Enjoy the challenge of a new term
The new term is finally here, which means, of course, it’s time to return to school.
For many students across China, that also means having to leave home for the next several months and move into a school dormitory.
Being away from our family for a long time, however, often leads to homesickness, a feeling that most students have experienced at some point.
A study by the UK’s National Union of Students found that up to 70 percent of UK students living away from home experience homesickness within their first few weeks of being away.
But homesickness isn’t just a feeling of sadness that happens in our mind; it can also affect us physically.
“You feel homesickness in your stomach—it’s an unease in which you feel uncomfortable, nervous, stressed because you’re in a place or situation that’s not familiar,” Joshua Klapow, a professor of public heath at the University of Alabama, us, told HuffPost.
According to Klapow, the body reacts physically when it’s placed in an unknown situation such as being separated from one’s familiar surroundings for a long time.
“It’s an evolutionary (进化的) thing that makes us protect ourselves from danger when something is unknown,” he told the HuffPost.
“When we think about home, we know that the sense of unknown … is not happening there, so we want to return.”
So, how can we overcome these physical reactions?
Ruth Hardy of the Guardian offered advice for students who are feeling the effects of being away from the safety of home.
“Try and establish routines (常规) quickly. This can make your new environment feel more stable and will hopefully make you feel more settled,” she wrote.
Making friends with others who are in your situation is also a great way to feel less homesick, according to Hardy.
The most important thing to remember, however, is that homesickness is completely normal and is nothing to be ashamed of.
And once it’s gone, you’re free to enjoy the adventures and challenges of a brand new school year.
1. The study by the UK’s National Union of Students is mentioned to ________.| A．show how homesickness causes harm to students |
| B．prove it’s common for students to feel homesick |
| C．introduce some causes of homesickness |
| D．show how all young people are troubled by homesickness |
| A．It’s only a feeling in our mind. |
| B．It usually disappears after a few weeks. |
| C．It has a physical influence on our body. |
| D．It always happens once we visit an unfamiliar place. |
| A．Take part in as many activities as possible. |
| B．Talk about your problems with your friends. |
| C．Get into a routine as early as possible. |
| D．Avoid seeing things related to your home life. |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】Tips for the perfect selfie（自拍）
You can take a selfie with a hand-held digital camera or mobile phone and later share it on the Internet. So selfies have been especially popular over the years.
After all, the selfie is the most important way to show off on holiday. Everyone has his own way to take the holiday selfies. How can you take the best holiday selfies?
◆‘Food chew’ style
Want to let everyone know how exciting your holiday food choices are?
◆‘I’m so adventurous’ style
Rock climbing, hiking, surfing, or skiing?
◆‘I am cultured tourist’ style
| A．Just taking a selfie against a famous cultural site makes you look great. |
| B．Some people have no idea where to travel. |
| C．According to a recent survey, half of the interviewees admitted to taking a selfie while on holiday. |
| D．These adventurous holiday moments are great for a selfie. |
| E．Different cultures have different characteristics of food. |
| F．Hold up some food on your fork or chopsticks. |
| G．Here are some useful posing tips for you. |
【推荐2】When researching New Year’s resolutions in the 1980s, the psychologist John Norcross found over 50% of Americans made resolution. After 6 months, only 40% had stuck with it. Two years later, the number had dropped to 19%. Still, we keep telling ourselves we can lose weight, save money, and go to the gym.
It turns out that timing is important in determining whether we succeed. In May, 2012, the behavioral economist Katherine Milkman, at a social science gathering, found herself in a discussion about “turning points”. She said, “I had a strong instinct that turning points are effective moments that feel like a new beginning.”
So she teamed up with two colleagues, Jason Riis and Hengchen Dai, to see if the “turning points” idea held any merit. In follow-up studies, they found fresh starts do push us to change our behavior. With those, researchers suspect, comes a sense of optimism, the promise of “a new me,” as Milkman put it. To test that theory, her team looked at daily Google searches for the term “diet” over 9 years, finding a predictable cycle: they topped at the start of any given week, month, or year, then gradually declined. The largest increase — 82% above the baseline — occurred immediately after New Year’s.
The college gym attendance is no exception: shooting up in January and decreasing in the following months. Smaller spikes occurred at the beginning of each week, each month, and each term.
Finally, the researchers investigated commitments on the website stick, which allows you to set a goal and contractually determine the consequences for failing to attain it. Tracking 43,000 people over 2.5 years, they found the greatest number of contracts were signed at the start of the new year. Throughout the year, each week and each month had a mini-cycle of its own, with the beginning of the week corresponding to a 63% increase. “Every week brings a new opportunity,” Riis says. “And people take advantage of that whether or not they know it.”
1. Why was John Norcross’s research mentioned in paragraph 1?| A．To make a comparison. | B．To indicate a conclusion. |
| C．To analyze the data. | D．To introduce the topic. |
| A．It is instinctive. | B．It guarantees a new start. |
| C．It follows a cycle. | D．It determines the result. |
| A．Peaks. | B．Sharp points. | C．Changes. | D．Accidents. |
| A．Entertainment. | B．Education. | C．Lifestyle. | D．News. |
【推荐3】An aspirin a day keeps the doctor away. Aspirin has long been praised as a wonder drug and has been in your family since you can remember. Not only does it cure pain, it also lowers the risk of heart attack and stroke. But taking the pills daily may not work for everyone.
Although taking an occasional aspirin or two is safe for most adults to use for headaches，body aches or fever, daily use of aspirin can have serious side effects. Up to 60 per cent of us，both healthy people and those being treated for all types of heart disease may have some level of resistance to aspirin’s benefits.
Aspirin keeps platelets(血小板) from sticking, lowering the risk of clotting(结块)．People who are aspirinresistant still get pain relief but not the full bloodthinning effects.
How do you know whether you’re resistant？New blood tests can help your doctor decide whether to give you a different medicine, especially if you’re at risk or are being treated for heart disease. The tests aren’t yet widely available, but it doesn’t hurt to ask.
People taking aspirin daily should limit the amount of alcohol they drink because of its additional bloodthinning effects and potential to upset your stomach. Thus you should not have more than one drink if you’re a woman or two drinks a day if you’re a man. Does daily aspirin treatment differ between men and women？Recent studies have focused on the effects of aspirin in women，finding that its effects differ between the sexes, and for women, between age groups.
All in all, aspirin is still an effective, affordable and simple option for many people at risk of heart attack and stroke. Though it is readily available, always check with your doctor before starting daily aspirin treatment.
1. Aspirin has got the reputation of a wonder drug because ______.| A．an aspirin a day keeps the doctor away |
| B．it can make people feel less painful |
| C．it helps to prevent heart attacks and strokes |
| D．it doesn’t have any serious side effects |
| A．Aspirin does have bloodthinning effects. |
| B．If you are resistant to aspirin, you won’t feel pain. |
| C．People taking aspirin won't suffer from heart attacks. |
| D．60 per cent of people couldn't benefit from aspirin. |
| A．The new examination doesn’t hurt at all. |
| B．The tests only help aspirinresistant people. |
| C．Doctors do the tests to test new medicines. |
| D．Only some people have ever taken the tests. |
| A．drinking alcohol will make people feel uncomfortable |
| B．drinking alcohol could influence the function of aspirin |
| C．alcohol has much greater effects than aspirin on bloodthinning |
| D．people should not drink any alcohol while taking aspirin daily |
| A．People should be careful to make this decision. |
| B．This treatment is effective, affordable and simple. |
| C．It could be used to cure heart attack and stroke. |
| D．Old women should not start this kind of treatment. |
【推荐1】Scientists believed that if they could hit an asteroid(小行星)with an object travelling very fast, they could push the asteroid off the path it was on. So NASA came up with an experiment called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART.
Engineers built a box-shaped spacecraft that was about the size of a small car and weighed 570 kilograms and equipped it with a special camera and computers that would allow it to find and follow the asteroid they had chosen for the experiment.
Asteroids are rocky objects that move around the Sun. The smallest are the size of a large stone while some are up to 1, 000 kilometers in diameter (直径). The asteroid that was the target for this test is called Dimorphos, about 160 meters in diameter, or the size of a football stadium. It orbits (环绕) another larger asteroid, called Didymos. They are more than 7 million kilometers away from Earth and go around the Sun together, once every two years.
The DART spacecraft was sent up in November 2021 and then orbited the Sun for 10 months, following the path of Didymos and Dimorphos. Most of that time, Dimorphos was hidden by the sunlight reflecting off of the larger asteroid. On September 26, 2022, the spacecraft’s camera noticed Dimorphos for the first time and its navigation(导航)system began to guide it through space towards its target. About an hour later, it crashed into Dimorphos at more than 22, 500kilometers per hour.
Scientists studied the data and images of the asteroids for the next two weeks and found that the orbit of Dimorphos has shortened from 11 hours and 55 minutes to 11 hours and 23 minutes:a 32-minute change. While this may seem like a very small change, it shows that—if a dangerous asteroid was heading toward us—it would be possible to knock it off its course, keeping Earth safe. The chances of Earth actually being hit by an asteroid large enough to cause damage are very small.
1. What is the purpose of the DART?| A．To test whether scientists’ idea is true or not. |
| B．To know the weight of the asteroids going around the Sun. |
| C．To learn about the number of asteroids getting close to Earth. |
| D．To understand how asteroids move through space. |
| A．It is as large as a stadium. | B．It is 1, 000 kilometers wide. |
| C．It is a box-shaped asteroid. | D．It is an asteroid called Didymos. |
| A．It hid the reflected sunlight. | B．It followed the path of the target asteroid. |
| C．It landed safely on the target asteroid. | D．It flew through space to the target asteroid. |
| A．Doubtful. | B．Unsatisfying. | C．Unexpected. | D．Useful. |
【推荐2】It’s normal to long for the taste of potato chips or a cheese-covered pizza. Even though they’re full of calories, eating them occasionally won’t do much harm. However, according to the new numbers, young people are becoming more gluttonous. The BBC’s Good Food Nation Survey showed that on average, 16 to 20-year-olds ate fast food at least twice a day in the UK. So what’s behind this fast food binge （狂热）?
WebMD, an online publisher of news and information of human health and well-being, surveyed nearly 600 teenagers and adults in the United States. They found that the most common reason was our busy lifestyle. More than 92.3 percent of respondents said they were too busy to cook. Many find it challenging to balance work and life, and the convenience of fast food meets their needs. Fast food is readily available in corner stores and vending machines （自动售货机）. Remember those instant noodle cups from the supermarket? They’re ready in minutes, and you can store them at home for a long time.
But many people think this trend does no good. Sarah Toule, head of health information at World Cancer Research Fund, told the BBC: “It’s frightening that people, especially younger generations, are eating so much fast food loaded with fat, sugar and salt, but offers little nutritional value.”
She added, “Especially high in calories, fast food leads to unhealthy weight gain — which in turn increases the risk of 11 cancers later in life.”
So what is the right thing to do? Toule suggested that young people should prepare meals in advance and learn to include the different food groups in their diets.
1. What does the underlined phrase “more gluttonous” in paragraph 1 mean?| A．Greedier. | B．Healthier. | C．Smarter. | D．Lazier. |
| A．People should make a change to their busy lifestyle. |
| B．Fast food helps people balance their work and life. |
| C．Fast food is becoming popular with teenagers and adults. |
| D．Nowadays people have more challenges both in work and life. |
| A．can’t provide enough nutrition for eaters |
| B．will lead to 11 cancers |
| C．can help lose weight |
| D．is easy to prepare ahead of time |
【推荐3】Will people remember less with Internet users becoming more and more dependent on the Internet to store information? If you know your computer will save information, why do you store it in your own personal memory, your brain?
Professor Betsy Sparrow, together with her research team, has carried out some experiments in a recent study, wanting to know how the Internet is changing memory. In the first experiment, they offered people 40 unimportant facts to type into a computer. The first group of people understood that the computer would save the information. The second group understood that the computer would not save it. Later, the second group remembered the information better. People in the first group knew they could find the information again, so they did not try to remember it.
In another experiment, the researchers gave people facts to remember, and told them where to find the information on the computer. The information was in a specific computer folder( 文 件 夹 ). Surprisingly, people later remembered the folder locations better than the facts. When people use the Internet, they do not remember the information. Rather, they remember how to find it. This is called “transactive memory(交互记忆)”.
According to Sparrow, we are not becoming people with poor memories as a result of the Internet.
Instead, computer users are developing stronger transactive memories; that is, people are learning how to organize huge quantities of information so that they are able to access it at a later date. This doesn’t mean we are becoming either more or less intelligent, but there is no doubt that the way we use memory is changing.
1. Why does the text begin with two questions?| A．To make a comparison. | B．To introduce the main topic. |
| C．To show the author’s attitude. | D．To list some examples. |
| A．The Sparrow’s team typed the information into a computer. |
| B．The two groups remembered the information equally well. |
| C．The first group did not try to remember the information. |
| D．The second group did not understand the information. |
| A．They remember how to find the information. |
| B．They organize information like a computer. |
| C．They change the quantity of information. |
| D．They bear the information in mind. |
| A．Negative. | B．Passive. | C．Objective. | D．Doubtful. |
