1 . Feel like you’re trying to keep pace with your friends? Envious of the classmates who have got progress in math?
When used in a positive way, comparison can actually help us become better.
You may start with staying in your lane. Focus on your own goals and work on achieving them in your own time.
Do you often dig for information on social media about your old school friends to see how they are going?
| A．Sometimes, you should also be realistic |
| B．Comparing yourself to others is something that we all do |
| C．This behavior often involves you into comparison-led self-pity |
| D．It is advisable to be true to yourself both in person and online |
| E．Avoid getting distracted by the “noise” of what others are doing |
| F．There’s no doubt that social media exposure plays a big part in it |
| G．However, the damage happens when we use it to determine how we fall short |
2 . “I was not exceptional at all,” Claudia Goldin once told me of her time as an economics PhD student at the University of Chicago. But as the course progressed, she said, “I felt like lightbulbs were going on in my head.” On October 9 the brightness of those lights was confirmed, as she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics “for having advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes”.
Goldin found men relatively dull, at least as a topic of study. Their labour was uniform compared to that of women, who might switch between caring for children, toiling (辛苦工作) in the family businesses or sweating somewhere else. But this complexity was harder to measure. According to America’s historical statistics, for example, their occupation was often unhelpfully listed as “wife”. So Goldin set out to measure their work properly.
The standard pattern of development was once that as countries got richer, women were pulled into the labour market. But by painstakingly stitching together different data sets, Goldin established that America’s path was more complicated, and that growth in the 1800s coincided with women moving away from work other than domestic labour.
Why? For a start, factory jobs were harder to combine with childcare than, say, sewing at home. And richer families could afford to spare women the indignity of toil. Goldin argued that stigma (污名) reinforced this, or the idea that “only a husband who is lazy and neglectful of his family would allow his wife to do such labour.” Later the stigma faded — the office clerk job of the 20th century was easier, and consistent with the impression of a supportive spouse. With the arrival of tight labour markets in the 1950s, discriminatory policies against hiring married women were virtually abandoned.
Today, women still work and earn less than men. As social norms have shifted and real barriers have fallen, Goldin says that most of the remaining gender gaps facing college-educated women are due to something else. So-called “greedy jobs” reward round-the-clock work and are conflicting with being on call for children. Perhaps men should also share the family burden and allow their partners to be more professionally involved instead.
1. Which of the following is the case for American women in the 1800s?| A．They took an active part in workforce. |
| B．They were comfortable enough not to work. |
| C．They stood a good chance in office jobs. |
| D．They were still stuck in household chores. |
| A．To explain the current gender gaps. |
| B．To introduce the employee reward system. |
| C．To call on men to stay at home. |
| D．To expose the greedy nature of capitalists. |
3 . If sales generally feel hard to resist, the sale in front of Arron Schurevich was the ultimate test: a new car just like the one he’d loved. And it was more than a 20% discount. “I figured that I would be a fool not to take advantage of that,” says Schurevich. After he drove the car off the lot, the deal turned sour. The brand-new car quickly needed repairs. Schurevich now jokes that he paid a tax for being a fool.
Why is it so hard for the human brain to resist a discount? Spotting something you’d like to buy activates your brain’s reward circuitry (奖赏回路). It gets especially heightened if it’s something you’ve been fascinated by — say, the same car you’ve enjoyed for years. Additionally, the discount itself often registers as a win, delivering its own kind of joy, says Jorge Barraza, a consumer psychologist at the University of Southern California.
“Not only are we getting the product,” Barraza says, “but we’re also getting that reward that we discovered something; we’ve earned this extra thing.”
Stores, of course, know all this and try to push our buttons. “Limited-quantity, limited-time, scarcity-marketing promotions—they get people’s blood pumping,” says Kelly Goldsmith, who studies this as a marketing professor at Vanderbilt University.
It’s really hard to always approach sales rationally. One buying strategy experts recommend is to make a shopping list in advance and then, stick to it. Another is to research items — beforehand or on the spot, checking online — to weigh whether the sale is really a good deal.
“The human brain has essentially evolved to feel first and think next, which is why you need to give yourself time to cool off from your instant reaction when in front of a sale,” says Goldsmith.
1. What is the purpose of telling Arron Schurevich’s story?| A．To explain the way to promote sale. | B．To inform readers of an important test. |
| C．To introduce the topic of the passage. | D．To show the advantage of products on sale. |
| A．Brain’s reward circuitry needs activating. | B．It’s hard to resist a discount for some reasons. |
| C．Buying discounted products has consequences. | D．It’s worthwhile to approach sales rationally. |
| A．Stores are good at pushing buttons. | B．Stores tend to affect people’s health. |
| C．Stores help consumers earn extra things. | D．Stores know how to attract consumers with sales. |
| A．Calm down in front of a sale. | B．Make a shopping list ahead of time. |
| C．Research items on the spot or online. | D．Avoid buying any discounted items. |
4 . Depending on which late-model vehicle you own, your car might be watching you — literally and figuratively — as you drive down the road. It’s watching you with cameras that monitor the cabin and track where you’re looking, and with sensors that track your speed, lane positions and rates of acceleration.
In addition to providing these functions, this data collection is a potential privacy nightmare. The information can reveal your identity, your habits when you’re in your car, how safely you drive, where you’ve been and where you regularly go.
There is a trade-off (权衡) between the quality of the driving experience and the privacy of drivers, depending on the level of services and features. Some drivers may prefer to share their biometric data to facilitate accessing a car’s functions and automating a major part of their driving experience. Others may prefer to manually control the car’s systems, sharing less personally identifiable information or none at all.
At first glance, it seems the trade-off between privacy and driver comfort cannot be avoided. Car manufacturers tend to take measures to protect drivers’ data against data thieves, but they collect a lot of data themselves. And as the Mozill a Foundation report showed, most car companies reserve the right to sell your data.
Researchers are now working on developing data analytics tools that better protect privacy and make progress on eliminating the trade-off. For instance, over the past seven years, the concept of federated machine learning has attracted attention because it allows algorithms (算法) to learn from the data on your local device without copying the data to a central server. Google’s Gboard keyboard benefits from federated learning to better guess the next word you are likely to type without sharing your private data with a server. There are other techniques to preserve privacy as well, such as location obfuscation, which alters the user’s location data to prevent the location from being revealed.
While there is still a trade-off between user privacy and quality of service, privacy-preserving data analytics techniques could pave the way for using data without leaking drivers’ and passengers’ personally identifiable information. This way, drivers could benefit from a wide range of modern cars’ services and features without paying the high cost of losing privacy.
1. What is the purpose of the first paragraph?| A．To explain the benefits of your car. |
| B．To bring in the topic of privacy problems. |
| C．To point out the bright future of car industry. |
| D．To stress the advanced technology applied in cars. |
| A．A good medicine tastes bitter. | B．Knowledge starts with practice. |
| C．A fall into a pit, a gain in your wit. | D．One man’s meat is another man’s poison. |
| A．It can protect user privacy. | B．It makes algorithms learn fast. |
| C．It is yet to be put into application. | D．It copies local data to a central server. |
| A．Hesitant. | B．Indifferent. | C．Positive. | D．Objective. |
5 . The Internet is a global network, which allows digital information to travel around the world. Let’s view some most popular uses of the Internet.
Information search
We search for information every day.
One of the most significant and popular use of the Internet is email. Email is a common thing that a majority of people check after they have logged (登录) on to the Internet.
Online shopping
Education
The Internet plays an important role in effectively shaping today’s school education process. It has the availability and the quality of learning for many students. They can study what they want and whenever they feel the most productive.
We are witnessing the rise of informal education where college graduates have online access and can sharpen their skills and get faster progress in a specific field.
| A．Communication |
| B．Online bill payments |
| C．Our habits of buying things have changed a lot |
| D．They can also attend classes or take exams online at home |
| E．It is done by typing a question for which we seek specific information |
| F．Many other personal businesses create their online shops every day |
| G．The email has enabled easier and faster communication between people |
6 . Proper questioning has become a lost art. The curious four-year-old asks a lot of questions-incessant streams of “Why?” and “Why not?“ might sound familiar-but as we grow older, our questioning decreases. In a recent survey of more than 200 of our clients, we found that those with children estimated that 70-80% of their kids’ dialogues with others were comprised of questions. But those same clients said that only 15-25% of their own interactions consisted of questions. Why the drop of?
Think back to your time growing up and in school. Chances are you received the most recognition or reward when you got the correct answers. Later in life, that motivator continues. At work, we often reward those who answer questions, not those who ask them. Questioning conventional wisdom can even lead to being distanced, or considered a threat.
Because expectations for decision-making have gone from ”get it done soon“ to ”get it done now“ to ”it should have been done yesterday, “ we tend to jump to conclusions instead of asking more questions. And the unfortunate side effect of not asking enough questions is poor decision-making. That’s why it’s vital that we slow down and take the time to ask more and better questions. At best, we’ll arrive at better conclusions. At worst we’ll avoid a lot of rework later on.
Aside from not speaking up enough, many professionals don’t think about how different types of questions can lead to different outcomes. We should lead a conversation by asking the right kinds of questions, based on the problem we’re trying to solve. In some cases, we’ll want to expand our view of the problem rather than keeping it narrowly focused. In others, we may want to challenge basic assumptions or confirm our understanding in order to feel more confident in our conclusions. Therefore, asking the right kinds of questions is what counts in achieving a goal.
1. What does the underlined word ”incessant“ in paragraph 1 most probably mean?| A．Constant. | B．Random. | C．Noisy. | D．Innocent. |
| A．One poses a threat to the company if they ask questions. |
| B．Those who ask questions don’t necessarily get positive feedback. |
| C．One doesn’t have as many opportunities as they did in childhood. |
| D．Those who question popular beliefs don’t have interpersonal skills. |
| A．Redoing is unavoidable despite thoughtful questions. |
| B．Better questions can surely result in desirable outcomes. |
| C．Some people think it can’t be too fast to make a decision. |
| D．We’ll make reasonable decisions as long as we ask questions. |
| A．Proper questions that should be raised. |
| B．Important goals that we are to achieve. |
| C．Right kinds of answers to the questions. |
| D．The reasons for the loss of questioning art. |
7 . Halloween candy could be in for a California big change. State lawmakers last month passed the California Food Safety Act, which bans four materials found in popular snacks and packaged foods - including candy corm and other Halloween treats. Set to take effect in 2027, the ban will lead candy and food producers to change their formulas for products sold both in California and elsewhere around the country.
The law bans the production and sale of some materials, which are used in processed foods including kinds of instant potatoes and sodas, as well as candies. The additives (添加剂) have been linked to increased risks of cancer and nervous system problems, according to the Environmental Working Group, which started the act, and are already banned in many other countries.
Food producers and their lobbyists (说客) opposed the law, arguing the conclusion that the four additives are unhealthy should be made by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). They thought that evaluating the safety of food materials and additives should rely on the scientific accuracy of the FDA. But food safety advocates say the FDA has moved far too slowly in regulating food chemicals. It’s unacceptable that the U.S. is so far behind the rest of the world when it comes to food safety.
California’s act made headlines this year as a “Skittles (彩虹糖) ban” that would wipe popular candies off California shelves. But supporters of the act said the intention is simply to require changes in the materials, as has already happened in Europe. Perhaps the most standing-out material on California’s banned list is red dye No. 3. It is allowed only in candied and cocktail cherries in the European Union but more than 3,000 products contain the chemical in the U. S. The list includes items like frosted pretzels and scores of brand-name candies such as Peeps and Pez. It also includes items like fruit cocktail cups, protein drinks, and yogurts.
1. How will Halloween candy in California change?| A．It will change its recipes. | B．It will transform its shapes. |
| C．It will move out of California. | D．It will disappear completely. |
| A．FDA’s conclusion on the materials is wrong. |
| B．Four materials are allowed all over the world. |
| C．The materials’ safety needs to be reassessed. |
| D．FDA moves too fast in regulating food chemicals. |
| A．They demand a complete ban on Skittles. |
| B．They wish the “Skittles ban” to be headlines. |
| C．They want to apply European policies to Skittles. |
| D．They hope more red dye No. 3 is used in Skittles. |
| A．California candy ban. | B．Food safety in California. |
| C．The responsibility of FDA. | D．Change of Halloween Candy. |
8 . At the start of the 20th century, an American engineer named John Elfreth Watkins made predictions about life today. His predictions about slowing population growth, mobile phones and increasing height were close to the mark. But he was wrong in one prediction: that everybody would walk 10 miles a day.
Today, in Australia, most children on average fall 2, 000 steps short of the physical activity they need to avoid being overweight. In the early 1970s, 40 per cent of children walked to school, while in 2010, it was as low as 15 percent.
The decline is not because we have all become lazy. Families are pressed for time, many with both parents working to pay for their house, often working hours not of their choosing, living in car-dependent neighborhoods with limited public transport.
The other side of the coin is equally a deprivation: for health and well-being, as well as lost opportunities (机会) for children to get to know their local surroundings. And for parents there are lost opportunities to walk and talk with their young scholar about their day.
Most parents will have eagerly asked their child about their day, only to meet with a “good”, quickly followed by “I’m hungry”. This is also my experience as a mother. But somewhere over the daily walk more about my son’s day comes out. I hear him making sense of friendship and its limits. This is the unexpected and rare parental opportunity to hear more.
Many primary schools support walking school-bus routes (路线), with days of regular, parent-accompanied walks. Doing just one of these a few times a week is better than nothing. It can be tough to begin and takes a little planning-running shoes by the front door, lunches made the night before, umbrellas on rainy days and hats on hot ones-but it's certainly worth trying.
1. What has caused the decrease in Australian children’s physical activity?| A．Plain laziness. |
| B．Health problems. |
| C．Lack of time. |
| D．Security concerns. |
| A．She can get relaxed after work. |
| B．She can keep physically fit. |
| C．She can help with her son's study. |
| D．She can know her son better. |
9 . Journalists are looking out for news stories that attract a significant audience. By applying a set of guidelines or criteria, they can recognize what material will make the best stories.
Timeliness
News gets out of date quickly; it’s timely if it happened recently. But how recently?
Unexpectedness
Currency
Topics that are already under the public spotlight are more likely to be newsworthy. Thus, growing public awareness of global warming has generated more stories about companies producing environmentally friendly products.
Human interest
People like to know people. Certain events make people feel strong emotions. Both a dying child receiving a donated organ and families reuniting after fifty years are good examples. People’s everyday concerns make them feel interested, for instance, stories about food, health and housing.
| A．We call these “news values”. |
| B．But this is not enough to make a story newsworthy. |
| C．Strange stories are likely to find their way into the news. |
| D．It depends on the publication cycle of the news medium. |
| E．Information about schools and work also catches the public’s eye. |
| F．An unfolding story has strong news value on 24-hour news channels. |
| G．Social media has enabled people to share opinions with a far wider audience. |
10 . Scientists have created the first full-sized digital model of the Titanic. The model will allow scientists to study the Titanic in ways that have never been possible before.
The Titanic sank in the Atlantic Ocean in 1912. It was the largest ship of its time, and was thought to be unable to go down below the surface of water. But four days after it left Southampton, England, the Titanic hit an iceberg (冰山) and sank early the next day, killing some 1,500 people. The sinking is one of the most famous disasters in history.
The Titanic broke into two pieces, and sank to the sea floor, about 3.8 kilometers below the surface of the ocean. The location of the wreck (沉船) wasn’t discovered until 1985. Since then, many research teams have visited the site with undersea robots, whose trips have resulted in lots of pictures and videos of the wreck. But even these only allow scientists to study one area of the wreck at a time.
Now, two companies — an undersea technology company called Magellan and the movie company Atlantic Productions — have created a 3-D model of the Titanic by sending two undersea robots down to the Titanic. The robots recorded both of the main pieces of the Titanic (the front and the back), as well as other hits of the wreck on the sea floor. Over six weeks, they took high-quality videos and over 715,000 pictures, based on which scientists created the 3-D model of the Titanic. Using it, users will be able to see the ship from all angles.
The companies say the 3-D model will help scientists, enabling them to study the Titanic in great detail and study how the Titanic broke down, which could help them learn more about thousands of other shipwrecks also lying on the sea floor. And of course, scientists hope the model will help them better understand what happened when the Titanic sank.
1. What does the author say about the Titanic?| A．It was supposedly unsinkable. | B．Its sinking is the best-known disaster. |
| C．Its voyage should last for 4 days. | D．It tops the list of England's ships in size. |
| A．More studies are encouraged on the Titanic. | B．Enthusiasm for the Titanic never fades away. |
| C．The exploration of the Titanic is far from easy. | D．New discoveries have been made about the Titanic. |
| A．The previous findings about the shipwreck. | B．The devotion of the scientists. |
| C．The cooperation between the two companies. | D．The complete picture of the wreck. |
| A．help rebuild other shipwrecks underwater | B．give scientists new insights into the Titanic |
| C．allow the public to fully admire the Titanic | D．reproduce the grandness of the large ship |
