Every kid wishes to be an adult. But now as grown-ups, some adults find they cannot leave childhood behind. They become "kidults" (kid+adult). Being a kidult has become a lifestyle-choice among young people across Asia.
Some kidults collect toys they once played with. Hello Kitty, Garfield, and Snoopy have many adult fans around the world. It is not unusual to see a 20-something woman with a big, Garfield-shaped cushion on her sofa or a Hello Kitty mobile phone accessory.
Other kidults still enjoy children's stories and fairy tales. For example, Bloomsbury even published the Harry Potter novels with an adult cover. That way, no one else on the subway will know that an adult is actually reading a children's book!
"Kidults can be like vitamins to society. Adults who value their childhood and hold on to pure, child-like emotion may be needed in such a rough and dry society," said Lee Sojung, professor of Foreign Studies at Hankuk University. He added that kidult culture may fill the generation gap between adults and kids. It could give children and their parents books, movies, and cartoon shows to enjoy together. He may be right.
Tim Green-halgh, a professor, explained that some kidults just refuse to grow up. They cling to (舍不得放弃) childhood because life in a busy and stressful city frightens them. Kidults would like to forget their age and openly show their fear of society and adulthood.
"So, they can escape from increasingly complex and stressful lives that are hard to deal with." Greenhalgh said.
1. We can know from the passage that kidults are ________.| A．children who can't wait to grow up |
| B．Grown-ups who hold on to child-like emotion |
| C．people who enjoy playing sports. |
| D．young people who pretended to be grown-ups when young. |
| A．buy Hello Kitty mobile phone accessories. |
| B．read a children's book on the subway. |
| C．work in a busy and stressful city. |
| D．collect toys they once played with. |
| A．some companies are taking advantage of it. |
| B．modern life is stressful and hard |
| C．some people like to stay young and energetic. |
| D．some people wish to fill the generation gap. |
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【推荐1】When it comes to helping developing countries, we often think about offering money in order that they can build schools and hospitals, buy food and medicine, or find clean water supplies. These seem to be the most important basic needs in their lives. However, it's far from enough. We have to come up with better ideas.
A man called Nicholas Negroponte invented a cheap laptop computer, which he decided to invent after he visited a school in Cambodia. The laptop which Mr. Negroponte has designed is not the same as the normal one that you can buy in the shops. One difference is that it will be covered in rubber so that it is strong and won't be damaged easily. As an electricity supply can be a problem in developing countries, the computer also has a special handle in order that children can wind the computer up to give it extra power just as easy as setting a clock.
This special laptop computer will cost less than 100 US dollars and Mr. Negroponte wants to produce as many as 15 million laptop computers in the first year. The idea is that these computers will help the children’s education as they will be able to access the Internet. These computers might not benefit the people in developing countries immediately, but by improving children’s education they should help people to find their own solutions to their problems in the long term.
Another idea to help children in developing countries is to recycle old mobile phones so that they can be used again in the UK and probably in many other countries too, millions of mobile phones are thrown away every year. The waste crested by throwing away these old phones is very bad for the environment, so it seems to be an excellent idea to achieve two important goals at the same time. We will reduce the waste we produce and help others, in other words, we will be able to “kill two birds with one stone” and that is always a good thing.
1. The underlined phrase “wind up” in paragraph 2 means .| A．吹风 | B．给……上紧发条 | C．拆开 | D．带走 |
| A．will be damaged much easier than the normal one |
| B．has a special handle to access the Internet |
| C．is cheap and can run with extra power |
| D．can be helpful to find the people’s own solutions |
| A．illustrate the kindness of people in the developed countries |
| B．tell us what high technology can help people |
| C．show how to find business opportunities in developing countries |
| D．give an example of how to help developing countries |
| A．We need to think about more ways to help people in developing countries，not just throw money at the problem. |
| B．We should spend much money helping people in developing countries build more schools and hospitals. |
| C．We should think about giving help to developing countries by giving them all we have. |
| D．We should help the people in developing countries by improving children's education immediately. |
【推荐2】I was driving to town on a beautiful summer day. The sky was full of clouds. The sun was dancing through the green trees with its golden light and I was smiling at the wonder of it.
Suddenly, a truck rounded in front of me, two feet over the center line. I pulled my wheel to the right as I just missed the truck on one side and a ditch on the other side. I noticed the other driver looking at his cell phone totally unaware of the near miss. I closed my mouth in order to avoid saying the words that I promised myself I would no longer use.
Later in town, I was coming out of a store when a yellow butterfly started to circle around my head. I smiled peacefully and held out my open hand. To my joy, the butterfly landed on it briefly and swung its wings before flying away. I looked around to see if anyone else noticed this small wonder, but the only two people near me had their heads down, looking at their cell phone screens.
I began to think that life is what happens while people are busy looking at their smart phones. Now I know that social media, computers and smart phones are all necessaries in our lives, but it doesn’t mean that they have to control our days or take over our lives. Amazingly, they all come with a power button. We can turn them off anytime we wish to.
Don’t let your smart phone take away your smart mind. Don’t let technology take over your soul. Use it when you need it, and turn it off when you don’t. Turn your heart on more and our phone on less. Share your kindness, your joy, your hugs, your laughter and your life that make others smile.
1. What can be inferred from Paragraph 2?| A．The writer’s car got destroyed in the accident. |
| B．Someone died in the accident. |
| C．The writer feels very angry. |
| D．The truck was driving on the right side of the writer. |
| A．not catching | B．not noticing | C．not understanding | D．not avoiding |
| A．being buried in a cell phone may make one miss something good |
| B．a cell phone may lead to bad luck |
| C．the butterfly doesn’t like people with cell phones |
| D．the writer is a lucky dog |
| A．Unconcerned | B．Doubtful | C．Supportive | D．Negative |
【推荐3】Learning a foreign language can broaden career opportunities in the USA. Here’s the reason why learning some of the popular foreign languages can help you.
Chinese
Chinese is considered as an important language to enhance business prospects across the globe. It has the largest number of speakers. More than 1. 4 billion people speak Chinese. Chinese companies have invested in various industries in other countries. There are great opportunities for employment in Chinese companies if you can master Chinese.
Spanish
Spanish is spoken by about 580 million speakers across the world. It has the second largest number of speakers. Furthermore, many Spanish companies are rapidly increasing their presence in various industries like travel and tourism, translation, teaching, and international business.
Portuguese
Spoken by about 230 million people, Portuguese is the sixth most widely spoken language in the world. It is the official language of eight countries. There’s a great demand for Portu-guese language experts in various industries.
German
German is the third most popular foreign language taught worldwide and the second most popular in Europe and Japan, after English. German has between 89 and 110 million native speakers. German companies account for 700,000 jobs in the USA, so learning German can give people great job offers.
1. Why does the author advise people to learn Chinese?| A．They can further study global business. |
| B．They can have an opportunity to go to China. |
| C．They can get more job offers in various countries. |
| D．They can find a chance to travel to other countries. |
| A．Chinese. | B．Spanish. |
| C．Portuguese. | D．German. |
| A．Japanese dislike learning it. |
| B．It is the most popular language in Europe. |
| C．It is spoken by less than 89 million people. |
| D．Mastering it helps people get more job opportunities. |
【推荐1】Fictional, computer-generated human faces are so convincing they can fool even trained observers. They can be easily downloaded online and used for Internet scams(诈骗)and fake social media profiles.
Al programs called generative adversarial networks (生成对抗网络), or GANs, can learn to create fake images that are less and less distinguishable from real images, by competing two neural networks against each other.
Nightingale and her colleague Hany Farid at the University of California, Berkeley, asked 315 participants, recruited on a crowdsourcing website, to say whether they could distinguish a selection of 400 fake photos from 400 photographs of real people. Each set consisted of 100 people from each of four ethnic groups: white, Black, East Asian and South Asian.
This group had an accuracy rate of 48.2 percent—slightly worse than chance. A second group of 219 participants were given training to recognize computer-generated faces. This group had an accuracy rate of 59 percent, but this difference is negligible (可忽略的), says Nightingale.
The researchers also asked a separate group of 223 participants to rate a selection of the same faces on their level of trustworthiness, on a scale of 1 to 7. They rated the fake faces as 8 percent more trustworthy, on average, than the real faces—a small yet significant difference, according to Nightingale. That might be because artificial faces look more like “average” human faces, and people are more likely to trust typical-looking faces, she says.
Looking at the extremes, the four faces rated most untrustworthy were real, whereas the three most trustworthy faces were fake.
“We need stricter ethical guidelines and more legal frameworks in place because, inevitably, there are going to be people out there who want to use these images to do harm, and that’s worrying,” says Nightingale.
To reduce these risks, developers could add watermarks to their images to flag them as fake. she says. “In my opinion, this is bad enough. It’s just going to get worse if we don’t do something to stop it.”
1. What can we know about GANs?| A．GANs can cheat trained observers. |
| B．GANs should be used under strict legal frameworks. |
| C．GANs can generate artificial pictures close to real ones. |
| D．GANs-generated Images can not be distinguished from real ones. |
| A．To warn people the risk of online fraud. |
| B．To train people to discover fake photos online. |
| C．To see if people can distinguish fake faces from real ones. |
| D．To test whether GANs can create fake faces to fool people. |
| A．Stricter laws and regulations should be imposed. |
| B．Effective ways are needed but not found yet. |
| C．Watermarks are an effective way against fake images. |
| D．Responsibility should be taken by developers to prevent misuse of fake images. |
| A．Development of Internet scams. | B．Development of AI technology |
| C．Will fake faces look more trustworthy? | D．Legal frameworks for GANs |
Here is a way to kill mice without spending a lot of money. It is a simple but effective kind of mouse trap. The method is first used by some farmers in the west African country of Mali. An agricultural expert in Mali reported about the Mali mouse trap in a magazine. The expert reported that his gardener caught 150 mice in just one night. The gardener used four traps. The trap is easy to make. First, remove the top from a 20 liter metal or plastic container(容器). Put it in a hole in the ground. The top edge of the container should be the level with the surface of the ground. Fill the container with water to within eight centimeters of the top. Add tiny pieces of grain wastes. They should float on the water. Also put some wastes on the ground near the trap. During the night, mice will come out to eat the grain wastes. They will fall into the container and drown. Replace the food in the trap every night．
1. According to the passage，_____ used the mouse trap first.
| A．an agricultural expert in the west Africa |
| B．farmers in the United States |
| C．all American gardener |
| D．farmers in Mali |
| A．A simple and effective method used by farmers to kill mice |
| B．How to kill mice |
| C．Methods used by farmers to kill mice |
| D．Farmers have problems with mice |
| A．A special grain storage building |
| B．Chemical poisons |
| C．A mouse trap |
| D．A hole in the ground |
A． | B． |
C． | D． |
【推荐3】Buying books on the Internet is a great way to save time and money. Online bookstores offer new books and used books that can save you lots of money. They are far better compared to traditional bookstores as they offer much wider kinds of books. Another advantage of buying books online is that you can also read the book reviews as well as readers’ reviews to get an idea whether the book is worth buying. Online bookstores offer great discounts to regular customers which is a big attraction for book lovers.
For book lovers, the most important thing is to get books on time. Therefore, you need to find a reliable online bookstore that will be able to provide fast deliveries (送货).
Here are some tips to use when choosing an online bookstore. Some online bookstores are popular for fiction books; some are for non-fiction books or novels, etc. Understanding their specialization will help you get the right kind of books in time. Check whether you will be buying the books from a third-party seller or directly from the website. Although the website could be reputable (声誉好的), third-party sellers advertised on their site may not have a good reputation. Never jump at stores that offer super cheap prices, as books sold at such low prices could be in very bad condition.
Most of the popular online bookstores offer useful tools. One tool is a wish list tool on its website. You can update (更新) the list of books you wish to buy in the future. The bookstore will know what you want and will e-mail you immediately when the book of your choice is available.
1. Why was online bookstores much better than traditional ones?| A．They offer the latest books. |
| B．They offer more kinds of books to choose from. |
| C．They offer the lowest prices. |
| D．They offer readers more about their favorite authors. |
| A．The speed of deliveries. | B．The author of books. |
| C．The prices of books. | D．The condition of books. |
| A．How to advertise on the website to get a good reputation. |
| B．How to avoid buying bad condition books online. |
| C．How to understand the specialization of an online bookstore. |
| D．How to choose a reliable online bookstore. |
| A．You may get the right kind of books. |
| B．You may buy the book you want as quickly as possible. |
| C．You may know more reliable booksellers. |
| D．You may pay for the book at a low price. |
