GEPT 高級全真模擬試題 Mock 4

第一部分：聽力測驗（Listening Comprehension）

Part 1：短篇問答（10 題）

Question 1

The “veil of ignorance” thought experiment in Rawls’s theory of justice asks us to choose principles of fairness without knowing our own position in society. But some critics argue that this abstraction strips away exactly the particular commitments — to family, community, culture — that make justice meaningful to actual people. Is this a fair criticism?

(A) Rawls never intended the veil of ignorance to describe how people actually reason — it’s a justificatory device, not a psychological one. The question isn’t “would you, with all your attachments, choose these principles?” but “are these principles that no one could reasonably reject, regardless of their position?” The particular commitments don’t disappear; they’re just bracketed for the purpose of the thought experiment. (B) Rawls’s theory is completely disconnected from reality and should be abandoned. (C) Particular commitments are irrelevant to justice — only abstract principles matter.

Question 2

How should we interpret the growing body of research suggesting that many corporate diversity training programs have limited or even counterproductive effects on workplace inequality?

(A) The research proves that diversity is an unsolvable problem. (B) The findings need to be read carefully rather than cynically. The problem isn’t that diversity initiatives per se are ineffective — it’s that brief, mandatory, compliance-oriented training is ineffective. The programs that do show results share common features: they’re voluntary, they’re integrated into broader structural changes (mentorship, transparent promotion criteria, accountability metrics), and they focus on specific behavioral skills rather than attitude change. (C) All diversity training should be eliminated immediately.

Question 3

The historian Yuval Noah Harari has argued that human rights are essentially a “fiction” — not in the sense of being false, but in the sense of being an intersubjective reality that exists only because large numbers of people believe in it, like money or nations. Does this framing undermine or strengthen the case for human rights?

(A) Harari’s framing completely destroys the foundation of human rights. (B) Harari’s point, properly understood, is descriptive, not normative. All large-scale human cooperation depends on shared fictions — laws, corporations, currencies. Acknowledging that human rights are constructed rather than discovered in nature doesn’t weaken them; it clarifies that their continued existence depends on our collective commitment to maintaining them. The danger isn’t recognizing them as intersubjective — it’s forgetting that intersubjective realities are real in their consequences. (C) Human rights are scientifically provable facts, not fictions of any kind.

Question 4

The concept of “technological determinism” — that technology develops according to its own internal logic and shapes society, rather than the reverse — has been largely discredited in academic sociology. But doesn’t the smartphone revolution suggest there’s something to it? Nobody planned for billions of people to spend hours a day on social media.

(A) Technology is completely neutral — society always controls how tools are used. (B) The smartphone case actually illustrates the opposite of determinism. The technology didn’t dictate its own use — a complex interplay of business models (advertising-based platforms), design choices (variable rewards, infinite scroll), and regulatory environments (or lack thereof) produced the outcome we observe. Different choices at any of those levels could have produced very different outcomes. The technological substrate enables and constrains, but it doesn’t determine. (C) The smartphone proves technological determinism is correct after all.

Question 5

In debates about free speech on university campuses, we often hear that the solution to speech we disagree with is “more speech, not less.” But does this principle scale to an era of algorithmic amplification, coordinated disinformation, and harassment campaigns?

(A) The “more speech” principle is absolute and should never be questioned. (B) The principle was articulated in a different information environment — one of pamphlets, public lectures, and limited print media. In an era where bad-faith actors can exploit algorithmic amplification to drown out good-faith deliberation, the principle needs recalibration, not abandonment. The goal remains maximal freedom of expression — but we need to be honest that the machinery of modern platforms introduces new forms of distortion that the original principle didn’t anticipate and can’t fully address. (C) We should abandon free speech entirely in favor of strict government content licensing.

Question 6

The “replication crisis” has called into question findings across psychology, medicine, and economics. But some worry the response — preregistration, larger samples, stricter statistical thresholds — is creating a new problem: a bias toward safe, incremental research at the expense of the kind of bold, exploratory work that has historically produced breakthroughs. How do we balance rigor and creativity?

(A) We should prioritize rigor over everything else, even if it means no breakthroughs. (B) This is a genuine tension that the research community is actively grappling with. One emerging model is to formally distinguish between “exploratory” and “confirmatory” research, with different standards and reporting norms for each. Exploratory work — generating hypotheses from data — should be labeled and valued as such, not dressed up as confirmatory through post-hoc statistical rationalization. The breakthrough work then feeds into preregistered confirmatory studies, creating a pipeline from creativity to rigor. (C) The replication crisis was overblown — we should return to pre-crisis norms.

Question 7

If you were designing a curriculum for “digital citizenship” — the skills people need to function as informed participants in a digital democracy — what would be the core competencies?

(A) Just teach everyone how to code — that’s the only digital skill that matters. (B) At minimum: source evaluation (distinguishing credible information from misinformation across media types), algorithmic literacy (understanding that feeds are curated by profit-driven systems, not neutral mirrors of reality), privacy self-management (understanding the trade-offs of data sharing), and — crucially — the deliberative skills to engage constructively with people one disagrees with, which turns out to be the hardest to teach and the most urgently needed. (C) Digital citizenship is impossible — people will always be manipulated online.

Question 8

Some environmental philosophers argue that granting legal rights to natural entities — rivers, ecosystems, even species — is the logical next step in the expansion of moral and legal consideration that has gradually extended from propertied white men to all humans. Is this a serious proposal or a category error?

(A) It’s a category error — natural entities can’t have rights because they can’t assert them. (B) The proposal is more practical than it sounds. Several countries — Ecuador, Bolivia, New Zealand — have already incorporated rights of nature into their legal frameworks. New Zealand’s Whanganui River has been granted legal personhood, with appointed guardians to represent its interests in court. The mechanism isn’t that the river hires a lawyer; it’s that the legal system creates a framework in which the river’s ecological integrity can be defended without requiring a human plaintiff to demonstrate personal harm. Whether this is philosophically coherent or merely a useful legal fiction depends on your jurisprudential commitments. (C) Only humans should ever have legal rights — the line should never move.

Question 9

The “paradox of thrift” in economics suggests that while saving is individually prudent, if everyone saves more during a recession, aggregate demand falls and the recession deepens — making everyone worse off. Does this paradox have implications beyond economics?

(A) The paradox only applies to economic systems and has no broader relevance. (B) The underlying dynamic — that individually rational behavior can produce collectively irrational outcomes — is pervasive. It describes why overfishing depletes fisheries even though no individual fisher wants the stock to collapse, why everyone standing up at a concert makes everyone see worse than if everyone stayed seated, and why firms underinvest in training because each fears the trained employee will be poached by competitors. The paradox of thrift is a special case of a much broader class of collective action problems. (C) The paradox proves that individual rationality is always harmful.

Question 10

How do you think the rise of synthetic media — deepfakes, voice cloning, AI-generated text — will affect the evidentiary value of audio and video recordings in legal proceedings?

(A) Courts will simply ban all digital evidence — problem solved. (B) The shift will be profound. For most of the past century, audio and video recordings enjoyed a privileged evidentiary status — they were treated as fundamentally reliable in ways that witness testimony was not. That presumption is eroding. The legal system will need to develop a new infrastructure of authentication — digital watermarking, chain-of-custody protocols, forensic detection tools — and, equally importantly, juries will need to be educated that seeing is no longer believing. The burden of proof may shift back toward witness testimony and circumstantial evidence in ways that would have seemed regressive a decade ago. (C) Deepfakes won’t affect legal proceedings at all — courts can always tell what’s real.

Part 2：長篇對話（10 題）

Conversation 1 (Questions 11-13):

Two senior diplomats discuss a multilateral negotiation.

W: The climate finance negotiations have stalled completely. The developing country bloc is insisting on $400 bi ll i o nann u a ll y in c l ima t e a d a pt a t i o nan d mi t i g a t i o n f inan ce b y 2030, w i t h t h e maj or i t y in g r an t sr a t h er t han l o an s . T h e d e v e l o p e d co u n t r i es a reo ff er in g$ 150 billion, heavily weighted toward loans and private-sector mobilization.

M: The numbers gap is large, but the more fundamental impasse is about trust. The $100 billion annual pledge from 2009 was never fully met. The developing countries’ position isn’t just about the dollar figure — it’s about whether any commitment made in these negotiations is credible.

W: That’s fair, but there’s a domestic politics dimension the developing country negotiators don’t fully appreciate. In my country, the climate finance commitment is routinely attacked by the opposition as “sending taxpayers’ money abroad.” An all-grant commitment at $400 billion is politically impossible for at least half the donor countries. It’s not that we don’t want to — it’s that our governments would fall if we tried.

M: Then we need to unbundle the commitment creatively. Partition it into categories with different political dynamics: a core grant component for adaptation in the most vulnerable countries (which polls surprisingly well with publics in donor countries when framed as humanitarian assistance), a larger concessional loan component for middle-income mitigation projects, and a separate mobilization target for private finance catalyzed by public guarantees. Each component has a different political calculus.

W: That’s the most constructive framing I’ve heard in weeks. If we can present the total as a package — with each component’s rationale clearly articulated — we might have a path to something both sides can live with.

What is the fundamental impasse in the climate finance negotiations? (A) The developing countries refuse to accept any form of climate finance at all. (B) Beyond the dollar gap, there’s a trust deficit because previous commitments were never fully met. (C) The developed countries want to provide more money than the developing countries are willing to accept. (D) International law prohibits grants for climate adaptation.

What domestic political problem does the woman identify? (A) Climate finance is too popular and is crowding out other budget priorities. (B) An all-grant commitment at $400 billion is politically impossible — governments would fall if they tried. (C) The developing country negotiators are politically more powerful than the donor country leaders. (D) The public in donor countries universally supports unlimited climate finance.

What solution does the man propose? (A) Abandon the negotiations and let each country act independently. (B) Unbundle the commitment into categories with different political dynamics — grants for vulnerable countries, concessional loans for middle-income projects, and private finance mobilization. (C) Reduce the total commitment to $50 billion to make it politically viable. (D) Shift all climate finance to the private sector with no public money involved.

Conversation 2 (Questions 14-16):

A film director and a studio executive discuss a script.

M: I’ve read the revised script. The third act is much tighter — the confrontation scene between the protagonist and her father actually lands emotionally now. But I have a structural concern about the first forty-five minutes. The pacing is deliberately slow, which I understand is an artistic choice — you’re building atmosphere, establishing the world — but test audiences are going to check out before they get to the payoff.

W: The slow burn is essential to what the film is doing. The protagonist’s emotional isolation has to be felt by the audience viscerally — if we rush to the plot mechanics, we lose the texture that makes the third act catharsis meaningful. This isn’t a thriller. It’s a character study that happens to have thriller elements.

M: I respect that. But “character study” and “opening weekend” are in tension here. The film has a $45 million budget. We need audiences, and audiences — particularly younger ones — have been conditioned by a decade of streaming content to expect a hook in the first ten minutes. What if we opened with a brief flash-forward — thirty seconds of the climactic scene, out of context, just enough to create narrative hunger — and then returned to your slow-build structure?

W: Flash-forwards are a cliché, and they telegraph the destination in a way that undermines the journey. But… there might be another way to create a hook that’s organic to the material. The protagonist has that recurring dream — the one we glimpse twice in the current cut. What if we opened with a more extended version of it, something visually arresting and tonally unsettling, that establishes the emotional stakes without revealing plot?

M: A dream sequence keeps the character focus while giving us a visually compelling opening that works in trailers. I like it. Can you storyboard a version for us to look at next week?

What is the studio executive’s concern about the script? (A) The third act confrontation scene is emotionally unsatisfying. (B) The deliberately slow pacing of the first 45 minutes risks losing the audience before the payoff. (C) The film’s budget is too small to execute the director’s vision. (D) The protagonist’s character arc is inconsistent and confusing.

Why does the director resist the executive’s suggested fix? (A) She doesn’t know how to shoot a flash-forward effectively. (B) Flash-forwards are clichéd and telegraph the destination, undermining the journey. (C) The studio doesn’t have the budget for additional scenes. (D) The test audiences specifically disliked flash-forward sequences.

What compromise do they reach? (A) The director agrees to cut 20 minutes from the first act. (B) The director will open with an extended version of the protagonist’s recurring dream. (C) The executive agrees to leave the film exactly as is with no changes. (D) They decide to abandon the slow-burn approach entirely.

Conversation 3 (Questions 17-20):

A university dean and a department chair discuss a controversial faculty hire.

W: Dean Morrison, I want to discuss the search committee’s recommendation for the senior philosophy position. The committee has unanimously recommended Dr. Kowalski, but I’ve received seven letters from faculty — some in philosophy, some in other departments — expressing concern about her published work on genetic differences in cognitive traits across populations.

M: I’ve read the letters, and I’ve read Dr. Kowalski’s work. Let me be direct: do you believe her research meets the standards of academic rigor and ethical conduct that we expect of our faculty?

W: That’s exactly the question, and I don’t think it has a simple answer. Her methodology is statistically sophisticated — no one credible has identified errors in her data or analysis. But her work engages with questions — about race, genetics, and intelligence — that have a long and deeply painful history, including the legitimization of discriminatory policies. The concern isn’t about the integrity of her statistical analysis; it’s about the responsible framing of findings that can cause real harm if misappropriated.

M: That’s a distinction with a real difference. Academic freedom protects the right to pursue controversial research questions, but it doesn’t absolve researchers of the responsibility to contextualize their findings. If Dr. Kowalski’s published work acknowledges the historical misuse of this line of inquiry, explicitly delimits what her findings do and don’t show, and addresses the ethical dimensions of the research — then the concern shifts from her to the critics. Does her work do those things?

W: That’s the crux. In her earlier papers, she was — I think one could fairly say — insufficiently attentive to the framing concerns. Her more recent work has been much more careful. The question is whether we judge by the trajectory or the full record.

M: If she’s demonstrably responsive to legitimate scholarly criticism — if her work has evolved in response to the discourse — that’s actually a strong positive signal for a senior hire. Academic maturity is the willingness to revise one’s thinking in response to evidence and argument. Draft a hiring recommendation that directly addresses the controversy, the evolution of her work, and the safeguards you’d propose — an ethics advisory structure for the research program, public-facing materials that contextualize the findings, an explicit commitment to engagement with critics.

What is the controversy surrounding Dr. Kowalski’s candidacy? (A) Her academic credentials have been called into question by an investigative report. (B) Her research on genetic differences in cognitive traits across populations has raised concerns about responsible framing given the history of this line of inquiry. (C) She has been accused of fabricating data in multiple published studies. (D) She lacks the teaching experience required for a senior faculty position.

What distinction does the Dean draw regarding academic freedom? (A) Academic freedom means there are no limits whatsoever on what researchers can study or publish. (B) Academic freedom protects controversial research but doesn’t absolve researchers from responsibly contextualizing their findings. (C) Academic freedom only applies to the sciences, not to the humanities or social sciences. (D) Academic freedom is an outdated concept that should be replaced.

What evolution in Dr. Kowalski’s work does the department chair note? (A) She has stopped doing research on controversial topics entirely. (B) Her more recent work has been much more careful about framing, while her earlier papers were less attentive to these concerns. (C) Her statistical methodology has significantly deteriorated over time. (D) She has shifted to entirely different research questions that are less controversial.

What does the Dean recommend for the hiring recommendation? (A) Reject the candidate outright because her research is too controversial. (B) Address the controversy directly, note the evolution of her work, and propose safeguards including an ethics advisory structure. (C) Hire the candidate but forbid her from continuing the controversial line of research. (D) Defer the decision indefinitely until the controversy blows over.

Part 3：長篇獨白（10 題）

Monologue 1 (Questions 21-23):

From a university lecture on postcolonial literature.

“In 1989, the Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe published an essay that would become one of the most discussed pieces of literary criticism in the English-speaking world. The essay was called ‘An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness,’ and its central argument was explosive: that Joseph Conrad, widely celebrated as one of the great modernists, was ‘a thoroughgoing racist,’ and that his most famous novel dehumanized Africans to the point where they functioned not as characters but as a backdrop — ‘a metaphysical battlefield devoid of all recognizable humanity’ — against which European psychological drama could unfold.

The essay provoked decades of debate. Some critics accused Achebe of anachronism — judging a 1902 novel by late-20th-century standards. Others defended Conrad by arguing that Heart of Darkness was actually a critique of colonialism, that Kurtz’s descent into brutality was a condemnation of empire, not a celebration of it. Achebe’s response to both defenses was characteristically sharp: the critique of colonialism in Heart of Darkness, he argued, was about what colonialism does to Europeans. The Africans remain props. ‘Can nobody see the preposterous and perverse arrogance,’ he asked, ‘in thus reducing Africa to the role of props for the break-up of one petty European mind?’

What makes Achebe’s intervention so enduring isn’t just the specific argument about one novel — it’s the paradigm shift it represented. He insisted that literary criticism must attend to the lived experience of the people being represented, not just the artistic intentions of the writer doing the representing. The ‘universality’ that Western criticism claimed for Conrad’s novel was revealed as a partial perspective — the perspective of readers who had never had to see themselves through the kind of gaze that Conrad’s novel directs at Africans. That methodological challenge — who gets to determine what’s universal, and from what position? — continues to reshape literary studies.”

What was Achebe’s central argument about “Heart of Darkness”? (A) Conrad was a brilliant writer whose novel should be taught in every African school. (B) Conrad was “a thoroughgoing racist” whose novel dehumanized Africans, reducing them to a backdrop for European psychological drama. (C) The novel is not worth discussing because it is too old to be relevant. (D) Conrad’s novel should be judged solely on its technical literary merits, not on its political implications.

How did Achebe respond to the defense that the novel criticizes colonialism? (A) He conceded that the defense was valid and withdrew his criticism. (B) He argued the critique is about what colonialism does to Europeans — Africans remain props. (C) He agreed that Conrad was actually anti-colonialist and praised the novel’s political stance. (D) He refused to engage with the defense because he considered it beneath serious consideration.

What broader paradigm shift does the lecturer attribute to Achebe’s essay? (A) It proved that literary criticism should only focus on the author’s intentions. (B) It insisted that criticism must attend to the lived experience of represented peoples, challenging the claimed “universality” of Western critical perspectives. (C) It demonstrated that postcolonial literature is inherently superior to European literature. (D) It showed that all literary criticism is inherently subjective and therefore meaningless.

Monologue 2 (Questions 24-26):

From a podcast on the history of computing.

“The story we tell about the personal computer revolution usually centers on a handful of famous names — Jobs and Wozniak in a garage, Gates dropping out of Harvard. But this narrative erases a figure whose contribution was, in certain respects, more foundational than any of them: Douglas Engelbart.

In 1968, at what later became known as ‘The Mother of All Demos,’ Engelbart presented — in a single 90-minute session — the computer mouse, hypertext linking, real-time collaborative document editing, video conferencing, and a graphical user interface with windows. Any one of these would have been a career-defining achievement. Engelbart demonstrated all of them simultaneously, on a system he and his team had built essentially from scratch. The audience of roughly 1,000 computer scientists gave him a standing ovation.

But Engelbart’s vision was more radical than the technology. He wasn’t trying to build a better office tool. He was trying to augment human intelligence — to create systems that would help humanity collectively solve the increasingly complex problems — environmental degradation, resource allocation, social conflict — that threatened its survival. This was the ‘mother’ part of the demo: not just new hardware, but a new relationship between humans and information.

Why isn’t Engelbart a household name? Partly because his vision was too big. The personal computer industry that emerged in the 1970s and 80s was built on a narrower, more commercially viable vision — computing as personal productivity and entertainment, not as collective intelligence augmentation. Engelbart’s ideas were absorbed in fragments (the mouse, the GUI) while their animating philosophy was largely forgotten. The irony is that today, as we grapple with AI alignment, information ecosystem collapse, and planetary-scale coordination problems, Engelbart’s original question — how do we get smarter together? — feels more urgent than ever.”

What did Engelbart demonstrate at the 1968 demo? (A) The first working prototype of a smartphone. (B) The computer mouse, hypertext, collaborative editing, video conferencing, and graphical user interface — all in one session. (C) A new programming language that would become the standard for decades. (D) The first artificial intelligence system capable of passing the Turing test.

What was Engelbart’s deeper motivation, according to the speaker? (A) To make as much money as possible from his inventions. (B) To augment human intelligence so humanity could collectively solve the complex problems threatening its survival. (C) To build the fastest computer in the world. (D) To replace all human workers with automated systems.

Why, according to the speaker, is Engelbart not a household name? (A) His inventions didn’t work and were abandoned by the industry. (B) His vision was too broad — the PC industry adopted his inventions in fragments while forgetting their animating philosophy of collective intelligence augmentation. (C) He refused to patent his inventions, so no company could commercialize them. (D) He died before any of his inventions became commercially available.

Monologue 3 (Questions 27-30):

From a public lecture on architecture and social control.

“Space is never neutral. That’s the starting insight of what’s sometimes called ‘critical spatial theory’ — the idea that the built environment doesn’t just reflect social relations; it actively produces them. The benches in a park that are divided into individual seats with armrests in the middle aren’t just benches. They’re a decision that sleeping is not a permitted activity. The absence of public restrooms in a downtown area isn’t just an oversight. It’s a spatial expression of the decision that certain bodies — homeless bodies, bodies with medical conditions, bodies caring for young children — are not welcome.

This isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s a description of how design choices, made for a variety of reasons — security, maintenance costs, aesthetic preferences — accumulate into environments that enable some behaviors and disable others, that welcome some populations and exclude others. The architectural historian Dianne Harris has called this ‘the architecture of exclusion by design.’ The exclusion doesn’t announce itself — there are no signs saying ‘homeless people not welcome’ — but the environment communicates the message clearly to those who need to hear it.

The most insidious forms of exclusion through design are those that masquerade as something else. ‘Hostile architecture’ — spikes on ledges, divided benches, armrests placed at intervals — is defended as being about maintenance or safety. But as the geographer Don Mitchell has documented, the cumulative effect is to criminalize the basic biological necessity of rest for those with nowhere else to go. The question spatial theory forces us to ask is not just ‘what does this space look like?’ but ‘what does this space DO — who does it welcome, who does it exclude, and what behaviors does it normalize or punish?’”

What is the central claim of critical spatial theory as presented? (A) Architecture is a purely aesthetic discipline with no social implications. (B) The built environment actively produces social relations — it enables some behaviors and populations while disabling others. (C) All architects are consciously designing spaces to exclude certain groups. (D) Public spaces only work when they are completely open and unrestricted.

How does the speaker characterize “hostile architecture”? (A) As a legitimate crime-prevention strategy that benefits everyone equally. (B) As decisions that masquerade as maintenance or safety while criminalizing basic biological necessities for those with nowhere else to go. (C) As an unavoidable consequence of limited public budgets for urban maintenance. (D) As a minor aesthetic issue that has been exaggerated by social critics.

What question does spatial theory ask us to consider? (A) “What does this space look like?” (B) “What does this space DO — who does it welcome, who does it exclude, and what behaviors does it normalize or punish?” (C) “How much did this space cost to build?” (D) “Who was the architect who designed this space?”

The word “insidious” in this context most nearly means: (A) obvious (B) harmful in a subtle or gradual way (C) beneficial (D) accidental

第二部分：閱讀測驗（Reading Comprehension）

Part 1：高階字彙（15 題）

The documentary’s ________ of the whistleblower as mentally unstable, rather than morally courageous, drew sharp condemnation from press freedom organizations. (A) vindication (B) portrayal (C) exoneration (D) celebration

The negotiations were ________ by a fundamental disagreement over verification mechanisms — neither side trusted the other to comply without intrusive monitoring. (A) facilitated (B) accelerated (C) hamstrung (D) concluded

The philosopher’s argument was ________ subtle — it required the reader to hold several apparently contradictory propositions in mind simultaneously before the synthesis emerged. (A) crudely (B) deceptively (C) superficially (D) bluntly

The corporation’s environmental pledges were dismissed as ________ by activists, who noted that the company had simultaneously lobbied against the very regulations it claimed to be voluntarily exceeding. (A) genuine (B) greenwashing (C) substantive (D) comprehensive

The historian’s analysis sought to ________ the myth that the empire’s decline was caused by moral decadence, demonstrating instead the role of concrete economic and military factors. (A) perpetuate (B) reinforce (C) debunk (D) celebrate

The court’s ruling was ________ — it explicitly declined to address the constitutional question, resolving the case on narrow procedural grounds instead. (A) sweeping (B) definitive (C) narrow (D) expansive

The painter’s late work is characterized by an almost ________ quality — forms seem to dissolve into light, boundaries between objects bleed into each other, and the viewer is left uncertain where one thing ends and another begins. (A) crystalline (B) liminal (C) rigid (D) stark

The treaty, rather than resolving the conflict, merely ________ it — grievances that had been suppressed by the terms of the agreement resurfaced with renewed intensity a decade later. (A) resolved (B) sublimated (C) terminated (D) eliminated

The critics ________ the novelist for her sentimental treatment of poverty, arguing that her portrayal of “the noble poor” romanticized deprivation rather than illuminating its structural causes. (A) lauded (B) excoriated (C) celebrated (D) praised

The witness’s testimony was ________ — she was unable to maintain her account under cross-examination, and the contradictions in her story became increasingly apparent. (A) compelling (B) unshakable (C) impeachable (D) irrefutable

The diplomat was known for her ________ approach to negotiation — she never revealed her bottom line, always maintained multiple options, and left every counterpart uncertain whether she was genuinely willing to walk away. (A) transparent (B) candid (C) opaque (D) straightforward

The scientific consensus on climate change, far from being ________ as some media coverage suggests, is overwhelming: over 97% of actively publishing climate scientists agree that human activity is the primary driver of recent warming. (A) settled (B) contested (C) unified (D) unanimous

The architecture critic argued that the new civic center, with its blank concrete walls and absence of human-scale detail, was an act of ________ aggression against the very citizens it was meant to serve. (A) aesthetic (B) unintentional (C) architectural (D) passive

The study’s methodology was ________ by independent reviewers, who identified serious flaws in the sampling strategy and statistical analysis that undermined the paper’s conclusions. (A) praised (B) corroborated (C) replicated (D) eviscerated

The politician’s speech was a masterclass in ________ — it simultaneously promised everything to everyone while committing to nothing that could be held against her later. (A) clarity (B) equivocation (C) transparency (D) candor

Part 2：克漏字（10 題）

Passage 1 (Questions 46-50):

The “Dunning-Kruger effect” — the tendency of unskilled individuals to overestimate their ability — has become one of the most widely cited psychological phenomena in popular discourse. It is also one of the most widely __46__. The original 1999 study by Justin Kruger and David Dunning found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance, rating themselves near the 60th percentile when they actually scored in the 12th.

However, subsequent research has __47__ the popular interpretation in important ways. A 2020 study by Gilles Gignac and colleagues, using large representative samples and more sophisticated statistical methods, found that the effect is significantly __48__ than the original study suggested — and that much of what appears to be a cognitive bias may actually be a statistical artifact: the combination of the better-than-average effect (most people rate themselves above average) with regression to the mean. When these factors are controlled, the Dunning-Kruger pattern largely __49__.

This doesn’t mean the original finding was fraudulent. It means that psychological phenomena, particularly those that __50__ with our intuitions, require careful replication before they become canonical. The Dunning-Kruger effect’s popularity in popular discourse may have more to do with its appeal as a narrative — “ignorant people don’t know they’re ignorant” — than with its robustness as an empirical finding.

(A) cited (B) misinterpreted (C) celebrated (D) corroborated

(A) confirmed (B) replicated (C) complicated (D) simplified

(A) stronger (B) weaker (C) identical (D) permanent

(A) intensifies (B) persists (C) disappears (D) amplifies

(A) conflict (B) resonate (C) contradict (D) clash

Passage 2 (Questions 51-55):

The concept of “learned helplessness” — first identified by psychologist Martin Seligman in the late 1960s — describes a phenomenon in which animals or humans, having been exposed to uncontrollable adverse events, subsequently fail to take action to avoid them even when escape becomes __51__. The original experiments, conducted on dogs exposed to inescapable electric shocks, showed that the animals later failed to learn a simple avoidance behavior — jumping over a low barrier — that control animals learned immediately.

The implications for human psychology are profound. Learned helplessness has been proposed as a mechanism __52__ depression, academic underachievement, and even the persistence of poverty. The theory suggests that when people repeatedly encounter situations in which their actions have no __53__ effect on outcomes — whether that’s a child in a chaotic classroom, an employee in a dysfunctional bureaucracy, or a citizen under an unresponsive government — they may internalize a generalized belief in their own powerlessness. This belief then becomes self-fulfilling: the belief that one cannot change things prevents the very actions that could produce change.

Crucially, learned helplessness is not __54__ — it’s learned, it can be unlearned. Seligman himself later shifted his research focus to “learned optimism” and the conditions that can __55__ helplessness. Interventions that provide experiences of mastery, that teach people to reframe setbacks as specific and temporary rather than global and permanent, and that build genuine communities of support have shown measurable effectiveness in reversing the pattern.

(A) impossible (B) available (C) distant (D) unlikely

(A) preventing (B) alleviating (C) underlying (D) contradicting

(A) discernible (B) negligible (C) random (D) predictable

(A) reversible (B) permanent (C) curable (D) temporary

(A) reinforce (B) perpetuate (C) induce (D) reverse

Part 3：閱讀理解（15 題）

Passage A (Questions 56-58):

The “Ship of Theseus” is one of the oldest thought experiments in Western philosophy, first recorded by Plutarch in the first century CE. The Athenians, the story goes, preserved the ship in which the hero Theseus had sailed to Crete by replacing each rotting plank with a new one as it deteriorated. Over time, every original piece of wood was replaced. The question: was the ship that remained still the Ship of Theseus? If not, at what point did it cease to be? If you had saved all the original planks and assembled them into a second ship, which one — if either — would be the “real” Ship of Theseus?

The puzzle endures because it exposes a deep uncertainty about the nature of identity over time. Is identity a matter of continuity of material substance (the atoms that make the thing up)? Or is it a matter of continuity of form, pattern, or function? Or is identity something that doesn’t inhere in the thing itself at all, but is conferred by social convention — the ship is the Ship of Theseus because we agree to call it that?

These questions are not merely academic. They arise in medical ethics (are you the same person after a brain transplant?), in intellectual property law (is a software program the “same” program after a major rewrite?), in corporate law (is a company after a merger the same legal entity?), and in personal identity (after decades of cellular turnover, psychological change, and memory loss, is the elderly person the “same person” as the child they once were?). The Ship of Theseus has become philosophy’s most durable metaphor for the problem of identity precisely because the problem refuses to stay contained within philosophy.

What is the central philosophical question posed by the Ship of Theseus? (A) How did ancient Greek shipbuilding techniques differ from modern ones? (B) What constitutes the identity of a thing over time — material continuity, continuity of form, or social convention? (C) Was Theseus a real historical figure or purely mythological? (D) Why did the Athenians preserve the ship rather than building a new one?

Which contemporary application of the Ship of Theseus puzzle is NOT mentioned in the passage? (A) Medical ethics (brain transplant identity) (B) Intellectual property law (software rewrites) (C) International maritime law (ship registration) (D) Personal identity (psychological change over time)

The passage suggests that the Ship of Theseus problem “refuses to stay contained within philosophy” because: (A) Philosophers have lost interest in the question and abandoned it to other fields. (B) The question of identity over time arises across diverse practical domains including medicine, law, and psychology. (C) The original text was lost, so the puzzle can’t be studied within traditional philosophy. (D) Modern science has definitively resolved the question, making philosophical discussion obsolete.

Passage B (Questions 59-62):

Between 1946 and 1956, the United States conducted 67 nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands — the equivalent, in explosive yield, of roughly 1.6 Hiroshima bombs detonated daily for a decade. The 1954 Castle Bravo test, a miscalculation that produced an explosion 2.5 times larger than expected, irradiated inhabited atolls and a Japanese fishing vessel, creating an international incident. The Marshallese people — particularly those from the atolls of Bikini, Enewetak, Rongelap, and Utirik — were displaced, exposed to radioactive fallout, and, in some cases, returned to islands that remain contaminated to this day.

The legal and moral reckoning has been slow and incomplete. The Compact of Free Association between the United States and the Republic of the Marshall Islands, signed in 1986, established a trust fund and compensation framework, but independent assessments have found that the compensation has been chronically underfunded relative to the scale of harm. The U.S. Department of Energy continues to monitor radiation levels and provide limited healthcare services, but Marshallese advocates argue that the monitoring is insufficient, the healthcare provision is inadequate, and the resettlement promises remain largely unfulfilled.

The Marshall Islands case raises fundamental questions about nuclear justice that extend far beyond this specific context. What does genuine remediation look like when the harm spans generations — when the very soil and water of ancestral homelands is rendered dangerous for human habitation on timescales measured in centuries? What kind of political consent is possible when the power imbalance between a nuclear superpower and a small island nation is so vast? And what does it mean for a nation to seek accountability when the instruments of international law — the International Court of Justice, the UN human rights treaty bodies — have advisory powers but limited enforcement mechanisms against a permanent member of the Security Council?

What was the Castle Bravo test, according to the passage? (A) A diplomatic agreement between the U.S. and Marshall Islands. (B) A 1954 nuclear test miscalculation that produced an explosion 2.5 times larger than expected, irradiating inhabited atolls. (C) The first successful test of a hydrogen bomb, conducted without incident. (D) A Marshallese protest movement against U.S. nuclear testing.

What problem with the compensation framework does the passage identify? (A) The Marshallese people have refused all forms of compensation offered. (B) Compensation has been chronically underfunded relative to the scale of harm, according to independent assessments. (C) The compensation has been so generous that it distorted the Marshallese economy. (D) All compensation was paid in full immediately after the testing ended.

According to the passage, what makes genuine remediation particularly challenging in this case? (A) The Marshallese people can’t agree among themselves about what kind of remediation they want. (B) The harm spans generations and the ancestral homelands remain dangerous on timescales measured in centuries. (C) The U.S. has offered full remediation but the Marshall Islands government has refused to negotiate. (D) International law clearly mandates specific remediation measures that the U.S. has fully complied with.

What structural obstacle to accountability does the passage identify? (A) The Marshall Islands is not a member of the United Nations. (B) International legal bodies have advisory powers but limited enforcement mechanisms against Security Council permanent members. (C) The U.S. has formally apologized and accepted full legal responsibility. (D) The statute of limitations for nuclear testing claims expired decades ago.

Passage C (Questions 63-67):

In the opening pages of his 2018 book “Enlightenment Now,” the cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker presents a series of graphs showing dramatic global improvements in life expectancy, child mortality, extreme poverty, literacy, and democracy over the past two centuries. Pinker’s argument — that the Enlightenment ideals of reason, science, and humanism have produced a world that is, by almost every objective measure, getting better — struck a nerve. The book became a bestseller and a flashpoint in debates about progress.

Pinker’s critics raised several substantive objections. Some challenged his cherry-picking of indicators: while life expectancy and poverty reduction have indeed improved dramatically, other trends — biodiversity loss, carbon emissions, income inequality within wealthy nations — tell a darker story. Others argued that Pinker’s framing of progress as the inexorable triumph of Enlightenment values over darkness glossed over the historical role of exploitation, colonization, and the uneven distribution of gains. Still others noted that Pinker’s narrative is poorly suited to addressing the systemic, interconnected risks of the 21st century — climate destabilization, pandemics, nuclear proliferation — where past progress provides no guarantee against future catastrophe.

The deeper philosophical disagreement concerns the nature of progress itself. Is progress a reliable escalator, driven by the self-correcting mechanisms of science and democratic deliberation, that we can trust to continue if we don’t interfere too much? Or is progress more fragile — a contingent historical achievement, dependent on specific institutional, ecological, and political conditions that can be eroded by the very forces (technological disruption, inequality, democratic backsliding) that progress itself sets in motion? Pinker’s optimism and his critics’ pessimism may be less about disagreements over data than about different underlying models of how history works — and whether the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice on its own, or only when people grab it and pull.

What is Pinker’s central argument in “Enlightenment Now”? (A) The world is getting worse by almost every objective measure of human welfare. (B) Enlightenment ideals of reason, science, and humanism have produced dramatic global improvements in human well-being. (C) Technological progress has been harmful overall and should be slowed down. (D) The Enlightenment was a historical mistake that we should move beyond.

What criticism about Pinker’s selection of evidence does the passage mention? (A) He fabricated data to support his optimistic conclusions. (B) While some indicators like life expectancy improved, other trends like biodiversity loss and carbon emissions tell a darker story. (C) He relied entirely on anecdotal evidence rather than statistical data. (D) His data only covered the last 10 years, which is too short a period.

What deeper philosophical question does the passage identify? (A) Whether statistical data can ever prove anything about human welfare. (B) Whether progress is a reliable, self-sustaining escalator or a fragile, contingent achievement that can be eroded. (C) Whether Steven Pinker is qualified to write about history and philosophy. (D) Whether the Enlightenment actually happened or is a historical myth.

According to the passage, why might Pinker’s narrative be poorly suited to 21st-century risks? (A) His statistical methods cannot handle data from the 21st century. (B) Systemic risks like climate destabilization and nuclear proliferation mean past progress provides no guarantee against future catastrophe. (C) He has refused to acknowledge that the 21st century is different from the 18th century. (D) 21st-century problems require abandoning reason and science entirely.

The phrase “arcane of the moral universe” in the passage’s final sentence alludes to which famous historical quote? (A) “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” — Martin Luther King Jr. (B) “I think, therefore I am” — René Descartes (C) “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” — Franklin D. Roosevelt (D) “That which does not kill us makes us stronger” — Friedrich Nietzsche

Passage D (Questions 68-70):

The discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider in 2012 was the culmination of a 48-year search — the particle had been predicted theoretically by Peter Higgs and others in 1964, but confirming its existence required constructing the largest, most complex scientific instrument in human history: a 27-kilometer circular tunnel, cooled to temperatures colder than outer space, in which protons are accelerated to near light speed and collided 40 million times per second.

The achievement was a triumph of collective scientific enterprise — over 10,000 scientists and engineers from more than 100 countries contributed to the discovery. But it also raised uncomfortable questions about the economics and priorities of “big science.” The LHC cost approximately $4.75 bi ll i o n t oco n s t r u c t . I t s ann u a l o p er a t in g b u d g e t r u n s t o ab o u t$ 1 billion. For comparison, that’s roughly equivalent to the entire annual research budget of several developing countries combined.

Defenders of the LHC argue that fundamental physics has repeatedly generated unanticipated practical applications — the World Wide Web itself was invented at CERN to help physicists share data. Critics counter that this argument is a form of retrospective rationalization: we can’t assume that future spin-offs will justify present costs. More fundamentally, they ask: in a world of urgent material needs — climate change, disease, poverty — is the search for the fundamental constituents of reality a luxury that humanity can afford?

The question has no clean answer. The Higgs discovery is one of humanity’s greatest intellectual achievements — but it is also a $5 billion data point in a field whose immediate practical applications are, as its proponents freely acknowledge, unpredictable. The tension between the intrinsic value of knowledge and the opportunity cost of pursuing it is not resolvable by any simple calculus. It is a value judgment about what kind of civilization we want to be — one that pursues the deepest truths about reality regardless of practical payoff, or one that prioritizes tangible improvements to human welfare here and now.

How long did it take from theoretical prediction to experimental confirmation of the Higgs boson? (A) 10 years (B) 25 years (C) 48 years (D) 75 years

What is the central tension the passage identifies regarding the LHC? (A) There’s disagreement about whether the Higgs boson was actually discovered. (B) The tension between the intrinsic value of fundamental knowledge and the opportunity cost of pursuing it in a world of urgent material needs. (C) Scientists from different countries cannot agree on how to operate the collider efficiently. (D) The theoretical prediction was wrong and the experiment was a waste of resources.

According to the passage, what practical benefit emerged from CERN that is cited by defenders of the LHC? (A) The development of new medical imaging technologies for cancer detection. (B) The invention of the World Wide Web, originally created to help physicists share data. (C) The discovery of a clean, unlimited energy source to replace fossil fuels. (D) The creation of new materials that revolutionized consumer electronics manufacturing.

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## 答案與解析 Answer Key

Listening Answer Key

Reading Answer Key

分數級距

聽力正確	閱讀正確	評估
27-30	36-40	通過高級穩了
24-26	32-35	邊緣，再加強
20-23	28-31	離通過還有一段
Below 20	Below 28	建議先鞏固中高級

本回重點單字 (15 Key Vocabulary Words)

英文	中文	出現位置
intersubjective	主體間的/互為主體的	Part 1 Q3
jurisprudential	法理學的	Part 1 Q8
anachronism	時代錯置	Part 3 Mon 1
hamstrung	癱瘓/阻礙	Part 1 Vocab Q32
greenwashing	漂綠/假環保	Part 1 Vocab Q34
liminal	閾限的/邊界的	Part 1 Vocab Q37
sublimated	昇華/壓抑	Part 1 Vocab Q38
excoriated	嚴厲批評	Part 1 Vocab Q39
equivocation	含糊其辭	Part 1 Vocab Q45
remediation	補救/整治	Part 3 Pass B
contingent	偶然的/有條件的	Part 3 Pass C
inexorable	不可阻擋的	Part 3 Pass C
collider	對撞機	Part 3 Pass D
rationalization	合理化	Part 3 Pass D
spin-off	衍生應用/附帶效益	Part 3 Pass D

解鎖內容

GEPT-高級-Mock-4

GEPT 高級全真模擬試題 Mock 4

第一部分：聽力測驗（Listening Comprehension）

Part 1：短篇問答（10 題）

Part 2：長篇對話（10 題）

Part 3：長篇獨白（10 題）

第二部分：閱讀測驗（Reading Comprehension）

Part 1：高階字彙（15 題）

Part 2：克漏字（10 題）

Part 3：閱讀理解（15 題）

Listening Answer Key

Reading Answer Key

分數級距

本回重點單字 (15 Key Vocabulary Words)

關係圖譜

目錄

GEPT-高級-Mock-4

GEPT 高級 全真模擬試題 Mock 4

第一部分：聽力測驗（Listening Comprehension）

Part 1：短篇問答（10 題）

Part 2：長篇對話（10 題）

Part 3：長篇獨白（10 題）

第二部分：閱讀測驗（Reading Comprehension）

Part 1：高階字彙（15 題）

Part 2：克漏字（10 題）

Part 3：閱讀理解（15 題）

Listening Answer Key

Reading Answer Key

分數級距

本回重點單字 (15 Key Vocabulary Words)

威威學習信

關係圖譜

目錄

GEPT 高級全真模擬試題 Mock 4