Teenagers are the most dangerous drivers on the road, and car crashes are the leading cause of death among teens. But there’s one simple way to keep kids safe: Don’t give teens a car they consider their own.
Teenagers who reported that they were the main person driving a vehicle, rather than sharing it with other family members, were more than twice as likely to be involved in a crash. One in four drivers with primary access to a car had had an accident while driving in the past year, compared with 1 in 10 for shared access. That means 25 percent of the kids driving their “own” cars had at least one accident last year! The teens with their own car also were more likely to use a cell phone while driving (78 percent, compared with 55 percent) and to speed (70 percent vs 54 percent). These figures come from a survey of 2167 teenagers by researchers at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. It is said to be the first to look at whether having primary access to a car affects safety for teenage drivers.
What makes driving a family car safer? Maybe it’s as simple as knowing that it’s the family’s car. I’m sure the realization that it wasn’t “my” car made me more sorry-and more careful.
Many parents are excited when their teenager is finally driving, and many teens need to drive themselves to school or work. As a result, it’s easy for parents to think that a new driver needs a car. Indeed, the researchers found that 70 percent of the teenagers said that they had their “own” car. This is dangerous, and parents should consider delaying giving a child a car at least until the teenager has been driving for a year.
Children who have strict parents were 50 percent less likely to have had a crash in the past year, compared with parents whose style is permissive. The advice: Don’t be afraid to set rules for safe driving behavior, and take the keys if those rules aren’t followed. In fact, making your teenager say, “Mom, can I have the car keys?” may be one of the simplest and best ways to keep your child safe.
1. The percentage of teenagers who speed while driving a family car is _________.| A．54% | B．70% | C．55% | D．78% |
| A．Their teenager finding a job. | B．Their teenager making friends. |
| C．Their teenager getting a driving license. | D．Their teenager buying their own car. |
| A．By using some examples. | B．By offering some figures. |
| C．By reasoning and concluding. | D．By analyzing causes and effects. |
| A．Teenagers: the most dangerous drivers | B．Keep teens safe-not giving them a car |
| C．Teens driving alone worry parents | D．Family shared cars can avoid car crashes |
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【推荐1】A bicycle may be seen by most people as just another vehicle(交通工具), but for many Londoners, cycling is a way of life.According to an official UK government survey in 2017, about 570,000 bike journeys are made every day in London.In fact, almost half of the vehicles that pass over London Bridge each day are bikes.
London introduced a public bikesharing system in 2010. “There can be no doubt that our trusty bicycles have changed the way people get around our great city,” Johnson told The Guardian in 2015.
In London, bikes are used for more than just taking short trips to and from the subway.No matter where you want to go in the city, taking a bike is usually the quickest and easiest choice.
And it's not just shared bikes that the government is encouraging people to ride.In many companies across the UK, the UK government's Cycle to Work scheme(骑行倡议) allows employees to buy a brand new bike without having to pay any tax(税)．This means that it's common to see many people cycling to and from work, and some employers even provide workplace showers and lockers(储物柜) for their workers.More importantly, a cycle-friendly boss may let you off for being late if you rode a bike to work.
Not only is it great for the environment and our body, cycling is also good for the mind.According to National Geographic Magazine, “Bike riding can improve people's happiness.”
1. How does the author show the popularity of cycling in London?| A．By making comparisons. | B．By giving examples. |
| C．By using numbers. | D．By using famous sayings. |
| A．Uninterested. | B．Doubtful. |
| C．Disappointed. | D．Supportive |
| A．A tax-free bike. | B．Free bike-sharing services. |
| C．Shorter working hours. | D．Workplace showers and lockers. |
| A．不惩罚 | B．奖赏. |
| C．请假 | D．使爆炸 |
【推荐2】Traveling by train can be a romantic way to see the world. Since it was one of the original forms of transportation worldwide, here are some fantastic train trips to add to your travel list.
Qinghai-Tibet Railway
Where it goes: Xining to Lhasa
Why not start with the world's highest train ride? The Qinghai-Tiber Railway climbs to great heights of over 16,0000 feet as it snakes trough the Himalayas. The wonderful 1215-mile journey only makes seven stops.
Eurostar
Where it goes: London to/from Paris
Eurostar is a popular way for folks to get from London to Paris, thanks to its quick travel time, but it has another attraction that makes it a great train trip. For 20 minutes, you will actually be riding 150 feet underwater through the famous English Channel.
Trans-Siberian Railway
Where it goes: Moscow to Vladivostok
The Trans-Siberian Railway is another historically famous railroad that should be on your travel list. It is also the world's longest continuous railway. Along the way, you will pass through eight time zones and have plenty of time to see the beautiful Russian countryside.
Glacier Express
Where it goes: St. Moritz to Zermatt in the Swiss Alps
This train ride is a favorite among many, as it's arguably the best way to experience the Swiss Alps. It's much more about the journey than the destination, and it gives new meaning to the term slow travel, taking over seven hours to pass just 180 miles. But it's one of the most scenic train journeys out there, so the slow pace is welcomed.
1. What's special about Eurostar?| A．It passes through the most time zones. | B．It travels underwater for some time. |
| C．It is the highest speed train ride in the world. | D．It offers you beautiful European scenery. |
| A．Qinghai-Tibet Railway. | B．Eurostar. |
| C．Trans-Siberian Railway. | D．Glacier Express. |
| A．A science magazine. | B．A travel brochure. | C．A biography. | D．A textbook. |
【推荐3】Think of London and you will probably remember the bright red double-decker buses. Think of Thailand’s capital city, Bangkok, and the noisy tuk-tuks may come to mind. Think of San Francisco and you might see the city’s cable cars.
Imagining what these cities would look like without those is difficult. They are symbols of these cities that make them different. However, these city symbols are not always so well loved by their city leaders. City leaders want what is best for their city, which often means the most modern transport.
In Bangkok, city leaders have banned (禁止) tuk-tuks because they consider them noisy and polluting. However, the ban has largely been unsuccessful as it has not changed Thai people’s love for the cheap tuk-tuks over taxis.
In London the city’s first ever mayor (市长) removed the red double-decker buses, which he thought were old fashioned. His plan worked, but Londoners were unhappy to lose the nice old buses they believed represented the best of their city. They made their unhappiness felt when the mayor came up for re-election. Most Londoners voted for his competitor, who promised to bring the bus back.
As for San Francisco, several cable cars are still in use but mainly as tourist attractions. They are too slow to be used for anything other than scenic trips.
City transport symbols may have a place in their city people’s hearts, but it seems they are increasingly out of step with the modern world. As Londoners have proved, their continued life depends on people’s willingness to fight for their survival.
1. What’s the author’s purpose of writing the first paragraph?| A．To introduce some city transport symbols. |
| B．To explain why some cities are popular. |
| C．To talk about modern transport in some cities. |
| D．To attract more tourists to visit some cities. |
| A．the new mayor loves it | B．Londoners fought for it |
| C．it is an improved transport | D．it is popular with tourists |
| A．Only a few cable cars are still in use in San Francisco. |
| B．Bangkok city leaders tried to remove the cheap tuk-tuks. |
| C．The mayor who sold double-decker buses lost the re-election. |
| D．The new mayor will bring back improved double-decker buses. |
| A．Modern cities should remove old city transport symbols. |
| B．The writer thinks highly of the old city transport symbols. |
| C．Old city transport symbols face the problem of survival. |
| D．Tourist cities will lose their attraction without the symbols. |
【推荐1】NBC News published an opinion piece declaring that parents aren’t qualified to make decisions about school curricula for their children. The column, “Schools face parents who want to ban critical race theory and don’t get how teaching works”, written by author Christina Wyman was instantly roasted on social media.
“Parents and politicians across the country are getting their fingers into the curricula that public schools use to teach students. Some states are passing laws to keep critical race theory out of schools, and school libraries are coming under attack for containing books about gender. There are even parents who are trying to keep students away from learning about mental health and as though helping children build emotional strength is a bad thing,” Wyman wrote to kick off the piece.
“While the political climate and national involvement in school districts give the phenomenon a broader platform and have more serious impact, this behavior is nothing new. Parents have always tried to interfere (干涉) with curricula, as I observed when teaching middle school in the mid-2000s,” she continued. Wyman then compared parents wanting to have a say in what their children learn to people breaking into an operating room during surgery on their children. “These interventions are nothing more than theater, and school boards and administrators should be protecting their teachers and students from them rather than bowing to them,” she wrote.
Wyman, who spent some time discussing her own schooling and Ph. D. in curriculum, painted parents as under-qualified to cut in unless they have achieved the same level of education that is required of most teachers. Wyman wrote, “An educator’s primary goal is to teach students to think. Parents who attempt to influence curricula with their personal opinions block that goal.”
1. How did Wyman begin the piece?| A．By presenting some unreasonable phenomena. |
| B．By calling for parents’ concern about children. |
| C．By stressing students’ mental health problems. |
| D．By introducing various public school curricula. |
| A．Curricula. | B．Parents. |
| C．Interventions. | D．Administrators. |
| A．To attract readers’ attention to NBC. | B．To reflect parents’ love for children. |
| C．To call for more concern for curricula. | D．To persuade parents out of interfering. |
| A．Stubborn. | B．Qualified. | C．Optimistic. | D．Unprofessional. |
【推荐2】Be it sugar or social media, the response in our brain is the same: It produces a “feel-good” chemical called dopamine. It first brings about pleasure, but it doesn’t last very long. It is then followed by pain so that we have to search for the pleasurable things again.
“This cycle of pleasure and pain made sense in the time of early humans when we had to constantly search for our basic needs-food, water, shelter,” says Dr. Anna Lembke, a Stanford Medical School researcher. “But our brains weren’t adjusted to put out the ‘fire of dopamine’ caused by pleasurable things that are so easily available in modern life.”
In addition, when we’re repeatedly exposed to pleasure-producing things, we’re not able to take joy in the same rewards. Instead, we need stronger and stronger stimulus (刺激) just to feel good. Otherwise, the cycle will lead us to anxiety, depression and many other problems.
“This is a universal problem—not one limited to those struggling with the disease of addiction. If we want to stay mentally healthy, we must rethink how to break the cycle in a dopamine-overloaded world,” says Lembke.
Her suggestions for the addicts?
Take a 30-day break from anything that we rely on for pleasure. This doesn’t mean going cold turkey forever. But this first month is key to breaking the pleasure-pain cycle and it’s a lot easier to cut out an addictive behavior entirely at first. Then re-introduce the pleasurable things little by little, like just a few bites of ice cream at a time or just one hour online a night.
Another strategy is to create physical distance between us and our addiction. That could mean just removing the addictive thing from our personal space. For someone who’s addicted to video games, that could mean a separate laptop for work and one for play.
“In a time of abundance, we have to strike a pleasure-pain balance, which means intentionally avoiding pleasure and seeking the kind of purposeful pain that keeps us healthy, such as exercise,” Lembke says. “By doing so, we will reset reward pathways and eventually be a lot happier. It’s not easy, but it’s well worth doing in the long term.”
1. What can we learn about dopamine from the text?| A．It has always been harmful to humans. |
| B．It gives us less joy for the same rewards. |
| C．It can be caused by anything available. |
| D．It can lead to a lasting good feeling. |
| A．Abandoning. | B．Waiting. | C．Cooking. | D．Repeating. |
| A．Avoid pleasure in life. |
| B．Set a strict limit on pleasurable things. |
| C．Change reward pathways. |
| D．Expose ourselves to repeated rewards. |
| A．Ways to Live With Dopamine in Peace |
| B．Tips on Getting Rid of Social Media Addiction |
| C．Strategies for Making Most of the Modern Life |
| D．The Need to Strike a Pleasure-pain Balance |
【推荐3】Josefa Marin went to New York from Mexico in 1987, supporting her daughter back home with the $140 a week she earned at a sweater factory. With that small income, she had to collect recyclables, trading in cans for five cents each.
When the clothing factory closed down in the late 2000s, she became a full-time recycler, picking up cans and bottles to make ends meet.
Marin’s story is not unique. Millions around the world make a living from picking through waste and reselling it — a vital role that keeps waste manageable. In New York City, the administrative department collects only about 28 percent of the cans that could be recycled. Rubbish collectors, however, keep millions of additional recyclables out of landfills every year.
Yet collectors are ruled out by government policies. The United States Supreme Court in 1988 stated that household garbage is public property once it’s on the street. That enables police to search rubbish for evidence, but that protection hasn’t always been extended to recyclers. And in places like New York City, which is testing city-owned locked containers to hide garbage from rats, containers are made clearly inaccessible for collectors.
“There’s value in the waste, and we feel that value should belong to the people, not the city or the corporations”, says Ryan Castalia, director of a nonprofit recycling and community center in Brooklyn.
Recognized or not, waste pickers have long been treated with disrespect. Marin recalls an occasion when someone living next to a building where she was collecting cans threw water at her. “Because I recycle doesn’t mean I am less of a person than anyone else,” she says. It’s a pity to see that the government doesn’t stand by the garbage collector’s side, either.
Fortunately, some governments are starting to realize that protecting the environment and humanity go hand in hand. Brazil classified waste picking as an official occupation in 2001. In 2009, Colombia’s government granted the right to collect valuable garbage. The U.S. is slowly catching on too. After all, to the government, the garbage is garbage, but to the collectors, it’s something they make a living on.
1. What is the author’s purpose of telling about Marin?| A．To highlight waste collectors’ role. |
| B．To reflect the unemployed’s hardship. |
| C．To praise her devotion to her daughter. |
| D．To show the seriousness of unemployment. |
| A．By citing reference. | B．By contrasting. |
| C．By giving definitions. | D．By cause-effect analysis. |
| A．No job is noble or humble. | B．Business is business. |
| C．The early birds catches worms. | D．One good turn deserves another. |
| A．Who owns our garbage? | B．How can we end poverty? |
| C．Who takes blame for waste? | D．How should we recycle rubbish? |
【推荐1】People often say that the world is getting smaller. By this, they mean that with improved communications and trade, each country is becoming more and more familiar with one another. There seems to be a lot of truth to this. After all, you can buy African food in Norway, or watch a French movie in China.
But in spite of this, countries still have the power to shock people who visit them for the first time. For many of us, there are still real differences in the culture and habits between nations.
Recently, the Daily Mail reported on some culture shocks from around the world. A Serbian student, Milorad Boti, was highly surprised on a school trip to Germany when he found that public bathrooms were very different to those in his home country. He noticed that after using the toilet, the lid(盖子)rotated(旋转)as part of a cleaning process. Milorad was impressed. “That was the best thing that happened on that school trip,” he said.
Most often, however, it’s eating habits that are different between cultures. The Daily Mail article mentioned the shock of an Indian man, Kaushal Braot. When visiting a Western country, he notice people socializing in restaurants, often spending hours in them with friends. Kaushal was surprised because in India, restaurants are for one thing only: eating.
The cultural differences people noticew can seem positive, negative, or simply jst strange. But rather than something to be feared, these differences should be welcomed. Indeed, if the whole world were like one big country, it would be a much duller place. So let’s be proud of our own culture, and at the same time, open to the cultures of others.
1. The world is getting smaller because of ___________.| A．African food in Norway | B．French movies in China |
| C．improved communications and trade | D．differences in culture |
| A．having a dinner with your friends | B．playing basketball with your friends |
| C．chatting with your friends | D．sharing a book with your friends |
| A．The world will become one big country. |
| B．Cultural differences make people feared. |
| C．Chinese culture is the best one in the world. |
| D．We should love our own culture and respect others’. |
| A．support the writer’s opinion | B．make the article interesting |
| C．make the article logical | D．introduce the topic |
“Have a nice day. Next!” This version(版本) of the expression is spoken by a salesgirl at the supermarket who is rushing me and my groceries out the door. The words come out in the same tone with a fixed procedure.They are spoken at me, not to me. Obviously, the concern for my day and everyone else’s is the management’s attempt to increase business.
The expression is one of those behaviors that help people get along with each other. Sometimes it indicates the end of a meeting. As soon as you hear it, you know the meeting is at an end. Sometimes the expression saves us when we don’t know what to say. “Oh, you just had a tooth out? I’m terribly sorry, but have a nice day.”
The expression can be pleasant. If a stranger says “Have a nice day” to you, you may find it heart-warming because someone you don’t know has tried to be nice to you.
Although the use of the expression is an insincere, meaningless social custom at times, there is nothing wrong with the sentence except that others who speak it without thinking may not really care about my day. But in a strange and comfortable way, it’s nice to know they care enough to pretend they care when they really don’t care all that much. While the expression may not often be sincere, it is always spoken. The point is that people say it all the time when they like.
1. How does the author understand Maxie’s word?
| A．Maxie really wishes the author a good day. |
| B．Maxie shows her anxiety to the author. |
| C．Maxie encourages the author to stay happy. |
| D．Maxie really worries about the author’s security (安全). |
| A．The salesgirl is rude. |
| B．The salesgirl is bored. |
| C．The salesgirl cares about me. |
| D．The salesgirl says the words as a routine(惯例). |
| A．express respect to you |
| B．give his blessing to you |
| C．try to be friendly to you |
| D．share his pleasure with you |
| A．Have a nice day—a meaningless expression |
| B．Have a nice day—a Heart-warming Greeting |
| C．Have a nice day—a Social Custom |
| D．Have a nice day—a Polite Ending of a Conversation |
【推荐3】Most people follow others blindly mainly under the effect of peer(同龄人) pressure. Some people also feel it safe to follow a large number of people. In some rare cases it might be right to follow the crowd(群众), but in most cases this can be one big mistake. Actually there are reasons why we shouldn’t follow the crowd blindly.
According to a study, people tend to follow the crowd when they aren’t sure about the direction they should take. This means a large number of people could be following others without understanding what’s right and what’s wrong！This attracts more people to follow them and the result is that most people move in a certain direction even if it isn’t right.
A man who wants to be successful always hopes for others’ guidance and he usually follows the same path of most people, but the question this man never asks himself is：are all of those people successful？Of course not！If you want to follow a crowd, then follow a successful one. However, in real life you’ll only find one successful person among hundreds of people, and that’s why following the crowd makes no sense at all.
Most people act without thinking wisely. If you always follow others because they’re greater than you in number, then sooner or later you’ll discover that you’re making decisions you might regret later.
However, should we never follow the crowd？No. I’m not trying to say you should never follow the crowd, but instead I’m just asking you to think wisely before you make a decision. If you find others are right, there is no problem in following them, but if you have doubts about the direction they’re moving in, don’t follow them blindly.
1. According to the text，most people follow others blindly mainly because .| A．they are affected by their peers | B．they don’t believe in themselves |
| C．they feel it safe to stay with others | D．they are weaker than other people |
| A．It needs some time to think wisely. |
| B．We shouldn’t regret what we have done. |
| C．We should think wisely before deciding to follow others. |
| D．Making others follow us is better than following others. |
| A．It is wrong to follow other people. |
| B．Those who follow others won’t succeed. |
| C．Only those foolish people will follow others. |
| D．One should use his head before following others. |
| A．Effects of following others. |
| B．Benefits of making wise decisions. |
| C．Reasons why most people follow others. |
| D．Reasons why people shouldn’t follow others blindly. |
