A huge 42 percent of marriages in the UK end in divorce, the highest rate in Europe. What is happening in the UK to cause such a phenomenon? Many consider the family to be the basic building block of society. If marriages and families are falling apart, is the UK society also falling apart? Is the UKs cultural identity breaking down? The UK of today is one of the most multicultural countries on earth. There are exotic sights and sounds on the street corners of every British city. British cuisine is now one of the most diverse around. Everyone speaks with a different accent.
Is such diversity a good thing? Well, it makes the UK a very exciting place to live in. There are new ideas everywhere. There is great freedom to be who you want to be, and most people will not criticize you for who you are. Yet such freedom seems to come at a cost. Some British people regard ethnic minorities (少数民族) as coming to the UK to steal jobs. When the economy does badly, this feeling increases as unemployment rates rise. So, it could be argued that the breakdown of marriages in the UK is in some part because of the pressures put upon families by wider problems in British society. Many people become stressed when those problems arise, and that can then make their family life unhappy as well.
Another possible reason for the high divorce rate might be that marriage no longer has the same value or meaning for British people as it once did. Church attendance in the UK has been falling for the last 50 years, suggesting fewer people consider marriage a holy thing. Since 1991, there has been a drop of 50 percent in people getting married in church rather than a register office.
Then there is the financial side. In the past, married couples paid lower government taxes than single people. That tax incentive (激励) policy, which used to reduce a couples tax by up to 500 in a year, has now disappeared, making the cost to keep a marriage higher.
However, the 42 percent UK divorce rate isn’t the highest rate in the past forty years! Meanwhile, some measures are being taken to strengthen marriage in the UK by the government.
1. According to the text, all the following account for the high divorce rate except .| A．Desire for freedom. | B．Social problems. |
| C．Change of values. | D．Financial pressures. |
| A．amazing | B．foreign |
| C．local | D．familiar |
| A．Cultural diversity has brought people freedom to criticize others. |
| B．The rising of the divorce rate indicates the society is falling apart. |
| C．The tax incentive policy once contributed to steady families to some degree. |
| D．More British people would get married in the church rather than in a register office. |
| A．Pessimistic. | B．Unconcerned. | C．Doubtful. | D．Optimistic. |
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【推荐1】When I read that we spend almost three hours every day checking our smartphones, I was shocked. What was I missing in the real world when walking down the street, lost in a virtual world of social media updates and videos of dogs on bicycles? I promised myself I would use my smartphone less, but it didn’t happen. Then one day my phone died and I had to wait a week for a new one.
The first consequence was quite amazing—On the first day in the office without my phone, I was thinking more deeply and concentrating more. I rediscovered my brain!
At the very beginning, I was worried that I would be bored without my phone, but actually I enjoyed it—I’d forgotten how much I love books and newspapers.
At times it was inconvenient to have no mobile internet connection, but all in all, there were a lot of benefits from not being connected 24/7. So, if you think you use your smartphone too much, put it away for a few days and see what happens.
| A．Would I survive? |
| B．What’s the problem? |
| C．You never know, you may become smarter! |
| D．Without a phone at hand I was more productive. |
| E．Reading everyday made me feel a lot more special. |
| F．I’m a lot more careful about how much I use it now. |
| G．Another day I was in a new city and I asked people for directions. |
【推荐2】How to stop procrastinating (拖延)
You know the people who walk confidently into an algebra test without trying to burn last-minute formulas (公式) into their brains?
The busy bee
The fix:
The multitasker
You’re great at getting started—if by that you mean opening a textbook and highlighting while also watching cat videos and eating fruit.
The fix: It’s normal to be bored or hungry, but these things needn’t mean losing sight of your goal.
The avoider
You open your backpack when suddenly you’re hit by an anxiety blackout (暂时的意识丧失).
The fix: The anxious part of your mind is working. To put your sensible brain back in the driver’s seat, try meditating (冥想), which sounds a lot harder than it is. Simply sit with your eyes closed and slowly breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth. Repeat 10 times, and then start your work. You’ll feel more motivated!
| A．Sure, you’ll study for tomorrow’s Spanish test! |
| B．Understand that procrastination isn’t caused by laziness! |
| C．To stay on track, turn your entertaining activities into your rewards. |
| D．You can’t ever imagine finishing your work, so you don’t even start. |
| E．You can become one of them once you learn to keep procrastination under control. |
| F．You’ll save yourself tons of stress if you outsmart those feelings that get in your way. |
| G．You may have tricked yourself into thinking you’re being productive, but you can’t fool us. |
【推荐3】Are you running a restaurant but can’t afford to hire waiters? Well, you could learn from this Japanese restaurant that hires monkeys for the job. In order to make them look more human, the restaurant owner even masks(用面具遮掩) their faces.
The restaurant is Kayabuki, which a traditional Japanese restaurant. They have hired a couple of monkeys named Yat-chan and Fuku-chan to work as waiters (or waitresses, we’re not sure). 16-year-old Yat-chan is the older of the two, but he moves quickly between tables as he takes the customers’ drink orders. Fuku-chan gives customers a hot towel and helps them clean their hands before they order their drinks, as is the custom in Japan. Believe it or not, the pair is actually certified(授予执照) by local authorities to work at the restaurant. The customers like them as well, so they give them beans as tips. One customer, Takayoshi, said, “The monkeys are actually better waiters than some really bad human ones.”
Yat-chan and Fuku-chan were once the household pets of the restaurant owner, Kaoru Otsuka. But the older one started imitating him in restaurant duties, and that was when he realized they were actually capable of working there. “Yat-chan first learned by just watching me working in the restaurant,” he said. “It all started when one day I gave him a hot towel and he brought the towel to the customer.”
Some customers even feel that the little monkeys are just like children, or even better. 62-year-old Shiochi Yano, a regular at Kayabuki, says, “Actually, they’re better. My son doesn’t listen to me, but Yat-chan will.” Customers also say that Yat-chan is able to understand exact orders and remember them. “We called out for more beer,” said one customer, “and he just brought us some beer. It’s amazing how he seems to understand human words.”
1. What can we learn about Yat-chan and Fuku-chan?| A．They both get beans as tips. |
| B．Fuku-chan is older than Yat-chan. |
| C．Yat-chan helps customers clean their hands. |
| D．Fuku-chan takes the customers’ drink orders. |
| A．can understand exact orders |
| B．listen to him very carefully |
| C．can remember the regular customers |
| D．behave better than some human waiters |
| A．surprise | B．copy |
| C．laugh | D．frustrate |
| A．He couldn’t afford to hire waiters. |
| B．He thought monkeys worked better than humans. |
C．He found his monkeys were able to work like waiters. |
| D．The officials encouraged him to hire the monkeys. |
【推荐1】Migrating (迁徙) terns may change their flight plans based on a keen sense of approaching typhoons, escaping the impact of the storms but still benefiting from feeding opportunities in their wakes.
Researchers at the Yamashina Institute for Ornithology examined data recorded by tracking devices on six blacknaped terns from Okinawa, Japan, to learn more about the birds’ migrations over multiple years. The terns flew across part of the Philippine Sea’s typhoon highway to get to the islands of Borneo and Sulawesi and varied their departure times — often apparently waiting to leave until a large typhoon was about to cross their projected path.
They seem to be able to predict it, says Jean-Baptiste Thiebot, a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute of Polar Research and lead author of the new study, which was published in June in Marine Biology. The study offers few clues about how terns might do this, but other research suggests some migrating birds detect weather signals or observe changing clouds.
The terns Thiebot studied typically avoided the typhoons themselves. But these storms can bring food to the ocean surface, so their immediate aftermath may help the hungry travelers. They might actually use the typhoon to know when to leave for their migrations each year, Thiebot says. In the unusually quiet 2017 season, without a strong typhoon cue, the birds started their journeys later and flew without pit stops. Thiebot would like to see this pattern confirmed in a larger study. He also worries that increasing typhoon frequency could affect birds' prediction accuracy, potentially getting them caught in dangerous weather.
Robert Gill, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, who was not involved in the work, says that although the study’s sample size is small, it adds to scientists’ overall understanding of migration. He has studied shorebirds that time their migrations based partly on incoming storms, but little research has delved(探究)into this behavior. “They are able to predict better than the best weather forecasters we have,” Gill says, “but they’ve also had tens of thousands, if not millions, of years to develop that skill.
1. Why did the terns vary their departure times?| A．They were tracked by devices. |
| B．They waited until a typhoon died down. |
| C．They flew across part of the typhoon highway. |
| D．They wanted to take advantage of upcoming typhoons. |
| A．They can be the pit stops for seabirds. |
| B．They might change seabirds’ migration routes. |
| C．They can provide seabirds with food in their wakes. |
| D．They might influence the accuracy of seabirds’ prediction. |
| A．Seabirds are the best weather forecasters ever. |
| B．The study leads to an overall understanding of migration. |
| C．Seabirds’ skill of prediction is acquired through evolution. |
| D．Thiebot’s findings are not convincing for lack of adequate evidence. |
| A．Typhoons cause great danger to seabirds. |
| B．Typhoons trigger the migration of seabirds. |
| C．Seabirds encounter difficulty while migrating. |
| D．Seabirds anticipate typhoons to help their migration. |
【推荐2】Unlike octopuses (章鱼), we don’t have brains in our limbs. So we can’t really “remember” anything with our arms and legs. But it’s true that once we learn how to do something physical—whether riding a bike or weightlifting—it becomes easier and easier to do it without conscious thought. Most people are referring to this phenomenon when they talk about “muscle memory”. They think the secret to learning a skill is to do it over and over again until they have developed muscle memory. But when biologists and neuroscientists (神经学家) study it, they mean at least two slightly different things.
A recent research by biologists at the University of Oslo found that the key indicators of muscular growth —myonuclei (肌核), which are inside muscle fibers, won’t disappear as muscles shrink, which suggests that our myonuclei are doing at least some of the remembering. The researchers have noted that muscle built during one’s younger years might functionally serve to allow individuals to “bank” myonuclei that could be drawn upon later in life to slow the effects of aging.
Neuroscientists, on the other hand, believe that learning to ride a bike is an exercise in episode memory: You can know how to ride a bike without being able to explain how you’re doing it. It feels to us as if that memory is stored in our muscles and they’re remembering how to perform an action without our really being aware of it. But the reality is that the activity is happening in our brains. “The processes that are important for learning and memory of new skills occur mainly in the cognitive (认知) system, not in the muscles,” explained Ainslie Johnstone, a neuroscientist at Oxford University. The parts of your brain responsible for that movement develop stronger connections between neurons that serve as the representation for the motion, and it’s these connections that make the memory better and easier to access.
Your new understanding of muscle memory is probably some combination of the two basic ideas. Anyway, the proverb, “practice makes perfect”, always holds true for us non-octopus creatures.
1. What is people’s common belief in “muscle memory”?| A．It relies heavily on the passion for sports. |
| B．It can refer to two slightly different things. |
| C．It means remembering things with our arms and legs. |
| D．It is acquired from frequent repetition of a movement. |
| A．Muscle memory is a short-term memory. |
| B．Muscle memory performs best at an old age. |
| C．Myonuclei fail to function as muscles disappear. |
| D．Myonuclei help explain the phenomenon of “muscle memory”. |
| A．Personal feelings. | B．Episode memories |
| C．Neuron connections. | D．Muscle myonuclei. |
| A．How different are we from an octopus? |
| B．What is the secret to being skillful at sports? |
| C．Muscle memory is real,but more than what you think. |
| D．The existence of muscle memory is being challenged. |
As a magnet for foreign companies, Bangkok attracts many overseas managers and business people from different fields, including tourism, automobiles and electronics. The city's population of foreigners is in the high hundreds of thousands, with tens of thousands of Japanese, Chinese and western employees working alongside hundreds of thousands of Burmese who mostly do unskilled jobs shunned by Thais.
For those used to the good life, the variety and quality of the city's food is a key attraction, says one US manager, before listing many of his favourite Italian, Mexican and, of course, Thai restaurants. Most offer quality meals for less than the cost of a takeaway sandwich in London.
Great choice and value can be found in Bangkok's other attractions, too. For overseas business people who enjoy shopping in luxury and air-conditioned comfort, the city has hundreds of modern shopping malls. Some foreigners, however, prefer the charms of Chatuchak Market, where anything can be bought at a good price by the skilled bargainer.
When the time comes to talk business many overseas business people prefer to move out of the markets and onto the golf course. Thailand has thousands of courses, which can provide a welcome break from the busy and noisy city life. But most business people go to the golf course because it's the perfect place to discuss the next big deal.
Because of the fast-paced life some foreign business people see Bangkok as a place to stay for the short term, rather than a lifetime. Australian computer software designer Sarah Huang is seven months pregnant but still working full-time in her Bangkok office. She says the city is "definitely a place I want to stay for the next five, ten years". Nannies and home help are affordable, but high fees for quality secondary education have convinced Ms. Huang to return to Australia when her child reaches high school age.
1. According to the first two paragraphs, we know that
| A．Bangkok offers many working opportunities for people |
| B．Bangkok has always been a rich Thai city |
| C．most foreigners coming to Bangkok are tourists |
| D．Burmese in Bangkok mostly work for Thais |
| A．forgotten | B．unwanted |
| C．appreciated | D．rewarded |
| A．It is the most convenient way for them to get regular exercise. |
| B．It is a good place in which to discuss business matters. |
| C．It is a great way to escape from the noise and pollution of the city. |
| D．It gives them the opportunity to meet local people in a social setting. |
| A．she is going to have a baby |
| B．her working hours are too long |
| C．it's not easy to find suitable home help there |
| D．the cost of a good education there is too high |
| A．explain the reasons for Bangkok's rapid economic growth over the past 30 years |
| B．promote the many attractions Bangkok has to offer tourists visiting the city |
| C．describe the attractions of living in Bangkok for foreign business people |
| D．compare the lifestyles of Burmese workers and foreign business people in Bangkok |
