Did you know that cutting meat and dairy products from your diet can reduce your food carbon footprint by 73%? It’s likely you’ve heard similar statistics before, which might have even grabbed your attention long enough to try a plant-based lifestyle for a while. However, for some, cutting out delicious meaty products forever seems too restrictive to sustain long term.
It’s true that we’re creatures of habit, so the dishes we love might be difficult to give up even when we intend to do so. But all the exciting new food technology could greatly change the way we consume food. Usually consisting of soy, grain or pea protein bases, fake meat hamburgers use around 90% less water than their beef stuff, so for all those looking to make a change without changing their diet, this could be wonderful news.
However good this may sound, it’s not a perfect system. Meat alternatives have their constraints too, but the good still far outweighs the bad when used to replace red meat. If health is a big concern for you, you might be better off sticking to vegetables and enjoying fake meat as a treat as some brands can be over processed or may not contain sufficient nutrients.
Currently, companies are racing to create the first “lab grown” meat products as a simple answer to everyone’s concerns. However, with all the moral concerns, questions about health and cost of production being extremely high, this is a long way from becoming a reality in mass production.
The exciting thing to take from this, whichever side you may be on, is that the fake meat industry is growing at such a rapid speed. It’s bound to produce a practical sustainable option soon, so keep watching this space.
1. What is the function of the first paragraph?| A．To give a definition. | B．To lead in the topic. |
| C．To provide statistics. | D．To support the argument. |
| A．They are nutritious. | B．They are delicious. |
| C．They are eco-friendly. | D．They are money-saving. |
| A．Values. | B．Flavors. | C．Advantages. | D．Limitations. |
| A．Worrying. | B．Promising. | C．Disappointing. | D．Unpredictable. |
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【推荐1】Tea drinking was common in China for nearly one thousand years before anyone in Europe had ever heard about it. People in Britain were much slower in finding out what tea was like, mainly because tea was very expensive. It could not be bought in shops and even those people who could afford to have it sent from Holland did so only because it was a fashionable curiosity. Some of them were not sure how to use it. They thought it was a vegetable and tried cooking the leaves.
Tea remained scarce (稀少的) and very expensive in England until the ships of the East India Company began to bring it directly from China early in the 17th century. During the next few years so much tea came into the country that the price fell and many people could afford to buy it.
At the same time people on the Continent were becoming more and more fond of tea. Until then tea had been drunk without milk in it, but one day a famous French lady named Madame de Sevigne decided to see what tea tasted like when milk was added. She found it so pleasant that she would never again drink it without milk. She was such a great lady that her friends thought they must copy everything she did, so they also drank their tea with milk in it. Slowly this habit spread until it reached England and today only very few Britons drink tea without milk.
At first, tea was usually drunk after dinner in the evening. No one ever thought of drinking tea in the afternoon until a duchess (公爵夫人) found that a cup of tea and a piece of cake at three or four o’clock stopped her getting “a sinking feeling” as she called it. She invited her friends to have this new meal with her and so, teatime was born.
1. What do we know about the introduction of tea into Britain?| A．Tea reached Britain from Holland. |
| B．The Britons got expensive tea from India. |
| C．The Britons were the first people in Europe who drank tea. |
| D．It was not until the 17th century that the Britons had tea. |
| A．In the late 19th century. | B．In the 18th century. |
| C．In the 17th century. | D．In the 16th century. |
| A．drinking tea with milk in it | B．drinking tea without milk in it |
| C．drinking tea after dinner | D．drinking tea in the afternoon |
| A．The history of tea. | B．The ways of making tea. |
| C．The birth of teatime. | D．The habit of drinking tea. |
【推荐2】Throwing a party is a great way to get all your favorite people in one place for music, conversation, of course, food.
Ask your guests about food restrictions before you start preparing food. For guests with food allergies or on diets, ask them to make their own restrictions clear. And ask if any guests are vegetarians and provide dishes accordingly.
Choose an appetizer-only meal for a relaxing inexpensive party. You’ll save money and preparation time, and be able to socialize more with your guests.
Prepare fruits and vegetables. Many guests will want a fresh, healthy option to start off a meal. A fruit tray or veggie platter with carrots, cucumbers, and broccoli is an easy and colorful addition to your appetizer spread.
| A．Serve a substantial main course if necessary |
| B．Serve light, simple snacks before a main course |
| C．You should detail it on the invitation that only appetizers will be served |
| D．So you should make thoughtful preparations for each of your guests |
| E．It’s a good idea to have a few vegetarian options available regardless |
| F．But it can be stressful to prepare food for guests with all different preferences |
| G．Look for ripe fruits and fresh vegetables that are in season for the best tasting ingredients |
A man named Walter Scott had the first “diner” in 1872. It wasn’t a real diner. It was only a food cart. People on the street walked up to the cart to buy food. These carts served late-night workers who wanted a cup of coffee and a late-night meal. The meal was a sandwich or boiled eggs. In 1887, Samuel Jones built the first diner big enough to allow the customers to come inside. However, they did not sit down. Later, people built diners with counters and stools, and people sat down while they ate.
Before long, many diners stayed open around the clock. In other words, people were able to eat in diner at any time. Diners changed in other ways, too. The original menu of sandwiches and coffee became bigger. It included soup, favorite dishes, and a breakfast menu. In addition, diners soon became permanent buildings. They were no longer carts on wheels.
Diners today look similar to the diners of the early 1900s. They are usually buildings with large windows. Inside, the diners have shining counters with stools, booths, and tables and chairs. People can eat all three meals in a modern diner.
Today, many people eat in fast-food restaurants such as McDonald’s and Burger King. However, the diner remains an American tradition, and thousands of people still enjoy eating there. It was popular a century ago, and it is still popular today.
1. A man named Walter Scott had the first “diner” in 1872. Why is the word “diner” in quotation marks(引号)？
| A．Because it is spelled differently from “ dinner” |
| B．Because diner was a new word |
| C．Because the first diner was not what it is now |
| D．Because it is a special kind of restaurant |
| A．Two ways | B．four ways |
| C．three ways | D．five ways |
| A．Diners existed before a fast-food restaurant |
| B．The menu included more food than sandwiches and coffee |
| C．Sandwiches became bigger |
| D．Burger King is a fast-food restaurant |
| A．Samuel Johns built the first diner big enough to allow the customers to come inside |
| B．The diner is a traditional , popular place to eat in the United States |
| C．American diners serve many types of food 24 hours a day to their customers |
| D．Diners are different from fast-food restaurants in many ways |
【推荐1】There is something to be said for being a generalist, even if you are a specialist. Knowing a little about a lot of things that interest you can add to the richness of a whole, well-lived life.
Society pushes us to specialize, to become experts. This requires commitment to a particular occupation, branch of study or research. The drawback to being specialists is we often come to know more and more about less and less. There is a great deal of pressure to master one's field. You may pursue training, degrees, or increasing levels of responsibility at work. Then you discover the pressure of having to keep up.
Some people seem willing to work around the clock in their narrow specialty. But such commitment can also weaken a sense of freedom. These specialists could work at the office until ten each night, then look back and realize they would have loved to have gone home and enjoyed the sweetness of their family and friends, or traveled to exciting places, meeting interesting people. Mastering one thing to the exclusion （排 除）of others can hold back your true spirit.
Generalists, on the other hand, know a lot about a wide range of subjects and view the whole with all its connections. They are people of ability, talent, and enthusiasm who can bring their broad perspective （视角）into specific fields of expertise （专长）.The doctor who is also a poet and philosopher is a superior doctor, one who can give so much more to his patients than just good medical skills.
Things are connected. Let your expertise in one field fuel your passions in all related areas. Some of your interests may not appear to be connected but, once you explore their depths, you discover that they are. My editor Toni, who is also a writer, has edited several history books. She has decided to study Chinese history. Fascinated by the structural beauty of the Forbidden City as a painter, she is equally interested to learn more about Chinese philosophy. "I don't know where it will lead, but I'm excited I'm on this pursuit."
These expansions into new worlds help us by giving us new perspectives. We begin to see the interconnectedness of one thing to another in all aspects of our life, of ourselves and the universe. Develop broad, general knowledge and experience. The universe is all yours to explore and enjoy.
1. To become a specialist, one may have to_____.| A．narrow his range of knowledge |
| B．avoid responsibilities at work |
| C．know more about the society |
| D．broaden his perspective on life |
| A．treasure their freedom |
| B．travel around the world |
| C．spend most time working |
| D．enjoy meeting funny people |
| A．is fully aware of his talent and ability |
| B．is a pure specialist in medicine |
| C．should love poetry and philosophy |
| D．brings knowledge of other fields to work |
| A．Passion alone does not ensure a person's success. |
| B．In-depth exploration makes discoveries possible. |
| C．Everyone has a chance to succeed in their pursuit. |
| D．Seemingly unrelated interests are in a way connected. |
| A．Be More a Generalist Than a Specialist |
| B．Specialist or Generalist: Hard to Decide |
| C．Turn a Generalist into a Specialist |
| D．Ways to Become a Generalist |
【推荐2】Will chatbots that can generate fascinating articles destroy education as we know it?
New York City’s Department of Education recently banned (禁止) the use of ChatGPT. “While the tool may be able to provide quick and easy answers to questions,” says the official statement, “it does not build critical-thinking skills, which are necessary for academic and lifelong success.”
Banning such use of technology from the classroom is a nearsighted response. Instead, we must find a way forward in which such technologies combine well with, rather than replace, student thinking.
Banning ChatGPT is impossible in practice. Students will find ways around the ban, which will cause a further defensive response from teachers and administrators, and so on. It’s hard to believe that a close race between those digital natives and their educators will end in a decisive victory for the latter. In fact, chatbots may well speed up a trend (趋向) toward valuing critical thinking. In a world where computers can fluently answer any question, students need to get much better at deciding what questions to ask and how to fact-check the answers the program generates.
So how do we encourage young people to use their minds when real thinking is so hard to tell apart from its simulacrum (假象)? Teachers, of course, will still want to watch students taking old-fashioned, in-person, no-chatbot-allowed exams to check that they do not cheat.
But we must also figure out how to do something new: how to use tools like GPT to inspire deeper thinking. GPT often generates text that is fluent and “reasonable” — but wrong. So using it requires the same mental heavy lifting that writing does: forming an opinion, creating an outline, picking which points to explain and which to drop, and looking for supporting facts. GPT can help with those tasks, but it can’t put them all together. Writing a good essay still requires lots of human thought and work. Indeed, writing is thinking, and good writing is good thinking.
One approach is to focus on the process as much as the result. For instance, teachers might require four drafts of an essay. After all, as John McPhee, the famous writer, said, “the central nature of the process is revision.” Each draft gets feedback from the teacher, from peers or even from a chatbot. Then the students produce the next draft, and so on.
Will AI one day outperform human beings in thinking? Maybe, but for now, we must think for ourselves. Like any tool, GPT is an enemy of thinking only if we fail to find ways to make it our partner.
1. How does the author feel about the ban?| A．Understandable. | B．Irresponsible. | C．Unwise. | D．Necessary. |
| A．Because students are digitally fluent. | B．Because schools will defend the ban. |
| C．Because ChatGPT will keep developing. | D．Because people treasure critical thinking. |
| A．By quoting others. | B．By presenting facts. | C．By giving examples. | D．By showing similarities. |
| A．Is GPT a process or a result? | B．Will GPT outperform students? |
| C．Why Chatbots become a new trend? | D．How can Chatbots serve education? |
As online learning becomes more common and more resources are changed to digital form, some people have suggested that public libraries should be shut down and everyone should be given a tablet.
Supporters of this idea state that it will save local cities and towns money because libraries are expensive to maintain. They also believe it will encourage more people to read because they can simply click on what they want to read wherever they are.
However, it would be a serious mistake to replace libraries with tablets. Digital books and resources are associated with less learning and more problems than print resources. A study done on tablet vs. book reading found that people read 20-30% slower on tablets, remember 20% less information, and understand 10% less of what they read, compared to people who read the same information in print. Additionally, staring too long at a screen has been shown to cause health problems, including blurred vision, dizziness, dry eyes and headaches, at much higher instances than reading print does. We should not add to these problems by giving people, especially young people, more reasons to look at screens.
It is incredibly narrow-minded to assume that the only service libraries offer is book lending. Libraries have a lot of benefits, and many are only available if the library has a physical location. Some of these benefits include acting as a quiet study space, giving people a way to talk to their neighbors, holding classes on a variety of topics, providing jobs, answering questions, and keeping the community connected. One neighborhood found that, after a local library instituted community events such as play times for kids and parents, job fairs for teenagers, and meeting spaces for senior citizens, over a third of residents reported feeling more connected to their community. Therefore, people see libraries as a way to connect with others and get their questions answered, which are benefits that tablets can’t offer as well or as easily.
While replacing libraries with tablets may seem like a simple solution, it would encourage people to spend even more time looking at digital screens, despite the many issues surrounding them. It would also end access to many library benefits that people have come to rely on. In many areas, libraries are such an important part of the community network that they could never be replaced by a simple object.
1. Why do some people believe tablet reading can encourage more people to read? (不多于14个单词)2. What does the study in paragraph 3 show? (不多于12个单词)
3. According to paragraph 4, what are the advantages of public libraries over tablets? (不多于15个单词)
4. Do you think public libraries will be replaced by tablets? Why or why not?(单词数不限)
