【推荐1】Many of our family traditions centered around food. We’d gather in the kitchen for every birthday and holiday and enjoy delicious food. My grandparents always held Christmas dinner, which included chicken cacciatore, sausage, meatballs and salad. But right before we sat down to eat, my grandmother would pull me aside to show me the dish she made just for me: fresh pasta (意大利面) with tomato sauce.

It was a simple dish, but to me it was warm food that filled me with happiness. But more than that, it made me feel like I belonged. I was a shy kid and, in many situations, I felt ignored. And here was my grandmother, showing me that I mattered.

Years went by; I moved away and got married. I’d visit throughout the years and my grandmother would serve up a plate of pasta.

When my daughter was born in 2020, for the first time in my life I wasn’t about to make the trip back home for Christmas. I cooked my family’s traditional foods and my husband and I had a big meal that included, of course, fresh pasta. I had a video call with my grandmother and showed her the pasta. Shortly after the holidays she passed away unexpectedly.

It seemed so unfair that my grandmother passed away soon after I became a parent. I’d hold my daughter and think about how I could tell her what an amazing great-grandmother she had.

In my sadness I came to an answer: food. Late at night after my daughter had gone to bed, I’d go to the kitchen and learn how to make fresh pasta, cooking my grandmother’s recipes. Before long I started experimenting, making a bit changes to classic recipes. When my daughter got a little older, I began making special dishes for her with my grandmother’s flavors in mind.

I know that no matter how hard I try, my daughter will never have a bowl pasta with sauce exactly like the ones my grandmother would make for me. While that makes me sad, she’ll still get to have my pasta sauce. I know there’re two things she’ll never lack for in this life: pasta and love.

1. What did the author say about her grandmother’s homemade pasta?

A．It was a special birthday gift for her.	B．It brought her a sense of belonging.
C．It was loved by every family member.	D．It took a lot of time and energy to prepare.

2. What made the author’s 2020 Christmas dinner different from previous ones?

A．She didn’t share pasta with her husband.

B．She didn’t give her grandmother a call.

C．She didn’t prepare many traditional family foods.

D．She didn’t have a chance to eat her grandmother’s pasta.

3. Why did the author learn to make fresh pasta late at night?

A．To honour her grandmother.	B．To give her daughter a surprise.
C．To meet her grandmother’s wish.	D．To be a role model for her daughter.

4. What can we learn about the author’s pasta sauce?

A．It isn’t easy to make.	B．It isn’t to her daughter’s liking.
C．It tastes exactly the same as her grandmother’s.	D．It shows her love for her daughter.

5. What’s the best title for the text?

A．Different types of pasta	B．The origin of pasta
C．Love through pasta	D．Pasta for Christmas

【推荐1】Perhaps you know them as “taters”, “spuds”, or “Kennebees”, or as “chips”, “Idahoes”, or even “shoestrings”. No matter, a potato by any other name is still a potato — the world’s most widely grown vegetable. As a matter of fact, if you are an average potato eater, you will put away at least 100 pounds of them each year.

That’s only a tiny amount grown every year, however. Worldwide, the annual potato harvest is over 6 billion bags. Each bag contains 100 pounds of potatoes, some of them as large as four pounds each. Here in the United States, farmers fill about 400 million bags a year. That may seem like a lot of “taters”, but it leaves the United States a distant third among world potato growers. Polish farmers dig up just over 800 million bags a year, while the Russians lead the world with nearly 1.5 billion bags.

People eat potatoes in many ways-baked, mashed, and roasted, to name just three. However, in the United States most potatoes are devoured in the form of French fries. One fast-food chain alone sells more than $1 billion worth of fries each year. No wonder, then, that the company pays particular attention to the way its fries are prepared.

Before any fry makes it to the people who eat at these popular restaurants, it must pass many separate tests. Fail any one of these tests and the potato is rejected. For example, only Russet Burbank potatoes are used. These Idaho potatoes have less water content than other kinds, which can have as much as 80 percent water. Once cut into “shoestrings” shapes, the potatoes are partly fried in a secret blend of oils, sprayed with liquid sugar to brown them, steam dried at high heat, then flash frozen for shipment to individual restaurants.

So, now that you realize the enormous size and value of the potato crop, you can understand why most people agree that this part of the food industry is no “small potatoes”.

1. What can we learn from the passage about potato?

A．One potato can weigh 4 pounds.

B．Taters don’t belong to the category of potato.

C．Potato lovers eat 100 pounds of potato every day.

D．Polish farmers harvest the most potatoes in the world.

2. What does the underlined word “devoured” in paragraph 3 probably mean?

A．consumed

B．planted

C．produced

D．harvested

3. How does paragraph 4 mainly develop?

A．By making comparison.	B．By listing figures.
C．By providing examples.	D．By following the order of space.

4. What’s the main idea of the passage?

A．Potatoes are disliked by many people.	B．Potatoes have experienced many changes.
C．Potatoes have been made into different food.	D．Potatoes are small, but the industry is large.

【推荐2】You’re either a lurker, a geek, an. Internet celebrity or a victim. That’s according to scientists who claim that we fall into one of four online personalities when using sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

And according to their research, more young people are choosing to be “lurkers” and “geeks” by reducing what they share online in an effort to avoid being a “victim”.

The geek has high participation but low visibility; the Internet celeb has high participation and high visibility; the victim with low participation but high visibility; and the lurker who has low participation and low visibility.

The “lurker” is described as someone who avoids argument in public forums and prefers closed group chats. They are also prone to stalking their favourite music bands online.

The “geek” meanwhile, uses invisibility to anonymously share and promote their amateur media creations online , such as music videos or fan fiction writing. The academics described how the geeks’ long hours of labour on projects risked parental concern that their behaviour was obsessive or addictive.

“While there has been a lot of negative media coverage around teenagers’ interaction with social media, our findings are more hopeful that teenagers are responsible users of social media, are very conscious of the dangers and make considerable efforts to protect themselves against those risks,” said Dr Berriman.

The highly visible victim can be a consequence of being part of the fourth group — the Internet celeb. The “Internet celeb” is fuelled by a desire to make a living from social media and offers complete transparency into their lives through vlogs or other social media platforms. These people are highly active and highly visible and, if they are not careful, can result in victimisation.

Professor Rachel Thomson said, “What is distinctive about these active social media users was the entrepreneurial character of their practice , with ‘play’ reenvisaged as a form of economically rewarding work. By gaining an audience, young people are aware that they could capture advertising and corporate sponsorship. The dream is to ‘go viral’, establishing a career as a cultural creator.

1. Which online personalities share less but highly visible?

A．The geek.	B．The victim.
C．The lurker.	D．The Internet celeb.

2. What do the lurkers do according to the text?

A．They prefer online music bands.	B．They share online fan fiction writing.
C．They keep silent in public forums.	D．They promote music videos online.

3. What made Dr Berriman feel pleased about teens?

A．They use social media to help others out of trouble.

B．They shoulder the responsibilities for cyber bullying.

C．They keep themselves away from negative media coverage.

D．They take measures to free themselves of danger.

4. What is the special feature of the Internet celebs?

A．They use social media to receive economic records.

B．They live their life on social media platforms.

C．They play for fun together with their audience.

D．They are usually victims of the Internet.

【推荐1】There was a time when both literature and the study of literature came under the delightful belles lettres-beautiful letters. When the phrase was introduced in the 18th century, literature was considered, at its best, beautiful. Devotees tried to reproduce that beauty in their response to it.

Modernism was a turning point, when literature became more alienated and combative (好斗的) with respect to society. American literature, with its powerful, democratic associations, contributed to the change. Belles lettres seemed too elitist to describe early-20^th century writing. The superiority of belles lettres was further undermined by the rise of science as civilization's potential savior. Science was necessary to defend democracy, first during World War II and then during the Cold War. Now, it is the means of moving ahead in a competitive, technological society. Who has time for beauty when there is serious work to be done?

The death knell (丧钟) for belles lettres came with a 1959 lecture by the scientist and novelist C.P. Snow, “The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution.”Snow seemed to call for cooperation between science and the humanities, but he was really criticizing the scientific illiteracy of writers and critics who, unlike him, didn't happen to be scientists as well. The problem is that science and the humanities are inherently incommensurate fields. Science builds on its discoveries. It moves forward, so that the past is the literal foundation for the present and future. Literature does not move forward in this way. One need not read Shakespeare to write a play or a poem. By the same token Shakespeare is as relevant today as he was when he wrote.

The simple truth that progress is central to science but not to the humanities is difficult to grasp for people who seek improvement in every walk of life. It fuels the drive to make the humanities scientific-through the use of technical jargon (术语) , general theories about social texts, and quantitative tools to analyze word choice, sentence structure and other aspects of literature.

When the humanities give up their mission and seek shelter from progress, they become dangerous companion to ideological agendas. Students come to feel there is a definitive, “virtuous”reading of an event or a text; they criticize great authors of the past based on the standards of the present. They create a climate that arouses opposition from those who feel excluded or offended by such thinking but who lack the humanistic training to do more than fight back.

We need to be skeptical of beauty and its relationship to truth, but we also need to see truth as beautiful, and to look with skepticism upon the products of a culture that speak to us in ugly, pseudoscientific (伪科学的) ways.

1. In the author's opinion, which of the following statements might C. P. Snow agree with?

A．Cooperation determines the progress of civilization.

B．We don't actually need literature and art.

C．We need the humanities as much as science.

D．A writer who doesn't know science is undesirable.

2. What does the word “incommensurate (Line 1, Para. 4)” most probably mean?

A．unable to affect and promote each other.

B．unable to be judged by the same standard.

C．related and unable to be totally separated.

D．mutually exclusive and independent.

3. According to the last two paragraphs, what is the unique role of the humanities?

A．To promote civilization of the past.	B．To encourage openness and tolerance.
C．To cultivate the skeptical mind.	D．To create a climate without criticism.

4. What's the subject of the text?

A．Call for due attention to the humanities.

B．Regret about the death of belles Jetties.

C．Challenge to the cooperation between art and science.

D．Criticism on progressives' control of the humanities.

【推荐2】Role of Mass Media in Education

In today’s advanced world, where everything is changing at lightning speed, mass media plays an important role.     1     It isn’t limited to the four walls of a classroom anymore. Mass media is responsible for this development to a great extent. The major roles mass media plays in the education field are:

Universal reach

Mass media has connected people like never before. Education is something which aims to have a universal reach. Mass media has helped to bridge that gap enormously.     2    

Storage of information

Mass media allows storing information which can be accessed from anywhere at any time. It is literally accessible, at our fingertips, which saves a lot of time and energy.     3    

No physical restrictions

    4     But it is not the case now. Mass media has reduced distances and made the world smaller for good. For instance, it is not necessary to be present at a place physically to gain knowledge now.

Fruitful results

Another huge advantage of current technological innovations in mass media is the increased memory capability of students. Many scientific pieces of research have proven that delivering lectures via an audio-visual format (视听格式) is quite effective.     5     All this has only been made possible because of mass media.

A．This results in the reduction of false information.

B．That being said, education is also advancing day by day.

C．Therefore, it serves as a rather useful resource in the field of education.

D．One of the major disadvantages before mass media was a physical restriction.

E．Mass media consists of the tools used for communicating information and ideas.

F．In other words, it is now within everyone’s reach and making the world a better place.

G．It has a more positive impact on the memory power of the brain than an audio lecture.

【推荐3】The ranking of universities and colleges at the national global level is a well-known doubtful practice. Imperfect approaches generate inaccurate results of these institutions. Nowadays, prestigious (有威望的) law and medical schools have started to walk away from this “evaluation”.

There are two obvious methodological problems with all of this. One is that the numerical rankings suffer from false precision. Is there really a difference between No.10 and No.11 in the undergraduate (本科生) school rankings? Johns Hopkins University famously had a plan called“10 by 20”with the goal of getting to No.10 by 2020. Hopkins is a great undergraduate institution — whether it’s No.10 or No.11 is meaningless, but it did indeed make it into the top 10 ahead of schedule, which no doubt delighted its trustees and students.

The other methodological problem is that rankings reward those schools that promote measurements by admitting students who have had the advantages of better pre-college education and test preparation coaching, and whose wealth will make them likely future donors. Equally worthy applicants without such resources will fail to enter the schools.

The good news is that in recent months, a reckoning (清算) has begun. Last September, Columbia University chose not to participate in the undergraduate rankings after an enterprising professor discovered that the school was fudging its own numbers. If Columbia’s data were corrected, it would drop from No. 2 to No. 18. Two months later, law schools began pushing back. Yale and Harvard Law Schools announced that they would refuse to provide data to U. S. News, and several outstanding law schools followed suit.

This resistance to rankings has now begun in the world of science. This is a great sign. In announcing its decision, the dean of Washington University’s medical school said, “…it is time to stop participating in a system that does not serve our students or their future patients.”

1. Why does the author mention Johns Hopkins University?

A．To share an experience.	B．To give specific example.
C．To make a detailed comparison.	D．To illustrate a complicated concept.

2. Why did Columbia University choose not to participate in the undergraduate rankings?

A．Its data was not based on facts.

B．It was left behind by other universities.

C．It didn’t think the system served their students.

D．Other universities chose to refuse to participate in the rankings.

3. What is the author’s attitude towards the rankings?

A．Objective.

B．Indifferent.

C．Supportive.

D．Opposed.

4. Which of the following is the best title for the text?

A．Resistance to Educational Rankings

B．The Ranking of Universities and Colleges

C．Educational Rankings: Scientific or Imperfect

D．Reasons for Universities’ Refusal of Rankings