1 . Music is one of the most powerful forces in our lives. It can bring us joy, sorrow, or even inspiration. It can evoke emotions and memories that we didn’t even know we had.
Music can be a source of comfort. It can provide a refuge（避难所）from the troubles of the world and provide a sense of peace and solace.
Finally, music can be a source of joy and celebration.
Music has the power to change our lives in ways we may never have imagined. It can provide us with strength, courage, comfort, and joy. It can help us to find our inner voice and express ourselves in unique and creative ways.
| A．Poor people can live a happy life with music. |
| B．Music can also give us strength and courage. |
| C．Music can associate people with each other around the world. |
| D．Music can change a person’s life in ways that nothing else can. |
| E．Listening to music can help to reduce stress, anxiety, and depression. |
| F．It can bring us closer together, helping us to appreciate and celebrate the beauty of life. |
| G．Music can truly be a life-changing force, and one that should never be underestimated. |
2 . No one’s perfect. Here, Kamran explains why he believes perfection isn’t a realistic goal.
You are chasing a myth.
Your mental health can suffer. Not only might you feel anxious that you’ re not where you want to be in life, you may feel emotionally low as a result of desiring perfection and constantly critiquing aspects of your life.
| A．You’ll not abandon it. |
| B．Perfection doesn’t exist. |
| C．You might judge others unfairly. |
| D．You won’t enjoy the small things. |
| E．This can cause feelings of being defeated. |
| F．Exercise can help remove the bad feelings. |
| G．All these can go unnoticed if you’re focused on future-based thinking. |
3 . It’s a classic story: A kid is forced to learn an instrument from a young age, they play it throughout their childhood, and they develop a bittersweet relationship with it. Is the constant battle between the love for the music and the hate for the constant challenge worth the fight? For me, it was.
I started playing the piano when I was four-that was 15 years ago! This was huge commitment, so there must have been something worth holding on to, right?
The easy guess is that I was purely in love with music and piano. Although that’s the sweeter tale, it’s a bit more complicated. I struggled a lot with piano. Family and peers were, at least in my own head, constantly placed beside me in competition. I felt pressure to be the best in order to prove something to others-and more devastatingly (破坏性地) to prove something to myself. The seed of my musical interest was grown in the sunlight of competition and doubt. Hate sprouted (滋生) when my self-criticism hit too hard.
It’s difficult to learn to love something that didn’t originate from love. For a while, piano was more of an annoyance than a hobby. But somehow, love grew. It was deeply buried. But it was there, and by high school,it was strong enough that when I was truly on the verge of quitting any kind of formal training. I found the strength to hold on tighter, and dig further. I switched teachers, and got incredibly lucky with one who helped me tunnel into what I loved. I learned pieces for myself, I composed for myself, and I found confidence not because I got “good enough,” but because I learned that anything I had was good enough.
The love and hate I’ve had for the piano were both planted and grown. If you too have learned to hate something, remember that with commitment, it can be uprooted, and love can make a home in its place. There is always time. There is always room.
1. What does the author want to show by telling a classic story?| A．The benefits of music. |
| B．Kids’ struggle in learning instruments. |
| C．Kids’ bittersweet childhood. |
| D．The popularity of learning instruments. |
| A．She finally quit formal training. |
| B．She never treated it as her hobby. |
| C．She was in pure love with music and piano. |
| D．She once experienced great pressure from herself. |
| A．Her attitude. | B．Her training. |
| C．Her compromise. | D．Her achievement. |
| A．Practice makes perfect. |
| B．Love is a thing that grows. |
| C．Content is better than riches. |
| D．Chance favors the prepared mind. |
4 . Forgiving doesn’t mean saying the pain doesn’t matter or what the other person said or did was OK. It doesn’t mean forgetting what happened. It means letting go of your need for an apology. It means making peace with past hurt and pain. It means choosing to move on. All of this is easy to say, hard to do. But forgiveness can happen in a series of small steps over time.
Take your feelings seriously. Forgiving doesn’t mean shrugging your shoulders and saying “Oh, well.” Cry, feel sad, throw things hard, or write angry passages in your diary to get rid of some of the stress. Talk with trusted friends or family to ask for advice to help find solutions to your problems. You have the right to feel hurt and angry. But suffering these feelings over time does you great harm.
Make a difference in your life. I’ve seen that many miss the opportunity for getting back a good relationship with someone else because they just wait for the apology that may never come. Others stay stuck in anger long after the other person has stopped to be a part of their lives. Make a decision to make a difference for yourself. That may be forgiving or being the first to reach out to the other so that you can move on with your own life.
Forgive yourself and engage in positive self-talk. Although you may mainly blame the other person, it’s important to forgive yourself with positive self-talk. Feel certain that you can learn from this and move on. Tell yourself that you will survive this pain and that life will get better because you can make a choice to let go.
Try understanding the other. This doesn’t reduce your pain but may make what happened more understandable. Understanding doesn’t forgive hurtful behavior, but understanding can help to get rid of your anger and to forgive.
Realize that forgiveness benefits you most of all. The other person may never know about your forgiveness. But forgiving and letting go can lighten the load on your body and on your spirit.
1. What does forgiving mean according to the text?| A．The pain the other person brought you isn’t very serious. |
| B．What the other person has said or done doesn’t hurt you. |
| C．You don’t care and have forgotten what happened to you. |
| D．You needn’t the other person to say sorry to you any more. |
| A．Positive. | B．Negative. | C．Objective. | D．Uncertain. |
| A．Wait for your friend’s apology. |
| B．Take the initiative (主动性) to say hello to your friend. |
| C．Try your best to forget your problem. |
| D．Have positive self-talk. |
| A．How to forgive other people. |
| B．Forgiveness is helpful for us all. |
| C．Understanding can help forgive others. |
| D．Life gets better if you choose to forgive. |
5 . When evaluating people on various psychological tests, psychologists often distinguish between markers of absolute performance and relative performance. Absolute performance reflects the raw measurement of something, like the time it takes to run a mile. Relative performance is how a person rates in relation to their peers, as in what place a runner gets in a race.
The standards we use to evaluate ourselves are almost always relative, as we compare ourselves to our peers and the standards that are most familiar to us. For instance, in my private practice, I have one patient I will call “Omar” who is dependent on social services and makes less than $30,000 per year at his job. While this level of poverty would lead most people to wake up depressed each day, Omar is one of the most optimistic and appreciative individuals I know. Why? Because most of his closest peers — his siblings and friends from childhood — have lives far worse than his.
In contrast to Omar, I have another patient, an adolescent I’ll call “Lena”, whose family has property over $5 million. Lena, however, lives in an upper-class neighborhood where her family is at the lower end of the income level. Though Lena's family allows her to enjoy possessions and experiences that less than I percent of her peers across the world can share, she consistently feels “less than”. Why? Because Lena doesn't compare herself to the rest of the world; This is too abstract an exercise for her, as it would be for most of us.
Accordingly, whether a psychologist is psychodynamic or cognitive-behavioral, therapy (疗法) with individuals struggling with situational or psychological depression aims to solve the problems associated with basing one's self-worth on comparisons with others. Psychologists try to help people focus on personal growth around the achievement of concrete goals in line with their values. independent of the achievement of others. For all of us, defining these goals, especially during Periods of emotional calm, can go a long way in helping us to avoid the trap of relativity that often leads to situational and psychological depression.
1. What is the function of Paragraph 1?| A．To show the significance of evaluating people. |
| B．To motivate readers to study psychological tests. |
| C．To help people perform well in psychological tests. |
| D．To provide some background information on evaluating people. |
| A．To measure different achievement. |
| B．To introduce the standards to evaluate people. |
| C．To explain relative performance with examples. |
| D．To contrast relative performance and absolute performance. |
| A．Setting goals in life is essential for everyone. |
| B．It's important to avoid unhealthy comparisons. |
| C．A sense of achievement can affect one's happiness, |
| D．Improving self-worth can help get rid of depression. |
| A．Happiness: Is it all relative? |
| B．Self-worth: Is it measurable? |
| C．Self-worth: Is it based on efforts? |
| D．Happiness: Is it associated with achievement? |
6 . It’s no secret that college is expensive. I received financial aid, and I was able to cover the cost of enrollment, books, supplies, course materials, and additional school-related fees. But I could not afford housing, transportation, food, healthcare, or other basic necessities. The longer each semester went on, the harder the choices became.
When spring semester ended that first year at college, I had good grades, but I did not have two quarters to my name. I decided that if I could afford to be a full-time student, I would need to work a full-time job. Soon, I started working at the airport as a cleaner of aircraft cabins. My first shift at the airport was a graveyard shift, where I detailed aircraft of varying sizes. During this total night shift, I have to do “deep cleaning”, which meant cleaning everything and even I had to check every safety compartment and replace any missing items. This could be disgusting work.
Another fact upset me a lot that working at the airport and going to school did not fit easily together. Some days 1 was too exhausted after a night shift to get to class. Other days I didn’t have time to complete school assignments owing to a busy workday. At the end of the fall semester, I received a final warning for my attendance at my job. Once again, I was between a rock and a hard place and had to make a decision. I wanted to go to school and excel, but I also had grown accustomed to financially supporting myself.
Ultimately, I chose to temporarily stop going to school and to continue working, a decision. I would later regret. The airline closed for various reasons. I felt stupid. I had put a lot into this job, even sacrificing my education, and now I would have neither job nor education. I’d finally learned what my grandmother meant when she once said that your job is temporary, and your education is forever.
1. What can we infer about the author from paragraph 1?| A．He met with a long boring semester. | B．Food accounted for his biggest expense. |
| C．He left himself financially embarrassed. | D．His financial aid could cover his necessities. |
| A．Cleaned. | B．Listed. | C．Repaired. | D．Replaced. |
| A．Confused. | B．Critical. | C．Decisive. | D．Diligent. |
| A．He who makes no mistakes makes nothing. |
| B．Nothing is difficult to the man who will try. |
| C．One should be financially supported by himself. |
| D．The significance of schooling should be recognized. |
