1 . What is an Adult?
How do you know when a person is an adult? Does the person’s age tell you? Or is an adult a person who takes on responsibility for work and family? There are different ways to define (定义) an adult.
Age
One way to define an adult is by age, but countries have very different ideas about the legal age of an adult. In India, a man can’t marry without his parents’ permission until age 21, and a woman can’t marry until age 18. However, in Jordan, the legal ages are 16 for men and 15 for women. In Brazil, a 16-year-old can vote, but in most African nations, people don’t have this right until they are 21. The legal driving age in Ethiopia is 14, and in Russia it is 18. The legal age of an adult is different around the world.
Body
Another way to define an adult is by the person’s body. An adult is a person who is grown and can have children. This is a physical definition of an adult. According to this definition, a 16-year-old is usually an adult.
Brain
Teenagers may have fully grown bodies, but they don’t usually think like adults. Their bodies usually stop growing at about age 17, but one part of the brain continues to grow until a person is about 25. This part of the brain, the frontal lobe, helps a person to understand cause and effect. It also helps a person to use good judgment to make decisions, solve problems, plan, and organize. When this part of the brain is fully grown at age 25, a person thinks like an adult.
Responsibilities
Another way of defining an adult is as a person who can take on important responsibilities like a job and a family. An adult respects others and understands that his or her own needs are not always the most important. This is the social definition of an adult. Some teenagers behave like adults, but most are not that responsible until they are over 20 years old.
What Is an Adult?
In conclusion, teenagers look like adults but are not yet adults. Some countries give teenagers the right to have adult responsibilities like marriage, voting, and driving, but teenagers don’t always think or act like adults. Most people agree that after age 25, a person is an adult.
1. Read the statements. Write T(true) or F(false).2. A man in India can marry without his parents’ permission when he is ________ years old.
| A．16 | B．18 | C．21 |
| A．16 | B．18 | C．21 |
| A．14 | B．16 | C．18 |
| A．18 | B．21 | C．25 |
| A．be intelligent | B．use good judgment（判断） | C．learn languages |
| A．a person is an adult after age 25 |
| B．a person is an adult when his or her body is grown |
| C．a person is an adult when she or he acts like an adult |
2 . Some parents said that they had difficulty in getting along with their children. I heard many parents complaining that their teenage children are rebelling. I wish it were so. At your age you ought to be growing away from your parents. You should be learning to stand on your own two feet. But take a good look at the present rebellion. It seems that teenagers are taking the same way of showing that they disagree with their parents. Instead of striking out boldly on their own, most of them are holding firmly at one another’s hands for reassurance.
They claim they want to dress as they please. But they all wear the same clothes. They set off in new directions in music. But somehow they all end up crowded round listening to the same record. Their reason for thinking or actin g in thus-and-such a way is that the crowd is doing it. They have come out of their cocoon (蚕茧) into a larger cocoon.
It has become harder and harder for a teenager to stand up against the popularity wave and to go his or her own way. Industry has firmly carved out a teenage market. These days every teenager can learn from the advertisements what a teenager should have and be. And many of today’s parents have come to award high marks for the popularity of their children. All this adds up to a great barrier for the teenager who wants to find his or her own path.
But the barrier is worth climbing over. The path is worth following. You may want to listen to classical music instead of going to a party. You may want to collect rocks when everyone else is collecting records. You may have some thoughts that you don’t care to share at once with your classmates. Well, go to it. Find yourself. Be yourself. Popularity will come — with the people who respect you for who you are. That is the only kind of popularity that really counts.
1. In this passage, the author wants to tell______.| A．teenagers to try to decide things for themselves |
| B．readers to try to be popular with people around |
| C．parents to try to control and guide their children |
| D．people to try to understand and respect each other |
| A．There is no popularity that really counts. |
| B．It is not good for a teenager to disagree with his or her classmates. |
| C．What many parents are doing is helping their children to go on their own ways. |
| D．Most teenagers claim to do whatever they want, but they are actually doing the same. |
3 . Universities are expanding opportunities to spend a year overseas, meaning that not only language students benefit from time spent in another culture. Amanda Harper, head of placements and Bath University, says going abroad offers students the chance to widen their cultural horizons and develop an international network of friends and contacts.
‘One of my science students learned to dance salsa and speak Spanish during his year in Costa Rica,’ she says. ‘The students mature and their confidence increases. These changes are unquantifiable in terms of marks are the time management skills, presentation skills and ability to deal with the world of vastly improved when they come back from their placements.’
As it becomes increasingly difficult to stand out in the graduate job market, a year’s experience in another country could be what separates one student from others with the same results. A survey for the confederation of British industry found that fifty six percent of employers were not satisfied with graduates’ foreign language skills and forty percent were dissatisfied with candidates’ international cultural awareness.
Most overseas placements are taken in the third year of university, after which students return for a fourth and final year. Cassandra Popli, 22, who spent a year at California State University in Long Beach, got a job in California which she will take up after graduating from Swansea University this summer. ‘I feel like I have got so much more from that year abroad than I would have if I had stayed here,’ she adds.
Read the article and find words that collocate with the words 1-6. （从文中找出与以下结构搭配的词，每空填一个词）
1. expand
2. go
3. widen
4.
5. increase
6. take up a
4 . This fall, Apple will roll out its newest update. It will offer parents greater control over content their kid views. Additionally, it will track the amount of time they spend using an iOS device. Following Google’s lead to deal with smart phone addiction (上瘾), new tools will include increased monitoring, usage time and activity reports.
Currently, Apple’s parental controls only allow for limiting usage of adult apps, music and video. There is growing public concern over unlimited exposure to social media for young people. Smartphone addiction combined with increased rates of distraction, suicide, and depression in teens led Apple to respond. It has developed better tools for monitoring content and control over iOS device usage for parents. For moms and dads looking to more effectively manage how their teen accesses iOS devices, the Screen Time, App Limits, and Down Time features will be of particular help.
Screen Time will generate daily and weekly reports detailing how many times users pick up their devices, the categories of apps and websites they use most often and the amount of time they spend interacting with each app.
According to public statements, Apple intends these reports to help users get a greater understanding of how they use their devices. They’re also intended to assist in making personal decisions about controls they’d like to have. This is especially helpful to parents who aren’t privy(准许知情) to specific apps and websites their kid is using or how long they use them each day. The new App Limits feature allows parents to set limits on time spent on websites, apps or a category of apps.
Also, parents will be able to set time periods for their child’s phone to be powered off. Down Time can be scheduled on devices. Parents can specify which apps can and can’t be used and when. If parents want to limit access to an entire category of apps, such as social media or gaming, during specified time periods for things like homework, diner, or bedtime, they can.
The new parental controls are account-based. Parents can access Screen Time to view reports and set limits on their teen’s device remotely (远程地) via devices connected through Family Sharing or directly from their teen’s device.
Totals for settings, usage reports, and limits set are based on usage across all of a users IOS devices. Thus, if a kid uses multiple iOS devices, he or she will reach a time limit on an app on their iPhone. The app will be inaccessible on their iPad as well. A screen notification will appear when a child is about to reach a time limit. The child can request more time from a parent.
This update is good news for those who wish to have better insight into teen smartphone usage. Parents, however, should keep communicating rules and guidelines for healthy tech habits.
1. Read the statements. Write T(true) or F(false).2. Which word has the similar meaning to the underlined word “notification” in the seventh paragraph?
| A．warning | B．note | C．figure | D．post |
| A．This new update alone cannot help teens develop healthy tech habits. |
| B．Kids with addiction to social media may also be satisfied with this update. |
| C．There’s no chance for parents to give more time if the kid reaches the limit. |
| D．If a kid reaches a time limit on his/her iPhone, he/she can go on to use iPad. |
| A．Parents Find Ways to Control the Screen Time of Your Kids. |
| B．Apple Follows Google’s Lead to Have More Functions. |
| C．Parents Should Have Greater Control over the Usage of smartphones. |
| D．Apple’s Newest Update Helps Parents Monitor Kids’ Cellphone Usage. |
Millions of dollars have been used in developing special chemicals to help dismiss the spills and to clean up the animals, beaches, and land spoiled by the oil. Unfortunately, when many of these chemicals are used, more damage is caused to the environment, especially to lives in the sea.
Of all of today’s environmental disasters, an oil spill may actually be one of the least serious. Although oil is poisonous, it is a natural material. In the end, it breaks down naturally. There are, of course, long-term effects, but it is usually more serious in the short term.
Nature by itself works better than chemical materials, but when there is a spill we demand that governments act immediately with as much hi-tech knowledge as possible. In 1967 the tanker Torrey Canyon sank off the Scilly Isles near the coast of England and spilled 120,000 tones of oil into the ocean. If you go there today, you will find it hard to see any sign that it ever happened.
Governments seem to accept the risk of transporting millions of tons of oil by ship every day so that we can fill up our cars and drive around and cause even more environmental damage. Interestingly, the biggest companies in the world produce cars, and the next biggest supply the gasoline to make them run!
We should be thinking more about reducing our dependency on oil. Governments should be encouraging research into new technologies, such as cars run by solar power(太阳能), electricity, hydrogen, and so on. Much of this research has, in the past, been held back by the oil, gas, and coal.
If the world’s millions of cars were 10% more efficient(高效的) — and the industry could easily produce cars at least twice as efficient — we would need many fewer tankers crossing the oceans each year. If this happened, the risks of oil spills would be reduced, and the air we breathe would be cleaner and fresher, too.
1. What is the passage mainly talking about?
| A．Oil spills pollution. | B．What oil pollution is. |
| C．Oil tanker accidents. | D．How to reduce oil pollution. |
| A．By giving a description. | B．By making an argument. |
| C．By giving an example. | D．By drawing a diagram. |
| A．Transportation depending more on oil. | B．Poisonous oil breaking down naturally. |
| C．Millions of tons of oil spilling into the sea. | D．More environmental damage being caused. |
| A．We should build safer oil tankers in the near future. |
| B．We should develop new technologies to cut oil use. |
| C．Tankers should not be allowed to sail near the coastlines. |
| D．Countries should build more oil pipelines under the sea. |
