资源简介

第一部分 阅读训练
Unit 1 · Great people 伟人
Passage 1 The Quiet Scientist Behind a Life-Saving Drug
(Adapted from NobelPrize.org and Britannica · 约 342 词)
In 1969, a 39-year-old Chinese researcher named Tu Youyou was given a task that seemed almost impossible. North Vietnam had asked China for help with a deadly form of malaria that did not respond to standard treatments. By that point, scientists worldwide had already tested more than 240,000 chemical compounds—and not one worked. Tu, who had quietly trained in both modern Western pharmacology and traditional Chinese medicine, was put in charge of a secret research project. She left her one-year-old daughter with her parents and placed her four-year-old in a nursery. It would be three years before she saw her children again.
Rather than searching for new chemicals, Tu turned to ancient Chinese medical texts. Buried in a 1,600-year-old handbook of emergency prescriptions, she found a single sentence about a plant called sweet wormwood: it should be soaked in cold water, wrung out, and the juice drunk. Tu and her team had already tried wormwood extracts using the standard boiling method, with disappointing results. The old reference made her wonder whether heat was destroying the active ingredient. She decided to try a low-temperature extraction instead.
The change worked. In 1971, the team finally produced an extract that completely eliminated the malaria parasite from infected mice and monkeys. The next step, however, was riskier: testing it on humans. To prove the medicine was safe, Tu volunteered to be the first patient herself. "As head of this research group, I had the responsibility," she later said simply. The treatment passed.
The compound, eventually named artemisinin, became the first-line treatment for malaria worldwide. Today, it is estimated to save more than 100,000 lives in Africa alone each year. In 2015, Tu became the first scientist from mainland China to win a Nobel Prize in the sciences—and she had done so without a doctorate, without an overseas degree, and without much public recognition for decades.
Asked how she felt about the honour, she replied that she did not want fame. "Artemisinin," she said, "is a true gift from old Chinese medicine."
Questions 1–4
1. Why did Tu Youyou decide to look into ancient Chinese medical texts
A. Because over 240,000 modern compounds had failed to cure the disease.
B. Because she had been trained mainly in traditional Chinese medicine.
C. Because the Chinese government required her team to do so.
D. Because she had a personal interest in classical Chinese books.
2. What was the key change that finally made Tu's research succeed
A. Using sweet wormwood instead of other plants she had tried.
B. Following the dosage instructions written in the ancient handbook.
C. Switching from a hot water method to a low-temperature one.
D. Testing the extract directly on patients rather than on animals.
3. What can be inferred about Tu Youyou's character from the passage
A. She was eager to win international fame for China.
B. She was willing to take risks for the sake of science.
C. She believed Chinese medicine was superior to Western medicine.
D. She preferred working alone rather than leading a team.
4. What is the best title for the passage
A. How a Forgotten Plant Saved Millions
B. The Story Behind a Nobel-Winning Discovery
C. China's First Female Nobel Laureate
D. Why Traditional Medicine Still Matters Today
Passage 2 The Man Who Helped Feed a Billion People
(Adapted from Nature, the Washington Post, and the World Food Prize Foundation · 约 357 词)
When Yuan Longping was a young teacher in Hunan Province in the early 1960s, China was struggling with a serious food shortage. Walking through the countryside, he saw villagers eating grass, fern roots, and even clay because there was nothing else. "There was nothing in the field," he later remembered. "Hungry people took away all the edible things they could find." Those scenes stayed with him for the rest of his life.
At the time, the scientific community widely believed that rice could not be successfully hybridized. Rice is self-pollinating, meaning each flower fertilizes itself, so producing hybrid varieties on a large scale was thought to be impossible. Yuan disagreed. He had read about how hybridization had dramatically increased yields in maize in Western countries, and he was convinced the same idea could work for rice—if he could find a male-sterile rice plant in nature to serve as the female parent.
For years, Yuan and his small team searched rice fields by hand. They examined tens of thousands of plants. Most senior researchers thought the project would lead nowhere. In 1970, after almost a decade of effort, his team finally found a wild rice plant in Hainan that carried the natural mutation they needed. Three years later, in 1973, Yuan released the world's first high-yielding hybrid rice strain. It produced about 20 percent more grain than ordinary rice from the same area of land.
The impact was hard to overstate. Today, hybrid rice accounts for more than half of China's total rice production, and varieties developed by Yuan and his successors are grown in over 60 countries. According to estimates, the extra harvest produced by hybrid rice each year is enough to feed roughly 80 million additional people.
Yuan himself, though awarded almost every major agricultural honour in the world, lived modestly until his death in 2021 at the age of 90. He liked to play the violin in the evenings near his rice fields and described himself, with a smile, as nothing more than "an intelligent peasant."
Questions 1–4
1. What made Yuan Longping determined to study rice in the 1960s
A. His teaching job no longer satisfied his interest in science.
B. The famine he witnessed left a lasting impression on him.
C. Foreign scientists invited him to join their hybridization projects.
D. Hunan Province offered him special funding for rice research.
2. Why did most scientists at the time believe hybrid rice was impossible
A. Because rice yields had been declining for many years.
B. Because rice flowers fertilize themselves, not other plants.
C. Because previous attempts in maize had completely failed.
D. Because no scientist was willing to spend years on it.
3. What does the underlined word "overstate" in Paragraph 4 most likely mean
A. Misunderstand
B. Exaggerate
C. Calculate
D. Question
4. Which of the following best describes Yuan Longping
A. A wealthy farmer who became a scientist by accident.
B. A persistent researcher who lived a simple life despite his fame.
C. A government official who pushed for agricultural reforms.
D. A bold critic of Western farming methods.
Passage 3 A School in the Mountains
(Adapted from CGTN, Global Times, and the South China Morning Post · 约 338 词)
In the mountainous county of Huaping in southwestern China, the local high school looks much like any other—until you notice that every student is a girl, and that every one of them attends for free. The school exists because of a single teacher who refused to accept that poverty should decide a girl's future.
Zhang Guimei moved to Huaping in the mid-1990s, shortly after her husband died of cancer. Working at a local middle school, she began to notice a troubling pattern. Each year, far more girls than boys dropped out before high school. Some were pulled out to work in the fields; others were told they had to leave so that their brothers could continue studying. A few were married off before they were eighteen. "Destitution," she later said, "just sprawls in front of you, naked and straightforward."
In 2002, Zhang began telling anyone who would listen about her dream: a free public high school just for girls from the poorest mountain villages. The idea sounded impractical to most people. Where would the money come from Which teachers would agree to work in such a remote place For years, she walked from one office to another, knocked on doors of companies, and even stood in busy streets explaining her plan to strangers. Some people gave her a few coins; others simply walked away. She kept going.
In 2008, with help from local authorities and donations from across the country, the Huaping High School for Girls finally opened its doors. Conditions were difficult. The dormitories were cold in winter, and the textbooks had to be shared. Yet, year after year, the school produced results few had expected: by 2020, more than 1,800 of its graduates had entered universities, many of them the first in their families ever to do so.
Today, Zhang's health has declined, and she walks with the help of a stick. Still, she rises before dawn and shouts down the corridors to wake her students. "I want them," she once told a reporter, "to walk out of the mountains."
Questions 1–4
1. What did Zhang Guimei notice during her years of teaching in Huaping
A. Many girls were forced to give up school for family reasons.
B. Local boys had less interest in school than girls.
C. Most students wanted to leave the mountains to find work.
D. Poor families spent more on daughters than on sons.
2. What does the passage suggest about Zhang's effort to start the school
A. It was supported by the government from the very beginning.
B. It was completed in only a few years thanks to wealthy donors.
C. It was a long and difficult process that required public help.
D. It was inspired by similar schools she had visited overseas.
3. What can we learn from the data given in Paragraph 4
A. The school's facilities have improved greatly since 2008.
B. More than half of the school's graduates come from rich families.
C. The school has changed the educational future of many girls.
D. Most universities welcome students from Huaping more than others.
4. Which of the following best captures the spirit of Zhang Guimei
A. Wealth lies in education, not in money.
B. Knowledge cannot grow without freedom.
C. Persistence can move mountains when nothing else can.
D. Schools should be free for everyone, rich or poor.
Unit 2 · Great ideas 伟大思想
Passage 1 A Crown, a Bath, and a Famous Shout
(Adapted from Live Science, Scientific American, and Britannica · 约 336 词)
Around 250 BC, King Hieron II of Syracuse had a new crown made of pure gold. After it was finished, however, the king suspected that the goldsmith had cheated him by mixing in cheaper silver. The crown weighed exactly what it should, so the difference, if any, had to lie in its volume rather than its mass. Unfortunately, melting the crown down to test it was not allowed. The king turned to a young mathematician named Archimedes for help.
Archimedes spent days walking through the streets of Syracuse, deep in thought. The problem seemed simple, yet no method he knew of could measure the exact volume of such an irregular shape. One afternoon, tired from thinking, he decided to visit the public baths. As he stepped slowly into a full tub, he noticed something most people would never bother to think about: water spilled over the edges, and the more of his body he lowered, the more water flowed out.
For Archimedes, that ordinary scene became extraordinary. He realised that an object placed in water always displaces an amount of fluid equal to its own volume. Suddenly, the impossible task had an answer. He could weigh out a piece of pure gold equal to the crown in mass, place both in water one after another, and compare how much each pushed out. If the crown contained any silver—a metal less dense than gold—it would have to be slightly larger to balance the weights, and so it would push out more water.
According to a famous legend, Archimedes was so excited by his idea that he leapt from the bath and ran through the streets of Syracuse, forgetting to put on his clothes and shouting "Eureka!"—Greek for "I have found it!" The test was later carried out: the crown did displace more water than pure gold, and the goldsmith's dishonesty was uncovered. The lesson Archimedes carried away, however, would prove far more valuable than the crown itself."
Questions 1–4
1. Why was Archimedes asked to deal with the king's problem
A. Because he was the only person trusted by the king.
B. Because no traditional method could measure the crown's volume.
C. Because the crown's weight clearly proved it contained silver.
D. Because the goldsmith refused to confess to the king.
2. How exactly did Archimedes plan to use his discovery to test the crown
A. By placing the crown alone in water and measuring how much it weighed afterwards.
B. By comparing the volume of water displaced by the crown and by an equally heavy piece of gold.
C. By measuring how high the water rose when only the crown was put in.
D. By placing the crown and a silver piece of equal weight in water together.
3. What does the underlined word "that" in Paragraph 3 refer to
A. The crown's strange shape.
B. The water spilling out as Archimedes stepped in.
C. Archimedes' walking around in deep thought.
D. The amount of gold in the crown.
4. What is the main message of the passage
A. Ancient kings often suspected their craftsmen of being dishonest.
B. Great discoveries can come from observing common things carefully.
C. Mathematics played a key role in protecting royal property.
D. Public baths used to be important places for ancient scientists.
Passage 2 The Idea That Came from a Game Board
(Adapted from , Wikipedia, and Microsoft 365 · 约 344 词)
Most people scan QR codes several times a day without thinking about where they came from. The technology, now used everywhere from supermarket shelves to museum walls, was developed in 1994 by a small team at Denso Wave, a Japanese company that made parts for the auto industry.
At the time, factories were using ordinary barcodes—those striped patterns still printed on most products—to track parts. The trouble was that a barcode could only hold about 20 characters and had to be scanned in one direction, which was slow on a busy production line. Customers kept asking Denso for something better. The task fell to a young engineer named Masahiro Hara, who worked with just one teammate on the project.
Hara's first attempts went nowhere. Then, one lunchtime, he was playing Go, a board game with black and white stones placed on a grid of horizontal and vertical lines. As he stared at the pattern of stones, an idea took shape. A grid, rather than a line, could carry information in two directions at once, holding far more data and—if designed properly—being readable from any angle. The QR (Quick Response) code was born.
Hara still needed to solve one tricky problem: how could a scanner instantly tell which part of the image was the code After months of work, his team analysed countless magazine pages, food labels and newspaper photos to find a black-and-white ratio that hardly ever appeared anywhere else. That unusual ratio became the three square "eyes" you can see in every corner of a QR code today.
Although Denso owned the patent, the company chose not to charge anyone for using QR codes. Hara later explained that this was not a difficult decision: "It was the only way to get the standard adopted quickly." Three decades later, more than two billion QR code payments are made every day in China alone—yet, as Hara joked in an interview, "We don't receive a commission each time. If only that were the case!"
Questions 1–4
1. Why were traditional barcodes considered inadequate for factories in the early 1990s
A. They were too expensive to print on a large scale.
B. They held little information and could only be read one way.
C. They were easily damaged on busy production lines.
D. They could not be scanned by computers at the time.
2. How did playing Go help Hara develop the QR code
A. It gave him time to relax and stop thinking about work.
B. It taught him that black-and-white patterns are easier to print.
C. It suggested that a grid could carry data in two directions.
D. It convinced him to give up barcode improvements completely.
3. What were the three square "eyes" of a QR code designed for
A. To make the code easier to print on different materials.
B. To help the scanner find the code quickly among other images.
C. To prevent companies from copying Denso's technology.
D. To allow the code to be scanned from a longer distance.
4. Why did Denso Wave decide not to charge for the use of QR codes
A. Because the patent had already expired by then.
B. Because the company wanted to make the technology popular fast.
C. Because the inventors disliked making profits from their work.
D. Because the Japanese government had asked them to do so.
Passage 3 The Invention That Wrapped the World in Words
(Adapted from Wikipedia, the Book of the Later Han, and Hou Han Shu records · 约 365 词)
Before the year 105 AD, writing in China was a heavy, expensive business. Important records were carved into bamboo strips tied together with string, while shorter notes might be written on silk. Bamboo books were so heavy that a long history could fill an entire cart. Silk, while lighter, cost so much that only the wealthy could afford to use it. For ordinary people, putting their thoughts on paper—or anything like it—was almost out of reach.
A solution came from a court official of the Eastern Han dynasty named Cai Lun. Cai was not a craftsman by training, but he was responsible for organising the emperor's library and had long been troubled by the difficulty of moving so many bamboo volumes. He began to experiment in his spare time. According to historical records, Cai gathered old fishing nets, tree bark, hemp rags and other waste materials, all of which were rich in plant fibres. He soaked them in water until they softened, beat them into a thin pulp, spread the mixture evenly on a frame, and let it dry into a sheet.
The result was a sheet that was light, strong, easy to write on, and cheap enough for daily use. In 105 AD, Cai presented his samples to Emperor He, who was so pleased that he ordered the new method to be used across the court. Within a hundred years or so, paper had spread throughout China, gradually replacing both bamboo strips and silk.
It is sometimes said that Cai Lun "invented" paper. Strictly speaking, archaeological evidence shows that simple paper-like materials existed in China before he was born. What Cai did was something different but no less important: he turned a rough, inconsistent craft into a reliable, systematic process that could be repeated by ordinary workers, using cheap waste materials. That is why his name is still attached to the invention today.
By the eighth century, the technique had travelled along trade routes to the Islamic world, and by the thirteenth century it had reached Europe. Wherever it went, knowledge became cheaper to store and easier to share—and paper changed the shape of human thought."
Questions 1–4
1. What does the passage tell us about writing in China before 105 AD
A. Most people preferred bamboo books because they were durable.
B. Both bamboo and silk had clear disadvantages as writing materials.
C. Silk was widely used as it was easier to carry than bamboo.
D. Ordinary citizens had to copy books by hand in their own homes.
2. Why did Cai Lun begin to experiment with new writing materials
A. Because the emperor specifically asked him to do so.
B. Because he was a trained craftsman who loved invention.
C. Because he found the existing materials hard to manage in his work.
D. Because silk was suddenly in short supply across China.
3. Why is Cai Lun's name still linked to the invention of paper, according to the writer
A. He was the first person ever to make paper-like material in history.
B. He developed a method that ordinary workers could repeat reliably.
C. He persuaded the government to keep papermaking a national secret.
D. He invented the paper-making frame still in use today.
4. What does the last paragraph mainly suggest
A. The spread of paper across continents took less than three centuries.
B. Asian inventions were quickly accepted in Europe at the time.
C. The invention of paper had a deep influence on human civilisation.
D. Trade routes were essential to the development of papermaking.
Unit 3 · Honesty / Right and wrong 诚信与是非
Passage 1 17,000 Wallets, One Surprising Result
(Adapted from PBS NOVA and the journal Science · 约 343 词)
How honest are people, really Most of us like to think we would do the right thing if we found a stranger's wallet on the street. But economists tend to predict the opposite: the more money inside, the more tempting it should be to keep. In 2019, a team of researchers decided to put that idea to the test on a global scale.
Over three years, the team and their assistants dropped more than 17,000 "lost" wallets in 355 cities across 40 countries. In each case, a researcher walked into a bank, hotel, police station or post office, handed a clear plastic wallet to a staff member, and quickly walked off, saying they had picked it up on the street. Every wallet contained a key, a shopping list, three business cards and the name and email of a fictional male owner. The only thing that changed was the cash inside—some wallets had nothing, others held a small amount, and a third group held the equivalent of nearly a hundred US dollars.
What the economists expected, based on standard theory, was simple: the more money a wallet contained, the less likely it would be returned. The actual results turned the prediction upside down. On average, 51 percent of the wallets with a small amount of money were returned, while 72 percent of the wallets with the larger amount made it back to the "owner." Wallets without any cash were the least likely to be handed in.
When the researchers asked people why, two reasons came up again and again. First, holding on to someone else's wallet felt more uncomfortable—more like stealing—the more money it contained. Second, most participants said they thought of how the owner might feel after losing it. In short, the people in the study were not perfect saints, but they cared about a positive self-image and about strangers they had never met. The world, it turned out, was a more honest place than even economists had imagined."
Questions 1–4
1. What was the researchers' main aim in the wallet study
A. To find out which countries had the most honest citizens.
B. To check whether more money makes people less likely to return wallets.
C. To prove that office workers are more honest than ordinary people.
D. To help police stations design new ways of reporting lost property.
2. Which of the following describes the design of the experiment correctly
A. Researchers left the wallets on the street and waited to see who picked them up.
B. Wallets were given to staff members in public places, with different amounts of cash.
C. All the wallets contained the same amount of money but had different owners' names.
D. Participants were asked to keep the wallets for a week before returning them.
3. What was the most surprising finding of the study
A. Wallets with no money inside were almost always returned.
B. People returned wallets with more money more often than those with less.
C. Returning wallets was more common in poorer countries than richer ones.
D. Most people quickly forgot they had been given a wallet.
4. Why, according to the study, did people tend to return wallets containing more money
A. Because they hoped to receive a larger reward in return.
B. Because they were afraid of being caught by the police.
C. Because keeping more money felt more like stealing.
D. Because they were unsure how much money was originally inside.
Passage 2 Why Smart Students Still Cheat
(Adapted from Education Week and the Center for Academic Integrity · 约 354 词)
It might surprise many adults to learn that the students who cheat most often in school are not the ones who are failing. According to a long-running survey by the Josephson Institute, more than half of American high school students admit to cheating on a test at least once a year, and many of them are top performers. Far from being driven by laziness, these students are often very ambitious. They cheat, they say, because they cannot afford not to.
Researchers who interview teenage cheaters tend to hear the same explanations. First comes pressure: pressure from parents who measure success in grades, from universities that expect ever-higher scores, and from peers who appear to be doing the same thing. "If everyone is cheating," one student told an interviewer, "and I don't, I'm just punishing myself." Second comes the belief that small dishonest acts—glancing at a friend's paper, copying a single homework problem—do not really count.
What is often missed in these conversations, however, is the price that cheating quietly extracts. A 2011 study found that students who cheated on a difficult test performed noticeably worse on later, related tasks, even when they were allowed to use notes. The reason was simple: by avoiding the struggle of trying to solve the problem themselves, the cheaters had also avoided the kind of mental effort that helps the brain remember and build on what it learns. They got the grade, but lost the learning.
There is also a wider cost. When cheating becomes common in a school, teachers respond by introducing stricter rules, longer tests and tighter supervision, and that pressure falls on every student—including the honest ones. Trust between teachers and students weakens. So does the meaning of grades themselves: an A in a course known for widespread cheating no longer carries the same weight as before.
Some schools have tried fighting cheating with harsher punishments. Researchers, however, have found that reminding students of the kind of person they want to become tends to work better. Honesty, it seems, is harder to build through fear than through self-respect."
Questions 1–4
1. What does the writer say about students who cheat most often
A. They are usually the weakest students in their class.
B. They tend to be ambitious rather than lazy.
C. They feel little pressure from their families.
D. They make up only a small group in any school.
2. Why does the writer mention the 2011 study in Paragraph 3
A. To show that cheating helps students get better short-term results.
B. To prove that cheaters easily forget what they learn in class.
C. To explain why cheating actually damages later learning.
D. To compare the test scores of honest and dishonest students.
3. How does cheating affect honest students, according to Paragraph 4
A. They begin to receive lower grades than they deserve.
B. They have to deal with tougher rules and tighter checks.
C. They lose interest in their schoolwork over time.
D. They are often blamed by teachers for not reporting cheaters.
4. Which sentence best summarises the writer's view on stopping cheating
A. Fear of punishment is the most powerful way to discourage cheating.
B. Cheating cannot be stopped as long as exams exist.
C. Encouraging students' sense of who they are works better than fear.
D. Honest students should be rewarded with higher grades.
Passage 3 The Small Act That Set a Town Talking
(Adapted from CBS New York and Sunny Skyz news features · 约 332 词)
It was a cool Saturday morning when eight-year-old Frankie Burns climbed out of his father's car in front of a small playing field in the Bronx, New York. The fourth-grader had travelled almost two hours from his home in Orange County for a youth soccer match. As he and his teammates lifted their bags from the back of the car, Frankie noticed something on the pavement.
"I saw a wallet," he later told a reporter, "and I gave it to my dad." His father, Mike, opened it and froze. Inside, between an old driver's licence and a few cards, were folded one-hundred-dollar bills—almost two thousand dollars in cash. There was nobody on the street. The owner of the wallet had clearly walked away long before the boys' team arrived.
For most adults, the next moves might have involved a quick mental list: ATM machines that ate the cash, an unexpectedly generous birthday gift, the dozens of small things two thousand dollars could buy. For Frankie, there was just one question. "We have to find the man," he said. The team played their match. Afterwards, Frankie and his father drove to the address on the licence and pressed the doorbell.
The owner, a man in his fifties, had spent half the morning searching parking lots and side streets. When he opened the door and Frankie held out the wallet, the man could not speak for a moment. He insisted on giving the boy a small reward, which Frankie's father quietly accepted on his behalf.
The story might have ended there, but a neighbour shared it online, and within days it had been picked up by local news stations. Reporters asked the eight-year-old what he wanted other children to know. Frankie did not say anything clever or rehearsed. "Just do the right thing," he answered, looking a little puzzled that anyone needed reminding. "That's all.""
Questions 1–4
1. What was Frankie doing on the morning he found the wallet
A. He was walking home from school in his neighbourhood.
B. He was helping his father search for a lost item.
C. He had just arrived in the Bronx for a soccer game.
D. He was visiting his relatives in New York City.
2. Why does the writer describe what "most adults" might think of in Paragraph 3
A. To prove that adults are usually more careless than children.
B. To explain why so few people return found wallets to their owners.
C. To contrast common temptations with Frankie's simple reaction.
D. To show how easy it is to spend a large amount of money.
3. What can we infer about Frankie's father from the passage
A. He felt slightly disappointed by his son's decision.
B. He had originally hoped to keep the money.
C. He respected and supported the choice his son made.
D. He believed the reward should have been larger.
4. What is the writer's main purpose in telling this story
A. To celebrate a simple but powerful act of honesty.
B. To warn readers about the dangers of carrying too much cash.
C. To show how social media can make ordinary people famous.
D. To criticise adults who do not return lost wallets.
Unit 4 · A better me 自我提升·青春期成长
Passage 1 The Magic Word Is "Yet"
(Adapted from Stanford News and Education Week interviews with Carol Dweck · 约 350 词)
A few years ago, the psychologist Carol Dweck visited a high school in the United States that had introduced an unusual grading policy. Instead of marking a failed assignment with a clear "F", teachers there gave students a grade called "Not Yet." For Dweck, who has spent decades studying how teenagers respond to setbacks, those two small words said everything that needed to be said.
In her work, Dweck divides students roughly into two groups. Some hold what she calls a "fixed mindset": they believe that intelligence is something you are born with, like the colour of your eyes. When they meet a difficult problem, a low score feels like proof that they are simply "not smart enough" and probably never will be. Others hold a "growth mindset". They view ability as something built up gradually through effort, mistakes, and better strategies. A low score, to them, is information, not a final judgment.
In one experiment, Dweck's team scanned the brains of teenagers as they faced challenging questions. Students with a fixed mindset showed almost no activity when they came across an error—it was as if their brains had turned away. Students with a growth mindset, by contrast, lit up: their brains became deeply engaged in working out what had gone wrong. Over months, the second group also improved their actual grades far more, even when the two groups had started at the same level.
What is remarkable, Dweck argues, is that a mindset is not a personality trait. It can be changed. Praising teenagers for being "so smart" tends to push them towards a fixed mindset, because they begin to fear losing that label. Praising the process—"You tried a really clever approach," "You stuck with it even when it was hard"—does the opposite.
It is in that spirit that the word "yet" matters so much. "I don't understand this" closes a door. "I don't understand this yet" leaves the door open—and, Dweck's research suggests, often quietly invites a student to walk through it."
Questions 1–4
1. Why does Carol Dweck approve of the grade "Not Yet"
A. It hides students' real performance from their parents.
B. It avoids the awkward feeling of receiving a clear "F".
C. It suggests that learning is still possible and ongoing.
D. It encourages teachers to give fewer failing grades overall.
2. How do students with a "fixed mindset" typically react to a low score
A. They become motivated to study harder than before.
B. They take it as proof of their limited ability.
C. They ask their teachers for more difficult tasks.
D. They quickly forget about the result and move on.
3. What does the brain-scan experiment in Paragraph 3 mainly show
A. Both groups of students used different parts of the brain to think.
B. Mindset can affect how deeply students engage with their mistakes.
C. Teenagers with higher IQ scores have more active brains.
D. Looking at errors is harmful to the developing teenage brain.
4. Which kind of praise does Dweck most likely recommend
A. "You are so naturally smart at maths."
B. "You always get the highest score in class."
C. "You kept trying different ways until it worked."
D. "You don't even need to study to do well."
Passage 2 When Your Parents Don't Understand You
(Adapted from Psychology Today and the American Academy of Pediatrics · 约 347 词)
Most teenagers know the feeling. You start to explain something important—about a friend, a worry, a song you love—and within thirty seconds your parent has turned the conversation into a lecture or, worse, a list of warnings. By the time they finish, you no longer feel like sharing anything at all. Family therapists hear about this scene almost every day, and they have begun to notice a pattern in what makes the difference between families that grow apart in adolescence and those that do not.
The first surprise, therapists say, is that most parent–teen conflicts are not really about the topic at hand—curfews, phones, homework. They are about whether each side feels heard. When teenagers complain that their parents "don't listen", they often mean something quite specific: their parents respond before fully understanding the problem. Even well-meaning advice, given too early, sends a message that the listener was waiting for a chance to talk rather than truly trying to understand.
Adolescents, for their part, also misread their parents in predictable ways. A father who looks tired after work may seem cold or uninterested when, in fact, he is simply exhausted. A mother who frowns at a low grade may be worried about her child's future rather than disappointed in the child as a person. Without checking, teenagers can pile up evidence of being misunderstood from situations that were never about them in the first place.
What experts recommend is surprisingly simple. Both sides are encouraged to slow down and use what is called an "I" statement—"I feel hurt when..."—rather than an accusation—"You never..." They are also asked to set aside short, regular times for conversation that is not about problems: a walk after dinner, ten minutes before bed, a shared meal once a week.
None of this turns a difficult adolescence into an easy one. It does, however, build a kind of safety net: a habit of speaking and listening that survives even the hardest weeks. Years later, that habit is usually what teenagers remember most—and pass on."
Questions 1–4
1. According to therapists, what do teenagers usually mean when they say their parents "don't listen"
A. Their parents refuse to allow them to speak at home.
B. Their parents reply before really grasping the situation.
C. Their parents prefer to talk to their teachers instead.
D. Their parents do not remember what they have just said.
2. Why does the writer mention a tired father and a frowning mother in Paragraph 3
A. To show that most parents work too hard to care for their children.
B. To explain why teenagers should never interpret their parents' moods.
C. To suggest that teenagers sometimes draw wrong conclusions about their parents.
D. To prove that body language is the main cause of family conflicts.
3. Which of the following is the writer most likely to support
A. Parents should explain their decisions in great detail to their teenagers.
B. Saying "I feel hurt when…" is usually more helpful than saying "You never…".
C. Avoiding all serious topics is the safest way to keep family peace.
D. Family conflicts can be solved completely by following expert advice.
4. What does the last paragraph suggest about the value of good communication habits
A. They guarantee that parents and teenagers always agree.
B. They make difficult periods in family life shorter.
C. They form a long-term protection that lasts beyond adolescence.
D. They are mainly useful for parents who have only one child.
Passage 3 Small Steps, Real Confidence
(Adapted from Big Life Journal and pediatric health resources · 约 339 词)
When fourteen-year-old Mia walked into the school auditorium for her first ever debate, her hands were shaking so badly that she had to hide them in her pockets. Three months earlier, she would have refused even to sign up. What changed Not a sudden burst of bravery, but a list of quiet, almost boring habits her counsellor had helped her practise.
Adolescent psychologists like to remind parents that confidence is rarely something teenagers either have or lack. It is more accurate to think of it as a muscle that grows with the right kind of exercise. The "exercise" looks small from the outside: making eye contact with a shop assistant, putting up a hand once in class, finishing a difficult piece of homework even when no one will see the result. None of these moments feel important in themselves. Repeated over weeks, though, they slowly change how a young person sees what they are capable of.
Equally important is the way teenagers talk to themselves about failure. After her first debate, Mia did not win. She stumbled over her opening line and forgot one of her arguments. On the way home, she found her counsellor's voice in her head: "Notice what went wrong, fix the part you can, and don't turn one bad afternoon into a life sentence." It was that final phrase—"a life sentence"—that stopped her from quietly avoiding the debate club for the rest of the year.
Researchers point out that teenagers with healthier self-esteem are not the ones who think they are perfect. They are the ones who accept that they will sometimes do poorly without then deciding that they are, in some unfixable way, "bad". They have learnt to separate a single event from a whole identity.
By the end of the term, Mia had competed in three more debates, lost two, and won one. The trophy she received was small. The thing she actually took home with her, she said later, was the feeling that she could try."
Questions 1–4
1. What does the example of Mia at the beginning of the passage mainly show
A. Teenagers cannot overcome stage fright without medication.
B. Confidence does not always look like courage from the outside.
C. Public speaking is the best activity to build self-esteem.
D. Counsellors are necessary for every teenager facing fear.
2. What does the writer compare confidence to in Paragraph 2
A. A natural ability some teenagers are born with.
B. A muscle that becomes stronger through small actions.
C. A magic word that suddenly transforms a person.
D. A trophy that one must win in front of an audience.
3. What does the underlined phrase "a life sentence" most likely mean here
A. A serious punishment given by a judge.
B. A famous quote that one always remembers.
C. A permanent label that one cannot escape from.
D. A goal that one works towards throughout life.
4. What does the writer suggest about teenagers with healthy self-esteem
A. They almost never fail because they prepare very well.
B. They believe that a single failure does not define them.
C. They tend to keep their failures secret from their families.
D. They expect themselves to be perfect in everything they do.Unit 1 · Great people 伟人
Passage 1 The Quiet Scientist Behind a Life-Saving Drug
1. 答案：A
2. 答案：C
3. 答案：B
4. 答案：B
Passage 2 The Man Who Helped Feed a Billion People
1. 答案：B
2. 答案：B
3. 答案：B
4. 答案：B
Passage 3 A School in the Mountains
1. 答案：A
2. 答案：C
3. 答案：C
4. 答案：C
Unit 2 · Great ideas 伟大思想
Passage 1 A Crown, a Bath, and a Famous Shout
1. 答案：B
2. 答案：B
3. 答案：B
4. 答案：B
Passage 2 The Idea That Came from a Game Board
1. 答案：B
2. 答案：C
3. 答案：B
4. 答案：B
Passage 3 The Invention That Wrapped the World in Words
1. 答案：B
2. 答案：C
3. 答案：B
4. 答案：C
Unit 3 · Honesty / Right and wrong 诚信与是非
Passage 1 17,000 Wallets, One Surprising Result
1. 答案：B
2. 答案：B
3. 答案：B
4. 答案：C
Passage 2 Why Smart Students Still Cheat
1. 答案：B
2. 答案：C
3. 答案：B
4. 答案：C
Passage 3 The Small Act That Set a Town Talking
1. 答案：C
2. 答案：C
3. 答案：C
4. 答案：A
Unit 4 · A better me 自我提升·青春期成长
Passage 1 The Magic Word Is "Yet"
1. 答案：C
2. 答案：B
3. 答案：B
4. 答案：C
Passage 2 When Your Parents Don't Understand You
1. 答案：B
2. 答案：C
3. 答案：B
4. 答案：C
Passage 3 Small Steps, Real Confidence
1. 答案：B
2. 答案：B
3. 答案：C
4. 答案：B

展开更多......

收起↑