GEPT 中高級全真模擬試題 Mock 5

第一部分：聽力測驗（Listening Comprehension）

Part 1：問答（Question-Response）

說明： 每題會播放一個英文問句，請從三個選項中選出最適當的回應。

Question 1

I’m torn between the conventional wisdom that you should specialize deeply in one area to achieve mastery, and the counter-argument that the most innovative thinkers are generalists who connect ideas across fields. Is there a way to reconcile these?

(A) Specialization is always better because you can charge more for niche expertise. (B) The research on this suggests the optimal path is what’s called a “T-shaped” skillset — deep expertise in one area (the vertical bar of the T) combined with broad enough knowledge across adjacent fields to make connections (the horizontal bar). It’s not an either/or choice. (C) Most Nobel Prize winners are specialists who never strayed from their field.

Question 2

I’ve been reading about the concept of “antifragility” — the idea that some systems actually get stronger when exposed to stress and volatility. Do you think this concept applies to human psychology as well?

(A) Stress is always harmful and should be avoided whenever possible. (B) It does, with crucial caveats. The research on post-traumatic growth suggests that some people do emerge from adversity with greater psychological strength. But the key variable is the dose — manageable challenges build resilience; overwhelming trauma breaks people. The antifragility analogy is useful but it can become a way of blaming victims who didn’t get stronger from their suffering. (C) Human psychology is fundamentally different from physical systems.

Question 3

How do you think we should balance the need for expert knowledge with the democratic principle that every citizen’s voice deserves equal weight?

(A) Experts should make all the important decisions because ordinary people are uninformed. (B) This is the central tension of democratic governance in a complex society. The solution isn’t to abandon either principle but to build institutions that mediate between them: expert advisory bodies that are transparent and accountable to democratic oversight, citizen assemblies that are given the time and information to engage deeply with complex issues, and a media environment that helps the public understand not just conclusions but the reasoning and uncertainty behind them. (C) Democracy means everyone’s opinion is equally valid on every subject.

Question 4

What do you make of the growing trend of people documenting every aspect of their lives on social media? Is this a healthy form of self-expression, or does the constant performance of life detract from actually living it?

(A) People should have the freedom to share whatever they want online. (B) I think the most honest answer is that it depends on the motivation. If sharing enhances the experience — if you are genuinely connecting with others, if the documentation deepens your appreciation of the moment — then it is additive. But there is a subtle tipping point where the sharing becomes the primary experience and the moment itself becomes merely raw material for content. I suspect many people have crossed that tipping point without noticing. The test is simple: would you still do this if no one could see it? If the answer is no, then the sharing has consumed the living. (C) Social media has created opportunities for people to become famous and successful.

Question 5

I’ve been thinking about the difference between regret and remorse. They feel different, but I struggle to articulate why. Can you help me distinguish them?

(A) Regret and remorse are synonyms and mean essentially the same thing. (B) The distinction that many philosophers and psychologists draw is that regret focuses on the outcome — “I wish that hadn’t happened” — while remorse focuses on the action and the harm caused — “I am sorry that I did that, and I recognize the pain it caused.” Regret can be entirely self-interested (I regret eating that because now I feel sick); remorse requires an other-oriented moral dimension. Remorse is what makes genuine apology and repair possible; regret alone is just wishing the world were different. (C) Both feelings are unproductive and should be dismissed as quickly as possible.

Question 6

My team is deeply divided on a strategic decision, and both factions have compelling arguments. As the team lead, how do I make a decision without alienating half the team?

(A) Let the majority vote and accept that the minority will be unhappy. (B) The first step is to ensure that both sides feel genuinely heard — not just given airtime but understood. Summarize each position back to its advocates in a way they would endorse as accurate. Then, articulate the decision criteria transparently: “We are choosing based on these factors, with these weights.” Where possible, incorporate elements of the losing position into the implementation plan, so it is not a pure defeat. Finally, acknowledge explicitly that reasonable people can disagree, that this decision is provisional, and that you will revisit it at a specified future date based on results. People can accept losing if the process is fair and their perspective is honored even when not adopted. (C) Make the decision privately and announce it without explanation to avoid debate.

Question 7

I’ve noticed that I’m much more judgmental of other people’s parenting choices now that I’m a parent myself. I used to be very “live and let live.” What accounts for this shift, and is it something I should try to correct?

(A) Your judgment is probably correct — you know better now that you have experience. (B) This is a well-documented phenomenon that psychologists call “maternal/paternal gatekeeping” or more broadly “attitude polarization through experience.” When we invest heavily in a particular approach, we need to believe it is right to justify the investment. The judgment of others is partly self-protective: their different choices imply that ours might be wrong, which is threatening. The awareness you’re showing is the antidote. Notice the judgment, acknowledge it as a psychological defense mechanism rather than a moral insight, and remind yourself that the outcome data on most parenting choices is genuinely ambiguous. The judgment is normal; the decision to indulge it or transcend it is a choice. (C) You should trust your instincts and not second-guess your judgments.

Question 8

What do you think about the argument that in the age of GPS, we are losing our natural sense of direction — that our navigational abilities atrophy when we outsource them to technology?

(A) GPS technology is a great convenience and has made travel much easier. (B) There is compelling neuroscientific evidence for this concern. Studies of London taxi drivers, who must memorize the city’s vast street network to earn their license — the famous “Knowledge” — show measurable growth in the hippocampus, the brain region associated with spatial memory. Conversely, research on GPS users shows decreased activation in the hippocampus during navigation. We are, literally, reshaping our brains by outsourcing navigation. Whether this matters depends on one’s values. If efficient arrival is all that matters, GPS is pure gain. But if the cognitive capacity for spatial reasoning has value beyond navigation — and there is evidence it does, correlating with broader cognitive health in aging — then the loss is real. The compromise is to use GPS strategically: learn the route first, then let GPS handle traffic optimization. Don’t let the tool replace the capacity. (C) People have always used tools to navigate, from compasses to road maps.

Question 9

I find myself increasingly unable to enjoy simple pleasures — a good meal, a walk in the park, a conversation with a friend — because my mind is always racing ahead to the next thing on my to-do list. How do you slow down enough to actually be present?

(A) You probably need a vacation to disconnect from your responsibilities. (B) What you’re describing is what some psychologists call “mental time travel” to the future — the habit of living in anticipation rather than experience. The most effective intervention, counterintuitively, is not to try to stop the racing mind but to practice redirecting it. When you notice you’re somewhere else, gently bring your attention back to a specific sensory detail in the present moment — the texture of the food, the sound of the wind, the expression on your friend’s face. This is essentially mindfulness practice. The key is that you will fail to be present hundreds of times; the skill is not staying present but returning. The return is the practice. (C) You should try to multitask less and focus on one thing at a time.

Question 10

I’ve been reflecting on the role of luck in success. On one hand, acknowledging luck keeps you humble. On the other hand, attributing your success to luck can feel like diminishing your own effort and choices. How do you hold these in balance?

(A) Success is 90% hard work and 10% luck. (B) I think the healthiest framing acknowledges that success is always a product of effort AND circumstances, and that the proportion varies dramatically. The person born into a wealthy, stable family in a peaceful country with excellent schools has won a lottery they did not enter. That does not mean their effort doesn’t matter — it means their effort operates on a platform they did not build. Acknowledging luck is not denying agency; it is placing agency in context. And crucially, it generates compassion: if we acknowledge that failure is often circumstantial, not purely a failure of character or effort, we become more humane in how we judge others. (C) You should focus on what you can control and not think about luck at all.

Question 11

How do you distinguish between legitimate introspection and unhealthy rumination — the kind of thinking that keeps you stuck rather than helping you move forward?

(A) Any deep thinking about yourself is healthy and productive. (B) The most useful distinguishing criterion is directional: introspection moves toward insight and action; rumination moves in circles. Introspection asks specific questions and seeks answers: “What was I feeling in that moment? Why did I react that way? What would I do differently?” Rumination asks unanswerable questions or re-litigates the unchangeable: “Why does this always happen to me? What if I had said something different?” A practical test: after twenty minutes of thinking, do you understand something you didn’t before, or do you feel more stuck and distressed than when you started? If the latter, you are ruminating, not introspecting. The intervention is to write down one specific insight or action step, and then physically change your context — go for a walk, talk to someone, do something with your hands. Movement breaks the loop. (C) You should try to distract yourself whenever you start thinking too much.

Question 12

What do you think about the idea that nations, like individuals, have “characters” shaped by their history — and that understanding a nation’s historical traumas and triumphs is essential to understanding its present behavior?

(A) National character is just a stereotype and has no basis in reality. (B) I think the concept of national character is real, but dangerous when handled carelessly. It is real in the sense that shared historical experiences — wars, revolutions, periods of prosperity or humiliation — shape collective memory and institutional reflexes. Germany’s post-war pacifism, America’s deep-seated frontier individualism, Taiwan’s existential preoccupation with sovereignty — these are not random. They emerge from specific histories. But the concept is dangerous when it becomes deterministic, when it is used to essentialize entire populations as if every citizen shares a single temperament, or when it excuses present behavior by appealing to historical victimhood. Nations, like individuals, are shaped by their past but not imprisoned by it. (C) History has very little influence on how modern nations behave.

Question 13

I’ve been struggling with how to stay informed about current events without becoming overwhelmed or cynical. The news feels like an endless stream of crises, and I oscillate between obsessive consumption and complete avoidance. What’s a healthier approach?

(A) You should stop reading the news entirely and focus on your local community. (B) The healthy approach, in my view, involves four elements. First, choose depth over breadth — follow a few issues closely rather than scanning headlines across everything. Second, limit your format to text rather than video or social media feeds, because text allows you to control pace and avoid algorithmic emotional manipulation. Third, pair consumption with action — even a small concrete action, like donating to an organization working on an issue you care about, reduces the feeling of helplessness that news can produce. Fourth, set temporal boundaries — a defined period for news consumption, not a constant background drip of alerts and refreshes throughout the day. The goal is to be informed enough to act meaningfully, not informed enough to feel terrible about everything. (C) You should set up news alerts so you never miss any important event.

Question 14

Do you think that people can fundamentally change, or are we essentially the same person at 50 that we were at 20, just with more experience and better manners?

(A) People’s basic personalities are fixed by early adulthood and cannot change. (B) The research on personality across the lifespan shows that change is both real and limited. The big five personality traits — openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism — show measurable average changes over decades. People tend to become more conscientious and agreeable and less neurotic as they age. But the rank order is remarkably stable: the most extraverted 20-year-old will likely be among the more extraverted 50-year-olds, even if their absolute level has shifted. So the honest answer is that people change gradually within a stable range. True transformation — the kind of radical character reformation that feels like becoming a different person — is rare but not impossible. It usually requires either profound trauma, profound love, or deliberate, sustained spiritual or therapeutic work. Most of us, most of the time, are variations on a theme established early. (C) Everyone changes completely every few years as they have new life experiences.

Question 15

I’m graduating next month, and I feel this pressure to make every decision count — to get the right job, in the right city, with the right trajectory — as if one wrong choice will derail my entire life. How much do early career decisions actually matter in the long run?

(A) Your first job determines your entire career path, so you should be very careful. (B) The evidence suggests they matter less than the anxiety suggests, but more than the “don’t worry, it’ll all work out” comfort would imply. Certain decisions do create path dependencies — the industry you enter first shapes the opportunities you see next, the network you build, the skills you develop. But these are starting points, not life sentences. Most people change careers multiple times. What matters far more than the specific first job is the meta-skill of learning from whatever environment you are in, the habit of building genuine relationships across your career, and the willingness to periodically ask, “is this path still taking me where I want to go?” rather than continuing on autopilot. The people who seem derailed by an early decision are usually the ones who never paused to re-evaluate. (C) You should follow your passion even if it means making less practical decisions.

Part 2：簡短對話（Short Conversations）

說明： 每段對話後有兩個問題，請從四個選項中選出最佳答案。

Conversation 1

Dr. Patel: Ms. Chen, your literature review on vaccine hesitancy is comprehensive, but I want to push you on your theoretical framework. You’ve organized the literature around psychological factors — trust, risk perception, cognitive biases. But you’re missing the sociological dimension entirely. Ms. Chen: Could you elaborate on what you mean by the sociological dimension? Dr. Patel: Vaccine hesitancy doesn’t occur in a vacuum. It clusters geographically and socially. You’ll find entire communities where vaccination rates drop not because of individual psychology but because of shared narratives, local leaders, and historical experiences of medical exploitation. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study, for instance, is not just a historical footnote — it is a living memory that shapes vaccine attitudes in African American communities today. Your review needs a section on these structurally and historically mediated forms of distrust. Ms. Chen: That’s a fair critique. I think I unconsciously framed the problem as an individual cognitive failure rather than a socially embedded phenomenon. I can add a section mapping the sociological literature. Dr. Patel: Good. And I would suggest restructuring the literature review so that the psychological factors are understood as operating within — and being shaped by — these broader social contexts, not as competing explanations. The most interesting research right now is at the intersection. Ms. Chen: I’ll work on that restructuring this week. Can I send you a revised outline before I rewrite the full chapter? Dr. Patel: Yes. Have the outline to me by Thursday. I want to see how you’re framing the relationship between the individual and social levels before you invest time in the full rewrite.

Question 16: What gap in Ms. Chen’s literature review does Dr. Patel identify?

(A) It lacks sufficient quantitative data and relies too heavily on qualitative sources. (B) It focuses only on psychological factors and misses the sociological dimensions of vaccine hesitancy. (C) It is too long and needs to be significantly shortened to meet journal requirements. (D) It covers too many countries and needs to be geographically restricted.

Question 17: What example does Dr. Patel use to illustrate the sociological dimension?

(A) The COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials that were rushed through approval (B) The spread of misinformation about vaccines on social media platforms (C) The Tuskegee Syphilis Study as a historical trauma that shapes vaccine attitudes in communities (D) The economic cost of vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks in developing countries

Conversation 2

Tech Lead: Anita, the product demo for the investors is in two weeks, and the machine learning recommendation engine is still returning obviously wrong suggestions about 5% of the time. That’s a showstopper for the demo. Anita: I know. I’ve been debugging it and I think the issue is in the training data, not the model architecture. About 8% of our user preference labels were generated by an earlier, less accurate algorithm rather than from actual user behavior. The model is effectively learning from another model’s mistakes. Tech Lead: So we need to clean the training data. How long would that take? Anita: A full re-labeling of the dataset would take about three weeks, which misses the demo deadline. But I have a faster approach. We know which data points came from the old algorithm because they’re timestamped before last September. I can train a new model exclusively on data from after September, when we switched to behavior-based labeling. The dataset will be smaller but cleaner. Preliminary tests show the error rate drops below 1%. Tech Lead: And does the smaller dataset cause other problems? Anita: Slightly higher variance — the recommendations are good but not as fine-tuned for niche preferences. For a demo, that’s acceptable. We can add the full cleaned dataset for the production launch. Tech Lead: Go with that approach. Keep me updated on the error rate as you train. If it stays below 1%, we’re in good shape. If it creeps above 2%, let me know immediately and we will reconsider the demo content. Anita: Got it. I’ll have results by the end of the week.

Question 18: What is the root cause of the recommendation engine’s errors?

(A) The model architecture was incorrectly designed for this type of data. (B) About 8% of the training data labels were generated by an older, less accurate algorithm. (C) The hardware running the model does not have sufficient processing power. (D) The team did not have enough time to adequately test the system before deployment.

Question 19: What solution does Anita propose?

(A) Delay the demo until the full dataset can be re-labeled over three weeks. (B) Train a new model exclusively on the cleaner, post-September behavior-based data even though it is smaller. (C) Hire a third-party data labeling service to fix the dataset overnight. (D) Present a simplified version of the product that does not use the recommendation engine.

Conversation 3

Leo: Mia, I saw that you withdrew your name from consideration for the department head position. I was surprised — everyone thought you were the frontrunner. Mia: I was. But here’s what happened. I went through the interview process, and in the final round, the dean asked me about my five-year vision for the department. I laid out what I genuinely think needs to happen — curriculum restructuring, interdisciplinary hiring, a more research-active culture. The dean was visibly uncomfortable. After the interview, one of the committee members privately told me that the administration wants “stability and continuity,” not transformation. Leo: So you were being asked to lead without actually leading? Mia: Exactly. The title would have been “department head,” but the actual authority would have been severely constrained. I would have been responsible for outcomes I couldn’t control, implementing a vision I didn’t share. That’s a recipe for burnout and bitterness. I’d rather be an influential faculty member with my integrity and energy intact than a powerless administrator with a nice title. Leo: That’s… disheartening. But I respect the clarity of your decision. Most people would have taken the title and then been miserable. Mia: I’ve been miserable in jobs before. I recognized the architecture this time. What’s frustrating is that the system is designed to produce mediocre, cautious leadership. People who would actually change things either get filtered out or, like me, filter themselves out. But I’m not bitter — I’m clear. And clarity is worth more than a title.

Question 20: Why did Mia withdraw her candidacy?

(A) She was not selected by the committee and withdrew to save face. (B) She realized the role offered responsibility without the authority to make real changes. (C) She received a better job offer from another university at the last minute. (D) Her colleagues convinced her that the administrative workload wasn’t worth it.

Question 21: How does Mia characterize her decision?

(A) She regrets it and wishes she had fought harder for the position. (B) She is bitter about the system but hopeful she’ll get another chance. (C) She values clarity and recognizes that the role would have led to burnout and bitterness. (D) She plans to leave the university entirely because of this experience.

Conversation 4

Housing Officer: Ms. Wang, thank you for coming in. Your application for affordable housing has been processed, and I wanted to discuss your options with you directly. Ms. Wang: Thank you. I’ve been on the waiting list for almost three years, so I’m eager to understand where things stand. Housing Officer: Your number has come up for two units. Unit A is in the newer complex on the east side of the city. It’s a one-bedroom, on the seventh floor, with a small balcony. The rent is $8, 500 am o n t hin c l u d in g mana g e m e n t f ees . U ni tB i s inan o l d er b u i l d in g o n t h e w es t s i d e, n e a r t h e in d u s t r ia l zo n e . I t^{'} s a l soo n e - b e d roo m, b u t s l i g h tl y l a r g er — w i t ha se p a r a t e ki t c h e n r a t h er t hanaki t c h e n e tt e . R e n t i s$ 6,200. Ms. Wang: That’s a significant price difference. What’s the catch with the cheaper unit? Housing Officer: Honesty is important here. The west-side building is scheduled for a structural assessment next year. It was built in 1980 and there are some concerns about the concrete quality that we are monitoring. There is no immediate danger, but there is a possibility — I want to emphasize possibility — that the building may require significant renovation or even replacement within the next 5-7 years. Residents would be offered priority relocation if that happens, but it would mean moving again. Ms. Wang: That makes the decision easier. I’ve moved four times in the past six years. Stability is worth more to me than square footage or a separate kitchen. Let’s go with Unit A. Housing Officer: I think that’s a wise choice. Let me print the paperwork and we can finalize everything today. Move-in would be available from the first of next month.

Question 22: What is the rent difference between the two units?

(A) $1, 500 p er m o n t h (B)$ 2,300 per month (C) $3, 000 p er m o n t h (D)$ 4,500 per month

Question 23: What is the potential issue with Unit B?

(A) It is in a building from 1980 with concrete quality concerns that may require renovation or replacement. (B) The neighborhood has high crime rates that the housing officer is required to disclose. (C) The unit does not meet minimum square footage requirements for affordable housing. (D) The building management company has a history of poor maintenance and tenant complaints.

Conversation 5

Journalist: Commissioner, thank you for sitting down with me. The city’s homelessness numbers released last week show a 12% increase year-over-year. That’s the fourth consecutive year of increases. At what point does this become a crisis? Commissioner: I would argue it has been a crisis for some time. The question is what kind of crisis we acknowledge it to be. Is it a crisis of individual behavior, as some on the city council frame it? Or is it a crisis of housing affordability, as the data overwhelmingly indicates? Journalist: You seem to be rejecting the “individual behavior” framing. Commissioner: Let me be precise. Substance abuse and mental illness are real factors in chronic homelessness, and they require serious, compassionate, well-funded treatment services. But the primary driver of the increase we are seeing — the new homelessness — is economic. We have people working full-time jobs who cannot afford market-rate rent in this city. That is not a personal failure. That is a structural failure. Journalist: What specific policies are you advocating? Commissioner: Three things. First, zoning reform to allow more housing units to be built, faster. The supply in this city has not kept pace with population growth for twenty years. Second, a significant expansion of housing vouchers — direct rental assistance — which is the single most evidence-based tool for reducing homelessness. Third, “housing first” programs that place chronically homeless individuals directly into permanent housing with wraparound support services, rather than requiring them to achieve sobriety or employment as a precondition. Journalist: The zoning reform proposal has been blocked in the city council twice. What makes this time different? Commissioner: (pause) I wish I could tell you it is different. The political obstacles are formidable, and they come primarily from homeowners who benefit from the scarcity that makes housing unaffordable for others. I will continue to advocate because the alternative is accepting that working people sleeping in their cars is the new normal. I am not willing to accept that.

Question 24: According to the Commissioner, what is the primary driver of the increase in homelessness?

(A) Substance abuse and mental illness among the homeless population (B) Economic factors — people working full-time cannot afford market-rate rent (C) A decrease in government funding for homeless shelters and services (D) Migration from other cities that have less generous social welfare systems

Question 25: What is the “housing first” approach?

(A) Giving priority for housing vouchers to families with children before single adults (B) Placing chronically homeless individuals directly into permanent housing with support services, without sobriety or employment preconditions (C) Building temporary shelter facilities before constructing permanent affordable housing units (D) Requiring homeless individuals to complete job training programs before receiving housing assistance

Part 3：簡短獨白（Short Talks）

說明： 每段獨白後有三個問題，請從四個選項中選出最佳答案。

Talk 1

“The Oxford English Dictionary, that monumental record of the English language, was built on a premise that was, in its time, revolutionary. Instead of a small team of expert lexicographers deciding what words mean from on high, the OED was constructed through what we would now call ‘crowdsourcing.’ The project’s first editor, James Murray, sent out a call to the English-speaking public in 1879: read books, find quotations that illustrate how words are used, and mail them to us on slips of paper.

The response was extraordinary. Over the next several decades, millions of quotation slips poured into the ‘Scriptorium’ — Murray’s iron shed in Oxford where he and his small team sorted and organized the submissions. The contributors ranged from professors to prison inmates. One of the most prolific contributors was William Chester Minor, an American surgeon who submitted over 10,000 quotations. What Murray did not know for many years was that Minor was sending these slips from Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, where he was incarcerated for murder.

Minor’s story — told beautifully in Simon Winchester’s book ‘The Surgeon of Crowthorne’ — raises a profound and unsettling question: what do we do with knowledge produced by morally compromised people? Minor’s mental illness, which included paranoid delusions, does not negate his scholarly contribution. His quotations are woven into the fabric of the OED, and through the OED, into our understanding of the English language itself. The words he documented are no less real, no less useful, because their documenter was a murderer.

This question — can we separate the value of a contribution from the character of the contributor? — has become more urgent in our own time. When we learn that a beloved artist was abusive, that a revered scientist falsified data on one project though their other work appears sound, that a political leader who advanced important reforms also committed grave injustices — we face the same dilemma Murray faced with Minor. The easy answers — ‘we must dismiss the work entirely’ or ‘we must ignore the biography and focus only on the work’ — are almost never adequate to the complexity of the situation.

Perhaps the most honest response is to hold the tension without resolving it: to acknowledge both the value of the contribution and the reality of the harm, to refuse both the erasure of the work and the erasure of the victims. The quotations are real. The murder was real. Both truths demand to be held simultaneously.”

Question 26: How was the Oxford English Dictionary originally constructed?

(A) By a large team of professional lexicographers working in a modern office (B) Through crowdsourcing — members of the public sent in quotation slips illustrating word usage (C) By scanning and digitizing every book in the Oxford University library (D) Through a collaboration between Oxford University and the British government

Question 27: What was notable about contributor William Chester Minor?

(A) He contributed more quotations than any other volunteer in the project’s history. (B) He was a famous professor of linguistics who later renounced academic life. (C) He was an American surgeon who contributed from a mental asylum where he was incarcerated for murder. (D) He was James Murray’s brother who worked on the project in secret.

Question 28: What broader ethical question does Minor’s story raise, according to the talk?

(A) Whether criminals should ever be allowed to contribute to academic projects (B) Whether the OED’s crowdsourcing methodology was scientifically valid (C) Whether we can separate the value of a contribution from the character of the contributor (D) Whether dictionaries should include words coined by mentally ill individuals

Talk 2

“Welcome back to ‘The Science Hour.’ I’m joined by Dr. Amelia Santos, a neuroscientist whose lab has just published a fascinating paper on the effects of bilingualism on the aging brain. Dr. Santos, your study followed a cohort of 800 participants over fifteen years. What did you find?

‘Thank you. The headline finding is that bilingual individuals in our study developed dementia an average of 4.5 years later than monolingual individuals, even after controlling for education, socioeconomic status, and other lifestyle factors. That is a very large effect — larger than any pharmaceutical intervention currently available.’

That’s remarkable. What’s the proposed mechanism?

‘We believe it comes down to what we call cognitive reserve. Every time a bilingual person speaks, their brain is doing extra work: suppressing one language while activating another. This constant mental juggling, over a lifetime, builds and strengthens neural pathways. Think of it like cross-training for the brain. When age-related cognitive decline begins, the bilingual brain has more redundant pathways to draw on — more routes to the same destination. The pathology of dementia may be present, but the brain can compensate for longer.’

Does the age at which someone learns a second language matter?

‘The evidence suggests that lifelong bilingualism — learning both languages in childhood — provides the strongest protective effect. But acquiring a second language in adulthood still provides measurable benefits. The effect appears to be cumulative; every year of actively using two languages adds to the cognitive reserve.’

What proportion of the world’s population is bilingual?

‘Estimates vary, but roughly half to two-thirds of the global population speaks more than one language. In many parts of the world — India, much of Africa, many European nations — bilingualism or multilingualism is the norm, not the exception. The English-speaking world is something of an outlier in its monolingualism.’

What practical advice would you give to someone listening who wants to protect their cognitive health?

‘Learn a language. It doesn’t matter which one. It doesn’t matter if you never become fluent. The process of learning itself — the struggle to acquire new vocabulary, new grammar, new sounds — is the protective exercise. And start as early as possible, but also know that it is never too late. Our data showed cognitive benefits across all ages of second-language acquisition.’”

Question 29: How much later did bilingual individuals in the study develop dementia?

(A) An average of 2 years later (B) An average of 3 years later (C) An average of 4.5 years later (D) An average of 6 years later

Question 30: What is the proposed mechanism for the protective effect of bilingualism?

(A) Bilingual people tend to have healthier diets and exercise more than monolinguals. (B) The mental juggling of two languages builds cognitive reserve and redundant neural pathways. (C) Bilingual people have higher levels of formal education than monolinguals. (D) Languages contain protective chemicals that strengthen neural connections.

Question 31: What does Dr. Santos say about the age of language acquisition?

(A) Only languages learned in childhood provide cognitive benefits. (B) Adult language learning provides no cognitive protection at all. (C) Lifelong bilingualism has the strongest effect, but adult acquisition still provides measurable benefits. (D) The cognitive benefits of bilingualism only appear if one reaches native-level fluency.

Talk 3

The Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, founded by economist Muhammad Yunus in 1983, fundamentally challenged one of the most entrenched assumptions in banking: that the poor are not creditworthy. This assumption seemed like common sense — without collateral, without credit history, without stable income, how could the poor possibly be trusted to repay loans? The answer, Yunus demonstrated, was that they could — and in fact, the poor, particularly poor women, repaid their loans at rates that would make commercial banks envious.

The key innovation was the group lending model. Rather than lending to individuals, Grameen Bank lent to small groups of five borrowers, typically women from the same village. The group was collectively responsible for ensuring that each member repaid. This shifted the function of collateral from physical assets to social capital — the borrowers’ reputations and relationships within their community. The model also provided something that individual lending could not: peer support, shared knowledge, and collective negotiation power.

The results over four decades have been transformative. The bank has disbursed over $30 billion in loans, the vast majority to women who had been systematically excluded from the formal financial system. Default rates have consistently been below 2%. More than 60% of borrowers’ families have crossed above the poverty line. The model has been replicated in over 100 countries.

Criticism of microfinance has also accumulated. The most persistent concern is interest rates. While dramatically lower than informal moneylenders — who might charge 10% per month — Grameen Bank’s effective annual rates of 20-30% are substantially higher than conventional bank loans. Critics argue that this represents a form of poverty profiteering, extracting wealth from the poorest communities.

Yunus and his defenders offer a multi-part response. First, the comparison to conventional bank rates is misleading because the cost of administering thousands of tiny loans is fundamentally different from administering a few large ones. Second, the relevant comparison is not to conventional bank loans that the poor cannot access, but to the informal credit markets they can access, where rates are far higher. And third, the evidence on net impact is clear: borrowers are demonstrably better off, not worse off, for having access to microcredit.

The unresolved question is not whether microfinance helps — the evidence suggests it does — but whether it is as transformative as its early evangelists claimed. Microfinance has not, as some once hoped, made poverty history. It has provided millions of people with a modest tool for improving their economic circumstances — valuable, but not revolutionary.”

Question 32: What was the key innovation of Grameen Bank’s lending model?

(A) Using gold and jewelry as collateral instead of land titles (B) Lending to groups of five, where peer social capital replaced physical collateral (C) Requiring all borrowers to complete financial literacy training before receiving loans (D) Partnering with large international banks to reduce interest rates for poor borrowers

Question 33: What is the main criticism of microfinance raised in the talk?

(A) The default rates are too high for the model to be financially sustainable. (B) Interest rates of 20-30%, while lower than informal lenders, are substantially higher than conventional bank loans. (C) Most of the loans go to men rather than women, perpetuating gender inequality. (D) The model only works in Bangladesh and has failed in every other country.

Question 34: According to the talk, what is the “unresolved question” about microfinance?

(A) Whether microfinance helps people at all or actually makes them worse off (B) Whether the group lending model can work in urban areas as well as rural areas (C) Whether microfinance is as transformative as early advocates claimed, or is a more modest tool (D) Whether Muhammad Yunus’s Nobel Peace Prize was justified by the evidence

Talk 4

“Good morning, shareholders. I am pleased to report that fiscal year 2025 was a year of significant strategic progress, despite challenging macroeconomic conditions. Let me walk you through the key numbers and then discuss our outlook for the year ahead.

Total revenue reached $4.3 billion, an increase of 7% compared to the prior year. This growth was led by our digital services segment, which grew 18% and now represents 42% of total revenue, up from 38% last year. This shift toward recurring digital revenue is strategically important: it provides greater visibility into future earnings and reduces our exposure to cyclical downturns in our traditional business lines.

Our traditional manufacturing segment saw a modest decline of 2%, driven primarily by softening demand in the European market, where economic growth has been sluggish. This was partially offset by stronger-than-expected performance in Southeast Asia, particularly Vietnam and Indonesia, where our market share increased by three percentage points.

Profitability metrics were mixed. Gross margin expanded by 80 basis points to 38.2%, reflecting the favorable mix shift toward higher-margin digital products. However, operating margin contracted slightly from 15.1% to 14.7%, as we increased investment in research and development and in our sales organization to support our digital transformation.

We returned $800 million to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks this year, consistent with our commitment to disciplined capital allocation. Our balance sheet remains strong, with a net debt-to-EBITDA ratio of 1.2x, providing us with ample capacity to pursue strategic acquisitions that complement our digital capabilities.

Looking ahead to 2026, we are projecting revenue growth of 6% to 8%, with digital services expected to surpass 50% of total revenue for the first time. We anticipate operating margins to improve modestly as the investments we made in 2025 begin to yield productivity gains. The global economic outlook remains uncertain, with trade policy, inflation, and geopolitical tensions all posing potential headwinds. Our strategy is to control what we can control — operational execution, disciplined investment, and the steady transformation of our business model.

I will now take your questions.”

Question 35: By what percentage did the digital services segment grow?

(A) 7% (B) 12% (C) 18% (D) 24%

Question 36: Why did operating margin contract despite gross margin expansion?

(A) The company paid higher taxes than in the previous fiscal year. (B) The company increased investment in R&D and sales to support digital transformation. (C) The manufacturing segment experienced a sharp and unexpected decline in revenue. (D) The company made a large acquisition that temporarily reduced profitability.

Question 37: What does the company project for digital services in 2026?

(A) The segment will be spun off as an independent company. (B) Digital services will surpass 50% of total revenue for the first time. (C) Growth will slow to below 5% as the market becomes saturated. (D) The segment will be merged with manufacturing to create a unified product line.

Talk 5

“On November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall — that grim concrete scar that had divided a city, a nation, and a continent for twenty-eight years — was opened. The images are seared into our collective memory: crowds surging through checkpoints, strangers embracing, young people dancing atop the wall with hammers and chisels, chipping away at the symbol of their own imprisonment.

The standard narrative of the wall’s fall emphasizes the heroic agency of protest — the Monday demonstrations in Leipzig, the tens of thousands who poured into the streets chanting ‘Wir sind das Volk’ (‘We are the people’), the courage of East Germans who refused to be intimidated by a regime that had surveilled, imprisoned, and killed its own citizens with methodical brutality for four decades. This narrative is true, and it is inspiring. The wall fell because ordinary people risked their safety to demand freedom.

But there is a parallel narrative that is messier, more contingent, and in some ways more instructive. The wall fell in part because of a bureaucratic error. On the evening of November 9th, Gunter Schabowski, a member of the East German Politburo, held a press conference at which he was handed a memo about new travel regulations. The regulations were supposed to be a controlled, gradual loosening of travel restrictions. They were not intended to open the wall. Schabowski, who had not been briefed on the document and was visibly confused when a reporter asked when the regulations would take effect, replied that they would take effect ‘immediately, without delay.’

His statement was broadcast on West German television, which most East Germans could watch. Within hours, thousands of people had gathered at the border crossings, demanding to be let through. The border guards, who had received no instructions and could not reach their superiors, were faced with an impossible choice: shoot unarmed civilians demanding what had just been announced on television as their new right, or open the gates. They opened the gates.

The lesson is not that the wall fell by accident. The protest movement had created the conditions of pressure and instability that made the regime’s grip increasingly tenuous. But the specific timing — November 9th rather than November 12th or December 2nd — was the result of a miscommunication. History is a tapestry woven from intention and accident, from courage and confusion, from the deliberate actions of heroes and the unintended consequences of bureaucrats. We err when we simplify it into either pure agency or pure chance.”

Question 38: What does the talk describe as the “standard narrative” of the Berlin Wall’s fall?

(A) The wall fell because of economic pressure from Western countries. (B) The wall fell due to the heroic agency of protestors who risked their safety demanding freedom. (C) The wall fell because the Soviet Union collapsed and could no longer support East Germany. (D) The wall fell as the result of a long-negotiated diplomatic agreement between East and West.

Question 39: What role did Gunter Schabowski’s press conference play?

(A) He deliberately announced the opening of the wall as an act of defiance against the regime. (B) He mistakenly announced new travel regulations as taking effect “immediately,” triggering the crowd to gather. (C) He was the leader of the protest movement who called for citizens to march to the border. (D) He negotiated directly with West German leaders to peacefully open the border crossing.

Question 40: What broader lesson about history does the speaker draw?

(A) Historical events are determined entirely by the actions of powerful individuals. (B) History is purely accidental and no human intentions ever shape outcomes. (C) History is woven from both deliberate human actions and unintended consequences. (D) The Berlin Wall’s fall was unique and teaches us nothing about historical events more broadly.

第二部分：閱讀測驗（Reading Comprehension）

Part 1：詞彙和結構（Vocabulary & Structure）

說明： 請選出最適合填入空格的答案。中高級實戰難度的詞彙集中於近義詞辨析和慣用搭配。

Question 41

The negotiation process had reached a(n) ___ point; neither side was willing to concede anything further, yet the core disagreements remained unresolved.

(A) promising (B) impasse (C) breakthrough (D) beginning

Question 42

While the government’s stated policy was to reduce carbon emissions, its actual behavior ___ its commitment — approving new coal plants while issuing statements about climate action.

(A) reinforced (B) belied (C) confirmed (D) supported

Question 43

Only after the independent review board published its findings ___ the full extent of the data manipulation that had occurred.

(A) did the public learn (B) the public learned (C) the public did learn (D) had the public learned

Question 44

The historian’s latest book offers a ___ reassessment of the Cold War, challenging both the triumphalist Western narrative and the revisionist accounts that came before.

(A) superficial (B) redundant (C) provocative (D) predictable

Question 45

By the time the rescue team reached the stranded hikers, they ___ without food or shelter for nearly 48 hours.

(A) were (B) have been (C) had been (D) would be

Question 46

What the committee’s report lacked in scope, it ___ for in depth, focusing narrowly but exhaustively on the three most critical aspects of the crisis.

(A) compromised (B) compensated (C) substituted (D) surrendered

Question 47

The CEO’s resignation, ___ unexpected, did not come as a complete shock to those familiar with the board’s growing dissatisfaction.

(A) while (B) because (C) despite (D) so

Question 48

The artist’s refusal to ___ to commercial pressure was both admirable and, ultimately, financially ruinous.

(A) resist (B) succumb (C) adhere (D) conform

Question 49

Such was the ___ of the witness’s testimony that the prosecution rested its case after calling only two additional witnesses.

(A) ambiguity (B) obscurity (C) potency (D) vagueness

Question 50

The organization’s failure to act on the warnings it had received was not merely negligent but ___ — a deliberate choice to prioritize profit over safety.

(A) accidental (B) inadvertent (C) intentional (D) coincidental

Question 51

There is a growing ___ between the skills that universities teach and the skills that the modern economy demands.

(A) alignment (B) convergence (C) consensus (D) disconnect

Question 52

Not until every avenue of diplomatic resolution ___ will the use of economic sanctions be seriously considered.

(A) has been exhausted (B) is exhausting (C) will exhaust (D) exhausted

Question 53

The memoir’s distinctive voice ___ from the author’s willingness to reveal not just her triumphs but also her moments of pettiness, fear, and moral confusion.

(A) departs (B) derives (C) deviates (D) detracts

Question 54

It is essential that every member of the expedition ___ informed of the potential risks before signing the liability waiver.

(A) is fully (B) be fully (C) must be fully (D) will be fully

Question 55

The new policy, ___ well-intentioned, created perverse incentives that ultimately made the problem it was designed to solve substantially worse.

(A) however (B) since (C) while (D) unless

Part 2：段落填空（Cloze Test）

說明： 以下三篇短文各有五個空格，請選出最適合的答案。

Passage 1

Few professions have been (56) ___ transformed by technology in recent decades as journalism. The newspaper, which for more than a century was the dominant medium through which citizens understood their world, has seen its advertising revenue collapse and its readership migrate to digital platforms. The consequences have been severe: newsroom employment has fallen by roughly half in the United States since 2000, and newspapers that once served as the primary accountability mechanism for local government have vanished from thousands of communities.

Yet this crisis has also (57) ___ innovation. A new generation of digital-native news organizations — ProPublica, The Marshall Project, The Markup — has demonstrated that high-quality investigative journalism can be sustained through a combination of philanthropic support, membership models, and diversified revenue streams. Podcasting has revived long-form audio journalism for a new audience. Newsletters have created direct, subscription-based relationships between individual journalists and their readers.

The deeper challenge is not economic but (58) ___. Even as the supply of high-quality journalism has, in many respects, expanded, the public’s trust in journalism has eroded. Polling consistently shows that trust in media has fallen to historic lows, driven by political polarization, the weaponization of the term “fake news,” and real failures within the profession. A 2025 Reuters Institute study found that 42% of respondents across 46 countries actively avoid the news, citing its negative emotional impact.

Rebuilding trust will require the profession to confront its shortcomings honestly. This includes a (59) ___ of the “both sides” model of objectivity that has proven vulnerable to manipulation, greater transparency about sourcing and methodology, and a clearer distinction between news reporting and opinion journalism. It also requires news organizations to become genuinely more representative of the societies they serve — the demographic profile of American newsrooms still does not (60) ___ that of the country.

The stakes could hardly be higher. Democracy cannot function without a citizenry that shares a basic understanding of reality. Journalism, at its best, provides the informational infrastructure for democratic self-governance. Rebuilding that infrastructure is one of the defining challenges of our time.

Question 56

(A) minimally (B) superficially (C) as profoundly (D) slightly

Question 57

(A) suppressed (B) prevented (C) stimulated (D) discouraged

Question 58

(A) technical (B) epistemological (C) mechanical (D) operational

Question 59

(A) celebration (B) defense (C) rethink (D) reinforcement

Question 60

(A) exclude (B) surpass (C) mirror (D) exceed

Passage 2

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is one of the most popular personality assessment tools in the world, administered to an estimated two million people annually and used by Fortune 500 companies, universities, and government agencies. Its central appeal lies in its affirmative framing: there are no bad personality types, only different ones. The test sorts people into one of sixteen (61) ___ based on four dichotomies — introversion/extroversion, sensing/intuition, thinking/feeling, and judging/perceiving.

The test also has a significant problem: it lacks scientific (62) ___. Research psychologists have criticized the Myers-Briggs on multiple grounds. The categories are not stable over time — roughly 50% of test-takers get a different result when they take the test a second time, even within a few weeks. The underlying assumption that personality traits are binary is contradicted by evidence showing that most traits are distributed continuously. And the test does not reliably (63) ___ important outcomes such as job performance or career satisfaction.

The Myers-Briggs was developed not by research psychologists but by a mother-daughter team, Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers, who were deeply inspired by the theories of Carl Jung but had no formal training in psychometrics. The test was (64) ___ and launched in the 1940s, well before the development of modern personality psychology. The dominant model in academic psychology today is the Five-Factor Model, which identifies five broad dimensions of personality — openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism — that have been repeatedly validated across cultures and over time.

Why does the Myers-Briggs persist despite its scientific shortcomings? The answer likely lies in the (65) ___ power of its framing. A personality test that sorts you into a type with a name like “The Architect” or “The Mediator” is far more engaging than a test that tells you you are in the 73rd percentile for conscientiousness. The Myers-Briggs succeeds not as science but as story — a tool for self-narrative that helps people make sense of themselves and others. Its persistence is a reminder that in the marketplace of ideas, narrative resonance often matters more than empirical validity.

Question 61

(A) categories (B) dimensions (C) scales (D) hierarchies

Question 62

(A) popularity (B) validity (C) appeal (D) controversy

Question 63

(A) obscure (B) predict (C) ignore (D) question

Question 64

(A) researched (B) discredited (C) commercialized (D) abandoned

Question 65

(A) destructive (B) analytical (C) narrative (D) technical

Passage 3

The decline of insects — sometimes called the “insect apocalypse” — is one of the less visible but potentially (66) ___ consequences of human activity on the planet. A 2019 global meta-analysis published in the journal Biological Conservation suggested that more than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, with the total mass of insects falling by 2.5% per year. If these trends continue, the authors warned, insects as a class could be functionally extinct within a century.

The implications of insect decline (67) ___ far beyond the loss of butterflies and bees in our gardens. Insects are the foundation of terrestrial and freshwater food webs. They pollinate roughly 75% of flowering plants, including about 35% of global food crops. They decompose organic matter, recycling nutrients through ecosystems. They control pests. The economic value of these ecosystem services has been (68) ___ at hundreds of billions of dollars annually — a subsidy from nature that we receive for free.

The causes of insect decline are multiple and interacting. Habitat loss from agricultural intensification and urbanization is the primary driver. Pesticide use — particularly neonicotinoids, which are systemic and persist in the environment — has been (69) ___ to insect mortality even at sub-lethal concentrations. Climate change is shifting the ranges of insect species and disrupting the synchrony between insects and the plants they pollinate. Light pollution disrupts nocturnal insect behavior and navigation.

Addressing insect decline requires systemic changes rather than individual actions alone, though individual actions are not meaningless. Reducing pesticide use through regulatory reform, protecting and restoring insect habitats, creating insect corridors through urban and agricultural landscapes, and reducing light pollution are all (70) ___ interventions. As the biologist E.O. Wilson famously observed, if insects were to vanish, the terrestrial environment would collapse. The same cannot be said if humans were to vanish — the insects would thrive. Our relationship with the insect world is not one of stewardship but of dependence.

Question 66

(A) trivial (B) catastrophic (C) negligible (D) superficial

Question 67

(A) expand (B) extend (C) restrict (D) confine

Question 68

(A) underestimated (B) ignored (C) dismissed (D) estimated

Question 69

(A) linked (B) unrelated (C) opposed (D) resistant

Question 70

(A) impossible (B) ineffective (C) feasible (D) counterproductive

Part 3：閱讀理解（Reading Comprehension）

說明： 以下為中高級實戰難度的長文閱讀，包含學術論文型、政策公告型和社會評論型文章。

Passage 1

The “replication crisis” in psychology — the discovery, beginning around 2010, that many of the field’s most celebrated findings could not be reproduced when independent researchers repeated the original experiments — has prompted what some scholars call a “credibility revolution.” Large-scale replication projects, most notably the Reproducibility Project led by Brian Nosek and the Center for Open Science, have systematically attempted to replicate landmark findings across psychology. Their results have been sobering: across multiple large-scale efforts, only about 40% to 60% of findings in top-tier psychology journals have been successfully replicated.

The causes of the replication crisis are now well-documented. One is “p-hacking” — the practice of analyzing data in multiple ways and selectively reporting only the analyses that produce statistically significant results. Imagine a researcher who initially planned to compare two groups on a single measure but, upon finding no significant difference, tries comparing them on a different measure, or comparing different sub-groups, or adding or removing control variables, until a significant result emerges. The reported p-value fundamentally misrepresents the probability of the finding being a false positive because it doesn’t account for all the unreported analyses that were tried and discarded.

Another critical factor is publication bias — the tendency of journals to preferentially publish positive, novel, statistically significant results while rejecting null results or replications. This creates a distorted scientific record in which published findings are systematically unrepresentative of the actual distribution of evidence. A meta-analysis can only work with what is published, and if what is published is biased, the meta-analysis will be biased too.

The response from the psychological science community has been remarkably candid compared to other fields facing similar scrutiny. Reforms being adopted include pre-registration — publicly committing to hypotheses, methods, and analysis plans before collecting data, which prevents p-hacking by making transparent the difference between planned and exploratory analyses. Registered Reports, a publication format in which journals commit to publishing a study based on its methodology rather than its results, address publication bias directly. Open data and open materials policies make it possible for other researchers to verify and build on published work.

Perhaps the most profound shift is cultural. The replication crisis has forced psychologists to confront uncomfortable truths about how the incentive structures of academic career advancement — publish or perish, novelty over reliability, quantity over quality — had produced a scientific literature that was both voluminous and unreliable. The reforms now underway represent an attempt to realign those incentives with the actual goals of science: not to produce surprising, counterintuitive findings that generate media coverage, but to produce knowledge that is likely to be true.

Question 71: According to large-scale replication projects, what percentage of findings in top-tier psychology journals have been successfully replicated?

(A) 20% to 40% (B) 40% to 60% (C) 60% to 80% (D) 80% to 100%

Question 72: What is “p-hacking” as described in the passage?

(A) Illegally accessing computer systems to manipulate research data before publication (B) Analyzing data in multiple ways and selectively reporting only the analyses that produce significant results (C) Falsifying the entire dataset to support a desired research hypothesis (D) Using outdated statistical software that produces incorrect p-value calculations

Question 73: What is a “Registered Report”?

(A) A government document that legally certifies a researcher is qualified to conduct studies (B) A publication format where journals commit to publish based on methodology, not results (C) A type of statistical analysis that automatically corrects for publication bias (D) A database tracking which researchers have replicated and which have not

Passage 2

INTERNAL MEMORANDUM

To: Senior Leadership Team From: Chief Risk Officer Date: May 3, 2026 Re: Quarterly Risk Assessment — Escalated Concern

This memorandum elevates a concern originally flagged in our standard Quarterly Risk Assessment. I am raising it to your attention directly because it meets our threshold for “emerging strategic risk” — a risk that is uncertain in both likelihood and magnitude but whose potential consequences warrant proactive attention.

The Concern: Deepfake-Enabled Corporate Fraud

Over the past 12 months, our cybersecurity team has tracked a sharp increase in what industry analysts term “deepfake-enabled business communication compromise” — fraudulent schemes in which AI-generated audio or video of executives is used to deceive employees into unauthorized transactions or data disclosures.

The threat has evolved rapidly. Early deepfakes were detectable by careful observers, but current-generation tools can produce voice clones from as few as three seconds of source audio and video clones that are indistinguishable from authentic recordings in real-time communication. Among the reported incidents in our industry over the past quarter:

A multinational bank lost $35 million when an employee received a video call that appeared to show the company’s CFO authorizing an urgent wire transfer. The call was a deepfake.
A tech company’s HR department released sensitive employee data after receiving a voicemail that appeared to be from the CEO requesting employee salary records for a “compensation review.”
A competitor’s product launch was disrupted when deepfake videos of their executives making inflammatory political statements circulated widely before they could be debunked.

Our Current Vulnerability

We currently rely on a single-factor verbal confirmation protocol for transactions above $500, 000. O u r a ssess m e n t i s t ha tt hi s p ro t oco l i s n o l o n g er a d e q u a t e a g ain s tt h ec u rre n tt h re a tl an d sc a p e . W ereco mm e n d im pl e m e n t in g am u lt i - c hann e l v er i f i c a t i o n p ro t oco l re q u i r in g in d e p e n d e n t co n f i r ma t i o n t h ro ug h tw ose p a r a t eco mm u ni c a t i o n c hann e l s (e . g ., e mai l co n f i r ma t i o n pl u s a c a ll - ba c k t o a p re - re g i s t ere d n u mb er) f or a llt r an s a c t i o n s ab o v e$ 100,000.

Proposed Next Steps:

Executive team discussion of threat severity and risk appetite — scheduled for May 10.
Implementation of multi-channel verification by June 1 if approved.
Employee awareness training on deepfake threats — recommended for all staff with financial or data access authority.
Engagement of a specialized external cybersecurity firm to conduct a deepfake-specific penetration test of our defenses.

I do not believe this threat is imminent or catastrophic, but the trend lines are concerning and the response time for preventive measures — before an incident occurs — is closing. I look forward to discussing this at the May 10th meeting.

Question 74: What is the primary concern raised in the memorandum?

(A) A ransomware attack has encrypted the company’s financial databases. (B) Deepfake technology enabling corporate fraud through fake executive communications. (C) Competitors are using AI to steal the company’s intellectual property. (D) The company’s social media accounts were hacked and used to post false information.

Question 75: What is the recommended solution for transactions?

(A) All transactions must now be approved in person by at least two executives. (B) A multi-channel verification through two separate communication channels for transactions above $100,000. (C) All digital transactions should be suspended until the threat is fully neutralized. (D) External auditors must review every transaction before it can be processed.

Question 76: What example is given of deepfake-enabled fraud at a multinational bank?

(A) A deepfake CEO video caused the bank’s stock price to drop by 15% in one day. (B) An employee transferred $35 million after receiving a deepfake video call from someone appearing to be the CFO. (C) Hackers used deepfake voices to access the bank’s vault by bypassing voice recognition security. (D) A deepfake news report about the bank’s bankruptcy caused a customer panic and run on deposits.

Passage 3

Nudge theory, as articulated by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein in their influential 2008 book “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness,” offers a compelling synthesis of behavioral economics and public policy. The core insight is straightforward: because human decision-making is predictably biased — we procrastinate, we are overly influenced by defaults, we discount the future excessively — policy can be designed to steer people toward better choices while preserving their freedom to choose otherwise.

The most celebrated nudge is the automatic enrollment in retirement savings plans. In the traditional model, employees must actively choose to enroll in their employer’s 401(k) plan. Many don’t, even when the employer matches contributions — leaving free money on the table due to inertia. By switching the default so that employees are automatically enrolled (with the option to opt out), participation rates increase from roughly 40% to over 90%. The choice set is identical; only the default has changed.

The elegance of the nudge framework is its promise to transcend traditional political divisions. For those on the left who believe government has a role in improving citizen welfare, nudges offer a lighter-touch alternative to mandates and bans. For those on the right concerned about government overreach and individual liberty, nudges preserve freedom of choice while acknowledging that pure free choice often produces suboptimal outcomes.

However, a decade and a half of experience with nudge policies has revealed limitations that the initial enthusiasm often obscured. First, many widely touted nudges produce smaller effects when tested at scale than in the original small-scale experiments — a classic problem of replication that the field is now grappling with. Second, nudges tend to be most effective for people who are already close to making the desired choice and least effective for people with the most severe behavioral or structural barriers.

A deeper critique concerns the ethics of nudging itself. Even “libertarian paternalism,” as Thaler and Sunstein call their approach, involves one group — policymakers, “choice architects” — designing the environment in which another group makes decisions. This raises questions of transparency, consent, and democratic accountability. If the public doesn’t know they’re being nudged, is their consent meaningful? If nudges are designed by unaccountable “nudge units” in government, where is the democratic oversight?

The most persuasive defense of nudging is pragmatic rather than philosophical: the alternative to nudging is not a neutral choice environment free of influence. There is no such thing as neutral choice architecture. Every design choice — from the default option on a form to the order of items on a menu — influences behavior. The question is not whether to influence choices but whether to do so deliberately, transparently, and with the goal of promoting well-being, or to leave those influences to the accidents of history or the interests of commercial actors whose incentives may not align with public welfare.

Question 77: According to the passage, what is the effect of changing from opt-in to automatic enrollment in retirement plans?

(A) Participation rates increase from approximately 40% to over 90%. (B) Participation rates decrease because employees feel coerced. (C) There is no measurable change in participation rates. (D) The effect varies so dramatically between countries that no average can be given.

Question 78: According to the passage, what is one limitation of nudge policies that has emerged with experience?

(A) Nudges are illegal in most countries and cannot be implemented in practice. (B) Many widely touted nudges produce smaller effects at scale than in original experiments. (C) Nudges only work on highly educated populations and fail with less educated groups. (D) Nudges have been shown to have permanent negative effects on mental health.

Question 79: What is the “most persuasive defense of nudging” identified in the passage?

(A) Nudges have been scientifically proven to work in every domain tested. (B) There is no neutral choice architecture; every design influences behavior, so deliberate, transparent influence is better than accidental or commercial influence. (C) Nudging is the only policy tool that has been endorsed by both major political parties. (D) The public overwhelmingly supports nudging once the concept is explained to them.

Passage 4

In 1897, the Indiana state legislature nearly passed a bill that would have legally redefined the value of pi — the mathematical constant representing the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter — as exactly 3.2. The bill was the brainchild of an amateur mathematician named Edwin J. Goodwin, who believed he had discovered a method for “squaring the circle” (a problem already proven impossible) and wanted the state to adopt his findings into law, generously offering to allow Indiana schools to use his “discovery” royalty-free while requiring royalties from other states.

The bill passed the Indiana House of Representatives unanimously — 67 to 0 — and proceeded to the Senate, where it might have become law had a Purdue University mathematics professor named Clarence Waldo not happened to be in the Statehouse that day on unrelated business. Waldo was informed of the bill and, horrified, intervened to explain its absurdity to sufficient senators that the bill was indefinitely postponed and never resurrected.

This episode is often recounted as a humorous anecdote about legislative incompetence — the punchline being that politicians nearly voted to change a mathematical constant, as if mathematics were subject to democratic deliberation. But the deeper lesson is more subtle and more troubling. The Indiana pi bill illustrates the fundamental problem of legislative bodies making decisions about technical matters that their members lack the expertise to evaluate. The representatives who voted for the bill were not stupid; they simply had no framework for assessing a claim that was dressed in the language of geometric proofs.

This problem is not historical; it is contemporary and intensifying. Legislatures routinely make decisions about climate policy, biotechnology regulation, artificial intelligence governance, and public health measures that require sophisticated understanding of complex scientific and technical evidence. The mismatch between the technical complexity of the issues and the generalist composition of legislative bodies creates a structural vulnerability that bad-faith actors — industry lobbyists, ideological advocates — are skilled at exploiting.

The solution is not to replace democratic governance with technocratic rule by experts — a path with its own history of catastrophic failures. It is to build institutions that bridge the gap: well-funded, independent scientific advisory bodies with statutory authority to provide legislators with assessments that are rigorous, transparent, and resistant to political pressure. The goal is not to let scientists make the laws, but to ensure that legislators making laws about science have access to an accurate understanding of what the science actually says.

Question 80: What would the Indiana pi bill have done?

(A) Funded new mathematics education programs in state schools (B) Legally redefined the value of pi as exactly 3.2 (C) Required all state construction projects to use metric measurements (D) Banned the teaching of geometry in public schools

Question 81: Who prevented the bill from becoming law?

(A) The governor of Indiana vetoed the bill after public outcry from mathematicians. (B) A Purdue University mathematics professor who happened to be at the Statehouse intervened. (C) The bill’s author, Edwin Goodwin, withdrew it after realizing his mathematical errors. (D) The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that legislatures cannot legislate mathematical constants.

Question 82: What “deeper lesson” does the passage draw from the pi bill episode?

(A) Politicians should never be trusted with any decisions involving science or mathematics. (B) Legislative bodies face a structural vulnerability when making decisions about technical matters they lack expertise to evaluate. (C) The democratic process is fundamentally incompatible with scientific progress. (D) Amateur mathematicians should be legally prohibited from proposing legislation.

Passage 5

Consider the salmon. Once upon a time — which is to say, before the widespread damming of rivers, before industrial agriculture, before climate change began warming rivers to temperatures salmon cannot tolerate — these remarkable fish performed one of the most extraordinary migrations in the natural world. Born in freshwater streams, they journeyed to the ocean, spent years growing to maturity in the vast Pacific, and then navigated back, across thousands of miles of open ocean, to the exact stream of their birth, where they spawned and died, their bodies decomposing to release ocean-derived nutrients into the forest ecosystem.

The salmon is what ecologists call a “keystone species” — a species whose impact on its ecosystem is disproportionately large relative to its abundance. Salmon runs transported millions of kilograms of marine-derived nitrogen and phosphorus into coastal forests each year. Bears, eagles, and dozens of other species depended on the annual salmon run for survival. Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest built cultures, economies, and spiritual traditions around the salmon for thousands of years.

Today, wild salmon populations in the Pacific Northwest have declined to a fraction of their historic abundance. The Columbia River system alone once supported annual runs of 10 to 16 million salmon; today, many runs are at 2% to 5% of those numbers, and some have been extirpated entirely. The Snake River sockeye was listed as endangered in 1991, and despite decades of conservation effort, it remains critically imperiled.

The conventional policy response to species decline — the logic of the Endangered Species Act and most conservation frameworks — is to protect the species. Regulate fishing. Restore habitat. Build fish ladders around dams. These measures are important, and they have slowed the decline. But they have not reversed it, because they address the symptoms rather than the system. The salmon is not declining in isolation; it is declining because the entire hydrological and ecological system it depends on has been fundamentally altered by dams, by agricultural water withdrawals, by the conversion of forests to farmland, by the warming of rivers.

The deeper question the salmon’s predicament raises is whether the piecemeal, species-by-species approach to conservation is adequate to an era of systemic ecological change. Protecting individual species within degraded ecosystems may be like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic — conscientious, well-intentioned, and ultimately futile if the ship is going down. The alternative is an approach that treats ecosystems as integrated wholes, that recognizes the connections between species and their habitats, and that addresses the root causes of ecological decline rather than just its most visible symptoms. This is not a more expensive or more radical approach — it is, in the long run, the only approach that can work.

Question 83: According to the passage, what makes salmon a “keystone species”?

(A) They are the most abundant fish species in the Pacific Ocean ecosystem. (B) Their impact on the ecosystem is disproportionately large relative to their abundance. (C) They are the only fish species that can survive in both fresh and salt water. (D) They have been commercially harvested for thousands of years by multiple cultures.

Question 84: What does the passage suggest as the limitation of current conservation approaches?

(A) Conservation efforts have been too focused on the Pacific Northwest and neglected other regions. (B) The Endangered Species Act is legally too weak to enforce meaningful protection measures. (C) Piecemeal, species-by-species protection addresses symptoms rather than the systemic causes of ecological decline. (D) Not enough funding has been allocated to build fish ladders and restore spawning habitats.

Question 85: What alternative conservation approach does the passage advocate?

(A) Completely eliminating all human activity from areas where endangered species live (B) Focusing exclusively on the most endangered species and accepting that others will go extinct (C) Treating ecosystems as integrated wholes and addressing root causes of ecological decline (D) Relying on captive breeding programs rather than wild habitat protection

第三部分：寫作測驗（Writing）

Part 1：中譯英（Chinese-to-English Translation）

說明： 請將以下中文句子翻譯成英文。這些句子涵蓋中高級常見的複雜句型。

Question 86

這項調查的結果之所以令人震驚，並非因為它揭露了多少受訪者感到孤獨，而是因為感受到最強烈孤獨感的族群竟然是大學生。

參考詞彙：shocking / not because…but because / reveal / loneliness / demographic group / college students

參考答案：The results of this survey were shocking not because they revealed how many respondents felt lonely, but because the demographic group experiencing the most intense loneliness turned out to be college students.

Question 87

相較於過去人們對於科技發展所抱持的樂觀態度，現代社會對於人工智慧的潛在風險顯然更為警惕。

參考詞彙：compared to / optimistic attitude / hold / toward technological development / modern society / far more / wary of / potential risks

參考答案：Compared to the optimistic attitude people held toward technological development in the past, modern society is clearly far more wary of the potential risks of artificial intelligence.

Question 88

這座城市透過將廢棄工業區改建為公共綠地和文化空間，成功地逆轉了人口外流與經濟衰退的趨勢。

參考詞彙：by / abandoned industrial zones / transform into / public green spaces / cultural venues / reverse / population outflow / economic decline

參考答案：By transforming abandoned industrial zones into public green spaces and cultural venues, the city successfully reversed the trend of population outflow and economic decline.

Question 89

唯有當我們願意承認自己對許多事物其實一無所知的時候，真正的學習才有可能開始。

參考詞彙：only when / be willing to / admit / know nothing about / genuine learning / become possible

參考答案：Only when we are willing to admit that we actually know nothing about many things can genuine learning begin.

Question 90

這篇評論文章最犀利的地方在於它不直接攻擊對手的主張，而是系統性地拆解了支撐那些主張的基本假設。

參考詞彙：sharpest aspect / commentary / not by…but by / directly attack / opponent’s claims / systematically / dismantle / underlying assumptions

參考答案：The sharpest aspect of this commentary is that it does not attack its opponent’s claims directly but systematically dismantles the underlying assumptions supporting those claims.

Part 2：引導寫作（Guided Writing）

說明： 請根據以下提示，寫一篇約 150-200 字的英文短文。這是中高級實戰級的寫作題目。

題目：Is Social Media Strengthening or Weakening Democracy?

社群媒體曾被譽為民主化的工具──讓每個人都能發聲，促進公民參與。然而近年來，社群媒體與假訊息傳播、社會兩極化、隱私侵害等問題的連結日益受到關注。請撰寫一篇短文討論社群媒體對民主的影響，並說明你的立場。

大綱建議：

社群媒體對民主的正面影響（至少兩點）
社群媒體對民主的負面影響（至少兩點）
你的整體評估與建議

參考答案（約 200 字）：

When social media emerged in the early 2000s, many observers hailed it as a democratizing force — a tool that would empower ordinary citizens, bypass traditional media gatekeepers, and facilitate the kind of grassroots political mobilization that strengthens democratic participation. The Arab Spring protests of 2011 seemed to validate this optimistic narrative.

In retrospect, this assessment was incomplete at best and naive at worst. Social media has indeed lowered barriers to political participation. Citizens can now organize protests, share firsthand accounts of events, and hold public officials accountable in ways that were previously impossible. Marginalized voices that traditional media ignored can find audiences online.

However, the same features that enable democratic participation also enable democratic erosion. The algorithmic curation that keeps users engaged also creates filter bubbles and echo chambers that amplify polarization. The ease of sharing content enables misinformation to spread faster than fact-checking can correct it. Foreign adversaries and domestic bad actors have exploited these vulnerabilities to manipulate public opinion and undermine trust in democratic institutions. Most fundamentally, the business model of social media — maximizing user engagement to sell advertising — creates a structural incentive to promote emotionally charged, divisive content over nuanced, factual discourse.

My assessment is that social media, in its current form, is doing more to weaken democracy than to strengthen it. The solution is not to abandon these platforms — they have become too deeply embedded in social and political life. Rather, it is to regulate them in ways that align their business incentives with democratic values: requiring algorithmic transparency, holding platforms accountable for the content they algorithmically amplify, and breaking up monopolies that concentrate too much power over public discourse in too few corporate hands. Technology shaped democracy; democracy must now shape technology.

第四部分：口說測驗（Speaking）

Part 1：朗讀（Reading Aloud）

説明： 請朗讀以下短文，注意發音、語調和意群斷句。Mock 5 實戰級的朗讀材料難度最高。

朗讀短文：

“I used to believe that the opposite of courage was cowardice, and that to be brave meant to act without fear. I no longer believe either of these things. The true opposite of courage is not cowardice but conformity — the willingness to go along with what is expected, to stay silent when speaking is costly, to look away when looking is painful. And to be brave is not to be unafraid; it is to be afraid and to act anyway. The most courageous people I have known were not fearless. They were terrified — of losing their jobs, of losing their relationships, of losing their freedom. They acted not because they were certain of the outcome, but because they were certain that silence was a form of complicity they could no longer live with. Courage is not the absence of fear; it is the judgment that something else is more important than fear.”

發音重點：

cowardice：/ˈkaʊərdɪs/，三個音節，重音在第一音節
courage：/ˈkɜːrɪdʒ/，兩個音節，注意 /ɜːr/ 是捲舌長母音
conformity：/kənˈfɔːrməti/，四音節，重音在第二音節
complicity：/kəmˈplɪsəti/，四音節，重音在第二音節
absence：/ˈæbsəns/，兩個音節，注意 /æ/ 要張大嘴巴

Part 2：回答問題（Question Response）

說明： 請用 3-5 句完整的英文回答以下問題。Mock 5 實戰級的口說要求更高層次的思考。

Question 1: What do you think is the greatest challenge facing humanity in the 21st century? Why?

參考答案：I believe the greatest challenge facing humanity is not a single problem but a meta-problem: our collective inability to effectively coordinate responses to large-scale, slow-moving threats that require short-term sacrifice for long-term survival. Climate change is the paradigmatic example. The science has been clear for decades. The necessary interventions are known. The technology exists. What is missing is not knowledge or capability but political will, international coordination, and the capacity of democratic systems to prioritize the interests of future generations over the interests of current voters. This coordination failure manifests across multiple domains — pandemic preparedness, antibiotic resistance, nuclear proliferation, artificial intelligence safety. In each case, the pattern is the same: we possess the technical capacity to address the threat, but our institutional and psychological apparatus for collective action is inadequate. Solving the coordination problem is therefore a prerequisite to solving almost everything else.

Question 2: Do you believe that technology is making people more or less empathetic? Why?

參考答案：I believe technology is making people more empathetic in some dimensions and less empathetic in others — and the net effect depends heavily on how the technology is used. On the positive side, technology has exposed people to perspectives, experiences, and suffering they would otherwise never encounter. A refugee crisis that unfolds on the other side of the world can humanize distant strangers in ways that a newspaper headline never could. Social movements that build solidarity across borders depend on this connective capacity. On the negative side, the dominant mode of digital communication — brief, text-based, asynchronous — strips away precisely the nonverbal cues (tone of voice, facial expression, body language, even the awkward pauses) that convey emotional nuance and build empathy. And the design of engagement-maximizing algorithms tends to surface content that triggers outrage and tribalism rather than compassion and understanding. I think the deeper question is not whether technology as such makes us more or less empathetic, but how we can redesign our digital environments to cultivate the empathy that face-to-face interaction naturally develops.

Question 3: What makes a good teacher, in your experience?

參考答案：In my experience, the best teachers share three qualities that go beyond mere content expertise. First, they possess genuine curiosity about their subject — not a static body of knowledge they are transmitting, but a living inquiry they are still engaged in. When a teacher is still asking questions of their own field, that energy is contagious; students sense that they are being invited into an ongoing conversation rather than being force-fed conclusions. Second, great teachers see their students clearly. They notice who is struggling silently, who is bored because they are under-challenged, whose apparent laziness is actually fear of failure. This kind of attention is rare and exhausting, and it requires institutions to give teachers the time and support to provide it. Third, great teachers hold intellectual humility and intellectual standards in creative tension. They make it safe to be wrong — to offer a tentative idea, to change one’s mind — while also insisting on rigor, evidence, and clarity of thought. The classroom becomes a place where thinking is taken seriously but the thinker is never attacked.

Question 4: Do you think it is more important to follow your passion or to be practical when choosing a career?

參考答案：This framing presents a false choice that I think causes a great deal of unnecessary suffering. The binary assumes that passion and practicality are inherently at odds — that the things we love are, by their nature, economically unrewarded, and that economically rewarded work is, by its nature, unloved. This is true for some people and some careers, but it is not the general rule. A more useful framework comes from the concept of “career capital” — the idea, developed by Cal Newport, that passion is more often a consequence of mastery than a prerequisite for it. When you develop rare and valuable skills, you gain the leverage to shape your work toward the things you find meaningful. The practical advice, then, is not “follow your passion” or “be practical” but “get good at something valuable, then use the leverage that skill provides to steer your career toward what matters to you.” The people I know who love their work did not, for the most part, find it through a lightning bolt of pre-existing passion. They built something they became passionate about through the process of becoming excellent at it.

Question 5: What role should universities play in fostering ethical thinking and moral development among students?

參考答案：Universities have historically understood their mission to include moral formation, not just intellectual training. The medieval university was fundamentally a religious institution. The 19th-century liberal arts college explicitly aimed to develop character. Somewhere in the 20th century, particularly in research universities, this dimension of education was quietly abandoned — partly in the name of value-neutral scientific objectivity, partly because moral formation is difficult to measure and funders like measurable outcomes. I believe this abandonment was a mistake. Universities should not, and in a pluralistic society cannot, prescribe a single moral framework. But they can and should create conditions for ethical development: courses that grapple seriously with moral philosophy and ethical case studies, not as abstract exercises but as preparation for decisions students will actually face; co-curricular programs that involve students in community engagement and cross-cultural encounter; and faculty who model ethical seriousness, not just career advancement, in their own professional lives. The alternative is to produce technically competent graduates who have never been asked to think seriously about what their competence should be used for. That is not education; it is training, and training without ethical formation is dangerous.

Part 3：看圖申論（Picture-Based Discussion）

説明： 請觀察以下情境並回答問題。Mock 5 的申論題最接近真實中高級口說難度。

情境描述： 一張圖表顯示 2000 年至 2025 年間三個世代的「對主要社會機構的信任度變化」。數據涵蓋三組：18-30 歲（Z 世代與千禧世代後段）、31-50 歲（千禧世代與 X 世代）、51 歲以上（嬰兒潮世代與沉默世代）。信任度以百分比表示：

政府：年輕人從 2000 年的 38% 降到 2025 年的 18%；中年人從 42% 降到 28%；老年人從 56% 降到 39%。媒體：年輕人從 2000 年的 45% 降到 2025 年的 14%；中年人從 48% 降到 25%；老年人從 62% 降到 38%。大學：年輕人從 2000 年的 65% 降到 2025 年的 42%；中年人從 68% 降到 48%；老年人從 75% 降到 56%。

附帶的調查問題詢問「你認為社會體制是否對你的世代公平？」結果：18-30 歲族群只有 23% 回答「是」；31-50 歲族群有 38%；51 歲以上族群有 54%。

Question A: What story does this data tell about trust in institutions across generations?

參考答案：The data tells a striking and troubling story. Trust in major social institutions has declined across all three age groups and all three institutions over the past 25 years — but the decline is dramatically steeper for younger generations. The trust gap between young and old, which was already present in 2000, has widened substantially. For government, the gap grew from 18 percentage points to 21 points. For media, from 17 points to 24 points. For universities, from 10 points to 14 points.

Several factors likely explain this generational gradient. Younger generations have come of age during a period of serial institutional failure: the financial crisis of 2008, which exposed the recklessness and impunity of the financial system; the Iraq War, launched on false premises; repeated government shutdowns and political dysfunction; the climate crisis, on which institutional action has been grossly inadequate; and the pandemic, which revealed the fragility of public health infrastructure. My parents’ generation could still believe, with some justification, that institutions were broadly functional and well-intentioned even if imperfect. My generation has been given repeated, compelling evidence to the contrary.

The survey finding that only 23% of young people believe society is fair to their generation captures something beyond trust — it captures a sense of betrayal. Young people today face housing costs, education costs, and healthcare costs that are dramatically higher relative to income than previous generations faced, while wages have stagnated and job security has eroded. They did not create these conditions, but they are living with their consequences. Low trust is not irrational cynicism; it is a rational response to experience.

Question B: What are the potential consequences for democracy when trust in institutions is low, particularly among younger generations?

參考答案：Low institutional trust among younger generations poses a set of interlocking risks to democratic governance. The most obvious risk is declining democratic participation. People who believe institutions are corrupt or indifferent have less motivation to vote, to engage in civic organizations, or to consider careers in public service. This creates a vicious cycle: the most public-spirited young people opt out of institutional politics, and the quality of institutional leadership declines further, confirming the cynicism that drove the opt-out.

A second risk is vulnerability to anti-system political movements. When trust in institutions collapses, the political center — which depends on the belief that incremental change through existing institutions is possible — loses its constituency. Voters become attracted to populist outsiders who promise to smash the system, not reform it. This dynamic is not speculative; it is visible across multiple democracies.

A third and more subtle risk concerns the loss of what sociologists call “epistemic common ground.” In a high-trust society, disagreements about values and policy occur within a shared understanding of facts. When institutional trust collapses, that shared factual foundation erodes. Different segments of the population inhabit different information ecosystems, making genuine democratic deliberation essentially impossible. A democracy in which citizens cannot agree on basic facts cannot function.

The most hopeful response to this data is not to deny its validity but to take it seriously as a call to institutional reform. Institutions that have lost the trust of the young need to earn it back — through transparency, accountability, and demonstrated commitment to serving the public interest rather than entrenched interests. Trust, once broken, is rebuilt through actions, not words.

Question C: The data shows that universities have retained more trust than government or media. Why do you think this is, and what responsibility does this place on universities?

參考答案：Universities have retained more trust than government or media, though the decline is still significant. I think several factors account for this relative resilience. First, universities deliver a tangible service that people directly experience — education — and the value of that service, while questioned in terms of cost, is less contested than the services of government or media. Second, the academic ideal of evidence-based inquiry, while imperfectly realized, provides a normative framework that distinguishes universities from explicitly political or commercial institutions. Third, the personal nature of the university experience — the relationship between student and professor, the sense of intellectual community — creates bonds of trust that abstract institutions struggle to sustain.

This retained trust places significant responsibility on universities. They are now, by default, one of the few institutions that significant portions of the population, including skeptical young people, still regard as at least partially credible. This means universities must be exceptionally careful guardians of their own intellectual integrity. The temptation to become partisan spaces — to trade scholarly credibility for political influence or commercial partnerships — must be resisted, because universities may be one of the last institutions standing between a functioning democratic public sphere and one in which no institution commands enough trust to mediate between competing truth claims.

Concretely, this means universities should recommit to viewpoint diversity — ensuring that multiple intellectual perspectives are genuinely present and engaged on campus, not just tolerated. It means transparent and rigorous conflict-of-interest policies when accepting research funding. And it means a institutional culture that rewards intellectual humility and the willingness to be wrong, which are the qualities of mind that make trust possible. The university’s comparative trust advantage is both a gift and an obligation.

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# Answer Key

Listening

Part 1: 問答

Q	Answer	Q	Answer	Q	Answer
1	B	6	B	11	B
2	B	7	B	12	B
3	B	8	B	13	B
4	B	9	B	14	B
5	B	10	B	15	B

Part 2: 簡短對話

Q	Answer	Q	Answer	Q	Answer
16	B	19	B	22	B
17	C	20	B	23	A
18	B	21	C	24	B
—	—	—	—	25	B

Part 3: 簡短獨白

Q	Answer	Q	Answer	Q	Answer
26	B	31	C	36	B
27	C	32	B	37	B
28	C	33	B	38	B
29	C	34	C	39	B
30	B	35	C	40	C

Reading

Q	Answer	Q	Answer	Q	Answer	Q	Answer
41	B	51	D	61	A	71	B
42	B	52	A	62	B	72	B
43	A	53	B	63	B	73	B
44	C	54	B	64	C	74	B
45	C	55	C	65	C	75	B
46	B	56	C	66	B	76	B
47	A	57	C	67	B	77	A
48	B	58	B	68	D	78	B
49	C	59	C	69	A	79	B
50	C	60	C	70	C	80	B
—	—	—	—	—	—	81	B
—	—	—	—	—	—	82	B
—	—	—	—	—	—	83	B
—	—	—	—	—	—	84	C
—	—	—	—	—	—	85	C

解鎖內容

GEPT-中高級-Mock-5

GEPT 中高級全真模擬試題 Mock 5

第一部分：聽力測驗（Listening Comprehension）

Part 1：問答（Question-Response）

Part 2：簡短對話（Short Conversations）

Part 3：簡短獨白（Short Talks）

第二部分：閱讀測驗（Reading Comprehension）

Part 1：詞彙和結構（Vocabulary & Structure）

Part 2：段落填空（Cloze Test）

Part 3：閱讀理解（Reading Comprehension）

第三部分：寫作測驗（Writing）

Part 1：中譯英（Chinese-to-English Translation）

Part 2：引導寫作（Guided Writing）

第四部分：口說測驗（Speaking）

Part 1：朗讀（Reading Aloud）

Part 2：回答問題（Question Response）

Part 3：看圖申論（Picture-Based Discussion）

Listening

Part 1: 問答

Part 2: 簡短對話

Part 3: 簡短獨白

Reading

關係圖譜

目錄

Q	Answer	Q	Answer	Q	Answer	Q	Answer
41	B	51	D	61	A	71	B
42	B	52	A	62	B	72	B
43	A	53	B	63	B	73	B
44	C	54	B	64	C	74	B
45	C	55	C	65	C	75	B
46	B	56	C	66	B	76	B
47	A	57	C	67	B	77	A
48	B	58	B	68	D	78	B
49	C	59	C	69	A	79	B
50	C	60	C	70	C	80	B
—	—	—	—	—	—	81	B
—	—	—	—	—	—	82	B
—	—	—	—	—	—	83	B
—	—	—	—	—	—	84	C
—	—	—	—	—	—	85	C

Q	Answer	Q	Answer	Q	Answer	Q	Answer
41	B	51	D	61	A	71	B
42	B	52	A	62	B	72	B
43	A	53	B	63	B	73	B
44	C	54	B	64	C	74	B
45	C	55	C	65	C	75	B
46	B	56	C	66	B	76	B
47	A	57	C	67	B	77	A
48	B	58	B	68	D	78	B
49	C	59	C	69	A	79	B
50	C	60	C	70	C	80	B
—	—	—	—	—	—	81	B
—	—	—	—	—	—	82	B
—	—	—	—	—	—	83	B
—	—	—	—	—	—	84	C
—	—	—	—	—	—	85	C

GEPT-中高級-Mock-5

GEPT 中高級 全真模擬試題 Mock 5

第一部分：聽力測驗（Listening Comprehension）

Part 1：問答（Question-Response）

Part 2：簡短對話（Short Conversations）

Part 3：簡短獨白（Short Talks）

第二部分：閱讀測驗（Reading Comprehension）

Part 1：詞彙和結構（Vocabulary & Structure）

Part 2：段落填空（Cloze Test）

Part 3：閱讀理解（Reading Comprehension）

第三部分：寫作測驗（Writing）

Part 1：中譯英（Chinese-to-English Translation）

Part 2：引導寫作（Guided Writing）

第四部分：口說測驗（Speaking）

Part 1：朗讀（Reading Aloud）

Part 2：回答問題（Question Response）

Part 3：看圖申論（Picture-Based Discussion）

Listening

Part 1: 問答

Part 2: 簡短對話

Part 3: 簡短獨白

Reading

威威學習信

關係圖譜

目錄

GEPT 中高級全真模擬試題 Mock 5

Q	Answer	Q	Answer	Q	Answer	Q	Answer
41	B	51	D	61	A	71	B
42	B	52	A	62	B	72	B
43	A	53	B	63	B	73	B
44	C	54	B	64	C	74	B
45	C	55	C	65	C	75	B
46	B	56	C	66	B	76	B
47	A	57	C	67	B	77	A
48	B	58	B	68	D	78	B
49	C	59	C	69	A	79	B
50	C	60	C	70	C	80	B
—	—	—	—	—	—	81	B
—	—	—	—	—	—	82	B
—	—	—	—	—	—	83	B
—	—	—	—	—	—	84	C
—	—	—	—	—	—	85	C