2 . What if — and it is a big what if — you could meet your future self? What a very strange question, but one that is worth asking.

I’m a psychologist, well aware that talking about the theoretical consequences of traveling in a time machine can sound strange, coming from someone like me, but my research in the last 15 years has not been too far from this topic. I have explored the reasons why people have such a hard time making long-term decisions, and how they can finally make better choices.

People often imagine their future self as another person, which creates problems. To make sense of why, think about someone in your life who you barely know: a neighbour or a co-worker, for instance. If that stranger asked you to make a sacrifice (牺牲) for him, for example, to lend him money, you might politely decline. If we treat our future selves the same way, then it makes sense why we sometimes give in to short-term desires rather than do something we’ll feel better about in the long run.

If only we could try to make our future selves seem more like people like our partners, loved ones, or best friends. One way is to think of future selves in more concrete and vivid ways. In one recent study on the willingness to save for the post-working life, I cooperated with a bank and found that when customers were shown age-progressed images of themselves alongside encouraging messages about saving, their willingness was about 16% higher than people who merely received the encouraging messages.

You don’t need to wait for time travel or advanced AI for answers that you can act on. Simply taking a bit of time to picture this meeting can help you make better choices now, closing the divide between who you are today and who you’ll be tomorrow. All you need is a little imagination, and the willingness to put yourself in the shoes of a person you currently treat as a stranger.

1. What does the author indicate about time travel?

A．It’s relevant to psychology.	B．It’s too unrealistic to explore.
C．It’s a key part of his research.	D．It’s an unscientific topic for him.

2. Why do people struggle with making long-term decisions?

A．They lack decision-making ability.	B．They barely consider future selves.
C．They view future selves as unfamiliar.	D．They focus more on short-term desires.

3. What were the customers more likely to do after seeing their age-progressed images?

A．Save for their family.	B．Put money into their retirement.
C．Think of future selves frequently.	D．Give future selves some messages.

4. How can we make better choices according to the author?

A．Put ourselves in the shoes of someone else.

B．Use technology to get future selves visualized.

C．Try to have a meeting with our future versions.

D．Improve emotional connections with future selves.

3 . What distinguishes an outstanding city? The Global Cities Index assesses cities based on diverse criteria, including:

·Business – The presence of multinational corporations. How many global companies are in the city? Does the city do a lot of international business?

·People – The city’s ability to attract talents globally. Does the city attract talented people from around the world? What’s proportion of residents with higher education?

·Media – The accessibility of varied information channels. How many residents have Internet access?

·Entertainment – The availability of leisure and cultural activities. Does the city have many entertainment options: museums, sports, music, and different types of restaurants?

Future Leaders       

Most cities on the Global Cities Index are strong in certain areas. Beijing’s strength, for example, is business, while Los Angeles’s strength is people. Which cities will become more powerful in the future?

·Asia: Beijing and Shanghai are both business centers and will continue to grow. In a few years, they will potentially match New York’s influence. Indian cities such as Mumbai and New Delhi have a lot of business potential, too.

·South America: urban centers like Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo in Brazil will gain influence. In these cities, the middle class is growing, and life for many people is improving.

·The Middle East: Istanbul in Turkey, Cairo in Egypt, and the cities of the United Arab Emirates such as Dubai will hold more power in international politics and business, especially in helping East and West work together.

In 10 years, the top cities on the index may be different, but one thing is certain: With over 50 percent of the world’s people now living in urban areas, tomorrow’s global cities will be more powerful than ever.

1. Which aspect is considered in the Global Cities Index?

A．Education.

B．Climate.

C．Transportation.

D．Location

2. Which parts of the world are predicted to grow in the area of business?

A．Asia and Europe.	B．Asia and South America.
C．Asia and the Middle East.	D．South America and the Middle East.

3. What is the passage mainly about?

A．Similarities between top cities.	B．The ways to become global cities.
C．Daily life in fastest-growing cities.	D．Forecast on future influential cities.

5 . Education in 2080 is distinctive from education in the 2020s. Until about 2035, the main function of education systems was to supply the economy with the next generation of workers. In 2080, the purpose of education is the well-being of society and all its members. To make this a bit more tangible for you, I would like to give an example of what a child’s education looks like in 2080. Her name is Shemsy. Shemsy is 13, and she is confident and loves learning.

Shemsy does not go to school in the morning because schools as you know them no longer exist. The institution was abolished as it was widely thought of as more like a prison or a factory than a creative learning environment. Schools have been replaced with “Learning Hubs” that are not restricted to certain ages. They are where intergenerational learning happens, in line with the belief that learning is a lifelong pursuit.

Every year, Shemsy designs her learning journey for the year with a highly attentive “teacher-citizen”. Shemsy is actively engaged in designing her education and has to propose projects she would like to be involved in to contribute to and serve her community. She also spends lots of time playing as the role of play in learning has finally been recognized as essential and core to our humanity. Shemsy works a lot collaboratively. Access to education is universal, and higher education institutions no longer differentiate themselves by how many people they reject yearly. Variability between students is expected and leveraged (利用) as young people teach one another and use their differences as a source of strength. Shemsy naturally explores what she is curious about at a pace she sets. She still has some classes to take that are mandatory for children globally: Being Human and the History of Humanity.

We invite you to think about your vision for education in the year 2080, what does it look like, who does it serve,and how does it transform our societies?

1. What does paragraph 1 mainly tell us?

A．There are different types of education.

B．The present education needs improvements.

C．Education and economy are closely associated.

D．The goal of future education is fundamentally different.

2. What do we know about the Learning Hub that Shemsy goes to?

A．It accepts students of all ages.	B．It promotes competition.
C．It discourages individualized learning.	D．It is all about play-based learning.

3. What does the underlined word “mandatory” in paragraph 3 mean?

A．Tough.

B．Satisfactory.

C．Optional.

D．Required.

4. What is the suitable title for the text?

A．An Example to All	B．A Vision for Education
C．A Challenge for Education	D．A Journey into the Future

6 . New Scientist magazine’s chief reporter Adam recently published “Net-zero living: how your day will look in a carbon-neutral (碳中和) world”. Here, he imagines what a typical day would be like in the future — through the eyes of Isla, a child in 2050.

Isla lives in the south of the United Kingdom and her life looks pretty much like life does today: she has a house, a car, a job, and a cup of tea in the morning. There are great forests, and giant machines sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. It all sounds like a green and pleasant land, but it didn’t sound like the future to me.

It’s an interesting exercise, imagining what it will be like in about 30 years. I thought I would give it a try: here is some speculative fiction about Edie, living in Toronto, Canada in 2050.

Edie lives in the garage in an old house that is her apartment and workshop. She considers herself to be very lucky to have this garage in what was her grandparents’ house. The only people who live in houses these days either get the houses from their parents or are multi-millionaires from all over the world, desperate to move to Canada with its cooler climate and plentiful water and are able to afford the million-dollar immigrant visa fee.

Edie is lucky to be working. There are no office or industrial jobs anymore: Artificial Intelligence and robots took care of that. The few jobs left are in service, culture, craft, health care, or real estate (房地产). In fact, selling real estate has become the nation’s biggest industry.

There may be lots of electricity from wind and solar farms, but even running tiny heat pumps for cooling is really expensive at peak times. The streets are unpleasantly hot, so many people sleep through the midday.

Now Edie is checking the balance in her Personal Carbon Allowance (PCA) account to see if she has enough to buy another imported battery for her e-bike. If she doesn’t have enough then, she will have to buy carbon credits, and they are expensive. She sets her alarm for 6:00 p.m. when the streets of Toronto will come alive again on this hot November day.

1. What does the author think of Isla’s life?

A．Desirable.	B．Unappealing.
C．Unachievable.	D．Exciting.

2. What will Toronto be like in 2050?

A．Many people will immigrate abroad.	B．Its climate will get colder and colder.
C．Electricity will be very cheap to use.	D．The house prices will be extremely high.

3. What might be Edie’s large concern?

A．The house problem.	B．Being out of work.
C．The balance of her bank account.	D．The energy consumption.

4. What is the purpose of this passage?

A．To point out Adam’s unreasonable thinking.

B．To compare the present life and the future life.

C．To imagine the life after reducing carbon emissions.

D．To raise people’s awareness of environmental protection.

7 . There’s a classic short story in which a young man travels years ahead and meets his future self. Narratives like this have always been related to science fiction. But what if you could meet your future self?

I’m a psychologist and professor. My research over the past 15 years isn’t far from this theme. I’ve largely focused on how people think about and relate to their future selves, and explored the reasons why we have such a hard time making long-term decisions. In my research, I’ve learnt that we often imagine our future selves like strangers, which can impede us in making long-term choices. One way to bridge the emotional gap is to think of future selves in more concrete and vivid ways, like writing letters to and from one’s future self, which can strengthen the connection between current and future selves.

Admittedly, having people engage in an imagined conversation is a far cry from actually meeting one’s future self. But it’s believed that far richer interactions may happen in the near future through artificial intelligence (AI). It wouldn’t be predicting exactly what choices you’d make. It’d be more about showing your potential, based on the lives of people similar to you: not just one possible life for you, but rather, the most possible life path for you. Such interactions could offer valuable insights into our potential future selves.

So, to return to my original question: if you could time-travel to meet your future self, what aspects of your life would you want to know more about? I realized, through thorough reflections, that the most powerful questions would be ones that helped me make better choices today —questions exploring personal growth, regrets and unfulfilled actions.

Actually, you don’t need to wait for time travel or advanced AI for answers that you can act on. Through my research, I’ve learnt that simply taking a bit of time to picture this meeting can help you make better choices now. All you need is a little imagination, and the willingness to put yourself in the shoes of a person you currently treat as a stranger.

1. Why is it difficult for people to make long-term decisions according to the author?

A．Technology for time travel is not available.

B．Strangers cannot help with decision-making.

C．Writing letters to one’s future self is impractical.

D．People find it hard to connect with their distant selves.

2. What does the underlined phrase “a far cry from” mean in paragraph 3?

A．contradictory to	B．very different from
C．not as convenient as	D．less popular than

3. Which question would the author most likely ask his future self?

A．Why hasn’t my hard work ever paid off?

B．What can AI do to help people become better persons?

C．If given the chance, what would you have done differently?

D．How can I succeed without going through all the difficulties in life?

4. Which of the following is a suitable title for the text?

A．Time travel: What if you met your future self?

B．My research: How do people view their future selves?

C．Emotional gap: Why can’t we talk with our future selves?

D．Artificial intelligence: Is it possible to meet your future self?

9 . One day, you might be ordering your favorite pizza from a robot.Researchers at a university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, are working on creating a pizza-making robot.

“Robots are basically preprogrammed to repeat the same actions over and over,” says David Held, a robot expert from Carnegie Mellon University, and one of the members of a pizza-making team．But making pizza has challenges.For instance, the flour (面粉) will become squishy when meeting water, with a shape that can change in many ways.Also, pizza-making requires many steps—such as rolling and cutting—and several tools, including a rolling, a knife and so on.In what order should the steps be done? Which tools should be picked, and when? “If you need to do a cooking task, there are several levels that you have to reason about,” Held says.Once people get the hang of it, “We don’t even need to think about exactly how we’re doing it- it sort of just happens.But robots can’t really “understand what to do on their own”.

To start, the team used a computer to consider how a robot could lift, fatten, gather, move and cut dough (生面团).The method has two levels of robotic reasoning: one that thinks how it should approach the overall task, and the other that thinks how it should move its “hands” to perform each action．The result was better than with the usual programming techniques.“We got a little bit closer to the right shape than the former methods,” Held says．“‘But there’s still a lot of room for improvement.”

For now, people will continue to make pizza the old-fashioned way: with their own hands.Sill, a pizza-making robot is a good goal.And if a robot could deal with dough, it could also work with other objects that can change shapes.“You can imagine robots helping in hospitals, or robots that clean up toys in day cares,” Held says.“The general goal is to eventually have robots that can help with whatever the task may be.”

1. What does the underlined word “squishy” in paragraph 2 mean?

A．Soft.

B．Dirty.

C．Plain.

D．Precious.

2. What is a challenge for pizza-making robots?

A．Separating flour from water.

B．Doing all the steps in order.

C．Using several tools at once.

D．Repeating the same actions.

3. What does paragraph 3 mainly talk about?

A．Methods of moving a pizza.

B．Problems with pizza making.

C．Improvements to the pizza robot.

D．Suggestions on how to make pizza.

4. What does Held say about the development of robots in the future?

A．They will help humans in different fields.

B．They will replace humans to do all the work.

C．They will do better than humans in day cares.

D．They will do whatever task as well as humans.