The current generation is not like any other generation I have seen in history. Due to the rise in technology, the world is evolving fast and changing the way most of us do things. Today’s young generation is so used to the technology which they learn very quickly. It could be considered as a benediction, but there are times when it is not appropriate.
In my generation, we met friends face to face to have real conversations rather than texting each other all the time. We walked everywhere, to the store or up the stairs instead of climbing into our car or on a motored skateboard each time we had to go two or three blocks away.
Most of the new generation expects things to be done for them. If something requires some extra effort or focus, they are easily discouraged. But if we want to reach success in this day and age, it is expected of us to work to achieve our dreams. The old generation knows that the world does not owe them squat. It understands that no one else than them can do it and that is their responsibility to make something of themselves.
Nowadays, there is no longer a sense of honor, because most people hide behind a computer screen. When you handle issues or hate for no reason over social media, it just proves that you are a weak person. I just put an ad in one of my groups for teaching Kung Fu, and one hater wrote “Kung Fu clown.” And this is for no reason as I have never seen or met the guy before.
The new generation relies too much on social media for their lives and doing things. It is okay to use it but not to abuse it. My final word is that each generation has its own advantages and downsides, but what matters is that each generation, old or new, has to give lessons which are valuable for future generations.
1. What does the underlined word “benediction” in Paragraph 1 mean?| A．Drawback. | B．Blessing. | C．Prejudice. | D．Criterion. |
| A．By analyzing reasons. | B．By explaining concepts. |
| C．By criticizing young guys. | D．By comparing generations. |
| A．The rapid development of social media. | B．The tough situations for future generations. |
| C．New generation’s inappropriate behaviour. | D．Genuine strangers behind computer screens. |
| A．The balanced use of social media | B．Lessons for old generations |
| C．The growth of new technology | D．No reason for hating others |
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【推荐1】Cultural heritage is a variety of local treasures from different places. These treasures often increase people’s pride in their hometown. Thus, protecting cultural heritage is of great significance and importance. In protecting cultural heritage, countries around the world should join hands further to deal with issues. Today there are shared measures to preserve cultural heritage, however, countries still have different views on cultural heritage preservation.
Asian and European architecture is very different, for example. European buildings are often stone structures(结构) that can stand damage caused by wind and rain, while those in the East are more often wooden structures which require renovation(整修). This leads to different views on how to preserve ancient architecture.
From the very beginning, Europeans have the opinion that people should take fewer measures in the process of protecting cultural heritage. For example, the ruins of the Roman Colosseum have simply been left as they are, but Asia has a tradition of renovation of cultural relics and we believe that this measure will not affect their authenticity(真实性). The Ise Grand Shrine building in Japan is rebuilt every 20 years from one generation to the next. Such tradition caused a debate in international cultural heritage preservation circles, as some thought that the rebuilding process would harm its authenticity. Experts around the world travelled to Japan especially to conduct onsite check and discussions, and they finally recognized that the term “authenticity” actually varies(变化) from culture to culture.
The importance of these international exchanges is that they will help the world understand Asia, and accept Asian ways to protect cultural heritage.
1. What is the purpose of paragraph 1?| A．To present an argument. | B．To make a comparison. |
| C．To draw a conclusion. | D．To give an example. |
| A．Views. | B．Damages. | C．Buildings. | D．Structures. |
| A．European experts fail to protect cultural relics. |
| B．Protecting cultural heritage causes many issues. |
| C．Many European ancient buildings are made of wood. |
| D．Ways to protect cultural heritage vary from area to area. |
| A．International communication is needed. |
| B．We should follow western experts’ advice. |
| C．Cultural heritage will be damaged through rebuilding. |
| D．Asian ways to protect cultural heritage are unacceptable. |
【推荐2】The stuff (要素) of science fiction has landed on our plates. Meat grown in a lab, instead of inside the body of an animal, has been approved for sale for the first time. The US startup took a biopsy (细胞活组织切片) of cells from a live chicken, bathed them in a nutrient medium and grew them in a bioreactor (生物反应器), where they grew until the meat was harvested.
Cultured meat is eye catching technology. But it is also an over engineered solution to a problem that we can solve by changing our diets. If we simply stopped eating meat, or ate it far less often, then there would be no need for either harmful animal agriculture or meat grown in a lab.
The cultured meat industry rests on a view of human beings as greedy and incapable of change. But the coronavirus pandemic has shown that we are able to make enormous changes to our behaviour when faced with crisis.
The startups growing meat in labs might be motivated by noble intentions: to save animals and save the planet. But giant meat producers such as Cargill and Tyson are already investing heavily in cultured protein. Who knows which companies will run the industry in decades to come.
If we move into a world where eating meat remains normal but killing animals is forbidden, we will become ever more dependent on remote companies with highly specialized technology to meet our basic needs. But we don’t have to. We can just choose to eat less meat. That’s where real power lies-not in using this new technology but in being prepared to change our behaviour.
1. What does the underlined part “Cultured meat” in Paragraph 2 mean?| A．Meat that is good-looking. | B．Meat that is grown on animals. |
| C．Meat that is ready for sale. | D．Meat that is produced by human. |
| A．Cultured protein. | B．Cultured meat. |
| C．Developing new kinds of meat. | D．Changing people’s way of life. |
| A．Positive. | B．Negative. | C．Doubtful. | D．Hopeful. |
| A．A notebook. | B．A diary. | C．A magazine. | D．A travel guide. |
Every hour of our time has a value. For every hour we work at one job we could quite easily be doing another, or be sleeping or watching a film. Each of these options has a different opportunity cost—namely, what they cost us in missed opportunities.
Say you intend to watch a football match but the tickets are expensive and it will take you a couple of hours to get to and from the stadium. Why not, you might reason, watch the game from home and use the
For economists, every decision is made by knowledge of what one must forgo—in terms of money and enjoyment—in order to take it up. By knowing precisely what you are receiving and what you are missing out on, you ought to be able to make better-informed, more reasonable decisions. Consider that most famous economic rule of all: there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Even if someone offers to take you out to lunch for free, the time you will spend in the restaurant still costs you something in terms of forgone opportunities.
Some people find the idea of opportunity cost extremely discouraging: imagine spending your entire life calculating whether your time would be better spent elsewhere doing something more profitable or enjoyable. Yet, in a sense it’s human nature to do precisely that—we assess the advantages and disadvantages of decisions all the time.
In the business world, a popular phrase is “value for money.” People want their cash to go as far as possible. However, another is fast obtaining an advantage: “value for time.” The biggest restriction on our resources is the number of hours we can devote to something, so we look to maximize the return we get on our investment of time. By reading this passage you are giving over a bit of your time which could be spent doing other activities, such as sleeping and eating. In return, however, this passage will help you to think like an economist, closely considering the opportunity cost of each of your decisions.
1. According to the passage, the concept of “opportunity cost” is applied to ________.
| A．making more money |
| B．taking more opportunities |
| C．reducing missed opportunities |
| D．weighing the choice of opportunities |
| A．spared for watching the match at home |
| B．taken to have dinner with friends |
| C．spent on the way to and from the match |
| D．saved from not going to watch the match |
| A．Opportunities you forget in decision-making. |
| B．Opportunities you give up for better ones. |
| C．Opportunities you miss accidentally. |
| D．Opportunities you make up for. |
【推荐1】“Hello!” You type into the chat box. There’s a slight feeling of excitement flowing through your fingers, and you can’t wait for a reply. You think, “There’s probably nothing more exciting than this.”
With communication from all corners of the world possible with the ease of our fingers, we are now witness to an advanced form of the handshake and physical conversations: online friendships.
Alarmingly, according to Internet Safety 101, almost half of young adult users have received upsetting messages, with 92 percent posting their own real names and identification online and 58 percent thinking it doesn’t cause concern. And though some parents may be biting their fingernails in fear right now, more than half of the youth have admitted to making their friends online and a great majority regularly text them.
Though the figures are daunting, we hope we haven’t scared you off! Researchers actually found that pursuing online friendships could be beneficial. The Pennsylvania State University reported that this was especially the case for those with social anxiety, as they might form a stronger comfort bond with their peers through the screen rather than a face-to-face meeting.
Additionally, online interaction may increase your self-confidence. In our current situation of isolation (隔离), perhaps that perfect connection from the safety of our homes is all it takes to make things just a little more bearable.
In the end, it all depends on you. Whether your search for a friend bears fruit lies in your approach, and though I’m not a great relationship master, I have some tips that will aid you in your exploration for the “BFF (best friend forever)” of your dreams.
1. What can we infer from the third paragraph?| A．The youth often meet online friends in reality. |
| B．Many parents like biting fingernails when worried. |
| C．Most Internet users like texting their online friends. |
| D．Many young adult users lack awareness of Internet safety. |
| A．Frightening. | B．Misleading. |
| C．Disappointing. | D．Surprising. |
| A．Negative. | B．Unclear. |
| C．Supportive. | D．Objective. |
| A．How to find the best online friends. |
| B．How to get on well with online friends. |
| C．How to keep in touch with online friends. |
| D．How to benefit from dream online friends. |
【推荐2】Everywhere I look outside my home I see people busy with their high-tech devices, while driving, walking, shopping, even sitting in toilets. When connected electronically, they are away from physical reality.
People have been influenced to become technology addicted. One survey reported that “addicted” was the word most commonly used by people to describe their relationship to the tablet and similar devices. One study found that people had a harder time resisting the allure of social media than they did for sleep, cigarettes and alcohol.
The main goal of technology companies is to get people to spend more money and time on their products, not to actually improve our quality of life. They have successfully created a cultural disease. Consumers willingly give up their freedom, money and time to catch up on the latest information, to keep pace with their peers or to appear modern.
What is a healthy use of technology devices? That is the vital question. Who is really in charge of my life? That is what people need to ask themselves if we are to have any chance of breaking up false beliefs about their use of technology. When we can live happily without using so much technology for a day or a week, then we can regain control and personal freedom, become the master of technology and discover what there is to enjoy in life free of technology.
Mae West is famous for the wisdom that “too much of a good thing is wonderful”. But it’s time to discover that it does not work for technology. Richard Fernandez, an executive coach acknowledged that “we can be swept away by our technologies”. To break the grand digital connection, people must consider how life long ago could be fantastic without today’s overused technology.
1. What is the probable meaning of the underlined word “allure” in paragraph 2?| A．Advantage. | B．Attraction. | C．Adaption. | D．Attempt. |
| A．To attract people to buy their products. | B．To provide the latest information. |
| C．To improve people’s quality of life. | D．To deal with cultural diseases. |
| A．consider too much technology wonderful |
| B．have realized the harm of high-tech devices |
| C．can regain freedom with high-tech devices |
| D．may enjoy life better without overused technology |
| A．Neutral. | B．Skeptical. | C．Disapproving. | D．Sympathetic. |
【推荐3】There’s a new AI bot: ChatGPT, and you’d better pay attention, even if you aren’t into artificial intelligence. The tool is an AI chat bot system that OpenAI released in November 2022 to show off and test what a very large, powerful AI system can achieve.
ChatGPT remembers the thread of your dialogue, using previous questions and answers to inform its next responses. It derives its answers from huge volumes of information on the Internet. ChatGPT is built on top of the OpenAI GPT-3 family of large language models and is fine-tuned (a method of transfer learning) using both supervised and reinforcement learning (监督和强化学习).
You can ask ChatGPT anything, like explaining physics, asking for birthday party ideas and getting programming help. Perhaps it’s not smart enough to replace all humans yet, but it can be creative, and its answers can sound downright authoritative. A few days after its launch, more than I million people were trying out ChatGPT. UBS analyst Lloyd Walmsley estimated in February 2023 that ChatGPT reached 100 million monthly users in January, accomplishing in 2 months what took TikTok about 9 months and Instagram two and a half years.
ChatGPT is free to use at the moment because it is still in its research phase. But when too many people hop onto the server, it overloads and can’t process your request. It just means you should try visiting the site at a later time when fewer people are trying to access it. If you want to skip the wait and have reliable access, there is an option for you. As of Feb. 1, 2023, OpenAI has aChatGPT pro plan, ChatGPT Plus, which allows users to have general access even during peak times. This service does come at a cost of $20/month.
However, ChatGPT can not replace Google. ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence robot that provides solutions to your questions, but Google is a search engine in which you can search for as much information as possible. ChatGPT has limited knowledge due to its programming but Google has unlimited knowledge which is updated every day.
1. What does paragraph 2 mainly tell us about ChatGPT?| A．Its language model. | B．Its working theory. |
| C．Its design inspiration. | D．Its development process. |
| A．To show the popularity of ChatGPT. |
| B．To stress the high cost of inventing ChatGPT. |
| C．To present the creativity of artificial intelligence. |
| D．To prove the necessity of developing tools for chatting online. |
| A．Providing solutions to any question. |
| B．Guiding users to experience free services. |
| C．Searching for a huge amount of information. |
| D．Giving users priority access during peak hours. |
| A．It operates based on limited data. |
| B．It needs longer to provide solutions. |
| C．It can only update information at a fixed time. |
| D．It may provide replies unrelated to the questions. |
