【推荐1】Some people say that friendship is the only channel through which human beings can ever experience the value of life. In our daily life, it is likely that you share some common interests with others — they may like the same sport, go to the same school or like the same kind of music as you do. Since you often meet them, they become your acquaintances. Although some people develop many acquaintances, only a few become their good friends in their lifetime because there are differences between acquaintances and friends.

It is said that true friendship begins when someone knows what you are really like, but still likes you anyway. A true friend shows loyalty from the very beginning of the relationship. A friend will go through challenges to help you without expecting anything in return. A “friend” today may probably become a “true friend” tomorrow when they get involved in unexpected circumstances together with you — for example, when you are going through a difficult experience and your friend is there to help you out. However, some acquaintances might leave you when you badly need their help. At this time, you can experience what true friendship is.

In our life, some people seem to go through life with plenty of friends. They may be funny or they may have a bright and pleasant personality. For these people, wherever they go, people seem to like them and welcome their company. But when they go through challenging life experiences, some of their friends are not there to help them. Therefore we can say some of their friends are not real friends and their friendship is just skin-deep.

However, others seem to go through life with no friends at all. They like to be alone, to travel by themselves or to do their own things. It’s a pity that few of these people find success in life because they have no friends. They lack the best gift in life — friendship.

1. According to the passage, which of the following statements about acquaintances is TRUE?

A．They have all of the same interests as you do.

B．You seldom meet them in your life.

C．They are sure to become your good friends.

D．Not all of them can become your friends.

2. According to the passage you may get to know the meaning of friendship better when you ________.

A．go to the same school as your friend

B．get into trouble

C．enjoy the same kind of music as your friend

D．see your friend often

3. We know from the passage that ________.

A．it doesn’t matter whether one has friends or not

B．people with bright personality are easy to have friends

C．people without friends are always unhappy

D．it’s easier to lose a friend than to get one

4. What does the underlined word “skin-deep” in the third paragraph mean?

A．Very deep.	B．Not deep at all.
C．As precious as skin.	D．Hidden under the skin.

5. What’s the writer’s attitude towards people without friends in their life?

A．Interested.	B．Angry.
C．Hopeful.	D．Regretful.

【推荐2】Hundreds of friends on Facebook can’t replace a handful of close friends in real life, a study has found. In a recent study, researchers discovered that people with only a few friends were at least as happy as those with far more if many of theirs were online.

Social media, the researchers said, has encouraged younger people to have larger but more impersonal networks of “friends”. But instead of trying to amass friends, they added, a better cure for loneliness might be spending time with those you’re closest to.

Scientists from the University of Leeds did their study using data from two online surveys on 1,496 people by a non-profit research organization. People taking part in the study showed their ages, the make-up of their social networks, how often they had different types of social interactions, and their own feelings of well-being. They included details of how often and how they interacted with families or neighbors, and whether they included people who provided services to them in their networks.

The number of close friends someone had appeared to be the only thing which influenced how satisfied they were with their social life.

“Loneliness has less to do with the number of friends you have, and more to do with how you feel about your friends,” said Dr Wändi Bruine de Bruin. Actually, it's often the younger adults who admit to having a bad opinion of their friends.

If you feel lonely, it may be more helpful to make a positive connection with a friend than to try and seek out new people to meet.

1. According to the text, friends made on social media can ______.

A．take the place of friends in real life

B．only help people increase the number of friends

C．be as important as people’s close friends

D．bring people more happiness than friends in real life

2. Which of the following can replace the underlined word “amass” in Paragraph 2?

A．Play the role of.	B．Increase the number of.
C．Take advantage of.	D．Think highly of.

3. What can be learned from the scientists’ study?

A．Scientists conducted one online survey on 1,496 people.

B．People surveyed mentioned new forms of social networks.

C．The number of friends was the only cause of people’s happiness.

D．People surveyed showed their ways to interact with families.

4. What’s the author’s purpose in writing the text?

A．To show us the importance of friends.

B．To tell us ways to get rid of loneliness.

C．To advise us to make few online friends.

D．To present us with the findings of a study.

【推荐3】My roommate Lily was well organised, while I was not. Each of her things had its place, but mine were always hidden somewhere. She even labeled (贴标签于) everything. I always looked for everything. Over time, Lily got neater and I got messier. She would push my dirty clothing over, and I would lay my books on her tidy desk. We both got tired of each other.

War broke out one evening. Lily came into the room. Soon, I heard her screaming. “Take your shoes away! Why under my bed! “Deafened, I saw my shoes flying at me. I jumped to my feet and started yelling. She yelled back louder.

The room was filled with anger. We could not have stayed together for a single minute but for a phone call. Lily answered it. From her end of the conversation, I could tell right away her grandma was seriously ill. When she hung up, she quickly crawled (爬) under her covers, sobbing. Obviously, that was something she should not go through alone. All of a sudden, a warm feeling of sympathy (同情) rose up in my heart.

Slowly, I collected the pencils, took back the books, made my bed, cleaned the socks and swept the floor, even on her side. I got so lost in my work that I even didn’t notice Lily had sat up. She was watching, her tears dried and her expression a kind of disbelief. Then, she reached out her hands to grasp mine. I looked up into her eyes. She smiled at me, “Thanks.”

Lily and I stayed roommates for the rest of the college years. We didn’t always agree, but we learned.

1. How is Paragraph 1 mainly developed?

A．By analyzing causes.	B．By following time order.
C．By showing differences.	D．By describing a process.

2. What made Lily so angry one evening?

A．She heard the author shouting loud.

B．She saw the author’s shoes under her bed.

C．She got the news that her grandma was ill.

D．She couldn’t find her books anymore.

3. Why did the author clean up the room?

A．Because she wanted to show her care for Lily.

B．Because she hated herself for being so messy.

C．Because Lily required her to do so.

D．Because she was scared by Lily’s anger.

4. What might be the best title for the passage?

A．Hard Work Pays Off	B．Learning to Be Roommates
C．My Friend Lily	D．How to Be Organised?

【推荐1】We’ve all felt the tap to the soul you get from driving by your old high school or hearing a tune you once danced to. But why is that feeling so universal?

Nostalgia, a combination of the Greek words nostos (homecoming) and algos (pain), was a special type of homesickness associated with soldiers fighting far-off wars. Seventeenth century physicians worried such thoughts put health at risk. In the 19th century, doctors believed it could cause irregular heartbeat, fever, and death.

Our understanding of nostalgia has developed since then. “It’s a very mixed emotion,” says Frederick Barrett, a neuroscientist. That makes it hard to fit into existing theory, which typically categorizes emotions as either positive or negative. And triggers—the cars, music or smells—are extremely personal. Therefore, designing a standardized study is difficult.

But we do know nostalgia has a marked effect on us: brain imaging studies show that those experiences have their own neural signature. Neuroscientists argued that the emotion is co-produced by the brain’s recall and reward systems. They found that nostalgic images use the memory-managing hippocampus (海马区) more than other sights, as people mine autobiographical (个人经历的) details deep in the past. This mental effort pays off: as the hippocampus activates, so does one of the brain’s reward centers.

That longing for the past might be a protective mechanism, says Tim Wildschut, a professor. His work also suggests a more primitive purpose for the feeling: it developed to remind our ancient ancestors of pleasant physical feelings during periods of discomfort and pain.

Recent research suggests the occasional look backwards can give us a boost in unnoticeable ways: by increasing self-respect and protecting against depression. Nostalgia’s apparent power to jump-start one’s memory also seems to improve recall ability in people with Alzheimer’s disease.

New flavors of “reminiscence therapy” (回忆疗法) are emerging around the world. In 2018, the George G. Glenner Alzheimer’s Family Centers opened its first Town Square, an adult daycare facility designed to look like a small town in 1950s America. Though Town Square has yet to publish peer-reviewed data on the success of the program, clients say it has helped seniors access dusty memories and reconnect with loved ones.

Scientists need a lot more information to adequately characterize this complex and bittersweet feeling. But while centuries of doctors considered nostalgia a deadly disease, we now know: it can help us make it through today.

1. What can we learn about nostalgia?

A．It was a well-defined scientific idea.	B．It’s more common among soldiers.
C．It was first discovered in Greece.	D．It’s set off by personal experiences.

2. What does the underlined word “triggers” in paragraph 3 refer to?

A．Categories.

B．Effects.

C．Causes.

D．Characteristics.

3. In what way might nostalgia benefit people?

A．It protects people from Alzheimer’s disease.	B．It helps ease people’s discomfort.
C．It gives seniors a sense of security.	D．It improves people’s learning ability.

4. Where is the text probably from?

A．Textbook.

B．Scientific magazine.

C．Autobiography.

D．Laboratory report.

【推荐2】While it’s no surprise that heavy drinking comes with health problems, women will experience more serious symptoms(症状) from alcohol - including an increased risk of alcohol-related death, according to a new study.

The researchers found that’s even more alarming considering the number of women who are drinking alcohol too much is on the rise, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). Even though men are not only more likely to drink alcohol but also more of it, alcohol hits women harder. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that “gender differences in body structure and chemistry cause women to take in more alcohol, and take longer to metabolize and remove it from their bodies,” adding, “These differences also make it more likely that drinking will cause long-term health problems in women than men.”

Heavy drinking also impacts heart health. The CDC states that studies show women who drink overmore have a higher risk of damaging the heart muscle than men. Keith Humphreys, a professor studying alcohol drinking at Stanford University explains that, one of the reasons why alcohol has a more effect on women is because, on average, they weigh less than men. According to the NIAAA, “Alcohol resides predominantly in body water, and, women have less water in their bodies than men. This means that after a woman and a man of the same weight drink the same amount of alcohol, the woman’s blood alcohol concentration will tend to be higher, putting her at greater risk for harm.”But it’s not just about size. Research shows women also have fewer Alcohol Dehydrogenase Enzymes(脱氢酶), which help the body metabolize alcohol.

The U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans has suggested that when drinking alcohol, it should be done properly: up to two drink per day for women and one drink per day for men of legal drinking age.

1. What makes alcohol-related problems more serious?

A．Heavy drinking mainly affects women.	B．Women drink more alcohol than men.
C．More and more women drink alcohol.	D．Women often have health problems.

2. What does the underlined word “metabolize” mean ?

A．recognise

B．handle

C．melt

D．absorb

3. What makes women suffered more by alcohol?
①The low ability to metabolize alcohol.        ②Gender differences
③Less water in bodies                                ④The weaker heart muscle

A．①②③

B．②③④

C．①②④

D．①③④

4. What is the text mainly about?

A．Drinking too much causes serious results.

B．Men tend to absorb alcohol easily.

C．Alcohol affects women more than men.

D．It is dangerous for women to drink alcohol.

【推荐3】The curb cut (路缘坡) is a convenience that most of us rarely, if ever, notice. Yet, without it, daily life might be a lot harder in more ways than one, such as carrying baggage, pushing a bicycle or a wheelchair or riding a skateboard etc. — all these tasks are easier because of the curb cut.

But it was created with a different purpose in mind.

It’s hard to imagine today, but back in the 1970s, most sidewalks in the United States ended with a sharp drop-off. That was a big deal for people in wheelchairs because there were no ramps (斜坡) to help them move along city blocks without assistance. According to one disability rights leader, a six-inch curb “might as well have been Mount Everest”. So, activists from Berkeley, California, who also needed wheelchairs, organized a campaign to create tiny ramps at intersections to help disadvantaged (弱势的) people dependent on wheels move up and down curbs independently.

I think about the “curb cut effect” a lot when working on issues around health equity (公平). The first time l even heard about the curb cut was in a 2017 Stanford Social Innovation Review piece by PolicyLink CEO Angela Blackwell. Blackwell rightly noted that many people see equity “as a zero-sum game.” Basically, there is a deeply rooted social belief among them that intentionally supporting one group hurts another. What the curb cut effect reveals though, Blackwell said, is that “when society creates the circumstances that allow those who have been left behind to participate and contribute fully, almost everyone wins.”

One such example is closed captioning (字幕), originally intended to help deaf people understand movies and TV shows without needing to hear dialogue or sounds. But it’s easy to think of other applications for closed captioning: it’s convenient for customers watching TV in a noisy bar or gym, second-language learners who want to read as well as listen, or students who use it as a study aid.

So, next time you cross the street, or roll your suitcase through a crosswalk or ride your bike directly onto a sidewalk — think about how much the curb cut, that change in design that broke down walls of exclusion for one group of people at a disadvantage, has helped not just that group, but almost all of us.

1. What is the purpose of the examples listed in the first paragraph?

A．To call on us to care about the disadvantaged groups.

B．To offer some background information about the curb cut.

C．To tell us that people ignore the existence of the curb cut.

D．To make us aware of the convenience of the curb cut to our daily life.

2. Why do many people see equity “as a zero-sum game” according to Angela Blackwell?

A．Because they believe it’s impossible to have everyone treated equally.

B．Because they believe it is right to give the disadvantaged more help than others.

C．Because they believe the health of the disadvantaged should be considered equally.

D．Because they believe it is a win-win situation when society creates convenience to the disadvantaged.

3. Which of the following examples best shows the “curb cut effect”?

A．The four great inventions of ancient China spread to other countries in the world.

B．Reading machines for blind people help build the digital maps that the drivers use to navigate.

C．Your reaching out to the disadvantaged contributes to more people doing it.

D．A butterfly flapping its wings in one country leads to a Tornado in another country.

4. What is the main idea of the text?

A．The curb cut is a convenient ramp designed to benefit the disabled.

B．Everyone in a society should be treated equally.

C．Supporting disadvantaged groups often ends up benefiting much larger ranges of society.

D．How disability rights activists fought for equity that changed the life of his fellow men.