We live in a town with three beaches. There are two parks less than 10 minutes’ walk from home where neighbourhood children gather to play. However, what my children want to do after school is pick up a screen — any screen — and stare at it for hours. They are not alone. Today’s children spend an average of four and a half hours a day looking at screens, split between watching television and using the Internet.
In the past few years, an increasing number of people and organisations have begun coming up with plans to counter this trend. A couple of years ago, film-maker David Bond realised that his children, then aged five and three, were attached to screens to the point where he was able to say "chocolate" into his three-year-old son’s ear without getting a response. He realised that something needed to change, and, being a London media type, appointed himself "marketing director for Nature". He documented his journey as he set about treating nature as a brand to be marketed to young people. The result was Project Wild Thing, a film which charts the birth of the Wild Network a group of organisations with the common goal of getting children out into nature.
"Just five more minutes outdoors can make a difference," David Bond says. "There is a lot of really interesting evidence which seems to be suggesting that if children are inspired up to the age of seven, then being outdoors will be a habit for life." His own children have got into the habit of playing outside now: "We just send them out into the garden and tell them not to come back in for a while."
Summer is upon us. There is an amazing world out there, and it needs our children as much as they need it. Let us get them out and let them play.
1. According to the author’s children, which are not their features?| A．They are addicted to electronics |
| B．They may have some friends who can play together |
| C．They like to gather in the park to play |
| D．They spend a lot of their time on electronics |
| A．By making a documentary film. | B．By organizing outdoor activities. |
| C．By advertising in London media. | D．By creating a network of friends. |
| A．How do humans adapt to nature |
| B．How do the children conquer nature |
| C．How do the children like nature |
| D．How do the children stay away from the electronics |
| A．Call on parents to take care of their children |
| B．Call on the children to play more |
| C．Call on the children to cherish the good summer times |
| D．Call on children to get more contact with nature |
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【推荐1】Nowadays, we live in a strict and judgmental world where people are quick to point out the faults of others yet seem to ignore their own ones. Some misguided souls believe they have a moral duty to help you be a better person telling you what a failure you really are.
If you're the one placing criticism upon others, please stop. Make a conscious decision, rather than focus on the negative aspect of a person's performance or attitudes, and you can offer helpful suggestions. If I'm painting a living room and making a mess in doing so, I'd have my husband say to me, “This is a tough job. Can I offer a suggestion that might make it easier for you?” rather than have him point out what a careless painter I am.
If you're on the receiving end of criticism, the “OK” response is a perfect solution. When someone comments negatively on a task you're doing, the natural response is to defend and attack.
However, this approach is rarely effective as it puts both parties on the defensive. It diffuses (扩散) a potentially explosive situation. It's important to keep calm and listen without feeling, to be an objective observer. There is much that one can learn from a negative review. You can ask yourself: Could I have done better, and been more thoughtful? Did I give 100% of myself to the task at hand? Is there any truth in what the other person says? If so, how can I improve?
In any event, one should remember the saying, “Stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned.” One can learn to be “OK” with criticism and not allow it to negatively impact his or her relationship with the other party. Let it go and that will be “OK”.
1. According to the author, today's people .| A．ignore the mistakes of others |
| B．focus on how to handle mistakes |
| C．like to point out the mistakes of others |
| D．have a moral duty to point out others' faults |
| A．pointing out a fault needs a skill |
| B．It's hard to avoid making mistakes |
| C．we ought to accept others' criticism |
| D．praise is more important than criticism |
| A．Paying no attention to it. |
| B．Learning something from it. |
| C．Making excuses for your mistakes. |
| D．Defending and attacking sometimes. |
| A．To comfort yourself. |
| B．To find out your potentials. |
| C．To make yourself become better. |
| D．To persuade yourself to admit your mistakes. |
| A．Is criticism really necessary? |
| B．What can you learn from criticism? |
| C．What's the best way to voice criticism? |
| D．How to criticize and reply to criticism? |
【推荐2】If you have a thought in mind that you can achieve the same goal within less amount of time and hard work by cheating to achieve success, then you shall feel bad later in future. You may have achieved a goal but you choose a wrong path. So, always remember that the path you choose in your life chooses your destination and then you shall not have an option to change it.
It is good to fail though it may take you to terrible feelings of life but in return, you will learn many things that life offers. The struggle is true but after that, the sweet of the fruit will build up your confidence to face any kinds of problem in the future. But if you prefer cheating, then you shall always live in fright.
Honour is like a coat, which you can wear confidently. If you cheat to achieve a goal, then you cannot hide it. Billy was lazy in hard work and used to delay all his work. He always thought of taking a fake degree to enter a big company. When the company CEO asked him to write a program for a certain topic, then he was quite shocked as he was unable to do the work, because he had no knowledge on the programming language and had faked his certificate.
Honour teaches you how to be disciplined. Being well-educated people, we should know what is good for us. It is always good to fail because at the end of the day, you will learn something new that will help you grow much stronger rather than cheating to achieve success, which will make you regret sooner or later.
All in all, success can be achieved via shortcuts but honour can never be. It’s better to live everyday with honour than to cheat.
1. Which opinion does the author agree with?| A．No option can be changed. |
| B．You can’t achieve without cheating. |
| C．Your path determines your end. |
| D．With a thought in mind you can realize your dream. |
| A．Those things that hurt, instruct. |
| B．There is honour among thieves. |
| C．You’ll fail if you stop trying. |
| D．Face the problem and you’ll succeed. |
| A．To make you believe hiding is cheating. |
| B．To prove honour makes you feel confident. |
| C．To encourage you to wear a coat confidently. |
| D．To advise you to learn the programming language. |
| A．No pains, no gains. |
| B．Success and honour. |
| C．Failure is the mother of success. |
| D．Honour is second to success. |
【推荐3】Technology seems to discourage slow, immersive reading. Reading on a screen tires your eyes and makes it harder for you to keep your place. Online writing tends to be more skimmable and list-like than print. The cognitive neuroscientist Mary Walt argued recently that this “new norm” of skim reading is producing “an invisible, game -changing transformation” in how readers process words. The neuronal circuit that sustains the brain’s capacity to read now favors the rapid absorption of information.
We shouldn’t overplay this danger. All readers skim. From about the age of nine, our eyes start to bounce around the page, reading only about a quarter of the words properly, and filling in the gaps by inference. Nor is there anything new in these fears about declining attention spans. So far, the anxieties have proved to be false alarms. “Quite a few critics have been worried about attention spans lately and see very short stories as signs of cultural decline,” the American author Selvin Brown wrote. “No one ever said that poems were evidence of short attention spans.”
And yet the Internet has certainly changed the way we read. For a start, it means that there is more to read, because more people than ever are writing. And digital writing is meant for rapid release and response. This mode of writing and reading can be interactive and fun. But often it treats other people’s words as something to be quickly harvested as fodder (素材) to say something else. Everyone talks over the top of everyone else, desperate to be heard.
Perhaps we should slow down. Reading is constantly promoted as a social good and source of personal achievement. But this advocacy often emphasizes “enthusiastic” “passionate” or “eager” reading, none of which adjectives suggest slow, quiet absorption. To a slow reader, a piece of writing can only be fully understood by immersing oneself in the words and their slow comprehension of a line of thought.
The human need for this kind of deep reading is too tenacious for any new technology to destroy. We often assume that technological change can’t be stopped and happens in one direction, so that older media like “dead-tree” books are kicked out by newer, more virtual forms. In practice, older technologies can coexist with new ones. The Kindle has not killed off the printed book any more than the car killed off the bicycle. We still want to enjoy slowly. formed ideas and carefully-chosen words. Even in a fast-moving age, there is time for slow reading.
1. Selvin Brown would probably agree that ________.| A．poetry reading is vital to attention spans |
| B．the gravity of cultural decline is urgent |
| C．fears of attention spans are unnecessary |
| D．online writing harms immersive reading |
| A．It demands writers to abandon traditional writing modes. |
| B．It leads to too much talking and not enough deep reflection. |
| C．It depends heavily on frequent interaction with the readers. |
| D．It paves the way for enthusiastic, passionate or eager reading. |
| A．Deep-rooted. |
| B．Fast-advanced. |
| C．Slowly-changed. |
| D．Rarely-noticed. |
| A．The Wonder of Deep Reading |
| B．Slow Reading is Here to Stay |
| C．The Internet is Changing the Way We Read |
| D．Digital vs Print: A Life-and-Death Struggle |
【推荐1】Where am I? What am I doing? If you're one of my 500 friends online, you'll always be the first to know. My phone and laptop are never out of touching distance, so I'm endlessly checking through all my social networking apps - whether I'm having a coffee, on my way to school, watching TV. . . even when I'm in the shower. I have a never - ending flow of messages and updates from all the people I associate with online. Yet the truth of the matter is: I feel lonely
I'm not the only person who feels this way. According to research, over two-thirds of young people find it easier to make friends online than it is “in real life”. I'm a shy person, but I'm wired up (上线) every day, like most of my friends. On the surface, phones bring us closer together. But in reality, my mind is always a million miles away.
I often feel depressed, dissatisfied and alone. Since I spend so much time socializing online, I even become a procrastinator (拖延者) . I keep postponing things that are important in my real life: homework, tasks, connecting with my friends and family members in a meaningful way. It's funny that my friends and I chatter away online so much, but we end up having nothing to say when we meet.
What is rally worrying is that no one I know, including myself could go cold turkey. I can't even imagine going without social networking for a week - think of all the important appointments, invitations and news updates you would miss! Alcoholics (酗酒者) who want to quit drinking can avoid drinks, but how do we give up our phones? After all, I need it for my studies because my teachers and classmates need to contact me at any time. So, that's the problem with social networking. We're hard-wired in, but we're more disconnected than ever.
1. The author always uses his phone and laptop to __________ .| A．avoid feeling a sense of loneliness |
| B．explore ways of enriching his social life |
| C．follow the updates on his online social network |
| D．receive help with his addiction to online socializing |
| A．He is an alcohol addict | B．He is a poor web chatter |
| C．He is a mild procrastinator | D．He is a heavy social media user |
| A．social media have created many offline problems |
| B．it's difficult to break away from online socializing |
| C．people are unwilling to interact face to face anymore |
| D．the benefits of social networking are too good to miss |
| A．So Close, Yet So Far |
| B．The Young Never Felt More Alone |
| C．Social Networking Worsens Relationships |
| D．More Social Media, Better Online Socializing |
Distracted (思想不集中的) dining is the new concern with customers constantly texting friends, uploading a Weibo photo of the meal they’re about to chew down or emailing the boss. For many smart-phone users, it’s hard just to focus on the meal and company at hand.
Now, one restaurant in Los Angeles is giving diners a reason to turn off the digital world, by offering customers willing to check (寄存) their phones at the door a 5-percent discount on their bill. Owner and chef Mark Gold of Eva Restaurant, located on Beverly Boulevard near N. Gardner Street, hopes this gives customers a way to truly sit back and relax, enjoy their meal and actually talk with friends and family in person.
“For us, it’s really not about people disturbing other guests. Eva is home, and we want to create that environment of home, and we want people to connect again,” he explained. “It’s about two people sitting together and just connecting, without the distraction of a phone, and we’re trying to create an atmosphere where you come in and really enjoy the experience and the food and the company.”
Gold said applying the suggestion reminds him to avoid cell phone usage, too. “I’m guilty of it as well. When my wife and I go to dinner it seems like the cell phone is part of the table setting now. Every table you look at, it’s a wine glass, the silverware and the cell phone,” he joked.
The husband and wife team runs Eva, a 40-person space with European flair. Gold said a little less than half take advantage of the deal, and no one has gotten upset about it.
“I think once the server approaches the table and they’re presented with the offer, they like the idea of actually talking to each other again,” he said.
1. When having meal in Eva Restaurant, we are not offered on the table.[学,
| A．forks | B．cellphones | C．napkins | D．knives |
| A．Because it can cause health problems. |
| B．Because it will disturb other customers. |
| C．Because it can get a 5-percent discount on the customers’ bills. |
| D．Because it may prevent people communicating with their companions. |
| A．Many people would like to upload a photo of their food before they eat nowadays. |
| B．People are forbidden to use cellphones in Eva Restaurant. |
| C．More than half of the customers in Eva Restaurant have enjoyed the discount. |
| D．People can easily connect with each other anytime without using cellphones. |
| A．No Cellphone at Table! |
| B．Focus on Your Cellphone! |
| C．Eva Restaurant – Home to Customers. |
| D．Talk Face to Face. |
【推荐3】The Internet plays a big part in human life. We use it for work and pleasure. We use it to learn a new language. We find advice on it. We use it to connect with family and friends. We use it to stay in touch with events we care about.The list goes on and on.
As far as the Internet being a part of our lives, well, that train has left the station. There is no going back to an Internet-free life. But can using the Internet too much be bad for our health? It might be, say researchers. A new study finds that heavy Internet use may be connected to high blood pressure in a young group: teenagers.
The study results show that teens who spend at least 14 hours a week only online may cause high blood pressure, which makes their hearts and blood vessels(血管) work too hard. Over time, this extra pressure increases the risk of a heart attack. High blood pressure can also cause heart and other diseases.
The Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan did the study. 335 young people, from 14 to 17 years old, took part in it. 134 of the teens were described as “heavy Internet users”. And researchers found that out of these 134 teens, 26 had high blood pressure. The researchers said the study was the first to connect heavy Web use with high blood pressure.
The lead researcher is Andrea Cassidy-Bushrow. She says, “Using the Internet is part of our daily life, but it shouldn’t ruin(毁坏) us.” Ms. Cassidy-Bushrow adds that it is important for teens to stop to have a rest regular from their computers or smartphones and do some kind of physical activity. She also suggests that parents shouldn’t let their children use the Internet for more than two hours a day, five days a week.
1. What does the underlined part “that train has left the station”mean in Paragraph 2?| A．The train has changed its course. |
| B．Life without the Internet is nowhere to be found. |
| C．The Internet brings great changes to people’s life. |
| D．The Internet has improved people’s life. |
| A．There was no similar study like it before. |
| B．Most of the young people had high blood pressure. |
| C．Adult people aged above 17 took part in the study. |
| D．Over half of the teens in the study were heavy Internet users. |
| A．That teenagers shouldn’t use the Internet. |
| B．That the Internet will ruin human life in the future. |
| C．That smartphones are more harmful than computers. |
| D．That regular breaks are necessary when using the Internet. |
| A．Heavy Internet users are mostly teenagers. |
| B．Every coin has two sides—so does the Internet. |
| C．Too much Internet use may be bad for teenagers. |
| D．How to prevent teenagers from using the Internet. |
