【推荐1】What kind of relationship do you think will provide you with more life satisfaction, better health and overall well-being? A romantic relationship? A familial (家庭的) one? Surprisingly, the answer is friendship.

However, it’s not possible to have true friends without first making regular friends. Have you ever thought about how long it takes to turn an acquaintance (认识的人) into a true friend?

Well, a study published in the April issue of the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships might have the answer to that question. According to lead study author Jeffrey Hall, a communications professor at the University of Kansas in the US, we need to spend at least 80 hours with another person to create a true friendship with them.

Hall surveyed two groups as they began new chapters in their lives. One group consisted of 429 adults who had recently relocated (搬家), while the other was made up of 112 freshmen from the University of Kansas.

The results showed that the more time each person spent together, the faster friendship formed in both groups. But it seemed that Hall wasn’t satisfied. He wanted to find out exactly how many hours it takes to form a friendship.

According to the survey, “casual” friends are generally formed after spending about 30 hours together. And people will go from casual friends to regular friends after another 50 hours.

However, it takes a lot longer to get really close to someone: A “close” friendship takes about 140 hours to create and “best friends” need about 300 hours.

But spending time together isn’t the only factor (元素) when it comes to making friends. “It’s not enough to just be in the company of someone… it matters how you spend the time,” Hall told the Daily Mail.

For one thing, as Hall noted, the way we communicate matters. “Catching up, joking around and having meaningful conversation promote intimacy (亲密) and closeness, while small talk actually decreases closeness in the relationship,” he said.

And since time is precious, Hall suggested taking advantage of our school years by making as many friends as we can.

Hall’s relationship tips:

·Watch a TV series together

·Share jokes and laughter

·Have long, meaningful conversations

·Watch a movie together

·Engage (参与) in friendly competition by playing video games

1. What is the article mainly about?

A．Factors that influence the forming of a friendship.

B．How people’s personality influences the time it takes to make friends.

C．The role that friendship plays in our life.

D．The necessity to make true friends in modern society.

2. What similarity do the two groups of people in Hall’s survey share?

A．They are of the same age.

B．They are good at making friends.

C．They study at the same university.

D．They just moved to a new environment.

3. How many hours will people need to make a close friend, according to Hall’s survey?

A．About 30 hours.	B．About 50 hours.
C．About 80 hours.	D．About 140 hours.

4. What does Hall think helps people develop a closer friendship?

A．Joking around with their friend.

B．Having more small talk.

C．Spending more time together in silence.

D．Discussing serious topics.

【推荐2】Many teenagers feel that the most important people in their lives are their friends. They believe that their family members don't know them as well as their friends do. In large families, it is quite often for brothers and sisters to fight with each other and then they can only go to their friends for some ideas.

It is very important for teenagers to have one good friend or a group of friends. Even when they are not with their friends, they usually spend a lot of time talking among themselves on the phone. This communication is very important in children's growing up, because friends can discuss something. These things are difficult to tell their family members.

However, parents often try to choose their children's friends for them. Some parents may even stop their children from meeting their good friends. Have you ever thought of the following questions?

1.Who chooses your friends?

2.Do you choose your friends or your friends choose you?

3.Have you got a good friend your parents don't like?

Your answers are welcome.

1. When teenagers have something difficult to tell their parents, they usually_______.

A．stay alone at home	B．fight with their parents
C．discuss it with their friends	D．go to their brothers and sisters for help

2. The sentence “Your answers are welcome." means _______.

A．you are welcome to discuss the questions with us

B．we've got no idea, so your answers are welcome

C．your answers are always right

D．you can give us all the right answers

3. Which of the following is the writer's attitude?

A．Parents should choose friends for their children.

B．Children should choose everything they like.

C．Parents should understand their children better.

D．Teenagers should only go to their friends for help.

4. Part of the purpose of this passage(短文) is to ________.

A．give information for the parents to make their own judgment (判断)

B．give advice to children who want to choose their friends

C．help parents to find better friends for their children

D．get some information from many readers

【推荐3】I once met a well-known botanist at a dinner party. I had never talked with a botanist before, and I found him very interesting. I sat there absorbed and listened while he spoke of unusual plants and his experiments (he even told me astonishing facts about the simple potato). I had a small indoor garden of my own—and he was good enough to tell me how to solve some of my problems.

As I said, we were at a dinner party. There must have been a dozen other guests, but I broke an important rule of politeness. I ignored everyone else and talked for hours to the botanist.

Midnight came. I said good night to everyone and departed. The botanist then turned to our host and said many nice things about me, including that I was a “most interesting conversationalist”.

An interesting conversationalist? I had said hardly anything at all. I couldn’t have said anything if I had wanted to without changing the subject, for I didn’t know any more about plants than I knew about sharks. But   I had done this one thing; I had listened carefully. I listened because I was really interested. And he felt it. Naturally that pleased him. That kind of listening is one of the best ways to show respect to others, and it makes them feel great too. “Few human beings,” wrote Jack Woodford in Strangers in Love, “can resist the sweet effect of rapt（全神贯注的） attention.” I went even further than that. I was “sincere in my admiration and generous in my praise”. I told him that I had been hugely entertained and instructed. I told him I wished I had his knowledge. I told him that I should love to wander the fields with him. What’s more, it was all true.

And so I had him thinking of me as a good conversationalist when, in reality, I had only been a good listener and had encouraged him to talk.

1. From Paragraph 1, we can learn that the writer__________.

A．was deeply moved by the botanist’s talk	B．behaved politely and properly
C．was not in a comfortable situation	D．was amazed by what he was hearing

2. Which of the following does the writer describe as a rule of politeness at dinner parties?

A．Giving attention to all those in attendance.

B．Listening carefully to what another guest says.

C．Arriving and leaving at the appropriate time.

D．Avoiding discussions about politics and religion.

3. According to the writer, which of the following is an important characteristic of a good conversationalist?

A．Encouraging the other side by sharing his/her own opinions.

B．Listening attentively and encouraging the other side to continue.

C．Promising a future meeting for more communication.

D．Expressing respect by nodding his/her head

【推荐1】We’ve all been there: in a lift, in line at the bank or on an airplane, surrounded by people who are, like us, deeply focused on their smartphones or, worse, struggling with the uncomfortable silence.

What’s the problem? It’s possible that we all don’t have enough conversational ability. It’s more likely that none of us start a conversation because it’s embarrassing and challenging, or we think it’s annoying and unnecessary. But the next time you find yourself among strangers, consider that small talk is worth the trouble. Experts say it’s a valuable social practice that leads to big benefits.

It is easy to consider small talk as unimportant, but we can’t forget that deep relationships wouldn’t even exist if there weren’t casual conversations. Small talk is the grease (润滑剂) for social communication, says Bernardo Carducci, director of the Shyness Research Institute at Indiana University Southeast. “Almost every great love story and each big business deal begins with small talk,” he explains. “The secret to successful small talk is learning how to connect with others, not just communicate with them.”

In a 2014 study, Elizabeth Dunn, professor of psychology at UBC, invited people to a coffee shop. One group was asked to interact (互动) with its waiter; the other, to speak only when necessary. The results showed that those who chatted with their server reported significantly higher positive feelings and a better coffee shop experience. “It’s not that talking to the waiter is better than talking to your husband,” says Dunn. “But interactions with peripheral (边缘的) members of our social network is important for our happiness and health.”

Dunn believes that people who reach out to strangers feel a greater sense of belonging, a link with others. Carducci believes developing such a sense of belonging starts with small talk. “Small talk is the basis of good manners,” he says.

1. What phenomenon is described in the first paragraph?

A．Addiction to smartphones.

B．Impatience with slow service.

C．Improper behaviors in public places.

D．Absence of communication between strangers.

2. What is important for successful small talk according to Carducci?

A．Keeping in touch with other people.

B．Showing good manners.

C．Making business deals

D．Focusing on a topic

3. What does the coffee-shop study suggest about small talk?

A．It improves family relationships.

B．It makes people feel good.

C．It raises people’s confidence

D．It matters as much as a formal talk.

4. What is the best title for the text?

A．Strengths of Small Talk

B．Ways of Making Small Talk

C．Conversation Counts

D．Uncomfortable Silence

【推荐2】You can relax if remembering everything is not your strong suit. Recent research makes the case that being forgetful can be a strength—in fact, selective memory can even be a sign of stronger intelligence.

Traditional research on memory has focused on the advantages of remembering everything. But looking through years of recent memory data, researchers Paul Frankland and Blake Richards of the University of Toronto found that the neurobiology（神经生物学） of forgetting can be just as important to our decisionmaking as what our minds choose to remember.

“The goal of memory is not the transmission of information through time. Rather, the goal of memory is to help improve decisionmaking. As such, transience(转瞬即逝) is as important as persistence in memory systems，” their study in Neuron states.

Making intelligent decisions does not mean you need to have all the information at hand, it just means you need to hold onto the most valuable information. And that means clearing up space in your memory palace for the most uptodate information on situations. Our brains do this by generating new neurons(神经元) in our hippocampus(海马体), which have the power to overwrite existing memories that are influencing our decisionmaking.

“If you're trying to deal with the situation and your brain is constantly bringing up multiple conflicting memories, that makes it harder for you to make a wise decision，” Richards told Science Daily.

If you want to increase the number of new neurons in your brain's learning region, try exercising. Moderate aerobic exercise like jogging, power walking, and swimming have been found to increase the number of neurons making important connections in our brains.

When we forget the names of certain clients and details about old jobs, our brain is making a choice that these details do not matter. Although too much forgetfulness can be a cause for concern, the occasional lost detail can be a sign of a perfectly healthy memory system. The researchers found that our brains facilitate decisionmaking by stopping us from focusing too much on minor past details. Instead, the brain promotes generalization, helping us remember the most important gist of a conversation.

“One of the things that distinguishes an environment where you're going to want to remember stuff versus an environment where you want to forget stuff is this question of how consistent the environment is and how likely things are to come back into your life，” Richards said.

If you're an analyst who meets with a client weekly, your brain will recognize that this is a client whose name and story you need to remember. If this is someone you may never meet again, your brain will weigh that information accordingly.

These findings show us that total recall can be overrated. Our brains are working smarter when they aim to remember the right stories, not every story.

Title：Being Forgetful Might Actually Mean You're     1    

Introduction	Recent research proves that being forgetful can be a strength, for forgetting and selective memory are of     2    importance in our decisionmaking.
The goal of memory	People take advantage of memory to make good decisions rather than     3     information.
4     of being forgetful	It helps us forget outdated information.	●Making wise decisions involves the existing memories making     5    for the latest information. ●Meanwhile, too much contradictory information in memory can do harm to our decisionmaking. ●Exercising helps increase neurons, contributing to our       6     decisionmaking.
	It helps us see the big       7    ．	●After       8    the information it gets, the brain chooses to focus on the key points, occasionally forgetting unimportant past details. ●Whether to remember or forget particular stuff is     9    by the degree of the consistency of the environment and the     10     of things reappearing later in life.
Conclusion	Our brains are working smarter when aiming to remember the right stories, not every story.