【推荐1】Moving to Orange County

If you're thinking of moving to Orange County, with its wealth of sandy beaches, wineries and tourist attractions then there’re several things that you’ll need to know.

Visas for the US

The US has a number of options, and if you are relocating due to work commitments or family ties, you’ll be alongside the majority of applicants.

A green card holder, for instance, can apply for an immigration visa for a spouse（配偶）or (unmarried) child. A US employer can apply on behalf of a non-national person, and there are five preference categories for companies sponsoring immigration visas, the majority of which require exceptional skills, master’s training or experience of a particular profession. If you are being sponsored by an employer, your spouse and any child under the age of 21 can apply for immigration visas alongside you.

Temporary worker visas, on the other hand, are typically easier, but still not necessarily easy, to obtain and allow for limited stays.

Finding accommodation

The three largest cities in the county are Anaheim, an industrial center, Santa Ana,10 miles from the coast with a perfect safety record, and Irvine, an wealthy planned city with a number of highly regarded schools. If you’re looking for a metropolitan lifestyle, expect to pay an average of 1,600 USD in rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the city center, rising to 2,900 USD a month for a family-size, three-bedroom apartment; an approximate 600 USD premium（溢价）on similar apartments outside of the city center.

If you would like to settle outside of a city, there are a number of suburbs in Orange County with plenty to offer young professionals and families. Perhaps one of the most renowned is Newport Beach, noted as one of the cleanest beaches in the county and famous for its many restaurants and fantastic schools. If you’re looking for an inland town, Aliso Viejo is an excellent option. This compact（紧凑的）town is easy to navigate and is ideal for young families.

1. If you want to get a US immigration visa, you must meet one of the requirements that ________.

A．you should have an unmarried child

B．your employer should be a non-national person

C．your spouse should be a lawful permanent resident

D．you should be qualified for five immigrant visa preference categories

2. It can be inferred that finding accommodation in Orange County depends on ________.

A．a settler’s sponsor	B．a settler’s professional level
C．a settler’s company location	D．a settler’s needs and the type of lifestyle

【推荐2】Do you have trouble trying to create the next big idea? Sometimes the answer isn’t to just force an idea out of your mind. Instead, you might want to try sitting back, relaxing and letting your mind wander. Yes, you heard that correctly. If you are in need of a new idea, try daydreaming.

Researchers from the university of California, Santa Barbara, found an association between daydreaming and creative problem-solving. Their study includes having participants first do an “unusual-use task”. They had to try to come up with as many different ways to use an object as they could.

Then, the participants chose to do one of the following four things before doing the “unusual-use task” again: complete a difficult task; complete an easy task; take a 12-minute break; or skip the 12-minute break and move right on to the task exercise again.

Surprisingly, the group that performed best was the one that completed the easy task. Many participants reported that they were daydreaming while performing the easy task. So the researchers believed that this daydreaming might have helped unlock their creativity.

But how could daydreaming help the brain come up with creative ways? The answer is something known as “unconscious thought”. Even when you are not actively working to solve a problem, it is still in the back of your mind. Your brain is still thinking about the problem, but in a much more subtle (不易察觉的) way.

When you daydream, your mind is allowed to think in ways it normally would not. Because it is free of control, it can create completely new and out-of-the-box ideas.

Great ideas never come easily, but that does not mean you always have to work hard to get them. Feel free to do what you want and let your mind wander.

1. The “unusual-use task” in Paragraph 2 means that participants ______.

A．complete an easy task	B．complete a very difficult task
C．take a 12-minute break	D．think of various ways to use an object

2. What does the underlined phrase “unconscious thought” in Paragraph 5 mean?

A．Your brain wander in a subtle way within your control.

B．Your brain knows clearly what you’re thinking and doing.

C．Your brain is thinking about a problem outside of your awareness.

D．Your brain refuses to receive any information from the outside world.

3. The passage mainly wants to tell us that ______.

A．brainstorming is important to creative ideas

B．daydreaming is a way to improve creativity

C．problem-solving skills are important in our lives

D．the more we exercise brains, the more ideas we’ll get

【推荐3】Self-motivation

Self-motivation occurs when a person has the willingness to do something and is internally（内心的） motivated to do it.

    1     There is a job to go to, groceries to do, television to watch ---whoops! I guess we get pretty good at finding excuses to escape getting started on goals like an exercise routine or reading a new book. The fact is that we are creatures of routine and habit. So what can we do to motivate ourselves to accomplish our goals?       2    

Decide what you want.

It’s hard to motivate an aimless mind.     3     Then break it down into smaller sections so it’s easier to handle and less overwhelming(势不可挡)

Keep track of your progress.

Keep a journal where you can measure how much you have accomplished.    4    Post motivating pictures or slogans within your sight.

It is always inspiring to see pictures of people who have accomplished what you’re going for. It makes it attainable. Likewise, little slogans like “go for it” or “just do it” can give you the little support you need.

    5    

Once you have accomplished your objective, e.g. becoming an early riser, keep it up so that it’s second nature to you and you don’t have to think about it anymore.

A．Make it a habit.

B．Support yourself with slogans.

C．Our natural tendency is to put off.

D．Here are some tips on how to get moving.

E．In modern society people tend to become forgetful.

F．Set a goal and decide how you are going to do about it.

G．Looking at it can also motivate you to keep pushing further..

【推荐1】Over the years, Brian Wansink, director of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University, has studied such things as how far Americans typically drive to buy food, how many times we refill our plates at all-you-can-eat buffets and how we organize our kitchens. In the mid-2000s he famously coined the phrase “mindless eating” (and wrote a book by that name) to focus attention on all the bad dietary decisions we make without really thinking about them.

His new book, Slim by Design: Mindless Eating Solutions for Everyday Life, aims to change the design of restaurants, school lunchrooms, office cafeterias and homes so that the mindless choices we make will be more healthful ones. Some examples:

Keep kitchen counters clear. No visible snack food, no bread, no nuts — not even breakfast cereal. In Wansink’s research, “women who had even one box of breakfast cereal that was visible — anywhere in their kitchen — weighed 21 pounds more than their neighbor who didn’t.”

Trick yourself into drinking less wine. “We tend to focus on the height of what we pour and not the width, so we pour 12 percent less wine into taller wineglasses than we pour into wider wineglasses.” And the shape of the glass is not the only variable that affects how much we drink. Wansink writes: “Because red wine is easier to see than white wine, we pour 9 percent less red wine whenever we pour a glass.”

Wansink said his researchers also found that people ate less at restaurants when sitting in well-lighted areas near windows and doors, than in darker areas or in the back. They ate less if they were offered a doggie bag, or to-go box, before they got their meals: apparently the idea of getting a “free” second meal outweighed the impulse (冲动) to clean their plates. Workers who frequently ate at their desks weighed 15.4 pounds less, on average, than those who didn’t. Fruits and vegetables kept on the top shelf of the refrigerator were eaten at higher rates than those on lower shelves.

The point, Wansink says, is to consider findings like those and change your environment or habits. Then you won’t have to think about it: You’ll just eat less.

1. Why did Brian Wansink write Slim by Design: Mindless Eating Solutions for Everyday Life?

A．Because he wanted people to become thin.

B．Because he intended to help people eat more healthily.

C．Because he hoped to coin a new phrase “mindless earing”.

D．Because he wished to change the design of dining places.

2. According to Wansink, which of the following affects the amount of wine we drink?

A．The shape of wineglasses.

B．The color of wineglasses.

C．The taste of wine.

D．The quality of wine.

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

A．Changing environment or eating habits will help you eat less.

B．Eating fruits and vegetables is better for your health.

C．Keeping your kitchen counter clear of any food will help make you thin.

D．Many people eat or drink too much without paying attention to it.

【推荐3】Having taken a photo of her avocado(牛油果)toast for breakfast, Emily posted it on Instagram, a popular social photo-sharing app. Emily is one of the millions of millennials—those born between the years 1981 and 1996 — in the West who are in love with avocados.

So why is the avocado, a green-colored fruit with a rough black outer shell originating from Mexico, loved so much by millennials?

At the start of the last century in the US, avocados weren’t popular. But this changed thanks to good marketing. Firstly, their name was changed from “alligator pear” to the nicer-sounding “avocado”. Then in the 1990s, at the Super Bowl — the US’ famous annual sports event watched by tens of millions on TV—a Mexican sauce made with avocados called guacamole was advertised. After this, avocados’ popularity soared. According to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the value of avocados increased by nearly 70 percent between 1988 and the year 2000 in the US.

But it wasn’t until the 2010s, when millennials started the avocado toast trend that it became a fruit celebrity. Avocados, as a superfood rich in nutrients and “good” fats, are perfect for millennials, who are regarded as a health-conscious generation. As reported by USA Today, millennials are more interested in food than previous generations. For them, eating is not just about feeling full; it’s about a lifestyle. They care more about their well-being and eat healthier and more plant-based foods.

Of these foods, avocado toast is the poster child. On a list of the top 25 millennial food trends, The recipe. com ranked avocado toast as number one. Millennials are a social-media-savvy generation, who love sharing their lives online through artistic pictures. The avocado craze hasn’t stopped with eating. Searching online, you’ll find endless results for avocado-themed items. In 2019, Disney even released a line of avocado-themed products.

1. Why does the author mention Emily’s story in paragraph 1?

A．To promote a healthy fruit.	B．To show millennials’ love for avocados.
C．To indicate the popularity of Instagram.	D．To describe a typical lifestyle of millennials.

2. When did avocados actually make a hit?

A．In the initial stage of the 19th century.	B．Shortly after the 1990s.
C．Around the year 2000.	D．In the 2010s.

3. What has contributed to the popularity of avocado toast?

A．Millennials sharing artistic pictures online.	B．Therecipe.com ranking it as the tastiest food.
C．The good advertising marketing skills.	D．The amount of avocado-themed items online.