1 . Camera flashes cut across the softly lighted downtown Los Angeles restaurant, as the crowd at Ludo Bites jostles (推挤) for the photo-of the Columbian River king salmon duck. “This is the game we all now play, ” chef and owner Ludo Lefebvre said. “We cook, we smile-and the people, they don’t eat. They get their cameras.”

Not so long ago, diners, hungry for special meals, would pull out a point-and-shoot at a restaurant for a quick picture of sliced birthday cake.

No more. Taking a cue from Twitter and Facebook cultures, serious foodies (美食家) and casual consumers alike are using digital technology to document each bite, then sharing the pictures online.

Flickr, the photo-sharing website, has seen the number of pictures tagged as “food” jump from about half a million in 2008 to more than 6 million today, according to company officials. In the group “I Ate This” on Flickr’s site, nearly 20,000 people have uploaded more than 307,000 images of their latest meals.

Camera manufacturers are joining the trend, selling cameras that offer “food” settings, which adjust to enhance colors and textures (质地) on close-ups.

“I am sharing my experiences with my friends,” said Hong Pham, 33, a Los Angeles radiologist who runs the food blog Ravenous Couple. “Why shouldn’t I share what inspires me?”

But what is documentary fun for people such as Pham is souring the gastronomic (烹饪的) set.

Managers regularly face diners demanding to be moved away from camera flashes and sounds. Waiters find themselves tongue-tied as customers take out voice recorders to capture a recitation of each course. Some chefs have had enough.

Chef Grant Achatz allows only no-flash photography in his restaurant. He, like many other chefs, finds himself torn between being flattered by the public’s enthusiasm and annoyed with the effect the picture-taking is having on the restaurant’s operation.

Some consumers now believe food should be consumed visually as well as physically. “What happened to the enjoyment of just eating the food?” said Andrew Knowlton, the restaurant editor for Bon Appetite magazine. “People are losing sight of why you go out.”

1. Who is the most supportive of taking pictures of food in restaurants?

A．Grant Achatz.	B．Andrew Knowlton.
C．Hong Pham.	D．Ludo Lefebvre.

2. People tend to take pictures in restaurants because ______.

A．delicately-made dishes are visually inviting

B．they will share with others their dining experience

C．cameras can be specially set for food photography

D．they can profit by selling pictures to famous websites

3. What can we infer from the passage?

A．More pictures will be uploaded at websites like Twitter and Facebook.

B．Consumers used to take pictures in restaurants only for their birthdays.

C．Rules should be set out that there is no food photography in restaurants.

D．Chefs are likely to accept picture-taking in their restaurants to a limited extent.

4. The passage is most probably a ______.

A．news story	B．feature article
C．commercial advertisement	D．survey report

2 . Crazy Laws

It seems that the Greek philosopher, Aristotle, was right when he said, “Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered.”     1     Some of them were strange right from the start!

Did you know, for example, that London taxis (officially called Hackney carriages) are still legally required to carry hay and oats for their horses to eat? And in England, it is illegal to stand within 100 yards (91 metres) of the queen, without wearing socks?

If you live in Scotland, however, it’s important to know that if someone knocks at the door of your house, and needs to use your toilet, you are legally required to let him in.     2     There, it is perfectly legal to shoot a Scotsman with a bow and arrow, unless it is a Sunday!

    3     In France, you cannot call your pig Napoleon, and in Italy, a man can be arrested for wearing a skirt. That’s not all. In Alaska, US, while it’s legal to shoot bears, waking a sleeping bear to take its photo is prohibited. Still in Alaska, it is considered an offence to push a live moose out of an aeroplane.

Lots of the craziest laws seem to involve animals.     4     And in Florida, if an elephant is left tied to a parking meter, the parking fine must be paid, just as it would for a vehicle.

Last, children are forbidden from going to school with their breath smelling of wild onions in West Virginia. And in Arkansas, teachers who have a certain hairc ut (a bob) will not be given a pay-rise. In Florida, a woman can be fined for falling asleep under the hair-dryer and unmarried women must not parachute on a Sunday. If they do, they might be arrested, receive a fine or be put in jail.

A．But if you are Scottish you should stay away from the city of York.

B．Never should a Scotsman leave his own country.

C．But strange laws don’t just exist in the UK.

D．England is the place where craziest laws have been in existence for centuries.

E．Laws in some parts of the world haven’t changed for centuries.

F．In Hollywood, it is illegal to take more than 2,000 sheep down Hollywood Boulevard at any one time.

3 . When Carolina Escudero was severely depressed, going to a therapist’s office became hard to face. So she joined BetterHelp, a popular therapy app. She paid $65 each week but spent most of her time waiting for her assigned counsellor to respond. She got two responses in a month.“It was like texting an acquaintance who has no idea how to deal with mental illness,” she says. BetterHelp says its service does not claim to operate around the clock, all its therapists have advanced degrees and “thousands of hours of hands-on clinical work”, and users are able easily to switch them if scheduling is hard.

Helping people to deal with mental problems has rarely been more urgent. The incidence of depression and anxiety has soared in the pandemic by more than 25% globally in 2020, according to the Lancet, a medical journal. That, combined with more people using online services, has led to a boom in mental-health apps. The American Psychological Association reckons 10,000-20,000 are available for download.

Underneath, though, a trauma lies in some corners of the industry. In October 2020 hackers who had breached Vastaamo, a popular Finnish startup, began blackmailing some of its users. Vastaamo required therapists to back up patient notes online but reportedly did not anonymize (匿名) them. Threatening to share private information on the dark web, the hackers reportedly demanded money from some 30,000 patients.

Other cases may arise. No universal standards for storing “emotional data” exist. John Torous of Harvard Medical School, who has reviewed 650 mental- health apps, describes their privacy policies as terrible. Some share information with advertisers. “When I first joined BetterHelp, I started to see targeted ads with words that I had used on the app to describe my personal experiences,” reports one user.

As for effectiveness, the apps’ methods are exceedingly difficult to evaluate. Woebot, for instance, is a chat robot which uses artificial intelligence to reproduce the experience of cognitive behavioural therapy. The product is marketed as clinically validated based in part on a scientific study which concluded that humans can form meaningful bonds with robots. But the study was written by people with financial links to Woebot.

Mental-health apps were designed to be used in addition to clinical care, not in the place of them. With that in mind, the European Commission is reviewing the field. It is getting ready to promote a new standard that will apply to all health apps. A letter-based scale will rank safety, user friendliness and data security. Liz Ashall-Payne, founder of ORCHA, a British startup that has reviewed thousands of apps, says that 68% did not meet the firm’s quality criteria. Time to head back to the couch?

1. What can we learn about Betterhelp?

A．Betterhelp is highly responsive to users' needs.

B．Betterhelp provides around-the-clock service.

C．Betterhelp is an app helping people deal with mental problems.

D．Betterhelp is trustworthy in terms of protecting users’ privacy.

2. According to the passage, what factors resulted in a boom in mental-health apps?
①The increasing awareness of one’s physical and mental health.
②The soaring incidence of mental problems during the pandemic.
③The widespread use of online services.
④The universal standards in quality evaluation.

A．①②

B．②③

C．③④

D．①④

3. For what purpose does the author cite Woebot as an example?

A．To illustrate to readers what kind of product Woebot is.

B．To inform readers that Woebot is clinically validated.

C．To show how artificial intelligence is used in health apps.

D．To prove how difficult it is to evaluate the effectiveness of health apps.

4. What is the author’s attitude towards the future of mental health apps?

A．Optimistic.

B．Indifferent.

C．Doubtful.

D．Negative.

4 . As guochao 3.0, spearheaded by the New Chinese Style in fashion, continues to grow, we see many global brands trying to tap into the interest in traditional culture and aesthetics.     1    

McDonald’s has recently launched a partnership with the Sanxingdui Museum, a historical ruins-turned-museum in Sichuan, with a new flavour of burger and packaging.     2    At the end of March, McDonald’s teased that it would launch a collaboration with the Sanxingdui Museum in Guanghan, Sichuan. The collaboration is centred around the McSpicy chicken thigh burger (different from the UK chicken breast version), as Sichuan is known for its hot and spicy food. Not only is the regular McSpicy brought back with exclusive bronze-looking Sanxingdui-themed packaging, a Sichuan-style hot pot flavour has also been added to the menu to add authenticity to the collab. The iconic “Ba da ba ba ba” jingle was also modified to become “ba la ba ba ba” (“吧辣吧吧吧”, with “la” meaning hot and spicy).

Along with the Sanxingdui Museum, McDonald’s released a couple of microdrama commercials.     3     The microdrama ads show office workers wearing the mask while enjoying the McSpicy burger at work. One of the episodes gained over 42,000 likes on Douyin, TikTok’s Chinese sister app.

Sanxingdui (“三星堆”, lit. Three Star Mount) is the ruins of the ancient Shu civilization. It is known for its idiosyncratic bronze ware. The museum went through a creative rebranding in 2020, resulting in several collaborations over the years, most recently an online-to-offline collab with the popular video game Genshin Impact.

Museum collaborations, especially with historical museums, have been popular among brands but as part of the “guochao 3.0” trend, as it adds cultural credibility to their “guochao” efforts. It is still not common for international brands. The country of origin fit between partners in a co-branding campaign is a key element, however, sometimes other aspects of fit can make up for it.     4    Other international brands have already experimented with museum collaborations. Interestingly many of the latest examples involve the Palace Museum in Beijing as partners.

A．Sanxingdui, located in China and the source of nearly 13,000 artifacts which have been recovered to date, poses almost as many questions now as the day it was found.

B．The fast-food chain invited a makeup artist to create a wearable mask based on the iconic Sanxingdui gold foil mask.

C．Starbucks’ collaboration with rural artists in Yunnan successfully launched the coffee chain in the guochao sphere.

D．This can be seen as the international fast-food chain’s exploration of the guochao trend.

E．Like temples, museums, especially that of history or traditional Chinese culture, have been a key element for guochao marketing.

F．The exhibitions in this large-scale museum date back to the Bronze Age, covering a wide range of relics, such as bronze masks, jade articles, and some gold objects.

5 . The recent criticisms of Taylor Swift for her silence on the war in Gaza highlight a peculiar issue: the unrealistic expectations we place on celebrities to be know-alls. It’s a topic worth looking into.

While many are quick to urge figures like Taylor Swift to lend their voice s to critical global conversations, a concerning pattern emerges on the flip side: celebrities navigating the dark waters of complex debates with limited knowledge. Take, for instance, Billie Eilish’s fashion choice at the Oscars — a red hand pin. This wasn’t just any accessory (配饰); it’s rooted in the upset history of the 2000 cruel treatments of two Israelis. It begs the question: Was Eilish aware of the weighty story this symbol carries? This moment serves as a reminder of the nuanced (微妙的， 细节的) balance celebrities must strike between being supportive and the profound responsibility of using apublic platform.

The celebrity culture in the United States, where public figures are elevated to almost god-like status, plays a significant role in this phenomenon. They are seen as perfect, their opinions holy. This is not only unfair to the celebrities themselves, who are, after all, only human, but it also takes away from the voices of actual experts on these subjects. When we prioritize a celebrity’s opinion over those with lived experience or specialized knowledge, we do a disservice to the complexity of these issues.

As a society, we must reevaluate our obsession with celebrity culture and recognize the limitations of looking to entertainers for guidance on complex issues. This doesn’t mean celebrities can’t or shouldn’t speak out on matters that affect them personally or on which they’re well-informed. It’s entirely appropriate for Taylor Swift to publicly support political candidates in her home country. The action stems from personal values and people’s engagement, which are different from commenting on international conflicts without a deep understanding of the nuances involved.

In advocating for this nuanced approach, we’re not suggesting celebrities should remain silent on all matters of public concern. Instead, we’re calling for a shift in how we, as the public, perceive and react to their involvement in social and political issues. By adjusting our expectations, we can foster a healthier, more informed public discussion that prioritizes substance over the temptation of star power.

Ultimately, the goal should be to create a more empathetic, informed society that values expertise and genuine activism over celebrity support. By encouraging public figures to use their platforms responsibly and directing our attention to where they can make a real difference, we take a step toward a more nuanced understanding of global issues. This isn’t just about relieving celebrities of undue burdens; it’s about empowering all of us to seek out and elevate the voices that matter most.

1. Why is “a red hand pin” mentioned in Para.2?

A．To make fun of Billie’s limited knowledge on debating.

B．To show Billie’s unawareness of irresponsible advocacy.

C．To speak ill of Billie’s poor taste for fashion at the Oscars.

D．To criticize Billie for his abuse of the public platform.

2. What does “this phenomenon” in Para. 3 refer to?

A．Billie’s unreasonable selection of a red hand pin at the Oscars.

B．Celebrities’ irresponsible opinions on critical global conversations.

C．Public’s great desire for celebrities to comment on key global issues.

D．Taylor Swift’s golden silence about the crucial international concern.

3. According to the passage, it can be inferred that ______.

A．experts tend to increase the complexity of the issues

B．celebrities’ voices are as important as those of experts

C．celebrities should air views on matters at home and abroad

D．we should reassess the social and political roles of celebrities

4. Which of the following might be the best title of this passage?

A．Expect the Unexpected	B．Public Platforms, Powered Places
C．The Downside of Celebrity Advocacy	D．The Essence of Celebrity Responsibility

6 . Everyone knows that running is a good way to stay in shape. The simplicity of running appeals to many people. You don’t need a lot of complicated or expensive equipment; you just need a good pair of running shoes. Well, that idea is changing.     1    

This is not a surprise to the Tarahumara Indians, who live in northwest Mexico. The rough terrain (地势) in their area makes it easier to travel on foot than by horse or by car. Traditionally, the Tarahumara were hunters. They follow their prey over long distances, sometimes, for days, until the animals became exhausted.     2     They are known for their endurance, running races of 50 miles or longer. When Tarahumara athletes ra n in the marathon at the 1968 Olympics, they didn’t understand that the race was over after only 26.2 miles, so they kept running. “Too short, too short,” they complained.

But here is the amazing part: Tarahumara runners don’t wear running shoes. Tarahumara shoes are very simple. The sole (鞋底) is a piece of rubber held to the foot with homemade belt. These rubber soles protect against sharp objects, but they don’t provide any support or cushioning.

How is it possible that some of the best runners in the world don’t wear running shoes? Scientific studies are beginning to point to something the Tarahumara have known for centuries: Human beings are built for running barefoot. In a recent study, researchers used a video camera to examine how athletes run when they are barefoot.     3     When they do this, the arch (足弓) of foot absorbs the impact. Then that force is redirected back up through the leg.

    4     Walk into a sporting goods store today and you will find sections that are devoted to the shoes using the simplest structure. With a thin sole and heel, they are designed to be the shoes that feel like no shoes. The increasing number of these shoes on the market is evidence of this new trend. It is clear that shoe companies and runners are beginning to accept the wisdom of Tarahumara — barefoot may be the best.

A．The study revealed that barefoot runners land on the middle of their foot.

B．Some researchers suggest that perhaps you do not need shoes at all.

C．As a result, for the Tarahumara, running very long distances became part of daily life.

D．Many of these shoes have higher heels that are equipped with special materials.

E．As the force of impact drives the foot toward the ground, the arch flattens and expands.

F．In response to this research, shoe companies started to reconsider the design of running shoes.

7 . ChatGPT, as a large language model, learned to generate human-like text based on a given context. It can do most of the text-generation tasks that involve natural language for communication. Examples of these tasks are text completion (e.g. email and report writing), paraphrasing, text summarization, machine translation, and question-answering. In addition, it can also be used for conversational AI applications, such as chatbots and virtual assistants.

While the ChatGPT platform has a wide range of applications related to text generation, outputs should be evaluated critically and used with caution, as they may contain false, biased, or outdated information.

The use of homework aids in higher education is not new. For years, students have used sites like Quizlet to cut comers as they complete homework assignments or take online quizzes. In response, teachers have had to adapt to these challenges and design assessments that can avoid the use of these tools.

I view ChatGPT in the same light. Essentially, ChatGPT collects information readily available online to form a response to a given prompt (提示). The AI has no capacity for critical thinking and often misses the mark whenever a prompt requires any critical or abstract thinking If university teachers want to avoid the threat of ChatGPT, then perhaps the strictness of their assignments needs to be increased.

While there are many concerns that ChatGPT harms academic assessment, it and better versions may force us to shift our curriculum to higher levels of critical thinking. Beyond this, we may discover ways it can be used to enhance the learning process. If students focus on advanced aspects of their schoolwork, chatbots could assist with more menial (微不足道的) educational tasks. For example, some instructors are experimenting with new forms of student engagement, including project-based learning. Perhaps a chatbot could be used to brainstorm on these projects. Learning effectiveness could be enhanced by customizing the learning process at an individual level to better match a diversified student body.

1. What’s the common point between ChatGPT and Quizlet according to the passage?

A．They should both be assessed objectively and used carefully.

B．They are both widely used by teachers, instructors and faculty.

C．They are both sites provided for students to take an online quiz.

D．They can both help students take a shortcut when doing homework.

2. What’s the main drawback of ChatGPT according to the passage?

A．It can only be used for traditional AI applications.

B．It’s not accurate or unbiased enough when generating text.

C．It cannot the level of critical thinking as high as that of humans.

D．It cannot be widely used in higher education or diversified learning.

3. What’s the new challenge that teachers are facing with the rise of ChatGPT?

A．They have to meet the diversified demands of students.

B．They have to deal with the cheating problem of students.

C．They have to design more strict and precise assignments.

D．They have to make the class more effective through advanced techs.

4. The author holds a(an) ________ attitude towards the emergence of ChatGPT.

A．indifferent

B．critical

C．objective

D．supportive

8 . Human Being or Human Doing?

During my seemingly-endless career as a high school teacher, not even once have I woken up in the morning, realizing that it’s the beginning of a new week, joyfully posted a Wechat Moment and said “Thank God! It’s Monday again!”

    1    . I learned this through a series of recent events where some people of my age whom I have known for years all bragged about their being super busy and took huge pride in working all the time. Although I can relate to their ambition to change the world, I am not quite sure whether that world in their mouth will change for the better or the worse.

Welcome to hustle culture (过劳文化). Now we all live in a society that encourages us to equate our work with our intrinsic value as human beings.     2    . Workers should love what they do and then promote that love on social media, thus taking the standard of a qualified employee to a whole new level.

It is not hard to view hustle culture as a swindle (欺诈行为).     3    . And the vast majority of people beating the drums of hustle-mania (狂热) are not the people who do the actual work. Sooner or later, employees will have to decide for themselves if they embrace or reject this culture of overwork.

    4    . It is no longer considered embarrassing to re-post whatever their companies have posted on Wechat. On some level, one has to respect the hustlers who see a dismal (令人沮丧的) system and understand that success in it requires total, shameless buy-in.

If we are doomed to overwork until we die, we may at least die with dignity. Stop pretending to love Mondays!

A．However, the gloomy employment prospect in recent years has significantly reduced the bargaining power of workers.

B．Apparently, that makes me slightly different from people of my generation.

C．After all, persuading a generation of workers to work their heads off is convenient for those at the top.

D．Hustle culture can negatively affect people’s personal relationships as they favor the hustle over the connections with others.

E．In this new work culture, enduring or even merely liking one’s job is no longer enough.

F．Furthermore, all that nonstop work will lead to exhaustion and burnout, which can have lasting harmful consequences.

9 . Addiction to Labeling

Maybe you’ve noticed it in the comments section of popular social media posts about anxiety. depression or things alike, with a number of people claiming to pick these labels for themselves.

These days, labeling is everywhere.     1     However, the negative part is that it’s easy for someone to identify with the characteristics without truly recognizing the context in which these characteristics would require diagnosis, according to Charlotte Armitage, a registered integrative psychotherapist and psychologist.

If you have done your research and genuinely feel that you have some form of mental health concern, then finally having a name for your behaviors can be great. But the risk is that many people will seek labels and intervention for any behavior, pattern or emotion that is outside of the permanent happy group that society has set as the norm. “    2     Then the saying ‘a little bit of knowledge is dangerous’ springs to my mind,” Armitage adds.

    3     “Children are still developing and evolving, and many childhood behavioral features may seem like those of a disorder when there’re other potential explanations for that behavior,” Armitage notes. Ideally, a diagnosis for a child should be carried out by a qualified mental health professional. So it is with an adult.

Nevertheless, the most important thing to bear in mind is that diagnosis doesn’t mean to indicate that you are broken or less capable.     4     And if you go deeper, it can alert you to the fact that you are not alone, and that many people experience life in the same way as you do.

A．Labeling poses even more of a problem when it comes to kids.

B．It can be helpful for those not quite able to understand why they feel the way they do.

C．There seems to be a desire to see negative emotions as something requiring intervention or diagnosis.

D．Labeling leads to children’s overcoming their addiction to what is posted online.

E．Someone has had only a certain experience and judges all behavior with that experience.

F．The basic function of a diagnosis is to give you a name for those behaviors once felt unusual.

10 . Pricing is managers’ biggest marketing headache. It’s where they feel the most pressure to perform and the least certain that they are doing a good job. All successful pricing efforts share two qualities: The policy combines well with the company’s overall marketing strategy, and the process is well-organized as a whole.

A company’s pricing policy sends a message to the market—it gives customers an important sense of a company’s philosophy. Consider Saturn Corporation (a wholly owned company of General Motors). Saturn wants to let consumers know that it is friendly and easy to do business with. Part of this concept is conveyed through initiatives such as inviting customers to the factory to see where the cars are made and sponsoring evenings at the dealership that combine a social event with training on car maintenance. But Saturn’s pricing policy sends a strong message as well. Can a friendly, trusting relationship be established with customers if a salesperson uses all the negotiating tricks in the book to try to separate them from that last $100? Of course not. Saturn has a “no hassle, no haggle” policy which removes the possibility of conflicts between dealer and potential customer. Customers have an easier time buying a car knowing that the next person in the door won’t negotiate a better deal.

Of course, there are typically many participants in the pricing process: Accounting provides cost estimates; marketing communicates the pricing strategy; sales provides specific customer input; production sets supply boundaries; and finance establishes the requirements for the entire company’s financial health. Input from diverse sources is necessary. However, problems arise when the philosophy of wide participation is carried over to the price-setting process without strong coordinating mechanisms (协调机制). For example, if the marketing department sets list prices, the salespeople negotiate discounts in the field, the legal department adjusts prices if necessary to prevent breaking the laws or contractual agreements, and the people filling orders negotiate price adjustments for delays in shipment, everybody’s best intentions usually end up bringing about less than the best results. In fact, the company may actually lose money on some orders.

1. Why is it essential for a company’s pricing policy to combine with its overall marketing strategy?

A．To maximize possible returns and profits.

B．To maintain consistency in business operations.

C．To eliminate the need for diverse sales inputs.

D．To attract customers to social events and trainings.

2. What does Saturn’s “no hassle, no haggle” policy (paragraph 2) most probably mean?

A．Saturn trains its dealers to treat customers sincerely.

B．Saturn offers discounts to some loyal customers.

C．Saturn cars are at least $100 cheaper than other cars.

D．Saturn cars are sold at fixed, non-negotiable prices.

3. What can be inferred from the wide participation in the pricing process?

A．Decision making requires gathering comprehensive information.

B．The coordinating mechanism won’t work without a lot of input.

C．Potential customers are easily upset at any stage of the process.

D．The company loses money unless everyone intends for the best.

4. Which of the following is the best title for this passage?

A．The art of coordinating pricing processes

B．The best sales negotiation techniques

C．Getting one step closer toward better pricing

D．Maximizing profits through pricing policies