A survey said the average Asian dad spent one minute a day with his children. I was shocked. I mean, a whole minute? Every day? Get real. Once a week maybe. The fact is, many Asian males are terrible at kid-related things. In fact, I am one of them.
Child-rearing (养育) doesn’t come naturally to guys. My mother knew the names of our teachers, best friends and crushes. My dad was only vaguely aware there were short people sharing the apartment. My mother bought healthy fresh food at the market every day. My dad would only go shopping when there was nothing in the fridge except a jar of butter. Then he’d buy beer. My mother always knew the right questions to ask our teachers. My dad would ask my English teacher if she could get us a discount on school fees. My mother served kid food to kids. My dad added chili sauce to everything, including our baby food.
The truth is, mother have superpowers. My son fell off a wall once and hurt himself all over. I demanded someone bring me a computer so I could google what to do. My wife ignored me and did some sort of chanting (咏诵) phrase such as “Mummy kiss it better,” and cured 17 separate injuries in less than 15 seconds.
Yes, mothers are incredible people, but they are not always correct. Yet honesty forces me to record the fact that mothers only know best 99.99 percent of the time. Here are some famous slip-ups.
The mother of Bill Gates: “If you’re going to drop out of college and hang out with your stupid friends, don’t come running to me when you find yourself penniless.” The mother of Albert Einstein: “When you grow up, you’ll find that sitting around thinking about the nature of time and space won’t pay the grocery bills.” The mother of George W. Bush: “You’ll never be like your dad, who became President of the United States and started his own war.”
1. The tone for the writer to write the passage is ________.
| A．serious. | B．humorous. |
| C．disapproving. | D．critical. |
| A．females love kids more than males |
| B．child-rearing is difficult both for females and males |
| C．my dad is not interested in child-rearing |
| D．males are not good at child-rearing |
| A．Stories. | B．Shortcomings. |
| C．Mistakes. | D．Disadvantages. |
| A．providing different examples | B．following the order of space |
| C．making comparisons | D．analyzing causes |
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【推荐1】Living on the Florida Emerald Coast, people view a hurricane as a common thing. So it is not unusual for a family to have several full gas cans and bottled water stored in their houses all summer.
Though unwilling to evacuate from a hurricane, on September 15,my family was forced to leave our home for my grandfather's house several miles away. We spent the early part of that evening watching the hurricane draw closer on the Weather Channel. Around nine o'clock, a loud sound shook the house, turned over the roof and carried it off. Soon came an indoor rainstorm.
Realizing the damage, my grandfather began to be afraid. The storm had started, but he still ran out into the heavy rain and wind to see how much of the roof was left. We got him back inside. I had never seen him so scared. Mom finally asked him to lie down in his room.
The leak had progressed rapidly. It soon became a race against time to protect what was saved. Some people may think it necessary to save material things, but I hoped to save those items with emotional value, such as the photos. I still feared the storm, but I more feared the influence it brought.
The next morning, it started to clear up. Thankfully, my family weathered the storm, though the same could not be said for the house. Only the wooden beams remained, but inside many of his things were safe. My mom and I had worked tirelessly through the night.
It was late, but we were still unwilling to go to bed. We discussed the rebuilding of the house. Under the beautiful sky, we suggested looking after my grandfather more often in the future. After this disaster, I realized the truth that the hurricane itself was not so terrible if we loved each other.
1. Why do the people store full gas cans and bottled water?| A．To save much money. | B．To watch a hurricane easily. |
| C．To protect their houses well. | D．To be prepared for hurricanes. |
| A．Frightened. | B．Surprised. | C．Calm. | D．Angry. |
| A．Prepared well for. | B．Waited patiently for. |
| C．Came safely through. | D．Suffered seriously from. |
| A．Family love is powerful. | B．Take things as they come. |
| C．Good health is over wealth. | D．Lost time is never found again. |
【推荐2】"Carers" are all sorts of people with so many different caring roles. I know this only too well from attending my severely ill mother as a teenager, to having main carer responsibility for my Nanna for her last ten years, to now as a father caring for my disabled son.
But more importantly, I was also cared for. My dad had died when I was four, so after my mum died, it was my amazing Nanna and Grandad who took me in. Because they were my grandparents, I never really thought of them as "carers"，and I don't think they did either. Back then, I probably didn9t even know what 66kinship（亲属关系）carer" meant
It wasn't easy for them. My mother's long illness and early death nearly broke them. I used to think looking after me helped them deal with their heartbreak. But the truth is, they helped me get over my mum's death. Surrounding me with unquestioning love, they were classic kinship carers.
Working as a lawyer, I've helped a surprisingly large number of kinship carers over the years—mostly grandparents, fighting the system for their precious grandchildren. I like to think I go the extra mile, which helped them face the challenges. More than 180,000 children across the UK are being raised by kinship carers today, but the huge challenges facing them are too often forgotten by politicians and policymakers.
What my Nanna and Grandad did—and what kinship carers across the UK are doing today—is amazing. They are giving a loving home to these children, while reducing the stress on the formal care system― ven though it may add difficulties to their own life. We can't thank and support them too much.
1. The author knows very well about what carers are by .| A．giving and getting care | B．doing voluntary work |
| C．becoming a parent | D．learning from carers |
| A．They took care of the author's ill mother. |
| B．They spoiled the author with too much love. |
| C．They offered to look after the author's children. |
| D．They helped the author get through hard times. |
| A．Take the wrong way. | B．Make a special effort. |
| C．Save much precious time. | D．Do some unnecessary work. |
| A．Carers Face Huge Challenges |
| B．More Kinship Carers Needed |
| C．Carers Deserve Recognition and Support |
| D．British Policies Intended for Kinship Carers |
【推荐3】My father told me a family story about his mother, my grandmother.
In 1949, my father had just returned home from the war. On every American highway you could see soldiers in uniform hitchhiking home to their families, as was the custom at that time in America.
Sadly, the excitement of this reunion with his family soon disappeared. My grandmother became very ill and had to be in hospital. The doctors told my father that she needed a blood transfusion immediately or she wouldn’t live through the night. The problem was that Grandmother’s blood types was AB-, a very rare type even today, but even harder to get then because there were no blood banks or air flights to ship blood. All the family members had their blood tested, but not one member was a match. So the doctors gave the family no hope; my grandmother was dying.
My father left the hospital in tears to gather up all the family members, so that everyone would get a chance to tell Grandmother good-bye. As my father was driving down the highway, he passed a soldier in uniform hitch-hiking home to his family. Deep in sadness, my father had no inclination at that moment to do a good deed. Yet it was almost as if something outside himself pulled him to a stop, and he waited as the stranger climbed into the car.
My father was too upset to even ask the soldier his name, but the soldier noticed my father’s tears right away and asked why. My father told this total stranger everything.
It got very quiet in the car. Then this soldier reached his hand out to my father, in which rested the dog tags from around his neck. The blood type on the tags was AB-. The soldier told my father to turn the car around and get him to the hospital.
My grandmother lived until 1996, and to this day no one in our family knows the soldier’s name. But my father has often wondered, was he a soldier or an angel in uniform?
1. Why did the author’s father leave the hospital ?| A．To buy something necessary for Grandmother. |
| B．To ask the family members to have their blood tested |
| C．To pick up a soldier whose blood type was the same as Grandmother’s |
| D．To gather the family members to pay their last respects to Grandmother |
| A．After her serious illness, Grandmother lived 47 years. |
| B．Grandmother’s children refused to help her. |
| C．My father has forgotten the soldier. |
| D．The doctors didn’t try to save Grandmother. |
| A．arrangement | B．design | C．schedule | D．willingness |
| A．A Strange Soldier | B．An Unexpected Gift |
| C．An Angel in Uniform | D．An Unknown Soldier |
【推荐1】Meetings. Answering emails. Ever feel too busy at work to get any actual work done? According to a new report from Microsoft, our workplaces have a serious productivity problem. 64% of 31,000 employees surveyed struggled with having the time and energy to do their job. Subjects said that countless meetings were their number one productivity killer. Other reports also supported Microsoft’s study. A report from EY-Parthenon found American worker productivity decreased by 2.7% in the first quarter this year compared with the same period last year, marking the fifth quarter in a row that worker productivity has dropped.
Unsurprisingly, Microsoft, with its enormous investment in Al tools, says Al is the solution. Never mind that it was Microsoft’s own technology — Teams, Office, Outlook — that promised productivity savings and delivered the opposite. Should we still put faith in Microsoft to solve the problem with new tools that will “rethink workdays” and “protect focus time for creative work”?
So what’s the answer to the productivity puzzle? Big companies need to look no further than small businesses, which have been showing how to be productive. Given that small businesses are still recovering from the pandemic, how are they getting work done when they’ve got fewer employees? The answer is easy. Visit a business with fewer than 100 employees and you will find people there at their desks, behind counters, or in front of machines. There are fewer meetings. There are fewer rules. Employees can make their own choices. Decisions are made without committees. Investments are made with more of a gut (直觉的) feeling. Technology is used when it’s clear that it can save time and make money.
Microsoft would have you believe that buying its Al technology will solve productivity issues. AI will definitely make a difference. But it’s not too little technology that’s the problem.
1. Which contributes most to the productivity problem?| A．Work atmosphere. | B．Colleague relationship. |
| C．Office equipment. | D．Meeting overload. |
| A．Cautious | B．Opposed. | C．Supportive. | D．Ambiguous |
| A．Rules | B．Committees | C．Flexibility. | D．Investment. |
| A．Boosting productivity calls for more than technology. |
| B．The development of Al will solve productivity issues. |
| C．Big companies have a promising future in the Al field. |
| D．Small businesses should make more use of technology. |
【推荐2】Not so long ago one could set one’s watch by the arrival of the post. I live in a quiet street in north-west London, so that used to mean two deliveries a day at fixed time. Now of course there is one, arriving at an unpredictable hour, and containing nothing one would ever miss a heartbeat for. The only certainty today is that there will be no personal letters.
What destructively efficient times we live in! Now of course it’s all emails and texts and tweets. But for Christmas there appears to be hope. Having failed to write letters during the rest of the year, we are now catching up, sending greetings to those we barely contact from January to November. Is it guilt that leads to this outpouring? Perhaps a little. But I think we also recognize the greater integrity involved when we touch pen to paper and bother to lick a stamp. In our busy lives we manage to send a message that says “I still have time for you.”
Seasonal greetings may be one of the last great traditions to fall. Earlier this month I was honoured to be part of an extraordinary event in which the true worth of letters was given with the full celebrity support. At a small church in the Notting Hill area of London, some actors read letters by the famous and the not-so famous. Among them, there was the Christmas letter of a British postal worker named Chris Barker and his wife-to-be Bessie Moore. It was 1944, so Barker was fighting in Greece and Moore was escaping bombs in London. Christmas appeared to be both an irrelevance and a vital tie for both of them, and while they regretted not being together they celebrated the ability of the letter to connect them.
Unlike today, it was all they had. Today, the temptations of Skype and e-card threaten to prevent our trip to the posting box. But Christmas cards continue to connect us. They offer a reminder that we have not died in the course of the year, and that we still value the personal touch. They will not be enough to rescue the world’s digitally challenged postal systems, but they may just be enough to make up for our digitally challenged souls.
1. What does the writer feel when he got a letter now?| A．Entertained | B．Disappointed | C．Uncertain | D．Indifferent |
| A．it’s another way we can try besides emails, texts and tweets |
| B．writing Christmas cards is efficient, practical and hopeful |
| C．we won’t feel sorry about not contacting friends for long |
| D．we manage to slow down our busy lives to send greetings |
| A．Because they were not together and they only had letters. |
| B．Because they were to be married but they were separated |
| C．Because they didn’t have Skype and had to send cards. |
| D．Because they celebrated Christmas by writing letters. |
| A．they can resist the temptations of Skype and e-card |
| B．they are the proof that we are still alive, safe and sound |
| C．the personal touch between people is still valued |
| D．the postal systems, though challenged, are able to recover |
【推荐3】Full stops intimidate young people when used in social media communication as they are interpreted as a sign of anger, according to linguistic experts.
Teenagers and those in their early twenties, classified as Generation Z, have grown up with smart phones which they use to send short messages without full stops. Linguistic experts are now investigating why teens interpret a correctly-punctuated(加标点)text as a signal of irritation. According to experts, youngsters used to communicating electronically break up their thoughts by sending each one as a separate message, rather than using a full stop, which they use only to signal they are annoyed or irritated.
In 2015, a study from Binghamton University in New York suggested that people who finish messages with full stops are perceived as insincere. The study involved 126 undergraduates and the researchers found that text messages ending in the most final of punctuation marks- eg, “Let's go together.”- were perceived as being less sincere. Unusually, texts ending in an exclamation (感叹) point-“I'm proud of you!”-are deemed heartfelt or more profound.
Research leader Celia Klin said at the time: “When speaking, people easily convey social and emotional information with eye gaze, facial expressions, tone of voice, pauses and so on. However, people obviously can't use these mechanisms when they are texting. Thus, it makes sense that texters rely on what they have available to them - emoticons, deliberate misspellings that mimic speech sounds and, according to our data, punctuation.”
The full stop derives from Greek punctuation introduced by Aristophanes of Byzantium(拜占庭的阿里斯多芬尼斯：古希腊早期喜剧代表作家、诗人)in the 3rd Century BC.
1. What does the underlined word “they” in paragraph 1 refer to?| A．Young people. | B．Full stops. |
| C．Social media tools. | D．Linguistic experts. |
| A．Teens never use a full stop in all short messages. |
| B．Teens used to use a full stop, but they don't now. |
| C．Teens break up thoughts by sending a separate message. |
| D．Teens consider a full stop to be insincere and formal. |
| A．Neutral. | B．Subjective. |
| C．Approving. | D．Critical. |
| A．Long history of the full stop. |
| B．New interpretation of the full stop. |
| C．Fundamental usage of the full stop. |
| D．Mysterious disappearance of the full stop. |
【推荐1】Sure, it's good to get along well with your teacher because it makes the time you spend in the classroom more pleasant.
And yes, it's good to get along well with your teacher because, in general, it's smart to learn how to get along well with the different types of people you'll meet throughout your life.
In fact, kids who get along well with their teachers not only learn more, but they're more comfortable with asking questions and getting extra help. This makes it easier for them to understand new materials and makes them do their best on tests. When you have this kind of relationship with a teacher, he or she can be someone to turn to with problems, such as problems with learning or school issues(问题).
Here is a question: what if you don't get along with your teachers? In fact, teachers want to get along well with you and enjoy seeing you learn. But teachers and students sometimes have personality clashes (个性冲突), which can happen between any two people. If you show your teacher that you want to make the situation better, he or she will probably do everything possible to make that happen. By dealing with a problem like this, you learn something about how to get along with people who are different from you.
However, if a certain teacher isn't your favorite, you can still have a successful relationship with her or him especially
Here are some of those responsibilities(责任):
Attend class ready to learn. Be prepared for class with the right stationery(文具), books, and completed assignments(作业). Listen when your teacher is talking. Do your best, whether it's a classroom assignment, homework, or a test.
1. According to the passage, getting along well with your teachers will make you ________.| A．have no problems with study |
| B．get a better seat in the classroom |
| C．get the best scores in the exams |
| D．have more pleasant time in the classroom |
| A．if you fulfill(履行)your basic responsibilities as a student |
| B．if you are thought of as a good student |
| C．if you know some basic social skills |
| D．if you are easygoing and helpful |
| A．The importance of friendship in schools. |
| B．The importance of a good relationship with your teachers. |
| C．Studying skills for students. |
| D．Useful skills to get along well with your teachers. |
【推荐2】As humans, we need time alone. It's good for our bodies and good for our brains.
I don't mean sitting there and staring at a wall, thinking about how everyone else is having more fun than you. I'm following the definition of psychologists worldwide; that is, being away from other people, by yourself, with no one to talk to. It's that time you spend alone after work, decompressing(减压)and recharging.
But what does the brain do in a quiet place with nothing to do? We now know it doesn't shut off. Once you get over your impatience for getting back to work, the brain starts a whole different pattern of activity among certain brain areas, which is known as the default mode network.
Many studies have examined the activity of the default mode network to understand it better. Scientists have found that this network is active whenever a person is resting, daydreaming, thinking about themselves or the memories of the past, or planning for the future. In other words, even though we are not busy with any particular task but resting. our brains are constantly talking to themselves, keeping lines of communication open between areas that work together. It may be that the brain activity during this resting state is preparing us to be ready for anything so that we can react in the correct manner when we head out into the world again.
Other studies have found that being by yourself may help promote creativity. Even if we're alone doing a small activity to pass the time, we accomplish it better alone, as well. We subconsciously(潜意识地）do several tasks at the same time when together with other people, but not in a way you'd think—we are constantly guessing what the other person is up to, what solution they're arriving at for a specific problem, what their thoughts and feelings are. Being by yourself can be completely liberating and it is a wonderful way to get to know yourself, so enjoy that time.
1. What does the author mean by “time alone”?| A．Staying away from your family. | B．Having pleasure by yourself. |
| C．Being by yourself and relaxing. | D．Self-reflection and planning. |
| A．It shuts off completely. | B．It still works actively. |
| C．It comes into a state of silence. | D．It reminds you to take a rest. |
| A．It will make you work better. | B．It will help you learn from others. |
| C．It will benefit your family tie. | D．It will help form a good habit. |
| A．Enjoy your time alone. | B．A silent world. |
| C．Keep yourself at home. | D．You are yourself. |
【推荐3】Before she leaves home in San Francisco, California, Jennifer Schaefer, puts on long sleeves and a big hat she calls her “personal umbrella.” With her fair skin, red hair, memories of bad childhood sunburn, and a family history of skin cancer, Schaefer is painfully aware of the danger of exposure to ultraviolet (紫外线) radiation, which accounts for the vast majority of skin cancers.
So she finds it unbelievable how few people bother with sun safety, with most preferring sun worship to sun protection. “In our culture, it's almost funny to be too protected,” she says, highlighting the way her friends tease her when she puts on her bathing suit—a protective “rash guard top” and knee-length board shorts. “We're slowly starting to become aware of the long-term effects of the sun, but it's like global warming—people are not going to make serious changes until they feel a direct impact.”
That impact has helped push Australians, who are famous for sun loving, into changing their behavior. With its high solar ultraviolet levels and mostly fair-skinned population, Australia has the highest rate of skin cancer in the world. But after decades of increase, the melanoma(黑色瘤) rate began to stay at a steady level in the mid 1990s. The incidence of melanoma among young people is now falling, as national surveys show that most Australians-more than 70% of adults and 55% of adolescents—no longer prefer a tan (棕褐色).
A 2013 study shows that, in addition to Australia, a handful of countries—notably New Zealand, Canada, Israel, Norway, the Czech Republic(or women) and the United States (for white men) —have melanoma rates that are decreasing or stabilizing among young people.
Back in San Francisco, Jennifer Schaefer is doing her best to educate the next generation. Her eldest daughter automatically puts on a hat to go outside. “Habits really start in children—it is like brushing your teeth,” she says.
1. By describing Schacfer's bathing suit, the author suggests that Schaefer ________.| A．does not mind the teasing by her friend |
| B．attaches great importance to sun protection |
| C．goes to extreme measures to avoid the sun |
| D．is more interested in surfing than sunbathing |
| A．Sun protection programs are developing quickly. |
| B．Their citizens prefer to be pale rather than get tanned. |
| C．Skin cancer rates are not increasing among the young. |
| D．Women and white men have the lowest rates of melanoma. |
| A．To help individuals know how to make medical decisions. |
| B．To call for more research into ultraviolet radiation effect. |
| C．To draw the public's attention to ultraviolet radiation effect. |
| D．To honor a mother for her research into ultraviolet radiation |
