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Nowadays our life is getting more and more demanding. It seems that multitasking can help us get out of the trouble. It was first used to describe computer performance. However, the human brain, is not a computer. And human attention is a very limited resource. Can we actually multitask?

According to the spotlight theory of attention, when we focus on the leftmost or rightmost things, our attention must cover the intervening region(间隔区) because the spotlight of attention cannot be divided. Even though we’re constantly receiving a huge amount of information from our senses, it’s only possible for a small amount to make it through to conscious awareness(意识). Take the Bouncing Ball Experiment for an example. Let’s watch carefully and pay particular attention to how many balls bounce(弹跳) in the circle. How many balls can you count? Seven, right? But did you also notice that little dinosaur? What about the changing shape of the circle? Or the smiley face on one of the balls? This experiment shows just how powerful our focused attention is.

Being able to delete irrelevant(无关的) detail is an amazingly useful tool, but it means we might miss things that are right under our noses. This is the effect known as inattention blindness. You can see this very clearly in the famous Invisible Gorilla experiment. When asked to concentrate exclusively on how often basketball players in white pass the ball, most people completely miss the gorilla walking across the screen and beating his chest.

We just don’t have the ability to process everything at a time. This is a particular problem when we try to multitask. We can change attention from one task to another and back again. But when attention is overloaded, we miss things, and the result is nearly always that we perform tasks less well than we will do them one at a time. It’s only truly possible to do two things at once if they require different sets of mental(头脑的) resources. For example, it’s totally possible to read a book and listen to music at the same time.

This would suggest that driving while talking on the phone is not a problem, as long as it’s a hands-free phone. But it’s not that simple. Research has shown that while talking on the phone we have tendency(趋势) to create mental images, and this uses the same visual resources needed for driving. And if visual resources become too spread, it’s possible for a driver to look directly at a danger but, just like with that little dinosaur, fail to see it.

So multitasking makes us at best, inefficient, and at worst, downright dangerous. If you’re feeling like you should be doing 17 things at once, remember, that’s just not the way your brain works.

假设你的同学夏明获得班级“优秀学生”称号，请你根据以下内容提示问题，以“An Outstanding (优秀的) Student”为题，用英文从爱好、习惯和行为规范等方面介绍他。

An Outstanding Student

My classmate Xia Ming wins “The Class Outstanding Student”.

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Twelve-year-old Mike dreamed of becoming a photographer. He showed great _______ in photographing and kept working on it. Recently, he was trying to take a picture of a sunset to enter the school photo competition.

“Mom, there are so many _______ these days. I don’t think I can get this picture!” Mike complained (抱怨).

“Why not find _______ on the computer?” said Mom.

“But the rules say the photos _______ be taken with a traditional camera. We hand in a roll of film, it gets developed (冲洗胶卷), and we _______ one photo for the competition. ”

“Why is a sunset so _______?” Mom asked.

“The topic of the competition is _______,” Mike explained, “and I feel most peaceful when seeing a sunset. ”

“Hey! You want to take a picture of me? Look!” Zach, his six-year-old brother, put both arms _______ his head.

“Not right now. ” Mike laughed.

That very afternoon, Mike felt excited when he saw _______ skies. He carefully lined up his shot (镜头) and waited hopefully ________ the sun reached the ground.

“That’s it!” he shouted ________.

The next morning, Mike realized he could take one more picture to ________ the roll of film, so he walked into Zach’s room. Zach was sleeping quietly with a teddy bear under his arm. Mike didn’t wake Zach up, and carefully took a picture of him.

A week later, Mike got the photos. The sunset picture seemed perfect. Then, he ________ the other photos. Suddenly, he stopped. His eyebrows ________ as he studied the photo of Zach. He looked back at the photo of the sunset again. ________, he handed in the picture of Zach for the competition.

Chinese operas are traditional dramas including literature, music, dance, martial arts (武术), and acrobatics (杂技). There are many local Chinese operas and some enjoy great popularity. Among them, Beijing Opera is the most famous type of opera in China.

In the beginning, Beijing did not have its own style of opera. According to legend, Emperor Qianlong (1711-1799) had seen and enjoyed some Huiban performances when he toured Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province. The word ban means an opera company, while the world hui probably refers to Anhui Province. There were many famous Huiban groups performing in Yangzhou, and they performed various opera styles, including Erhuang and kunqu. Since Qianlong had enjoyed Huiban performances so much, four Huiban groups were invited to perform in Beijing for Oianlong’s 80th birthdav celebration in 1790, which proved successful. From then on, they lived in the capital, mostly performing for the palace, and then later also performing for the public. Over the years, Beijing Opera developed and changed, borrowing parts of other opera styles, particularly Kunqu Opera, which had been popular in the palace before 1790. Over time, it developed its own artistic style and a complete repertoire (表演体系). It is now considered as the crown of Chinese opera.

Singing, recitation, acting, and acrobatic fighting (唱、念、做、打) are the four artistic means and the four basic skills of Beijing Opera. Footwork (腿脚功夫) and other movements express the actions such as riding a horse, rowing a boat, opening a door, going upstairs, climbing a hill, or travelling. Beijing Opera is a number of stylized (非写实的) actions to tell a story or present different characters and their feelings of happiness, anger, sorrow, surprise, fear and sadness.

There are many famous masters who are good at performing Beijing Opera. Among them, the Four Famous Dans—Mei Lanfang, Cheng Yanqiu, Shang Xiaoyun and Xun Huisheng are the most well-known. They are experts in performing the role of Dan and each has its own artistic feature. Their wonderful performances are still praised by many people.

Beijing Opera is a prized form of theater in China. It continues to bring to life many ancient stories and heroes, which enchants (使陶醉) many Chinese people and foreigners with its artistic charm. As the most influential type of opera in China, Beijing Opera is an important form of expression of the traditional culture of Chinese nations. It is sure that it is really the treasure of Chinese culture.

There is a special coffee shop in Shanghai. It is the 1． (one) coffee shop run by blind people in China. Twin brothers Yin Tianbao and Yin Tianyou serve as baristas (咖啡师) there. Tianbao is also the 2． (manage) of the shop. The brothers were born blind, but it has never stopped them from 3． (enjoy) their life. They like playing football and they are skilled marathon runners. Their latest effort to challenge 4． (they) is running the coffee shop.

Tianbao 5． (begin) to learn to make coffee in late 2021. It was no easy task for him. He practiced making over 100 cups of coffee every day. “There is no other way but to practice over and over again,” Tianbao said: Latte art (拿铁艺术) was the most challenging part for him. “The milk foam (奶泡) is 6． light that it’s hard for me to know whether the coffee cup is almost full by the sound. What I can do is to try 7． feeling slowly.” he said.

Tianbao’s hard work has paid off. Now he can make a great cup of coffee in two minutes. “Making coffee makes me full of hope for the future. 8． I can succeed in this, maybe I can succeed in many other things,” Tianbao said. It also encouraged his brother Tianyou to follow in his footsteps and become a barista.

The shop is specially designed (设计) to meet the brothers’ needs. It uses different materials in different work areas. For example, wood 9． (use) at the checkout and steel in the cleaning area. The coffee machine has buttons (按钮) in different shapes to help the baristas make different kinds of coffee. So far, they 10． (make) thousands of cups of coffee for the guests.

From overcoming physical challenges to running a coffee shop, the brothers are trying to make the impossible possible.

Each year on Feb 21, UNESCO ( 联合国教科文组织) holds an International Mother Language Day (IMLD ). The event is to help people to pay attention to the disappearance of the world's languages; many of them are disappearing each year. UNESCO sees this as a terrible fact.

What happens when a language dies out? Something great is lost-not just sounds and marks but the way that people understand the world and communicate with each other. We keep different cultures and traditions through languages. Kill a language and all these are killed too.

Through IMLD, more and more people come to realize he terrible situation and try to stop it.

Google's 2018 Endangered (濒临灭绝的) Languages Project is a good example. Many speakers and protectors of endangered languages upload (上传) texts, audios and videos to the project website. They want to introduce the way that people communicate and express themselves around the world.

The Myaamia Project is the same kind of effort to revive the language spoken by the Miami tribes (部落) of the United States. Project members work to encourage people to study and communicate with this language , which died out in the 1960s.

These activities give life to those endangered languages. People who work to keep Languages

alive are not limited to the past. Many young people design apps and use social media to support their activities. They "spread the word " to save the world.

So, while the problem of disappearing languages remains a very serious one, there is hope. We all have a special feeling of our mother language. This is why we should remember the wise words of late president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela: "If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to a man in his own language，that goes to his heart."

Have you ever had a day when everything seemed to go wrong, and ________ seemed to go right? Not too long ago I was having one of those days. I was discouraged, tired, and ________. My focus was on me. After all, no one else was experiencing the same test I was.

I expressed my upset feelings to my mother, hoping for some ________. Instead, she said, “I heard Jamie was having a difficult day too. Why don’t you make her some ________ and we’ll take them to her this afternoon?”

I didn’t really want to,________ I decided that I didn’t want to go back to my other problems just yet. I made the cookies and put them on a little plate. Then I made a card ________ a sunflower on it and wrote a small note.

That afternoon we ________ my friend’s house. I went to the door and rang the bell. Soon Jamie came to the door and looked at me in surprise for the ________ visit. Before she could say anything I rushed, “I heard you were having a hard day and ________ you some sweet cookies. I hope your day goes ________.” The look that came over Jamie’s face was one that I could never put into ________. It was as if a darkened sky was suddenly bright with the golden, rays of the sun; it was as if in that small act, her day was ________.

I got back into the car and for some ________ reason, I felt a lot better myself. That day I ________ the truth that James Barrie described: “Those ________ bring sunshine to the lives of others can not keep it from themselves.”

On March 3, 2022, the 2021 Touching China Award ceremony aired on CCTV. Ten role models were on the list, and Yang Zhenning is one of them. When mentioning the greatest theoretical (理论的) physicists in the world, Yang Zhenning is a name never to be forgotten.

Yang Zhenning, a famous Nobel Prize-winning physicist, became the first Chinese- American scientist who managed to return to China after the US just lifted (解除) the ban (禁令) on visits to China in 1971. Yang also helped hundreds of Chinese students to have a further study in the US. These people later made a huge construction (贡献) for China.

Yang was born in 1922, in Hefei Anhui, China, and grew up in Tsinghua University. From a young age he had an interest in physics. At the age of 12, Yang showed his great goal to win a Nobel Prize after being attracted by a book about the unknowns of the universe.

With this goal in mind, Yang studied hard. After getting a master’s degree in Tsinghua University in 1944, Yang got the chance to further his studies in the United States. There he met another Chinese student, Tsung-dao Lee (李政道), who shared the same interests, and they often discussed the physics problems together. In 1957, they won the Nobel Prize in Physics. It let other Chinese people know that Chinese scientists could stand out in the global science community.

At the Nobel Banquet (宴会),Yang also expressed his pride. He was very proud of his Chinese background. No matter where he has been, Yang Zhenning has always had his motherland in mind.

In 2003, Yang returned to China and also taught at Tsinghua. Under his influence, many overseas Chinese also returned to China to make contributions, such as Turing Award winner Yao Qizhi, physicist Wu Xiaogang, and mathematician Zhang Shouwu.