【推荐1】Dad and I loved baseball and hated sleep. One midsummer dawn when I was nine, we drove to the local park with our baseballs, gloves, and Yankees caps.

''If you thought night baseball was a thrill, just wait, '' Dad told me. ''Morning air carries the ball like you've never seen. ''

He was right. Our fastballs charged faster and landed more lightly. The echoes of our catches popped as the sun rose over the dew-sprinkled fields.

The park was all ours for about two hours. Then a young mother pushed her stroller toward us. When she neared, Dad politely leaned over the stroller, waved, and gave the baby his best smile.

The mother stared at him for a second,and then rushed away.

Dad covered his mouth with his hand and walked to the car. ''Let's go, bud, '' he said. ''I'm not feeling well. ''

A month earlier, Bell's palsy(贝尔氏神经麻痹) had struck Dad,paralyzing the right side of his face. It left him slurring words and with a droopy eyelid. He could hardly drink from a cup without spilling onto his shirt. And his smile, which once eased the pain of playground cuts and burst forth at the mention of Mick Jagger, Woody Allen, or his very own Yankees, was gone.

As I slumped in the car, I began suspecting that our sunrise park visit wasn't about watching daylight lift around us. This was his effort to avoid stares.

It was a solemn drive home.

After that day,Dad spent more time indoors. He left the shopping, driving, and Little League games to Mom. A freelance editor,he turned our dining room into his office and buried himself in manuscripts. He no longer wanted to play catch.

At physical therapy, Dad obeyed the doctor: ''Now smile as wide as you can. Now lift your right cheek with your hand. Now try to whistle. ''

Only the sound of blowing air came out. My earliest memories were of Dad whistling to Frank Sinatra or Bobby McFerrin. He always whistled. He had taught me to whistle too.

Of the roughly 40,000 Americans suffering Bell's palsy every year, most recover in several weeks. Other cases take a few months to heal. But after nine weeks of therapy, the doctor confessed she couldn't help Dad.

''I've never seen anything like this,'' she told him after his final session. Then she handed him the bill.

Dad coped through humor. He occasionally grabbed erasable markers and drew an even-sided wide smile across his face. Other times, he practiced his Elvis impersonation, joking that his curled lips allowed him to perfect his performance of ''Hound Dog''.

By the time I entered fourth grade that September, Dad could blink his right eye and speak clearly again. But his smile still hadn’t returned. So I made a secret vow: I would abstain from smiles of any kind.

Nothing about fourth grade made this easy. Classmates were both old enough to laugh about pop culture and young enough to appreciate fart jokes. Kids called me Frowny the Dwarf. (I was three foot ten.) Teachers accompanied me into hallways, asking what was wrong. Breaking the promise I had made myself was tempting, but I couldn't let Dad not smile alone.

When I asked my PE coach, ''What's so great about smiling？''He made me do push-ups while the rest of the class played Wiffle ball. Then he called Dad.

I never learned what they discussed. But when I got off the school bus that afternoon, I saw Dad waiting for me, holding our gloves and ball. For the first time in months, we got in the family car and went to the park for a catch.

''It's been too long, '' he said.

Roughly a half-dozen fathers and sons lined the field with gloved arms in the air. Dad couldn't smile, but he beamed, and so did I. Sundown came quickly. The field's white lights glowed, and everyone else left. But Dad and I threw everything from curve balls to folly floaters into the night. We had catching up to do.

1. Why did Dad choose to play baseballs one summer dawn?

A．They could perform better in the morning.

B．Morning air was more suitable for playing baseball.

C．He tried to escape others' attention to his face.

D．The park was empty and they could enjoy themselves.

2. The underlined phrase ''abstain from'' in Paragraph 16 is closest in meaning to ''     ''.

A．seek for

B．give up

C．recover from

D．break into

3. What can we infer from the underlined sentence in Paragraph 17?

A．The boy lost his ability to smile.

B．The boy couldn't appreciate pop culture.

C．The boy must have suffered many wrongs.

D．The boy tried his best to make Father smile.

4. Why did the father accompany his son to the park for a catch that night?

A．He had made a complete recovery.

B．He thought night baseball was a thrill.

C．He was instructed by the PE coach to do so.

D．He intended his son to return to normal.

5. Which of the following can best describe the author's father?

A．Selfless and lucky.	B．Responsible and humorous.
C．Sensitive and stubborn.	D．Generous and determined.

6. What is the best title for the passage?

A．Losing My Father's Smile	B．Making a Hidden Secret
C．Playing Baseball in the Morning	D．Recovering from a Face Illness

【推荐2】For children, communication with older adults is important when visits with grandparents are called off because of the pandemic(流行病).

Even before COVID-19 sent older adults into hiding, grandparents and great-grandparents could often seem like strangers to kids. Contact might include gifts of toys meant for someone a little younger, forced piano performances by parents, and really bad jokes. So, coming up with what to say to those out -of-touch people through a camera can be hard. It can be a lot of pressure for kids.

Yet keeping up with older relatives has mental and physical health benefits for everyone. According to studies, older adults who participate in programming between generations show more happiness, better self-care. And a strong relationship between grandparents and grandchildren can lessen depressive tendencies(抑郁倾向) in both adults and kids.

Having an actual relationship with a grandparent can also help children develop qualities that make all-around great citizens. “Children are born to be me, me, me,” says Tina-Anne Praas of SKIP, an Ontario-based organization. “But seeing a person who has experienced life stages pulls them away from that thinking. They can gain some worldly points of view.”

Being close with a grandparent can also help children develop communication skills, especially when they’re able to learn about and compare their experiences with a grandparent’s. And it doesn’t carry the pressure of talking to a parent.

Tina-Anne Praas adds that students who were worried about life after graduation eagerly listen to older adults sharing their own experiences from the same time of life, 50-plus years ago. One student says, “My interactions(互动) with my grandparents encouraged me to become a physician.”

1. What causes much stress for kids?

A．Playing the piano in public.

B．Communicating with grandparents online.

C．Buying gifts for other younger children.

D．Being out of touch with parents for a long time.

2. What does the underlined phrase “that thinking” refer to in paragraph 4?

A．Seeing an experienced person.

B．Kids’ own ideas about the world.

C．Children’s care of themselves only.

D．Keeping contact with grandparents.

3. What is Tina-Anne Praas’ attitude towards communication between generations?

A．Supportive.	B．Doubtful.
C．Uncertain.	D．Worried.

4. Grandchildren benefit from older relatives by____.

A．listening to stories online

B．watching what they do daily

C．forming new ideas about themselves

D．communicating and interacting with them

【推荐3】A new study argues that people's instinct to treat probabilities as evenly split when they are uncertain is widespread.

In a working paper Benjamin Enke and Thomas Graeber, both of Harvard University, argue that the bias towards 50:50 has shown up in many contexts. One is decision-making under known risks, such as gambling at a slot machine(老虎机). Economists have long realized that people are more sensitive to changes in probabilities the nearer they are to the boundaries of 0% and 100% For example, the chance of a big win of, say, $1 million rising from 0% to 1% seems much more significant than the chance of the same win rising from 20% to 21%. At the extremes, there is a tendency to compress(压缩) odds to evens.

Other researchers have found that ambiguous risks have a similar compression effect: it can make people act as if they are facing known odds that are closer to 50:50 than might seem rational, given the information on offer. Messrs Enke and Graeber argue that this tendency even shows up in surveys of expectations about the performance of the economy and the stockmarket.

The authors suggest a new theory to explain this behavior: “cognitive uncertainty". It could be described as a simple lack of confidence. If people know that they may not be doing the sums right, or that their memory may be falling them, or that they are not sure what their own preference are, then their choices depend on the information they are presented and more on a “mental default" of equal probabilities.

In a series of online gambling experiments Mr. Enke and Mr. Graeber show that the more uncertain people are in their judgements, the more likely they are to hedge their bets (几面下注)----even when they have access to information that should, in theory, be useful.

Researchers have in the past suggested that odds of 50:50 are really code for “I don't know". Forecasters put odds on evens because words like "probable" and "likely" are interpreted very differently by different people. But numbers mean nothing without confidence.

1. People tend to treat probabilities as evenly split when        

A．they are gambling at a fair slot machine.

B．the economists have realized people's sensitivity.

C．they are trying to earn more money in the boundaries.

D．they follow their instinct for widespread uncertainty.

2. We can conclude from the passage that the compression effect        

A．is considered very unique in extreme situations.

B．applies when people make predictions for economic performance.

C．enables ambiguous risks to be clearer and more obvious.

D．affects people's answers on surveys of the stockmarket.

3. According to the passage, if people lack confidence and certainty, they may____ when they are making decisions.

A．depend on equality	B．miss useful information
C．forget things more easily	D．make mistakes in their calculations

4. What's the author's purpose in writing this passage?

A．To explain the application of odds and evens.

B．To offer tips on promoting people's confidence.

C．To introduce a new study about odds and evens.

D．To propose a new theory about cognitive uncertainty.

【推荐1】What are pillows really stuffed with? Not physically, but symbolically? The question occurred to me with the photos in the news and social media from the 50 cities around the world that staged public celebrations for International Pillow Fight Day. Armed with nothing more than bring-our-own sacrificial cushions, strangers struck heavily each other in playful feather from Amsterdam to Atlanta, Warsaw to Washington DC. But why? Is there anything more to this delightful celebration?

As a cultural sign, the pillow is deceptively soft. Since at least the 16th Century, the humble pillow has been given unexpected meanings. The Chinese playwright Tang Xianzu tells a famous story about a wise man who meets a depressed young scholar at an inn and offers him a magic pillow filled with the most vivid dreams of a seemingly more fulfilling life. When the young man awakens to discover that his happy 50-year dream has in fact come and gone in the short space of an afternoon’s nap, our impression of the pillow’s power shifts from wonder to terror.

Subsequent writers have likewise seized upon the pillow. When the 19th-Century English novelist Charlotte Bronte poetically observed “a ruffled (不平的) mind makes a restless pillow”, she didn’t just change the expected order of the adjectives and nouns, but instead she made unclear the boundaries between mind and matter — the thing resting and the thing rested upon.

It’s a trick perhaps Bronte learned from the Renaissance philosopher Montaigne, who once insisted that “ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head”. On Montaigne’s thinking, intelligence and happiness confront each other forever in a pillow fight that only one can win.

With the words of Tang. Bronte, and Montaigne, we can perhaps more easily measure the attraction of the global pillow fight. Like a ritual of release, the annual international pillow fight amounts to a kind of cleansing, a brushing off of daily worries: an emptying of the world’s collective mind. Rather than a launch-pad for weightless rest, the pillow is a symbol of heavy thought: an anchor that drags the world’s soul down — one that must be lightened.

1. The example of Tang Xianzu is used to illustrate that ________.

A．pillows symbolically convey the meaning in contrast to their soft appearance

B．people’s impression of pillows changes from wonder to terror

C．dreams are always wonderful while the real world is cruel

D．pillows give people satisfactory dreams

2. The underlined sentence in Paragraph 4 “ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head” most probably means ________.

A．pillows give us comfort

B．pillows make people more intelligent

C．people can easily fall asleep when they know nothing

D．people with too many thoughts have less inner peace

3. According to the author why is Pillow Fight Day so popular around the world?

A．Because it contains a profound meaning of life.

B．Because it comforts restless minds.

C．Because it makes life delightful.

D．Because it is a ritual release.

【推荐2】Don’t put it off, do it now!

Why do we spend so much time not doing the work we should do, or putting off small jobs that have piled up to create a big problem? Procrastinating, as putting things off like this is called, is in our character we have naturally since birth; we avoid dull or difficult jobs until it’s too late to do anything else.

“We often put things off although we know it will make life more stressful,” says Dr. Steel, an authority on the science of motivation. “If these tasks were fun, we’d just do them now. We put off what is difficult or unpleasant, such as the paperwork that needs doing before leaving the office or cleaning the bits of your home that people can’t see. But the fact is, the less people procrastinate, the more money they have, the better relationships they have, and the healthier they are.” This is obvious when you look at the couples who don’t argue about whether anyone has cleaned the kitchen, and the people who simply go for a run instead of endlessly rescheduling it in their heads.

Of course, there are the rest of us, who feel the small jobs piling up around us daily. “We’ve evolved to respond to the moment, and not to set our sights too far in an uncertain world,” Dr. Steel adds. “We are not set up to appreciate long-term rewards, whether it’s the benefit of a four-year degree, doing exercise or dieting. We usually feel the cost now and the reward comes much later.” According to Dr. Steel, we have two decision-making systems. They are the limbic, which is responsible for the short term, and the prefrontal cortex, which deals with the future. We bounce between long-term goals and short-term temptations, so we need goals that will translate our plans for the limbic system.

Let’s take the example of students’ writing essays. They should set themselves targets and word counts per day. These are thus turned from seemingly endless tasks into something concrete with measured progress. Dr. Steel recommends such techniques, or “pre-commitments”, adding that leaving you a month before the “deadline” makes it more likely a task will be completed. The benefit is that you’ll avoid the embarrassment of not following up on something people are expecting you to do — telling everyone you are going to take up jogging makes you more likely to do so.

Overcoming procrastination finally comes down to planning, which, if you’re not careful, becomes procrastination in itself. But it is worth making sure you have everything in place. “Successful people don’t pretend they don’t procrastinate,” Dr. Steel says. “People who pretend they have willpower are less successful.” Instead, plan for procrastination: make your work environment a temple of productivity by cutting out what stops you paying your attention, so you can really focus on moving forward.

1. What does the author say about procrastination in Paragraph 1?

A．It is caused by the technology in people’s life.

B．It is more common when people have small jobs to do.

C．It is something many people can’t avoid.

D．It is an excuse people often use in public.

2. In paragraph 3, Dr. Steel believes that people who procrastinate should________.

A．be aware that their problem is relatively small

B．find out more about the way they make decisions

C．attempt to overcome their natural tendencies

D．take the advice of others in the same situation

3. Why does Dr. Steel recommend making “pre-commitments” in Paragraph 4?

A．They are an effective way of impressing others.

B．They allow people to achieve their aims sooner.

C．They are an alternative to impossible goals.

D．They make challenges feel more manageable.

4. The underlined sentence in the fifth paragraph intends to________.

A．Warn the reader against spending too long getting organized.

B．Remind the reader to take the time to focus properly on a task.

C．Encourage the reader to develop plans effectively.

D．Advise the reader to deal with complex tasks quickly.

【推荐3】US forests could become a “substantial carbon source” by 2070, suggesting that forests could worsen global warming instead of easing it, a new Agriculture Department report says.

US forests currently absorb 11 percent of US carbon emissions (释放), equal to the combined emissions from 40 coal power plants. The report predicts that the ability of forests to absorb carbon will start declining after 2025 and that forests could emit up to 100 million metric tons of carbon a year as their emissions from decaying (腐烂) trees go beyond their carbon absorption.

The prediction suggests that this will require the US to cut emissions more rapidly to reach net zero, according to Lynn Riley, a senior manager of climate science. “Eleven percent of our domestic emissions. That is a really significant portion,” Riley said. “As we work to decarbonize... forests are one of the greatest tools available. If we were to lose that, it means the US will contribute that much more” in emissions. The report also assesses and predicts the extent of renewable resources provided by the nation’s forests and undeveloped landscapes, including farmlands, wetlands and grasslands.

According to the report, the loss of carbon absorption is driven in part by natural disasters which are increasing in frequency and strength as global temperatures rise. Development in forested areas, which the report predicts will continue to increase, is having the same effect as people increasingly move to the so-called wildland urban areas. Aging forests also contribute as older, mature trees absorb less carbon than younger trees of the same species, and the US forests are rapidly aging.

More aggressive forest management can help by cutting down a small portion of aging forests to make ways for younger trees that absorb more carbon. A thorough study of each forest should be done before removing older trees, Riley said.

1. Why could US forests become a “substantial carbon source”?

A．They fail to absorb enough carbon.	B．They begin to emit carbon increasingly.
C．They may emit more carbon than absorb.	D．Mature trees outnumber young trees.

2. Which of the following may Lynn Riley agree with?

A．US forests have lost their role in carbon absorption.

B．It is urgent for the US to reduce carbon emissions.

C．The US has contributed to 11% carbon emissions.

D．The loss of forests contributes to less carbon emissions.

3. What leads to the loss of carbon absorption?

A．Improper tree species.	B．Removal of aging trees.
C．Decreasing urban development.	D．Frequent severe natural disasters.

4. Which could be a suitable title for the text?

A．Aging Forests —a Major Emitter of Carbon.

B．Growing Forests —a Solution to Carbon Emissions.

C．Reducing Forests —a Threat to Global Warming.

D．Decaying Forests —a Consequence of Global Warming.