阅读理解Nowadays you can’t buy anything without then being asked to provide a rating of a company’s performance on a five-star scale. I’ve been asked to rate my "store 【C1】________" on the EFTPOS terminal before I can pay. Even the most【C2】________activities, such as calling Telstra or picking up a parcel from Australia Post, are followed by texts or emails with surveys asking, "How did we do?" Online purchases are【C3】________followed up by a customer satisfaction survey. Companies are so【C4】________for a hit of stars that if you delete the survey the company sends you another one. We’re【C5】________to rate our apps when we’ve barely had a chance to use them. One online course provider I use asks you what you think of the course after you’ve only completed【C6】________2 per cent of it. Economist Jason Murphy says that companies use customer satisfaction ratings because a【C7】________display of star feedback has become the nuclear power sources of the modern economy. However, you can’t help but【C8】________if these companies are basing their business on fabrications (捏造的东西). I 【C9】________that with online surveys 1 just click the【C10】________that’s closest to my mouse cursor (光标) to get the damn thing off my screen. Often the star rating I give has far more to do with the kind of day I’m having than the purchase 1 just made.A) announce F) fascinated K) shining B) commonplace G) option L) showeringC) confess H) prompted M) varietyD) desperate I) roughly N) voyageE) experience J) routinely O) wonder
阅读理解Questions 41 to 50 are based on the following passage
阅读理解Many people believe that passion and commitment are the foundations of strong romantic relationships. But a relationship is made of two【C1】________individuals. And the personality traits (特性) these individuals【C2】________or lack can often make a relationship more—or less—likely to【C3】________. Recent research has found that one trait in particular—humility (谦逊)—is an important indicator of successful relationships. Humility can sometimes be【C4】________with a lack of confidence. But researchers have come to realize that being humble generally indicates the【C5】________of deeply admirable personal qualities. Being humble means you have the ability to accurately【C6】________your deficiencies without denying your skills and strengths. For example, you might recognize that you are intelligent, but realize that you are not a【C7】________. Thus, humility leads to an honest view of one’s own advantages and shortcomings. Humble people do not ignore, avoid, or try to deny their limits or deficiencies. They can【C8】________mistakes, see value in things that are far from perfect and identify areas for improvement. Perhaps it is not【C9】________, then, that humility appears to be a huge asset to relationships. One study found that people tend to rate this quality【C10】________in their spouse. The study also found that someone who is humble is more likely to initiate a romantic relationship, perhaps because they are less likely to see themselves as "too good" for someone else. Thus, a humble partner might be your ideal partner.A) acknowledgeB) assessC) confusedD) endureE) extremelyF) geniusG) highlyH) permanentI) possess J) presence K) puzzled L) status M) surprising N) thoroughly O) unique
阅读理解Questions 81 to 90 are based on the following passage
阅读理解Questions 81 to 90 are based on the following passage
阅读理解Questions 11 to 20 are based on the following passage
阅读理解Questions 21 to 30 are based on the following passage
阅读理解Questions 6 to 10 are based on the following passage
阅读理解Questions 41 to 50 are based on the following passage
阅读理解Questions 91 to 100 are based on the following passage
阅读理解Questions 21 to 30 are based on the following passage
阅读理解Questions 16 to 20 are based on the following passage
阅读理解Questions 81 to 90 are based on the following passage
阅读理解Questions 71 to 80 are based on the following passage
阅读理解Questions 36 to 40 are based on the following passage
阅读理解Questions 31 to 35 are based on the following passage
阅读理解Questions 11 to 20 are based on the following passage
阅读理解Questions 46 to 50 are based on the following passage
阅读理解What happens when a language has no words for numbers?A) Numbers do not exist in all cultures. There are numberless hunter-gatherers in Amazonia, living along branches of the world’s largest river tree. Instead of using words for precise quantities, these people rely exclusively on terms similar to "a few" or "some." In contrast, our own lives are governed by numbers. As you read this, you are likely aware of what time it is, how old you are, your checking account balance, your weight and so on. The exact numbers we think with impact everything in our lives.B) But, in a historical sense, number-conscious people like us are the unusual ones. For the bulk of our species’ approximately 200,000-year lifespan, we had no means of precisely representing quantities. What’s more, the 7,000 or so languages that exist today vary dramatically in how they utilize numbers.C) Speakers of anumeric, or numberless, languages offer a window into how the invention of numbers reshaped the human experience. Cultures without numbers, or with only one or two precise numbers, include the Munduruku and Piraha in Amazonia. Researchers have also studied some adults in Nicaragua who were never taught number words. Without numbers, healthy human adults struggle to precisely distinguish and recall quantities as low as four. In an experiment, a researcher will place nuts into a can one at a time and then remove them one by one. The person watching is asked to signal when all the nuts have been removed. Responses suggest that anumeric people have some trouble keeping track of how many nuts remain in the can, even if there are only four or five in total.D) This and many other experiments have led to a simple conclusion: When people do not have number words, they struggle to make quantitative distinctions that probably seem natural to someone like you or me. While only a small portion of the world’s languages are anumeric or nearly anumeric, they demonstrate that number words are not a human universal.E) It is worth stressing that these anumeric people are cognitively (在认知方面) normal, well-adapted to the surroundings they have dominated for centuries. As a child, I spent some time living with anumeric people, the Piraha who live along the banks of the black Maici River. Like other outsiders, I was continually impressed by their superior understanding of the ecology we shared. Yet numberless people struggle with tasks that require precise discrimination between quantities. Perhaps this should be unsurprising. After all, without counting, how can someone tell whether there are, say, seven or eight coconuts (椰子) in a tree? Such seemingly straightforward distinctions become blurry through numberless eyes.F) This conclusion is echoed by work with anumeric children in industrialized societies. Prior to being spoon-fed number words, children can only approximately discriminate quantities beyond three. We must be handed the cognitive tools of numbers before we can consistently and easily recognize higher quantities. In fact, acquiring the exact meaning of number words is a painstaking process that takes children years. Initially, kids learn numbers much like they learn letters. They recognize that numbers are organized sequentially, but have little awareness of what each individual number means. With time, they start to understand that a given number represents a quantity greater by one than the number coming before it. This "successor principle" is part of the foundation of our numerical (数字的) cognition, but requires extensive practice to understand.G) None of us, then, is really a "numbers person. "We are not born to handle quantitative distinctions skillfully. In the absence of the cultural traditions that fill our lives with numbers from infancy, we would all struggle with even basic quantitative distinctions. Number words and their written forms transform our quantitative reasoning as they are introduced into our cognitive experience by our parents, peers and school teachers. The process seems so normal that we sometimes think of it as a natural part of growing up, but it is not. Human brains come equipped with certain quantitative instincts that are refined with age, but these instincts are very limited.H) Compared with other mammals, our numerical instincts are not as remarkable as many assume. We even share some basic instinctual quantitative reasoning with distant non-mammalian relatives like birds. Indeed, work with some other species suggests they too can refine their quantitative thought if they are introduced to the cognitive power tools we call numbers.I) So, how did we ever invent "unnatural" numbers in the first place? The answer is, literally, at your fingertips. The bulk of the world’s languages use base-10, base-20 or base-5 number systems. That is, these smaller numbers are the basis of larger numbers. English is a base-10 or decimal (十进制的 ) language, as evidenced by words like 14 ( "four" + "10" ) and 31 ( "three" × "10" + "one" ). We speak a decimal language because an ancestral tongue, proto-Indo-European, was decimally based. Proto-Indo-European was decimally oriented because, as in so many cultures, our ancestors’ hands served as the gateway to the realization that "five fingers on one hand is the same as five fingers on the other." Such momentary thoughts were represented in words and passed down across generations. This is why the word "five" in many languages is derived from the word for "hand." Most number systems, then, are the by-product of two key factors: the human capacity for language and our inclination for focusing on our hands and fingers. This manual fixation—an indirect byproduct of walking upright on two legs—has helped yield numbers in most cultures, but not all.J) Cultures without numbers also offer insight into the cognitive influence of particular numeric traditions. Consider what time it is. Your day is ruled by minutes and seconds, but these concepts are not real in any physical sense and are nonexistent to numberless people. Minutes and seconds are the verbal and written representations of an uncommon base-60 number system used in ancient Mesopotamia. They reside in our minds, numerical artifacts (人工制品) that not all humans inherit conceptually. K) Research on the language of numbers shows, more and more, that one of our species’ key characteristics is tremendous linguistic (语言的) and cognitive diversity. If we are to truly understand how much our cognitive lives differ cross-culturally, we must continually explore the depths of our species’ linguistic diversity.
阅读理解The start of high school doesn’t have to be stressfulA) This month, more than 4 million students across the nation will begin high school. Many will do well. But many will not. Consider that nearly two-thirds of students will experience the "ninth-grade shock," which refers to a dramatic drop in a student’s academic performance. Some students cope with this shock by avoiding challenges. For instance, they may drop difficult coursework. Others may experience a hopelessness that results in failing their core classes, such as English, science and math.B) This should matter a great deal to parents, teachers and policymakers. Ultimately it should matter to the students themselves and society at large, because students’ experience of transitioning (过渡) to the ninth grade can have long-term consequences not only for the students themselves but for their home communities. We make these observations as research psychologists who have studied how schools and families can help young people thrive.C) In the new global economy, students who fail to finish the ninth grade with passing grades in college preparatory coursework are very unlikely to graduate on time and go on to get jobs. One study has calculated that the lifetime benefit to the local economy for a single additional student who completes high school is half a million dollars or more. This is based on higher earnings and avoided costs in health care, crime, welfare dependence and other things.D) The consequences of doing poorly in the ninth grade can impact more than students’ ability to find a good job. It can also impact the extent to which they enjoy life. Students lose many of the friends they turned to for support when they move from the eighth to the ninth grade. One study of ninth-grade students found that 50 percent of friendships among ninth graders changed from one month to the next, signaling striking instability in friendships.E) In addition, studies find the first year of high school typically shows one of the greatest increases in depression of any year over the lifespan. Researchers think that one explanation is that ties to friends are broken while academic demands are rising. Furthermore, most adult cases of clinical depression first emerge in adolescence (青春期). The World Health Organization reports that depression has the greatest burden of disease worldwide, in terms of the total cost of treatment and the loss of productivity.F) Given all that’s riding on having a successful ninth grade experience, it pays to explore what can be done to meet the academic, social and emotional challenges of the transition to high school. So far, our studies have yielded one main insight: Students’ beliefs about change—their beliefs about whether people are stuck one way forever, or whether people can change their personalities and abilities—are related to their ability to cope, succeed academically and maintain good mental health. Past research has called these beliefs "mindsets (思维模式)," with a "fixed mindset" referring to the belief that people cannot change and a "growth mindset" referring to the belief that people can change.G) In one recent study, we examined 360 adolescents’ beliefs about the nature of "smartness"—that is, their fixed mindsets about intelligence. We then assessed biological stress responses for students whose grades were dropping by examining their stress hormones (荷尔蒙). Students who believed that intelligence is fixed—that you are stuck being "not smart" if you struggle in school—showed higher levels of stress hormones when their grades were declining at the beginning of the ninth grade. If students believed that intelligence could improve—that is to say, when they held more of a growth mindset of intelligence—they showed lower levels of stress hormones when their grades were declining. This was an exciting result because it showed that the body’s stress responses are not determined solely by one’s grades. Instead, declining grades only predicted worse stress hormones among students who believed that worsening grades were a permanent and hopeless state of affairs.H) We also investigated the social side of the high school transition. In this study, instead of teaching students that their smartness can change, we taught them that their social standing—that is, whether they are bullied or excluded or left out—can change over time. We then looked at high school students’ stress responses to daily social difficulties. That is, we taught them a growth mindset about their social lives. In this study, students came into the laboratory and were asked to give a public speech in front of upper-year students. The topic of the speech was what makes one popular in high school. Following this, students had to complete a difficult mental math task in front of the same upper-year students.I) Experiment results showed that students who were not taught that people can change showed poor stress responses. When these students gave the speech, their blood vessels contracted and their hearts pumped less blood through the body—both responses that the body shows when it is preparing for damage or defeat after a physical threat. Then they gave worse speeches and made more mistakes in math. But when students were taught that people can change, they had better responses to stress, in part because they felt like they had the resources to deal with the demanding situation. Students who got the growth mindset intervention (干预) showed less-contracted blood vessels and their hearts pumped more blood—both of which contributed to more oxygen getting to the brain, and, ultimately, better performance on the speech and mental math tasks.J) These findings lead to several possibilities that we are investigating further. First, we are working to replicate (复制) these findings in more diverse school communities. We want to know in which types of schools and for which kinds of students these growth mindset ideas help young people adapt to the challenges of high school. We also hope to learn how teachers, parents or school counselors can help students keep their ongoing academic or social difficulties in perspective. We wonder what would happen if schools helped to make beliefs about the potential for change and improvement a larger feature of the overall school culture, especially for students starting the ninth grade.