1 . Are you shy? If you are, you are not alone. In fact, close to 50 percent of people are shy. Almost 80 percent of people feel shy at some point in their lives. These days, shyness is becoming more and more common. Now, scientists are trying to understand shyness. They have some interesting ideas about why people are shy.
Is it possible to be born shy? Many scientists say yes. They say 15 to 20 percent of babies behave shyly. These babies are a little quieter and more watchful than other babies. Interestingly, these shy babies usually have shy parents. As a result, scientists think that some shyness is genetic.
Family size might cause people to be shy as well. Scientists at Harvard University studied shy children. They found that 66 percent of them had older brothers and sisters. The scientists said that these children were often bullied(欺负)by their older brothers and sisters. As a result, they became shy. At the same time, children with no brothers and sisters may be shy as well. Growing up alone, they often play by themselves. They are not able to learn the same social skills as children from big families.
You may also be shy because of where you were born. When scientists studied shyness in different countries, they found surprising differences. In Japan, most people said they were shy. But in Israel, only one of three people said so. What explains the difference? One scientist says the Japanese and Israelis have different opinions of failure. In Japan, when people do not succeed, they feel bad about themselves. They blame(责备)themselves for their failure. In Israel, the opposite is true. Israelis often blame failure on outside reasons, such as family, teachers, friends, or bad luck. In Israel, freedom of opinion and risk taking are strongly supported. This may be why Israelis worry less about failure and less shy.
For shy people, it can be difficult to make friends, speak in class, and even get a good job. But scientists say you can get over your shyness. They suggest trying new things and practicing conversation, And don’t forget —if you are shy, you are not the only one.
1. What is the passage mainly about?| A．Happiness. | B．Shyness | C．Kindness | D．Loneliness |
| A．Passed down from parents. | B．Learned from friends |
| C．Taught by teachers. | D．Made up by brothers |
| A．Most little babies are born shy and quiet. |
| B．If you are shy now, you will be shy forever. |
| C．Many shy children have older brothers and sisters. |
| D．Many shy children can be easy to make friends. |
| A．blaming their failure on outside reasons |
| B．trying new things and practicing conversation |
| C．getting themselves away from their shy parents |
| D．trying to understand reasons for their shyness |
A book cover that attracts you to read, an app that keeps you exercising, a search engine that is easy to use… these all need good design. Good design makes our lives easier and better. But what makes good design?
Fortune magazine recently published a list of the 100 greatest designs of modern times. The list shows a clear change in design idea over the past years, according to Fortune. In the 1950s, design mostly referred to the aesthetics of a product, such as the beautiful design of a sports car. But today, the key point is how it can solve problems and change society in a good way.
One example is the Chinese app WeChat. It offers many kinds of functions, including messaging, video calling and online payment. It's a "one-stop shop" that makes our life much easier.
Mobike is also on the list. In big cities, many people have to travel a long way between the bus or subway stop and their homes or offices. Thanks to China's Mobike, people can solve the "last mile" problem by riding bikes, Fortune said. Mobike's bikeshare service allows people to find a bike almost anywhere in most Chinese cities. Its online payment allows people to easily open a bike lock with a smartphone.
Here is another great design called OXO Good Grips Peeler. This peeler was designed by American designer Sam Farber in 1990. When he found that his wife had trouble holding her peeler because of the hurt of her arm, Sam decided to create a more useful tool that would benefit everyone. The peeler has a wide handle that is easy to hold and control. He also used a special material to make the handle, which is soft to the touch and non-slip even when it gets wet.
1. A good design today is surely________.| A．useful | B．famous | C．expensive | D．beautiful |
| A．a shop with a stop | B．a shop with lots of services |
| C．an app for users of all ages | D．an app with plenty of functions |
| A．They can share bikes with others. | B．Mobike is easy for a short ride. |
| C．Mobike is safe because of the bike lock. | D．It's cheap to pay for Mobike online. |
| A．people want to be modern. | B．people meet some problems. |
| C．people need some knowledge. | D．people hope their lives become colorful. |
Why is it called Mars? You might have asked yourself this before. Well, Mars is the name of the Roman god of war. People have seen the planet as a symbol of war for thousands of years. The ancient Greeks called the planet Ares after their god of war. Chinese people called it the“fire star" for the same reason.
Scientists have been interested in the planet since long before any space tasks. Egyptian scientists first saw Mars in the sky more than 4,000 years ago. Since then, people from all over the world have studied the planet.
Over the years, scientists have continued to study the planet and learned some basic things about it.
Mars is 10 times lighter and about 6 times smaller than Earth. Earth is 93 million miles (about 150 million km) from the sun, while Mars is 142 million miles away. That means it is much colder on Mars. In fact, the average temperature on Mars is - 62℃. Scientists found water on Mars long ago, but because of the low temperatures there, it is frozen. One day on Mars is called a sol and is about 40 minutes longer than one Earth day. The Red Planet's surface gravity is only 37% as strong as Earth's, meaning you would be able to jump nearly two times higher on Mars.
1. What did the ancient Greeks call Mars?| A．Mars | B．Ares | C．The“fire star" | D．The Red Planet |
| A．Chinese scientists first saw Mars. | B．Mars is lighter and bigger than Earth. |
| C．Earth is father from the sun than Mars. | D．A sol is about 1480 minutes. |
A． Earth Mars |
B． Earth Mars |
C． Earth Mars |
D． Earth Mars |
| A．history book | B．story book | C．science book | D．art book |
Each country has its own "art of living". For example, the word "niksen" shows how Dutch people fight stress and tiredness in a fast- paced lifestyle.
The term "niksen" comes from the Dutch word "niks", which refers to"nothing". In practice, "niksen" could be as simple as just relaxing, looking at your surroundings or listening to music - as long as it's without purpose and not done in order to achieve something. Think "simply sitting in a chair or looking out of the window," says Ruut Veenhoven, a professor at Erasmus University who studies happiness.
"Niksen" sounds contrary to the advice that we were all given as kids. Nowadays, we're always told to stay busy and work harder than everyone else. But "niksen" is against that attitude. It offers the chance to "deliciously do nothing", as Carolien Hamming told Time. She thinks that "niksen" is very important to staying healthy, since it's a form of mental relaxation and healing. Just like a wild animal lying in wait for their food, "niksen" seems to be a natural state of being.
For some people,"niksen" can mean more than just mental relaxation. It's also a way to imagine new ideas or plans. As an early adopter of "niksen", Jenny Holden, adds it to her daily lunch breaks. "Within 10 minutes of doing nothing-just staring and listening to myself-my head began to clear and pick out my work and home to-do lists", she told the Metro UK. However, for many, doing nothing isn't as simple as it sounds. In fact, it can be somewhat challenging to sit still and stare out a window.
Above all, "niksen" is a suggestion for balancing work and rest. As Dutch-born writer Ogla Mecking wrote in Whoolly Magazine,"niksen" is the full enjoyment of life's breaks".
Everyone is encouraged to have your "niksen" moments. They give you the strength to face everyday challenges.
1. The term "niksen" means ________| A．living in the moment | B．being free and doing nothing |
| C．staying busy and working hard | D．using your wildest imagination |
| A．"niksen" helps fight against illness | B．"niksen" can improve one's mental health |
| C．"niksen" can shorten the distance between people | D．"niksen" helps people come up with new thoughts |
| A．Sitting on the chair and dreaming. | B．Going hiking alone on sunny days. |
| C．Lying on the bed and thinking about nothing. | D．Watching TV while eating some snacks. |
| A．The importance of enjoying happy moments. | B．Suggestions on how to balance work and rest. |
| C．An introduction to one of the Dutch lifestyles. | D．An explanation of some Danish words about health. |
Parents, teachers and others who deal closely with teenagers know how difficult the teenage years can be, as teenagers always do wild and even dangerous things. Now, brain-imaging technology allows scientists to study the physical development of the brain in more detail to learn why teenagers act differently from adults.
Recently, scientists discovered that though our brains are almost at their full size by the age of six, they are far from fully developed. Only during teenage years do our brains truly "grow up". During this time, they go through great changes. These changes were once thought to be finished by age 12. Now, scientists have found our brains continue to change till age 25. The result is the unpredictable actions seen in teenagers.
The studies show that teenagers prefer to take more risks and act in more dangerous ways. One way the brain does this is by changing the way teenagers think of risk and reward. When teenagers think about rewards, their brains produce more chemicals that create pleasure than an adult brain would. Researchers believe this makes the rewards seem more important than the risks, and makes teenagers feel more excited about the new experiences than adults do.
Research also found it makes social connections seem especially rewarding. Generally speaking, teenagers have a stronger need to meet new people. This is because teenagers begin to realize the people of the same age may one day control the world they live in. Because it's still developing, a teenage brain can change to deal with new situations. So, it connects social rewards with even more pleasure. In this way, the brain encourages teenagers to have a wide circle of friends, which is believed to make them more successful in life.
Unluckily, this hunt for greater rewards can sometimes lead teenagers to make bad decisions. However, it also means teenagers are less afraid to try new things. The teenage brains are what help teenagers prepare for adult life.
1. ________might be most interested in reading this passage.| A．Tony, an animal doctor | B．Bob, a traffic policeman |
| C．Gina, a teacher at a middle school | D．Mary, who has a forty-year old son |
| A．six | B．twelve |
| C．eighteen | D．twenty-five |
| A．Their brains are already fully developed. |
| B．They think they can do better than adults do. |
| C．They think risks are more important than rewards. |
| D．They feel more excited about the new experiences compared with adults. |
| A．can help them get ready for adult life |
| B．are not able to change to deal with new situations |
| C．can always help teenagers to make right decisions |
| D．stop teenagers from meeting new people and making friends |
Each year on Feb 21, UNESCO holds an International Mother Language Day (IMLD). The event is to help people to pay attention to the disappearance of the world's languages: many of them are disappearing each year. UNESCO sees this as a terrible fact.
What happens when a language dies out? Something great is lost—not just sounds and marks but the way that people understand the world and communicate with each other. We keep different cultures and traditions through languages. Kill a language and all these are killed too.
Through IMLD, more and more people come to realize the terrible situation and try to stop it. Google's 2018 Endangered Languages Project is a good example. Many speakers and protectors of endangered language upload texts, audios and videos to the project website. They want to introduce the way that people communicate and express themselves around the world.
The Myaamia Project is the same kind of effort to revive the language spoken by the Miami tribes of the United States. Project members work to encourage people to study and communicate with each other in this language, which died out in the 1960s.
These activities give life to those endangered languages. Many young people design apps and use social media to support their activities. They "spread the word" to save the word.
So, while the problem of disappearing languages remains a very serious one, there is hope. We all have a special feeling of our mother language. This is why we should remember the wise words of late president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela: "If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to a man in his own language, that goes to his heart."
1. UNESCO holds IMLD every year in order to help people to __________.| A．learn and use endangered languages |
| B．show their talent in learning languages |
| C．practice reading skills of mother languages |
| D．realize the situation of endangered languages |
| A．Discuss how to make good use of websites. |
| B．Offer online courses on endangered languages. |
| C．Share materials about endangered languages online. |
| D．Translate endangered languages into mother languages. |
| A．It gets more difficult to protect endangered languages. |
| B．The disappearance of languages has already stopped. |
| C．Young people don't care about endangered languages. |
| D．Young people have creative ways to protect languages. |
| A．show his influence to language protection |
| B．tell the importance of one's mother language |
| C．tell the trouble in learning endangered languages |
| D．show the achievement of protecting mother languages |
Humans produce a lot of rubbish, such as leftover food, waste paper, plastic bottles and batteries every day. It has become a big headache in every city. Rubbish classification is a good way of dealing with it.
At an office in San Francisco, USA, if you drop a coffee cup in a robotic waste bin, the machine will automatically sort* the cup for recycling.
The office is one of the first to use the technology, called TrashBot, from a startup called CleanRobotics that is trying to solve a basic challenge in recycling: Even when someone is trying to reduce waste, there's possibility they're recycling wrongly.
"The idea was really born out of frustration*," says Charles Yhap, CEO of CleanRobotics.
He points to the example of a store like Whole Foods, where anyone who eats at the salad bar has to figure out which bin to use for their forks, boxes and cups.
"I eat my food and I go to throw something away and I'm faced with plenty of waste bins, and it's just so confusing—everywhere you go, the rules are a little different, and I'm still not sure whether I'm doing it correctly."
He thought that technology could help. "We started looking at the reduction costs of sensors*and robotic components*and the increasing accessibility of algorithms and AI systems and we think, maybe we can build something that does this better than people," he says.
The present waste bins are already expensive—a single set in an airport might cost $1,200. "They are just shiny metal tubes that don't do anything for you. So we think we can build a robot that is price competitive and adds a ton more value."
1. According to the passage, what can a robotic waste bin do?| A．It can help to collect the coffee cups. |
| B．It can make cups clean and reusable. |
| C．It can put the waste into the right bin. |
| D．It can tell people where to put the waste. |
| A．To point out the causes of the waste. |
| B．To ask people to learn from the store. |
| C．To show us it's difficult to sort the waste. |
| D．To prove people don't like sorting the waste. |
| A．He thinks it will have a bright future. |
| B．He is not sure whether it will be useful or not. |
| C．He hopes it will do everything difficult for us. |
| D．He is afraid it's too expensive for people to buy. |
| A．A robotic waste bin costs $1,200. It's not cheap. |
| B．People are satisfied with the present waste bins. |
| C．A robotic waste bin was first used in an office of England. |
| D．A robotic waste bin can sort the rubbish better than humans. |
8 . Americans with small families own a small car or a large one. If both parents are working, they usually have two cars. When the family is large, one of the cars is sold and they will buy a van（住房汽车）.
A small car can hold four persons and a large car can hold six persons but it is very crowded（拥挤）. A van hold seven persons easily, so a family with three children could ask their grandparents to travel together.
Mr. Hargen and his wife had a third child last year. This made them sell a second car and buy a van. There are seven seats in the van, and two of them are used to put things on, for a family of five must carry many suitcase（衣箱）when they travel. When they arrive at their grandparents’ home, the suitcase are put into the two seats. And then they can carry their grandparents.
Americans call vans motor homes. A motor home is always used for holidays. When a family are traveling to the moutains or to the seaside, they can live in their motor home for a few days or weeks.
All the members of a big family can enjoy a happier life when they are traveling together. That is why motor homes have become very popular. In America there are many parks for motor homes.
1. From the passage, a van is also called .| A．a motor | B．a motor home |
| C．a motorbike | D．a big truck |
| A．sold their old house | B．moved to their grandparents’ house |
| C．built a new place for a van | D．sold their second car |
| A．a baby | B．much money |
| C．more than two kids | D．interest in vans |
| A．to travel with all the family members on holiday. |
| B．to do some shopping with all the family members. |
| C．to visit their grandparents at weekends. |
| D．to drive their children to school every day. |
| A．they can take people to another city when people are free. |
| B．they can let families have a happier life when they go out for their holidays. |
| C．some people think motor homes are cheap. |
| D．big families can put more things in motor homes. |
Now it's time for us to learn words and their stories—our weekly program about common, everyday expressions in American English. Today we are talking about the word "leap" and its expressions.
February 29th is called "a leap day". And the entire 12-month period with a February 29th in it is called "a leap year". This year, 2020 is such a year. The somewhat unusual day of February 29th comes up on the calendar only every four years. A year with a February 29th might be good news if you are paid by the day or the week. But it might be bad news if you were born on a February 29th. You have to wait three years in between birthdays!
As a verb, the word "leap" means to jump, or to move quickly. Leap can also be a noun, meaning a jump, or a sudden move. In a leap year, the dates jump over one day of the week. The reason for a leap day or a leap year is because our calendar does not follow the Earth's orbit* around the sun exactly. Each year, we have a little time left over. So every four years, we put all that time together into an extra day. It is officially called an intercalary day. But I have never heard an English speaker use that term. "Leap day" is fine.
“Leap" is also an important word for two other common American expressions. One is a kind of warning. If you want someone to investigate* a situation completely and consider the possible results carefully before taking actions, you might say, “Look before you leap." The other expression is a phrase of hope. If you want someone to take actions, you may say "take a leap of faith", even if not everything about a situation is known. In other words, it asks the person to take courage and step into the unknown. Interestingly, the two phrases are completely reasonable to say to someone who is about to get married.
Thank you for your listening!
1. The next leap year is _________________.| A．2022 | B．2024 | C．2026 | D．2028 |
| A．Because February 29th is officially called an intercalary day. |
| B．Because the calendar doesn't follow that official term exactly. |
| C．Because the extra time is put together into an extra day every year. |
| D．Because the Earth doesn't orbit the sun in the exact amount of time. |
| A．You are supposed to express congratulations to your friend on his prize. |
| B．It is good to warn your friend about online shopping on November 11th. |
| C．You can encourage your friend before he enters his singing competition. |
| D．It’s considered to be OK to advise your friend to get on well with others. |
| A．a vocabulary lesson | B．a space program | C．a science report | D．an English calendar |
10 . During the day, we work hard like bees. But do you know our bodies are busy too while sleeping at night?
11:00 pm Better Lock the Doors
To find the most comfortable position, some people sleep on their backs or stomachs. Most people curl up and lie on the side like a baby. Others take more unusual positions, such as on elbows* and knees or completely covered in the sheets.
During the first few hours of the night, some behaviors can be caused by the disagreement between your brain and body. For example, the brains of sleepwalkers want to stay awake, while their bodies are in a deep sleep. So most sleepwalkers walk around and return to bed without waking up.
4:00 am Dare to Dream
Your sweetest 一 or scariest 一 dreams usually happen in the last hours of sleep. If you awaken in the middle of a dream, you might find it difficult to move for a moment. Certain parts of your brain have shut down, stopping messages going to the muscles* and disabling the body for a time.
Dreams may seem foolish, but some cultures believe they are real events happening to a person's soul during sleep. Others use their dreams to solve the problems of daily life.
7:00 am
Time to wake up, but wait, your arm can't feel anything. As you begin to move, an uncomfortable feeling floods* down from your shoulder. When pressure on your arm stops sending messages to the brain, your arm loses all feelings. As the pressure is reduced and messages sending restarts, uncomfortable feelings appear. So don't worry if you wake up and your arm is still "asleep". It’ll be wide awake in a moment.
1. Which of the following is the sleeping position for most people?A． | B． | C． | D． |
| A．cultures | B．dreams | C．problems | D．messages |
| A．their brains are still in deep sleep | B．they dream in the last hours of sleep |
| C．their brains fail to get messages | D．walking in the sleep makes them tired |
| A．Get Comfortable | B．I'm Falling. . . Asleep |
| C．Wake Up Immediately | D．But My Arm Is Still Asleep |
