Section I Use of English

Directions:

Read the following text.Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, Cor D on the ANSWER SHEET.(10 points)

There are many understandable reasons why you might find it difficult to ask for help when you need it. Psychologists have been interested in this $\underline{\quad1\quad}$ for decades, not least because people’s widespread $\underline{\quad2\quad}$ to ask for help has led to some high - profile failures. Asking for help takes $\underline{\quad3\quad}$. It involves communicating a need on your part—there’s something you can’t do. $\underline{\quad4\quad}$, you’re broadcasting your own weaknesses, which can be $\underline{\quad5\quad}$. You might worry about coming across as incompetent. You might have $\underline{\quad6\quad}$ about losing control of whatever it is you’re asking for help with. $\underline{\quad7\quad}$ someone starts to help, perhaps they’ll take over, or get credit for your earlier efforts. Yet another $\underline{\quad8\quad}$ that you might be worried about is being a nuisance or $\underline{\quad9\quad}$ the person you go to for help. If you struggle with low self - esteem, you might find it especially difficult to $\underline{\quad10\quad}$ for help because you have the added worry of the other person $\underline{\quad11\quad}$ your request. You might see such refusals as implying something $\underline{\quad12\quad}$ about the status of your relationship with them. To $\underline{\quad13\quad}$ these difficulties, try to remind yourself that everyone needs help sometimes. Nobody knows everything and can do everything all by themselves. And while you might $\underline{\quad14\quad}$ coming across as incompetent, there’s actually research that shows that advice - seekers are $\underline{\quad15\quad}$ as more competent, not less. Perhaps most encouraging of all is a paper from 2022 by researchers at Stanford University, in California, that involved a mix of contrived help - seeking interactions and asking people to $\underline{\quad16\quad}$ times they’d sought help in the past. The findings showed that help - seekers generally underestimate how $\underline{\quad17\quad}$ other people will be to help and how good it’ll make the help - giver feel (for most people, having the chance to help someone is highly $\underline{\quad18\quad}$). So, bear all this in mind the next time you need to ask for help. $\underline{\quad19\quad}$, take care over who you ask and when you ask them. And if someone can’t help right now, avoid taking it personally. They might just be too $\underline{\quad20\quad}$, or they might not feel confident about their ability to help.

1. A. illusion B. discussion C. tradition D. question

2. A. reluctance B. ambition C. tendency D. enthusiasm

3. A. attention B. talent C. courage D. patience

4. A. At any time B. In other words C. By all means D. On the contrary

5. A. unrealistic B. deceptive C. tiresome D. uncomfortable

6. A. doubts B. concerns C. suggestions D. secrets

7. A. Once B. Unless C. Although D. Before

8. A. theory B. choice C. factor D. context

9. A. overpraising B. outperforming C. reassessing D. inconveniencing

10. A. reach out B. settle down C. turn over D. look back

11. A. declining B. considering C. criticizing D. evaluating

12. A. unnecessary B. negative C. strange D. impractical

13. A. explain B. identify C. predict D. overcome

14. A. deny B. forget C. miss D. fear

15. A. disguised B. perceived C. followed D. introduced

16. A. recall B. classify C. analyse D. compare

17. A. brave B. disapproving C. willing D. hesitant

18. A. relaxing B. surprising C. rewarding D. demanding

19. A. Thus B. Also C. Finally D. Instead

20. A. polite B. proud C. busy D. lazy

Section II Reading Comprehension

Part A

Directions:

Read the following four texts. Answer the questions after each text by choosing A, B, Cor D. Mark your answers on the ANSWER SHEET.(40 points)

Text 1

U.S. customers historicall tipped people they assumed were earning most of their income via tips,such as restaurant servers earning less than the minimum wage. In the early 2010s, a wide range of businesses started processing purchases with iPads and other digital payment systems. These systems often prompted customers to tip for services that were not previously tipped.

Today's tip requests are often not connected to the salary and service norms that used to determine when and how people tip. Customers in the past nearly always paid tips after receiving a service, such as at the conclusion of a restaurant meal, after getting a haircut or once a pizza was delivered. That timing could reward high-quality service and give workers an incentive to provide it.

It's becoming more common for tips to be requested beforehand. And new tipping technology may even automatically add tips

The prevalence of digital payment devices has made it easier to ask customers for a tip. That helps explain why tip requests are creeping into new kinds of services.Customers now routinely see menus of suggested default options often well above 20% of what they owe. The amounts have risen from 10% or less in the 1950s to 15% around the year 2000 to 20% or higher today. This increase is sometimes called tipflation-the expectation of ever-higher tip amounts.

Tipping has always been a vital source of income for workers in historically tipped services, like restaurants,where the tipped minimum wage can be as low as USS2.13 an hour.Tip creep and tipflation are now further supplementing the income of many low-wage service workers.

Notably, tipping primarily benefits some of these workers,such as waiters, but not others,such as cooks and dishwashers. To ensure that all employees were paid fair wages, some restaurants banned tipping and increased prices, but this movement toward no-tipping services has largely fizzled out.

So, to increase employee wages without raising prices, more employers are succumbing to the temptations of tip creep and tipflation. However, many customers are frustrated because they feel they are being asked for too high of a tip, too often.

And, as our research emphasizes, tipping now seems to be more coercive, less generous and often completely disassociated from service guality.

21. According to Paragraph 1, he practice of tipping in the U.S.

A. was regarded as a sign of generosity

B. was considered essential for waiters

C. was a way of rewarding diligence

D. was optional in most businesses

22. Compared with tips in the past, today's tips

A. are paid much less frequently

B. are less often requested in advance

C. have less to do with service quality

D. contribute less to workers' income

23. Tip requests are creeping into new kinds of services as a result of

A. the advancement of technology

B. the desire for income increase

C. the diversification of business

D. the emergence of tipflation

24. The movement toward no-tipping services was intended to

A. promote consumption

B. enrich income sources

C. maintain reasonable prices

D. guarantee income fairness

25. It can be learned from the last paragraph that tipping

A. is becoming a burden for customers

B. helps encourage quality service

C. is vital to business development

D. reflects the need to reduce prices

Text 2

When it was established, the National Health Service (NHS) was visionary: offering high-qualiy, timely care to meet the dominant needs of the population it served. Nearly 75 years on, with the UK facing very different heath hallenges,.it is clear that the model is out of date.

From life expectancy to cancer and infant mortality rates,we are lagging behind many of our peers, With more than 6.8 milio on wailist, halthcare is becoming increasingly inaccessible for those who cannot opt to pay for private treatment; and the cost of providing healthcare is increasingly squeezing out investment in other public services. As demand for healthcare continues to grow. pressures on the workforce-which is already near breaking point-will only become more acute.

Many of the answers to the crisis in health and care are well rehearsed. We need to be much better at reucing and diverting demand on health services, rather than simply managing it. Much more needs to be invested in communities and primary care to reduce our reliance on hospials, And capacity in social care needs to be greater, to support the growing number of people living with long-term conditions.

Yet despite two decades of srategies and a number of major health reforms, we have failed to make meaningful progress on any of these aims. That is why the Reform think ank is launching a new programme of work entile "Reimagining health", upported by ten former health ministers. Together,we are calling for a much more open and honest conversation about the future of health in the UK,and an "urgent rethink" of the hospital-centric model we retain.

This must begin with the question of how we maximnise the health of the nation, rather than "fi" the NHS. It is stimated, for example,that healthcare accounts for only about 20% of health outcomes. Much more important are the places we live, work and socialise-yet there is no clear cross-government strategy for improving these social determinants of health. Worse, when policies like the national obesity strategy are scrapped, taxpayers are left wih the heavy price tag of treating the ilees, ikedabes, ta esu

Reform wants to ask how power and resources should be distributed in our health system. What health functions should remain at the centre, and what should be given to local leaders, ofien responsible for services that rate health,and with a much better understanding of the needs of their populations?

 26. According to the first two paragraphs, the NHS

A. is troubled by funding deficiencies

B.can hardly satisfy people's needs

C.can barely retain its current employees

D.is rivalled by private medical services

27. One answer to the crisis in health and care is to

A. boost the efficiency of hospitals

B.lighten the burden on social care

C. increase resources for primary care

D. reduce the pressure on communities

28."Reimagining health" is aimed to

A. reinforce hospital management

B. readjust healthcare regulations

C. restructure the health system

D. resume suspended health reforms

29. To maximise the nation's health, the author suggests

A.introducing relevant taxation policies

B.paying due attention to social factors

C. reevaluating major health outcomes

D.enhancing the guality of health care

30. It can be inferred that local leaders should

A. exercise their power more reasonably

B.develop a stronger sense of responsibility

C. play a bigger role in the health system

D. understand people's health needs better

Text3

Heat action plans, or HAPs, have been proliferating in India in the past few years. In general, an HAP spells out when and how officials should issue heat warnings and alert hospitals and other institutions. Nagpur's plan, for instance, calls for hospirals to set aside "cold wards" in the summer for treating heatstroke patient, and advises builders to give construction laborers a break from work on very hot days.

But implementation of existing HAPs has been uneven, according to a report from the Center for Policy Research. Many Iack adequate funding, it found. And their triggering thresholds ofien are not customized to the local climate.In some areas, high daytime temperatures alone might serve as an adequate trigger for alerts. But in other places, nightime temperatures or humidity might be as important a gauge of risk as daytime highs.

Mumbai's April heat stroke deaths highlighted the need for more nuanced and localized warings, researchers say. That day's high temperature of roughly 36°C was 1℃C shy of the heat wave alert threshold for coastal cities set by national meteorological authorities. But the effects of the heat were amplified by humidity-an often neglected factor in heat alert systems-and the lack of shade at the late-morning outdoor ceremony.

To help improve HAPs,urban planner Kotharkar's team is working on a model plan that outlines best practices and could be adapted to local condions. Among other things, she says, all icshoud ceat a ueraliy wap to elp focus responses on the populations most at risk.

Such mapping doesn't need to be complex, Kotharkar says."A useful map can be created by looking at even a few key parameters." Por eample, neighborhoods with a large elderly population or informal dwellings that cope poorly with heat could get special warnings or be bolstered with cooling centers. The Nagpur project has already created a risk and vulnerability map, which enabled Kotharkar to tell officials which neighborhoods to focus on in the event of a heat wave this summer.

HAPs shouldn't just include short-term emergency responses, esearchers say,but also recommend medium- to long-term measures that could make communities cooler. In Nagpur, for example, Kotharkar's team has been able to advise city officials about where to plant trees to provide shade. HAPs could als guide efforts to retofit homes or modify building regulations."Reducing deaths in an emergency is good target to have, but it's the lowest target,"says climate researcher Chandni Singh

31. According to Paragraph 1, Nagpur's plan proposes measures to

A. tackle extreme weather

B. ensure construction quality

C. monitor emergency warnings

D.address excessive workloads

32.One problem with existing HAPs is that they

A. prove too costly to be implemented

B. lack localized allert-issuing criteria

C. give delayed responses to heat waves

D. keep hospitals under great pressure

33. Mumbai's case shows that India's heat alert systems need to

A. include other factors besides temperature

B. take subtle weather changes into account

C. prioritize potentially disastrous heat waves

D.draw further support from local authorities

34. Kotharkar holds that a vulnerability map can help

A. prevent the harm of high humidity

B.target areas needing special attention

C. expand the Nagpur project's coverage

D.make relief plans for heat-stricken people

35. According to the last paragraph, researchers suggest that HAPs should

A. focus more on the heatstroke treatment

B. invite wider publi participation

C. apply for more government grants

D.serve a broader range of purposes

Text 4

Navigating beyond the organised pavements and parks of our urban spaces, desire paths are the nofficia fopits f commi,y reaing the npoen preferences, hared shortcuts and collective choices of humans. Ofien apparing as trodden dirt tracks through otherwise neat green spaces, these routes of colletive disobedience cut comners, bist awns and cross hil, epesenting the natural capabiy of people and animals to go from point A to point B most effeitvety.

Urban planners interpret desire paths as more than just convenient shortcuts; they offer valuable insights into the dynamics between planning and behaviour. Ohio State University allowed is students to navigate the Oval, a lawn in the centre of campus, freely then procced to pave the desire paths, creating a web of effecive rutes students had established.

Yet, reluctance persists among other planners to integrate desire paths into formal plans, citing concerns about safety, environmental impact, or primarily, aesthetics. A Reddit webpage devoted to the phenomenon, boasting nearly 50,000 members, showcases images of local desire paths adorned with signs instructing pedestrians to adhere to designated walkways,underscoring the rebelius nature inherent in these human-made tracks. This clash highlights an ongoing struggle between the organic, user-driven evolution of public spaces and the desire for a visually curated and controlled urban envionment.

The Wickquasgeck Trail is an example of a historical desire path, created by Native Americans to cross he forsts f anhatan nd me betwen setlements quickly. This trai, when Dutch colonists arived,was widened and made into one of the main trade roads across the island, known at the time as de Heere Straat, or Gentlemen's Street. Folwin the British assumpion of contol in New York, the street was renamed Broadway. Notably, Broadway stands out as one of the few areas in NYC that defies the grid-based system applied to the rest of the city, cutting a diagonal across parts of the city.

In online spaces, desire paths have sparked a fascination that can approach obsession, with the Reddit page serving as a hub. Contributors offer a wide array of stories, from little-known new shortcuts to long-established alternate routes.

Animal desire paths, such as ducks forging rails through frozen ponds or dogs carving direct routes in gardens,highlight the adaptability of these trails in both human and animal experiences. As desire paths criss-cross through both physical and virtual landscapes, they stand as a proof of the colleive nistnc on forging unconventional routes and embracing the spirit of communal choice.

36. According to Paragraph 1, desire paths are a result of

A. the curiosity to explore surrounding hills

B. the necessity to preserve green spaces

C.the tendency to pursue convenience

D.the wish to find comfort in solitude

37. It can be inferred that Ohio State University

A.intends to improve its desire paths

B. leads in the research on desire paths

C. guides the creation of its desire paths

D. takes a positive view of desire paths

38. The images on the Reddit webpage reflect

A.conflicting opinions on the use of desire paths

B.the call toupgrade the designing of public spaces

C. the demand for proper planning of desire paths

D.growing concerns over the loss of public spaces

39. The example of the Wickquasgeck Trail illustrates

A. the growth of New York City

B. the Dutch origin of desire paths

C. the importance of urban planning

D. the recognition of desire paths

40. It can be learned from the last paragraph that desire paths

A. reveal humans' deep respect for nature

B. are crucial to humans' mental well-being

C. are a human imitation of animal behaviour

D. show a shared rait in humans and animals

Section Ⅱ

Part B

Directions:

Read the following text and answer the questions by choosing the most suitable subheading from the list A-G for each of the numbered paragraphs (41-45). There are two extra subheadings which you do not need to use. Mark your answers on the ANSWER SHEET.(10 points)

A.Stay positive

B. Respect the past

C. Use channels

D.Give it time

E. Invite resistance

F.Be a salesman

G. Be humble

Five Steps to Suggesting a Change at Work That'll Actually Get Taken Seriously

Everyone wants to be that person—the one who looks at the same information as everyone else, but who sees a fresh, innovative solution. However, it takes more than simply having a good idea. How you share it is as important as the suggestion itself. Why? Because writing a new script—literally or figuratively—means that other team members will have to adapt to something new. So whether you’re suggesting a (seemingly) benign change like streamlining outdated protocol, or a bigger change like adding an hour to each workday so people can leave early on Fridays, you’re asking others to reimagine their workflow or schedule. Not to mention, if the process you’re scrapping is one someone else suggested, there’s the possibility of hurt feelings. To gain buy - in on an innovative, new idea, follow these steps:

41. __________

Great ideas don’t stand alone. In other words, you can’t mention your suggestion once and expect it to be adopted. To see a change, you’ll need to champion your plan and sell its merits. In addition, you need to be willing to stand up to scrutiny and criticism and be prepared to explain your innovation in different ways for various audiences.

42. __________

Sometimes it makes sense to go to your boss first. But other times, it’s useful to build a coalition among your co - workers or other stakeholders. When it works, it works great—because you’re ready for your stubborn supervisor’s pushback with answers like, “Actually, I connected with a few people in our tech department to discuss how much time these kinds of website updates would take, and they suggested they have the bandwidth.”

43. __________

One of the biggest barriers to gaining buy - in occurs when the owner of an idea is viewed as argumentative, defensive, or close - minded. Because, let’s be honest: No one likes a know - it - all. So, if people disagree with you, don’t be indignant. Instead, listen to their concerns fully, try to understand their perspective, and include their concerns (and possible remedies) in future discussions. So, instead of saying, “Martha, our current slogan is confusing and should be updated,” you could try, “Martha raises a great point that our current slogan has a long history for our stakeholders, but I wonder if we might be able to brainstorm a tagline that could build on that—and be clearer for new customers.”

44. __________

New ideas are the grandchildren of old ones. In other words, don’t throw old solutions under the bus to make your improvement stand out. Remember that in light of whatever the problem the old system solved—or, maybe, has failed to solve in recent memory—it was a great idea at the time. Appreciating the older contributions as you suggest future innovations helps bolster the credibility of your idea.

45. __________

When pitching a new idea, it’s important to use the language of abundance instead of the language of deficit. Instead of saying what is wrong, broken, or suboptimal, talk about what is right, fixable, or ideal. For example, try, “I can see lots of applications for this new approach” rather than, “This innovation is the only way.” Be optimistic but realistic, and you will stand out.

（请将41-45题的答案填入下方的输入框，不区分大小写）

Section III Translation

Directions:

Translate the following text into Chinese. Write your translation on the ANSWER SHEET. (15 points)

You know the moment—the conversation slows, then there's a pause. It's awkward, and so awkward that some people will panic and say anything. Do we all find such silences so stressful?

Researchers analysed the frequency and impact of gaps greater than 2 seconds during conversations, including an overview of previous studies which indicate that the fear of awkward silences can be so extreme that people avoid talking to strangers, even though doing so is likely to be an enjoyable experience.

During conversations with short gaps, people feel more connected to their conversation partners. But such feelings of connection markedly dip when entering a long gap. Long gaps between strangers are likely to be followed by a change in topic.

But the opposite seems to be true for conversations between friends. Long gaps there saw increased connection. Between friends, longer gaps seem to provide natural moments for reflection and expression.

Section Ⅳ Writing

Part A

47. Directions:

Suppose you are planning a short play based on a classic Chinese novel. Write your friend John an email to

1. introduce the play, and

2. invite him to take part in it.

Write your answer in about 100 words on the ANSWER SHEET.

Do not sign your own name in your email; use “Li Ming” instead. (10 points)

Part B

48. Directions:

Write an essay based on the chart below. In your essay, you should

1) describe and interpret the chart, and

2) give your comments.

Write your answer in about 150 words on the ANSWER SHEET. (15 points) 

（注：图片内容为某社区老年人主要日常休闲活动调查，看电视 90.8%，散步 68.3%，养花 34.7%，阅读 31.8%，下棋 18.4% ）