PartⅢReading Comprehension(40 minutes)

Section A

Directions:In this section,there is a passage with ten blanks.Yoare required to select one word for each blank from a list of choices given in a word bank following the passage.Read the passage through carefully before making your choices.Each choice in the bank is identified by a letter.Please mark the corresponding letter for each item on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre.Yomay not use any of the words in the bank more than once.

Most animals seek shade when temperatures in the Sahara Desert soar to 120 degrees Fahrenheit,But for the Saharan silver ant,26 from their underground nests into the sun’s Brutal to 27 for food,this is the perfect time to seek lunch.In 2021 these ants were joined in the desert by scientists from two Belgian universities,who spent a month in the 28 heat tracking the ants and digging out their nests.The goal was simple,to discover how the 29 adapted to the kind ofheat that can 30 melt the bottom ofshoes.

Back in Belgium,the scientists looked at the ants under an electronic microscope and found that their 31 triangular hair reflects light like a prism(棱镜),giving them a metallic reflection and protecting them from the sun’s awful heat.When Ph.D.student Quentin Willot32 the hair from an ant with33 knife and put it under a heat lamp,its temperaturejumped.

The ants’method of staying cool is 34 among animals.Could this reflective type ofhair protect people Willot says companies are interestedin 35 these ants'method of heatprotection for human use,including everything from helping to protect the lives of firefighters tokeeping homes cool in summer.

A)adapting

B)consciously

C)crawling

D)crowded

E)extreme

F)hunt

G)literally

H)moderate

D)remote

J)removed

K)species

L)specimens

M)thick

N)tiny

0)unique

Section B

Directions:In this section,yoare going to read a passage with ten statements attached to it.Each statement contains information given in one of the paragraphs.Identify the paragraph from which the information is derived.Yomay choose a paragraph more than once.Each paragraph is marked with a letter.Answer the questions by marking the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2.

The start of high school doesn’t have to be stressful

[A]This month,more than 4 million students across the nation will begin high school.Many willdo 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 dropdifficult coursework.Others may experience a hopelessness that results in failing their coreclasses,such as English,science and math.

[B]This should matter a great deal to parents,teachers and policymakers.Ultimately it shouldmatter to the students themselves andsociety at large,because students’experience oftransitioning(过渡)to the ninth grade can have long-term consequences not only for thestudents themselves but for their home communities.We make these observations as researchpsychologists 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 incollege 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 additionalstudent who completes high school is half a million dollars or more.This is based on higherearnings 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’abilityto find a good job.It can also impact the extent to which they enjoy life.Students lose manyof 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 graderschanged 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 greatestincreases in depression of any year over the lifespan.Researchers think that one explanationis that ties to friends are broken while academic demands are rising.Furthermore,most adultcases of clinical depression first emerge in adolescence(青春期).The World HealthOrganization reports that depression has the greatest burden of disease worldwide,in termsof 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 highschool.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 changetheir 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),〞witha“fixed mindset〞referring to the belief that people cannot change and a“growth mindset〞referring to the belief that people can change.

[G]In onerecent 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 yoare stuck being“not smart〞if youstruggle in school--showed higher levels of stress hormones when their grades weredeclining at the beginning of the ninth grade.If students believed that intelligence couldimprove--that is to say,when they held more of a growth mindset of intelligence--theyshowed lower levels of stress hormones when their grades were declining.This was anexiting result because it showed that the body’s stress responses are not determined solelyby one’s grades.Instead,declining grades only predictedworse stress hormones amongstudents 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 ofteaching 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 thenlooked at high school students’stress responses to daily social difficulties.That is,we taughtthem a growth mindset about their social lives.In this study,students came into thelaboratory and were asked to give a public speech in font of upper-year students.The topic of the speech was what makes one popular in high school.Following this,students had tocomplete 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 showedpoor stress responses.When these students gave the speech,their blood vessels contractedand their hearts pumped less blood through the body--both responses that the body showswhen 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 canchange,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 mindsetintervention(干预)showed less-contracted blood vessels and their hearts pumped moreblood-both of which contributed to more oxygen getting to the brain,and,ultimately,betterperformance on the speech and mental math tasks.

[J]These findings lead to several possibilities that we are investigating further.First,we areworking to replicate(复制)these findings in more diverse school communities.We want toknow in which types of schools and for which kinds of students these growth mindset ideashelp young people adapt to the challenges ofhigh 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 beliefsabout the potential for change and improvement a larger feature of the overall school culture,especially for students staring the ninth grade.

36.The number of people experiencing depression shows a sharp increase in the first year of high school.

37.According to one study,students’academic performance is not the only decisive factor of their stress responses.

38.Researchers would like to explore further how parents and schools can help ninth graders by changing their mindset.

39.According to one study,each high school graduate contributes at least 500,000 dollars to the local economy.，

40.In one study,students weretold their social position in school is not unchangeable.

41.It is reported that depression results in enormous economic losses worldwide.