seems unimaginable but, if I am honest, I have told exactly the same lie to several patients whose spouses had died. Mrs. Walton was in her eighties and desperate to see her husband. She’d been in hospital after a fall and was in pain. She called out for him frequently and couldn’t understand why he wasn’t there to comfort her. She was becoming more and more distressed and would try to get up to find him, despite being at risk of falling again.
“He’s on his way, don’t worry,” the nurses would say and this would calm her down. I confess I said the same thing to her. She’d smile and roll her eyes and say how he was always late for things and tell the same story about him being late for their wedding nearly 60 years ago. But he wasn’t on his way. It was a lie. He’d died two years ago. The truth, if I can use that word, is that it is a kindness to lie sometimes.
Part of the natural history of many of the dementias, in particular Alzheimer’s disease which is what Mrs. Walton had, is that the sufferer loses their short-term memory and the memory of recent events, but retains memories from the distant past. Sufferers are trapped forever in a bewildering past that many realise bares little connection to the present, but are at a loss to explain. It is very distressing and tormenting and many of the behavioural difficulties that I have encountered in those with dementia relate to them feeling upset, scared and confused that they are in a strange place, surrounded by strange people, even when they are in their own homes surrounded by their family, because they have returned back to decades ago.
They look at their adult children confused and wonder who they could be because they think their children are still toddlers. How does one deal with this? I have had countless families break down in tears in outpatient clinics or on wards, not knowing what to say or how to react as their loved one moves further and further away from them back into their distant past and they are left behind in the present. And how, as the doctor or nurse caring for these patients, does one manage the anger and outbursts of distress that comes with having no knowledge of your life for the past 10 or 20 years? The lies that doctors, nurses, carers and families tell these patients are not big, elaborate lies — they are brief reassurances intended to calm and allow the subject to be swiftly changed.
Colluding (串通) with them about this false reality they find themselves flung into is not heartless or unprofessional — it is, when done in the right way, kind and tender-hearted. That’s not to say that lying to patients with dementia unnecessarily is right or defensible or that there are not times when of course they have the right to know the truth. But what compassionate person would put another human being through the unimaginable pain of learning, for the first time again and again, repeatedly throughout the day, that their beloved one has died. It would be an unthinkable cruelness.
Sometimes, surely, honesty is simply not the best policy.
1. Write a title for this article.2. Why do people with dementia feel upset, scared, and confused even when they are in their own homes surrounded by their family?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
The public expect doctors to be honest with their patients and the author also believes that it is heartless and unprofessional to lie to patients.
4. The author says sometimes, surely, honesty is simply not the best policy. Do you agree or disagree? Why? (In about 40 words)
Almost every community in the world has some form of rules and some way of carrying them out. A community is a group of people who are united by a number of factors, including geography, language, and values. So why do we have rules, and what makes people follow them? Studies have suggested that the reason we don’t like cheating and rule-breaking is that fairness is programmed into our brains. They have found that the brain reacts in a particular way when we feel we are being treated unfairly. The findings concluded that fairness is a basic human need along with food and social contact.
Our sense of fairness depends on the influences in our culture, the immediate situation we are in, and our own self-interest. Arriving at a feeling of fairness means considering different, often conflicting, points of view. Regardless of the disagreement, people almost always need to compromise. But it can be difficult to arrive at a compromise (妥协) when there are conflicting interests. This is why communities have rules that everyone must follow.
Social controls are an important factor in setting and following rules. They influence the way we behave and can be internal or external. Internal controls come from within and are based on our values and fears. Most of us don’t steal, for example, because we believe that theft is unfair and wrong. In other words, our internal controls keep us from behaving in ways that cause conflict.
External controls include rewards and punishments. They do not come from within but are implemented by an authority — this could be the government, the police, a teacher or parents, depending on the situation. Rewards, such as job promotions, awards, and praise, are designed to encourage people to behave and act in the interest of the whole community. Punishments, such as public embarrassment, fines, and even imprisonment can prevent people from acting against the community’s best interests.
People need their communities to function smoothly. Because of this, humans most often behave in orderly, fair, and predictable ways. If there were no rules, the majority of people would probably continue to interact positively. However, there would always be a minority who would not, with serious consequences. This is why a society without rules is unlikely to become a reality any time soon — at least not in the real world. (390 words)
1. Why do we have rules and follow them?2. How do social controls influence our behavior?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then change it and explain why.
Our internal control comes from rewards and punishments from an authority like our school.
4. If you could change a rule at your school/home/community, which one would you like to change? Why? (In about 40 words)
3 . Humans are fascinated by the source of their failings and virtues. This preoccupation inevitably leads to an old debate: whether nature or nurture (养育) shapes us more. A revolution in genetics has poised this as a modern political question about the character of our society: if personalities are hard-wired into our genes, what can governments do to help us? It feels morally questionable, yet claims of genetic selection by intelligence are making headlines.
This is down to “hereditarian (遗传论的)” science and a recent paper claimed “differences in exam performance between pupils attending extraordinary and ordinary schools mirror the genetic differences between them”. With such an assertion, the work was predictably greeted by a lot of absurd claims about “genetics determining academic success”. What the research revealed was the rather less surprising result: the educational benefits of extraordinary schools largely disappear once pupils’ inborn ability and socio-economic background were taken into account. That is to say, there’s nothing to support strongly either a hereditary or environmental argument.
Yet the paper does say children are “unintentionally genetically selected” by the school system. Central to hereditarian science is a tall claim: that identifiable variations in genetic sequences can predict an individual’s ability to learn, reason and solve problems. This is problematic on many levels. A teacher could not seriously tell a parent their child has a low genetic tendency to study when external factors clearly exist. Unlike-minded academics say the inheritability of human traits is scientifically unsound. At best there is a weak statistical association and not a causal link between DNA and intelligence. Yet sophisticated statistics are used to create a frightening atmosphere of scientific certainty.
While there’s an undoubted genetic basis to individual difference, it is wrong to think that socially defined groups can be genetically accounted for. The fixation on genes as destiny is surely false too. Medical predictability can rarely be based on DNA alone; the environment matters too. Something as complex as intellect is likely to be affected by many factors beyond genes. If hereditarians want to advance their cause it will require more balanced interpretation and not just acts of advocacy. Genetic selection is a way of exerting influence over others, “the ultimate collective control of human destinies,” as writer H. G. Wells put it. Knowledge becomes power and power requires a sense of responsibility. In understanding cognitive (认知的) ability, we must not elevate discrimination to a science: allowing people to climb the ladder of life only as far as their cells might suggest. This will need a more skeptical eye on the science. As technology progresses, we all have a duty to make sure that we shape a future that we would want to find ourselves in.
1. What did a recent research paper claim?| A．The type of school students attend makes a difference to their future. |
| B．Genetic differences between students are far greater than supposed. |
| C．Students’ academic performance is somewhat determined by their genes. |
| D．The advantages of extraordinary schools are too obvious to ignore. |
| A．It is one of scientific certainty. | B．It is not one of cause and effect. |
| C．It is subject to interpretation of statistics. | D．It is not fully examined by gene scientists. |
| A．Take all relevant factors into account in interpreting their data. |
| B．Conduct their research using more sophisticated technology. |
| C．Gather gene data from people of all social classes. |
| D．Cooperate with social scientists in their research. |
| A．Losing sight of professional ethics in conducting research. |
| B．Misunderstanding the findings of human cognition research. |
| C．Promoting discrimination in the name of science. |
| D．Exaggerating the power of technology in shaping the world. |
Everyone needs it, but no one wants to ask for it. “Help” has become a sort of dirty word, implying weakness and neediness, that we can’t handle our problems on our own. However, whether it be for your physical, mental or academic health, getting words of advice or encouragement from an outside source can make all the difference.
During a time of such uncertainty, the frequency of people requesting help for anxiety and depression has increased. The current situation has made people realize they can’t be alone with their thoughts, and that asking for help from professionals is the best way to get their problems off their chests and their minds on the road to wellness.
Still, requesting help carries a societal weight. The British Psychology Society found that two types of stigmas (羞耻、耻辱) exist: public stigma and self stigma. A “public stigma” is external, a collection of beliefs from around us, which holds a heavy weight on our ideas on seeking help. A “self stigma” is internal, assigning ourselves labels based on our state of mental health, claiming we are worthless and undeserving of help. “Public” and “self” stigmas go hand in hand, and when we hear the stigmas being voiced by those around us, we tend to apply them to ourselves because of social influences, especially those concerning mental health.
To be our better selves, we have to break the stigma around “help” and accept the fact that some problems are too tough to overcome on our own. If we fail to break the stigma around the word “help”, we ignore the increasingly more relevant necessity of getting ourselves assistance in times of need. Despite what society may tell us, it’s not odd or wrong to get help — it’s probably one of the most insightful and courageous things we can do for ourselves.
Each one of us should be able to openly admit that we need help, whether it be for problems we face with school or for internalized struggles with mental health. Sometimes we need support, and that isn’t bad — it’s healthy, and remarkably brave.
1. According to the passage, why is “help” considered a “dirty word”?2. What is explained in paragraph 3?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
● Breaking the stigma around “help” can increase our need of seeking help.
4. What do you think are some other benefits of asking for help? (In about 40 words)
So many things can keep you from seeing your loved ones in person, from busy schedules to long distances to a rather unexpected pandemic (流行病). Fortunately, thanks to modern technology, the people we miss are often only a phone call or text message away. But if you’re someone who prefers typed out messages to verbal ones, you may want to reconsider. According to science, if you want to feel more connected to the people you’re talking to, you should call them instead of texting.
A new study, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, found that communication interactions that included voice, like a phone call or video chat, created stronger social bonds than communication through typing, like text messaging or email.
In the study, researchers used various experiments to gauge connectedness. In one, they asked 20 people to make predictions about what it would be like to reconnect with an old friend by email or by phone and then assigned it on people at random to do one or the other. Although people anticipated that a phone call would be more awkward, hearing someone’s voice actually made the experience better. “People reported they did form a significantly stronger bond with their old friend on the phone versus email, and they did not feel more awkward,” study co-author Amit Kumar, an assistant professor of marketing at the McCombs School of Business, said in a statement.
In another experiment, the researchers had strangers connect by either texting, talking over video chat, or talking using only audio. They found that both forms of voice communication -whether video or audio only-made the strangers feel significantly more connected than when they communicated via texting.
Sabrina Romanoff, a Harvard trained clinical psychologist based in New York City, says people tend to text or email instead of calling because of convenience, as they see it as a controlled form of communication where they can “correspond information exactly in the way they intend without unexpected additions by the other person”.
Romanoff says that in reality, texting can make it hard to determine the true meaning behind a conversation. “A phone call is actually more convenient when considering the net effects of the message” she explains. “Each party is more present, and therefore able to gauge the meaning behind the content without thinking about the endless possible meanings behind words and punctuations.”
1. What did the new study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology find?2. In the first experiment mentioned in the passage, how do people feel actually when they connected with an old friend by phone?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
➢ According to Romanoff, the convenience of text or email lie in its controlled form of communication while a phone call is more convenient because of its instant access.
4. If you are going to reconnect old friends, will you text them or call them directly? Why? (In about 40 words)
6 . In a perfect world, people would not test medicines on animals. Such experiments are stressful and sometimes painful for animals, and expensive and time-consuming for people.
Now Europe is changing the rules governing animal experiments by limiting the number of animals used in labs.
Animal experimentation has taught humans a great deal and saved countless lives.
| A．They should be stopped. |
| B．Lab animals are mainly used in developed countries. |
| C．Japan has even less comprehensive data than America. |
| D．It needs to continue, even if that means animals sometimes suffer. |
| E．Europe, on the whole, has the world’s most restrictive laws on animal experiments. |
| F．Yet animal experimentation is still needed to help bridge wide gaps in medical knowledge. |
| G．Alternatives to animal testing, like using human tissue, are now strongly recommended. |
7 . Think back to when you were in a classroom, maybe a maths classroom, and the teacher set a difficult problem. Which of the two following answers is closer to the way you reacted?
A: Oh no, this is too hard for me. I’m not even going to seriously try and work it out.
B: Ah, this is quite tricky but I like to push myself. Even if I don’t get the answer right, maybe I’ll learn something if I try.
Early in her career, the psychologist Carol Dweck of Stanford University gave a group of ten-year-olds problems that were a little too hard for them. One group reacted positively, said they loved challenge and understood that their abilities could be developed. She says they had a “growth mindset”and are focused on what they can achieve in the future. But another group of children felt that their intelligence was being judged and they had failed. They had a “fixed mindset” and were unable to imagine improving. Some of these children said they might cheat in the future; others looked for someone who had done worse than them to increase their self-confidence.
Professor Dweck believes that there is a problem in education at the moment. For years, children have been praised for their intelligence or talent, but this makes them vulnerable to failure. They become performance-oriented (i.e. interested in the result), wanting to please by getting high grades, but they are not necessarily interested in learning for its own sake. The solution, according to Dweck, is to praise the process that children are involved in: making an effort, using learning strategies and improving. This way they will become mastery-oriented (i.e. interested in getting better at something) and will achieve more. She says that effort over time is the key to outstanding achievement.
Psychologists have been testing these theories. Students were taught that if they left their comfort zone and learned something new and difficult, the neurons (神经元) in their brains would form stronger connections, making them more intelligent. These students made faster progress than a control group. In another study, underperforming school children on a Native American reservation (保护区) were using growth mindset techniques for a year. The results were extremely successful. They came top in regional tests, beating children from much more advanced backgrounds. These children had felt that making an effort was a sign of stupidity in the past, but they came to see it as the key to learning.
So, back to our original question. If you answered B, well done-you already have a growth mindset. If A, don’t worry; everyone is able of becoming mastery-oriented with a little effort and self-awareness.
1. The students with a “growth mindset” will ________.| A．cheat in the future |
| B．like to take on challenges |
| C．get high grades to please others |
| D．look for someone who had done worse than them |
| A．It’s easy for them to succeed. | B．It’s difficult for them to give up. |
| C．They’re proud of their talent. | D．They’re not likely to achieve success. |
| A．How to be a best learner? | B．What’s the growth mindset? |
| C．Do you have the right mindset? | D．What’s the key to success? |
8 . If there’s one cliché (陈词滥调) that really annoys Danah Boyd, a specialist researcher who has made a career from studying the way teenagers use the web, it’s that of the digital native. “Today the world has computer-mediated communications. Thus, in order to learn about their social world around them, teenagers are learning about those things too. And they’re using that to work out the stuff that kids have always worked out: peer (同龄人) sociality, status, etc.” she says.
It’s no surprise Boyd takes exception, really. As one of the first digital anthropologists to dig into the way teenagers use social networking sites, she gained insights into the social web by taking a closer look at what was going on.
Lately, her work has been about explaining new ways of interpreting the behavior we see online. She outlined some examples at a recent conference in San Francisco, including the case of a young man from one of the poorest districts of Los Angeles who was applying for a top American college. The applicant said he wanted to escape the influence of violence, but the admissions officer was shocked when he discovered that the boy’s MySpace page was covered with precisely the violent language he claimed to hate. “Why was he lying about his motivations?” asked the university. “He wasn’t,” said Boyd. “In his world, showing the right images online was a key part of surviving daily life.”
Understanding what’s happening online is especially important, for today’s teenagers have a vastly different approach to privacy from their parents. She says, “Adults think of the home as a very private space. That’s often not the case for teenagers because they have little or no control over who has access to it, or under what conditions. As a result, the online world can feel more private because it feels like there’s more control.”
The concept of control is central to Boyd’s work, and it applies to pointing out the true facts about teenage behavior. Boyd suggests control remains in the same places as it always did.
“Technologists all go for the idea of techno-utopia (乌托邦), the web as great democratizer (民主化)”, she says. “But we’re not actually democratizing the whole system; we’re just shifting the way in which we discriminate.”
It’s a call to arms that most academic researchers would tend to sidestep, but then Boyd admits to treading a fine line between academics and activists. “The questions I continue to want to ask are the things that are challenging to me；having to sit down and be forced to think about uncomfortable social stuff, and it’s really hard to get my head around it, which means it’s exactly what I should dive in and deal with, ” she says.
1. What does Danah Boyd think of “computer-mediated communications”?| A．They teach teenagers about social interaction. |
| B．They replace other sorts of social interaction for teenagers. |
| C．They are necessary for teenagers to have social interaction. |
| D．They are barriers to wider social interaction among teenagers. |
| A．To show how easy it is to investigate somebody’s online activity. |
| B．To explain how easy it is to misinterpret an individual online activity. |
| C．To prove how important it is to check the content of someone’s online activity. |
| D．To express how necessary it is to judge someone’s sincerity from his online activity. |
| A．parents tend not to respect teenagers’ need for online privacy |
| B．teenagers are less concerned about privacy than their parents |
| C．teenagers feel more private in the online world than in the home |
| D．parents value the idea of privacy less in a domestic environment |
| A．is willing to take on research challenges others would avoid |
| B．regards herself as being more of an activist than a researcher |
| C．is aware that she is lacking in ability to deal with the challenges |
| D．feels like abandoning the research into uncomfortable social stuff |
9 . Americans clearly love their museums. One of the most famous, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met), saw a record 6.5 million visitors in 2015. But record attendance doesn’t necessarily translate into record revenue. Last month，the Met said it was trying to erase a USS10 million budget deficit. Meanwhile, one of its rivals，the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), was abundant in cash, but only about three million people stopped by in 2015. Why do some museums flourish while others flounder? My research leads me to believe there are three reasons: fashion, billionaires and demographics.
First, underlying the Met’s financial challenges is the problem with the acquisitions policy. Recent directors of the Met did not add much to the museum’s modern collection. The argument was that museums such as the MoMA were already providing such works in their collections and that the acquisition of contemporary art by living artists was problematic and risky. However, given the fact that museum-goers increasingly favor contemporary art, the revenue of the Met will likely fall if it isn’t able to keep up with the tastes of the customers. And by the time it might recognize this, it’s already too late to do much about it because the costs to acquire the in-demand art is sky-high. This leads to a second critical issue-the changing distribution of income and its effects on museum finance and operation.
We are living in a boom period for contemporary art. The number of auctions and art fairs has grown enormously to accommodate this growing market. In a world with about 1,800 billionaires, it only takes a relative few to drive high-end art prices to astronomical levels. Works by the German artist Gerhard Richter have generated $1.2 billion in sales in recent years. The soaring prices mean museums simply can’t keep up and must usually depend on donations to assemble the best works, or they’re priced out. Moreover, billionaires themselves are increasingly setting up their own private museums, further distancing the ability of public museums to get the good stuff.
A third interrelated problem is that demographic issues have put pressure on the revenue side. Unemployment, early retirements and the aging of the population in the US have contributed to increased attendance at museums. You might think it’s a good thing, but more traffic means higher costs, and when those additional visitors don’t result in more revenue, profitability goes down. This is because of the longstanding movement toward making museums “free” by having individuals, government or businesses “sponsor” the cost. But when that support gets reduced by budget costs or another reason, museums must either cover the cost themselves or lose patrons by suddenly charging fees. There is evidence that attendance rises when economic growth slows, but that’s also when those “sponsors” are more likely to begin to disappear.
Museums will certainly continue to exist and provide us with invaluable insights into our culture. But they must exist under economic principles, and it’d be wise for their administrators to consider the economies in their calculations.
1. According to the author, ________.| A．MoMA saw a rise in donation due to its increased attendance |
| B．the Met failed to respond to the artistic tastes of modern visitors |
| C．the Met considered works of the living artists as questionable |
| D．MoMA added to its modern collection despite the budget deficit |
| A．Billionaires control art auctions to price out public museums. |
| B．The boom of modern art will lead visitors to private museums. |
| C．The increase in visitors can hurt the profitability of museums. |
| D．Economic slowdowns result in a weakened interest in museums. |
| A．Pessimistic. | B．Doubtful. | C．Cautious. | D．Uncertain. |
| A．How can Museums Boost Revenues? |
| B．Should Museums Charge Entrance Fees? |
| C．Will Museums Survive in a Fast-changing World? |
| D．What Causes the Financial Challenges of Museums? |
10 . The word “robot” was coined in 1920 by the Czech playwright Karel Capek meaning fully functional servants. For most of their history, robots have been inelegant mechanical devices sitting out of sight in factories. Things are starting to change, however. Robots are leaving carefully managed industrial settings for everyday life and, in the coming years, will increasingly work in supermarkets, clinics, social care and much more.
They could not be coming at a better time. Many industries are facing a shortage of labor — the demand for workers has recovered much faster than expected and some people have left the workforce, particularly in America. Warehousing (仓库) has grown rapidly thanks to the e-commerce boom. Robots are picking items off shelves and helping people pack a rising numbers of boxes. They are even beginning to move slowly along some pavements, delivering goods or food right to people’s doors. Nowadays, short of workers but with lots of elderly folk to look after, having more robots to boost productivity would be a good thing.
And yet many people fear that robots will destroy jobs. A paper in 2013 by economists at Oxford University was widely misinterpreted as meaning that 47% of American jobs were at risk of being automated.
In fact, concerns about mass unemployment are overblown. The evidence suggests robots will be ultimately beneficial for labor markets. Japan and South Korea have the highest robot usage rate but very strong workforces. A Yale University study that looked at Japanese manufacturing between 1978 and 2017 found that an increase of one robot unit per 1,000 workers boosted a company’s employment by 2.2%. Research from the Bank of Korea found that robotization moved jobs away from manufacturing into other sectors, but that there was no decrease in overall vacancies.
For all that, the march of the robots will bring big changes to workplaces, too. One supposed example of “bad automation” is self-service checkouts in supermarkets, because they displace human workers. But robots could perform unpleasant work. Checkout staff who retrain to help customers pick items from aisles (传送带) may find that dealing with people in need is more rewarding than spending all day swiping barcodes in front of lasers. In addition, as jobs change, workers should be helped to acquire new skills, including how to work with and manage the robots that will increasingly be their colleagues.
The potential gains from the robot revolution are huge. In Capek’s play, the robots revolt(反抗)against their human masters and cause mass unemployment and worse. However, the beginnings of the world’s real robots have not matched Capek’s assumption. So there is no need to concern about their future.
1. The author mentions the two researches in paragraph 4 to ____________.| A．prove an argument | B．introduce an approach |
| C．present an assumption | D．highlight an experiment |
| A．New skills will be acquired by workers with the help of robots. |
| B．The more robots are used, the greater employment it can bring. |
| C．Robots will betray their human masters and cause worse problems. |
| D．Checkout staff in supermarkets may be happier to do with people in need. |
| A．approved | B．neutral | C．opposed | D．doubtful |
| A．Future Risk: Jobs Being Automated |
| B．Robot Revolution: Causes of Changes |
| C．Workplace Automation: Rise of Robots |
| D．Robotization: Solution to Unemployment |
