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 . 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.

3 . 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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4 . 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

5 . 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

6 . 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.

7 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

Recently, residents in a youth apartment building in downtown Shenzhen have planted the seed, cultivating (形成)     1     unique city lifestyle. They can farm their own land, which can     2     (access) just an elevator ride away to the top of their building. There they can grow vegetables, while     3     (communicate) with other renters and taking in the skyline of the city.

Huang Suyun, the founder of the youth apartment building,     4     (see) positive changes in her own life since “farming” and other social activities were introduced to the rooftop of it.     5     (additional), the experience of tending the gardens allows her     6     (make) friends and get to know others who cither live in the building or visit from outside.

The rooftop heaven covers a total area of 450 square meters and consists     7     a sightseeing zone, a shaded leisure area as well as the urban farming section. “There’s space to exercise, like doing yoga at the leisure zone, and then to walk over to check the vegetables,” says Xie Jing, an architect     8     undertook the project.

An increasing number of urban     9     (resident) at home and abroad have started to seek a social life that promotes environmental     10     (protect) and personal health, which is good news for sustainability and community activity development, experts say.

8 .

HITTING THE BOOKS IN CHINA AND THE WORLD
Reading is a good way to nourish(滋养) people mentally. Recently, Shanghai Library released a report about it. Let’s check out some findings.	Reading time per week in different countries India:        10 hours and 42 minutes Thailand:        9 hours and 24 minutes China:        8 hours Philippines:        7 hours and 36 minutes France:        6 hours and 54 minutes
	Digital reading has become a trend in China ·In 2022, digital readers nationwide reached 506 million, an increase of 2.43 percent compared to 2021. ·An average of 11.58 e-books and 7.08 audiobooks were read per person in China in 2022. ·By 2022, the market for digital reading in China made 41.57 billion yuan, an increase of 18.23 percent compared to 2021.
As technology develops, people primarily read through three methods:	Digital readers in China ·Most of the digital readers are from East China and South China. ·Most of these readers are aged between 26 and 45. ·Males account for 54.3 percent and females 45.7 percent.
A total of 477 million Chinese people were willing to pay for digital reading in 2022.

1. How long do Indians spend reading in a day?

A．Less than 70 minutes.	B．About 80 minutes.
C．About 100 minutes.	D．More than 90 minutes.

2. How many Chinese people were willing to spend money on digital reading in 2022?

A．477 million.

B．415.7 million.

C．494 million.

D．506 million.

3. Who is most likely to be a digital reader in China?

A．A male clerk aged 35.	B．A high school student.
C．A female retired engineer.	D．A female professor aged 50.

9 . Sales of electric vehicles（EVs）grew by 40 percent last year worldwide. In the US, nearly a third of drivers want their next car to be electric. Almost 100 pure-electric vehicles are set to be launched by the end of 2024. Many manufacturers, including GM, Jeep, and Volvo, have promised to offer fully electric lists before this decade is done.

Though some EVs are still eye-wateringly expensive, plenty of other EVs are even more affordable. When assessing the cost of an EV, keep in mind that many states offer additional buying payment if you're switching to an electric vehicle. Some models will even qualify you for a federal tax credit of up to $7,500. Then there are the long-term savings. A typical EV owner spends less than a traditional car owner on vehicle services. One reason is that EVs don't have transmissions or clutches, two of the costliest parts to repair.

EVs go without the classic vroom（加速时发出的呜呜声）we expect to hear when we floor it. That quietness can catch pedestrians off guard and strikes some drivers as terrible. That's why several electric automakers have turned to sound designers to copy these desired engine noises.

You can run an electric car through a car wash without worry. The water will not damage any of the electrical components or the battery because these systems are specially sealed to prevent water entry. What you do need to watch out for, however, is extreme cold or heat. Both will affect the battery and reduce an EV's range.

While EVs produce far fewer emissions than conventional cars do, they aren't without environmental influence. Coal is still burned to create the electricity that charges them. And EV production is emission intensive（密集排放型）. So power systems need to become carbon-free and EV batteries need to fully become recyclable before EVs can be truly emission-free.

1. What can we know about EVs from Paragraph 1?

A．Their trend is uncertain.	B．Their future is promising.
C．Their producers are declining.	D．Their purest ones are launched.

2. Which aspect encourages people to buy EVs?

A．Lack of expensive parts.	B．Long-term free repair fees
C．The government's support.	D．The additional buying payment.

3. What should people pay special attention to when driving the EVs?

A．Quiet passers-by.	B．The water damage.
C．The extreme temperature	D．Batteries' short life.

4. What can be a suitable title of the passage?

A．Recyclable Electrical Vehicles Win Markets

B．Driving Electrical Vehicles Will Be Common

C．Electrical Vehicles Are Within Reach in the US

D．Keep Current with Facts About Electric Vehicles