1 . Rosie Dutton teaches a weekly class for 10- and 11-year-olds. During a recent class, Dutton used apples to brilliantly explain the effects of bullying.
Rosie Dutton started out by showing the class two perfect-looking apples. But unknown to the students, she had dropped one of the apples repeatedly on the floor. She picked up the dropped apple and began insulting (侮辱；损害) it.
“I started to tell the children how I disliked this apple, that I thought it was ugly and it was a horrible color,” Dutton wrote. “I told them that because I didn't like it, I didn't want them to like it either.”
They passed that apple around in a circle and the kids joined in on the insults. Then, Dutton took a completely different approach with the other apple.
“We then passed another apple around and started to say kind words to it,” the 31-year-old wrote.
She eventually cut both of them open to reveal that the apple that had been insulted was bruised (青肿的) inside. The apple that received praise wasn't.
“When people are bullied, especially children, they feel horrible inside and sometimes don't show or tell others how they are feeling,” Dutton wrote in her post. “If we hadn't cut that apple open, we would never have known how much pain we had caused it.”
“Unlike an apple, we have the ability to stop this from happening. We can teach children that it's not OK to say unkind things to each other,” the 31-year-old explained in her post. She later added, “More and more hurt and damage happens inside if nobody does anything to stop the bullying. Let's create a generation of kind, caring children.”
1. What didn't the students know in advance?| A．She had dropped one apple repeatedly on the floor. |
| B．She had dropped two apples repeatedly on the floor. |
| C．The two apples were perfect-looking in appearance. |
| D．She had picked the two apples from the same tree. |
| A．By reading famous sayings. | B．By listing the numbers. |
| C．By making comparisons. | D．By quoting some examples. |
| A．brave | B．considerate |
| C．active | D．honest |
| A．One woman found an incredible way to teach a history lesson. |
| B．People have the ability to stop bullying from happening again. |
| C．A teacher encourages students to put what they learned to use. |
| D．A teacher uses a bruised apple to show bad effects of bullying. |
2 . Maeve Higgins once set herself a task. The Irish-born comedian wanted to see what life would be like if she stopped laughing at things that weren’t funny. Turns out it wasn’t as easy as she thought. “It was so hard,” she says. “ Laughter is a lubricant (润滑油) and is expected, and it’s really hard not to do it.”
Higgins suggests there’s something particularly special about being part of the shared experience that is live comedy — that curious magic that occurs when people come together specifically to laugh.
Comedy is more than just a pleasant way to pass an evening, humour more than something to amuse. They’re interwoven into our everyday existence. Whether you’re sharing an amusing story at a party or telling a dark joke at a funeral, humour is everywhere. But what is it for? And can humour, as comedy, change how we feel, what we think or even what we do?
As an essential part of human interaction, humour has been on the minds of thinkers for centuries. One of the most enduring theories of humour was put forward by the philosopher Thomas Hobbes. It asserts that humour appears to make fun of the weak and exert superiority. While this is clearly the function of some comedy, it’s far from a complete explanation for the overall purpose of humour.
For some comedians, it’s not just about getting laughs — it’s about changing what we think and maybe even what we do. If there’s one comic who is really typical of this, it’s Josie Long. A social justice activist and a comedian, Long has a reputation for delightful, optimistic humour and storytelling.
As her career has evolved, she has consciously put social and political topics at the heart of her act. She believes that comedians have a role to play in challenging some of the most pressing issues of the day.
British comic Stephen K Amos sells out venues seating thousands, year in, year out. Amos firmly believes that when comics consciously deal with pressing or controversial （有争议的）social issues like racism, they can reach people on a much more meaningful level than that achieved by briefly lifting someone’s mood. And while it may be difficult to quantify, he says, the social and psychological impact of comedy deserves much greater recognition.
The research backs this up. Although the role of comedy is to be entertaining first and foremost, Sharon Lockyer, a sociologist who studies humour, has identified a number of possible other functions. These include challenging stereotypes (刻板印象).
Amos’s work frequently settles the issues of race by challenging stereotypes.”I don’t do things for shock value,” he says. “ I do stuff that matters to me. In the old days it was just about doing jokes. We’ve moved on — people are talking about things that matter. ”
1. What do the first two paragraphs mainly talk about?| A．The benefits of laughing. |
| B．What a comedian’s daily work is about. |
| C．Why Maeve Higgins chose to be a comedian. |
| D．Maeve Higgins’ understanding of the appeal of comedy. |
| A．Protect the weak from the evil. |
| B．Encourage people to be stronger. |
| C．Be determined to improve oneself. |
| D．Show you are better than other people. |
| A．By gradually influencing people’s attitudes. |
| B．By urging politicians to try and solve the issues. |
| C．By quickly yet thoroughly changing people’s thinking. |
| D．By calling on the whole society to pay attention to the issues. |
| A．getting people to laugh |
| B．promoting social progress |
| C．influencing people’s ideas |
| D．making people more productive |
3 . City Information Sheet
The city has several services and events each year that may interest you and are listed below:
•The city has an Animal Control Office that enforces laws for dogs and cats running at large in the city. All dogs and cats are required to be leashed (系住) unless they are kept inside your house. You can contact Dispatch to report animals running without the owner’s company.
•Each family is allowed two two-day yard sales per calendar year. You don’t have to get a permit before you hold a yard sale in the city limits.
•The city requires anyone doing business in the city to first obtain a business license. This license can be obtained from the City Hall.
Spring Cleanup — Held for one week in spring each year. Citizens may place unwanted furniture at the road edge in front of their location and the Spring Cleanup Crew (SCC) will remove them at the end of the event. If any nonresident is putting garbage at your address or in your neighborhood, please get the license plate number and description of the vehicles. Call City Council Center at 270-265-2501 to report it. The SCC is not authorized to take your garbage, so please place your daily garbage in the proper trash can.
Harvest Festival — Street festival with live music, children's activities, food stands, arts and crafts, fashion clothing and much, much more! The festival is sponsored by the Community Alliance and is held annually on the first Saturday in October.
Leaf Pickup — During the month of October, citizens may take the leaves to the road edge and the city will remove them. The machine will not vacuum(吸走)up sticks.
Elkton Bike Night — Every Thursday night, currently from May through September, the city welcomes cycle enthusiasts from around the region. Local food stands set up, restaurants have specials and the Todd County Community Alliance provides live entertainment such as live bands, karaoke or radio music. Even if you are not a cycle rider, everyone is welcome to join us for the free entertainment and food!
1. Which organization should you report to when spotting a dog running alone outside?| A．Dispatch. | B．Animal Control Office. |
| C．City Council Center. | D．The Community Alliance. |
| A．A couple preparing to hold a yard sale. |
| B．A retired man planning to open a bike shop. |
| C．A businessman organising a charity event. |
| D．A neighbor placing the unwanted furniture. |
| A．The city events cover all the seasons of a year. |
| B．Machines are used to collect the leaves and sticks. |
| C．The fun of Elkton Bike Night is not limited to cycling. |
| D．The SCC can take daily garbage away if properly placed. |
4 . One of Britain' s most outstanding scientists says the growth in the use of electronic tablets and smart phones is causing people to spend so much time indoors that they need to take regular vitamin D supplements to make up for the lack of sunlight they receive naturally.
Geneticist Steve Jones said he himself was a follower to the cause and urged others to follow. “I never thought I would be a person who would take vitamin supplements；I always thought it was absolute nonsense. But now I take vitamin D every day. Today, because I knew the sun wasn't going to shine, I took an extra one,” he said.
Exposure to the sun is the major source of vitamin D. However, people are spending less and less time outdoors in many areas. The problem is particularly serious in Scotland. "The Scots are the whitest people in the world because their entire body systems are crying out for vitamin D," he said, adding that life expectancy in Scotland is two years shorter than in England or Wales. Multiple sclerosis (多发性硬化症), a medical condition which is often seen in northern Europe, is also higher in Scotland than in England.
Vitamin D helps with the absorption of Ca, which helps keep bones strong. And Jones said the fact that rickets (佝偻病) was making a comeback in Britain after nearly 50 years was another sign of how changing behavior patterns were bringing physical harm.
Jones admitted that concerns over the damaging effects on skin of long-time exposure to the sun were reasonable, but said sunlight was healthy and necessary for the human body, and could help in lowering blood pressure. "If you lie on the beach for an hour, you will drop your blood pressure by about 10 points, because it relaxes your blood vessels (血管). So, get out in the sun while we still can," he said.
1. How are people affected by the rise of technology according to the text?| A．They are more sensitive to sunlight |
| B．They take more vitamin D supplements. |
| C．They get less vitamin D than before. |
| D．They become addicted to electronic games. |
| A．Skeptical. | B．Cautious. |
| C．Worried. | D．Supportive. |
| A．Because they are in great need of sunlight. |
| B．Because their blood pressure is very low. |
| C．Because they enjoy a short period of sunshine. |
| D．Because they are easy to get multiple sclerosis. |
| A．Get out and gain more Vitamin D |
| B．Keep away from tablets and phones |
| C．Pay attention to the importance of sunlight |
| D．Take vitamin D supplements to keep healthy |
5 . Some time ago, in my class I was about to fail a student for his answer to a physics question when the student claimed he deserved a better score. The examination question sounded “safe”.
“Show how it is possible to determine the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer（压表）.” The student had answered: “Take the barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it, lower the barometer to the street, and then bring it up, measuring the length of the rope. The length of the rope is the height of the building.”
I argued that a high grade should prove his competence in physics, but the answer did not confirm this. I suggested that the student have another try. Immediately, he worked out his answer: A second best way is to take the barometer to the top of the building. Drop the barometer, timing its fall with a stopwatch. Then, using the formula to calculate the height of the building.
I was shocked by his answer. His method gave me not only a broken barometer but a U-turn in my teaching philosophy. I gave him full marks.
On his leaving my office, I recalled that he suggested there could be a better answer. So I asked him what it was. “Oh, yes,” said the student, “There are many ways. Probably the best,” he said, “is to take the barometer to the basement and ask the superintendent （楼管）. You speak to him as follows: Mr.Superintendent, here I have a fine barometer. If you tell me the height of this building, I will give it to you.
At this point, I asked the student if he really did not know the conventional answer to this question. He admitted that he did, but said that he was fed up with high school instructors’ trying to teach him how to think, and to use the so-called “scientific method”. He just wanted to solve the problem in a practical manner, not just answer the question in an expected way. Hearing this, I really had nothing to do but give the boy a firm handshake, feeling thankful that I hadn’t failed him in the first place and even more thankful, neither had he.
1. Why did the author want to fail the student in the first place?| A．The student challenged his authority. |
| B．The student’s answer was not practical. |
| C．The student didn’t show his academic ability. |
| D．The student had a poor performance in physics class. |
| A．Without love, there is no education. |
| B．A man becomes learned by asking questions. |
| C．Teaching is to make two ideas grow where only one grew before. |
| D．You can lead your horse to the river, but you can’t make it drink. |
| A．Lack of physics-related knowledge. |
| B．Ignorance of the teacher’s expectation. |
| C．Intention to deeply impress his teacher. |
| D．Disapproval of existing teaching concepts. |
| A．The superintendent was a greedy person. |
| B．School education restricted this student’s thinking. |
| C．The teacher appreciated the student’s answers finally. |
| D．The examination question is a lough physics problem. |
6 . It’s easy to assume that a vacation to Bali will cost a small fortune. There are plenty of accommodations, food and local transportation, and even the spas offer massages and treatments at value prices. However, you can easily spend a week or two in Bali for under $2,000, without having to sleep on the beach. Here are a few things to consider when planning Bali on a budget.
What is the best time to visit Bali on a budget?
If you’re on a budget, consider visiting Bali during the lower, wetter season, which runs from October through March. The crowds will be fewer, and both hotel rates and flights from abroad are often cheaper, except during the holiday period between mid-December and early January, when crowds swell. The only trade-off for the lower prices is the wet season. This time of year isn’t always ideal for sunbathing, and serious rainfall can make outdoor activities, such as whitewater rafting and visiting waterfalls and rice terraces, less than appealing. That said, even during rainy season, it doesn’t usually rain all day long. Expect bursts of sunshine between the storms.
What is the cheapest way to get around Bali?
The absolute cheapest way to get around Bali is by local bus, but it can take a long time. There are also tourist buses, including hop-on, hop-off options, that travel between different hubs across the island. Bali is well-served by taxis, both of the car and motorbike variety, and the prices tend to be affordable by international standards. Most drivers will offer you a fixed rate for full-day hires or to get from point A to point B, rather than using a meter.
Remember to bargain; doing so is particularly easy when a driver is on his own rather than at a taxi stand.
How much does food cost in Bali?
If you’re into fine dining, you can end up spending a large chunk of your budget on food. Eating at the average restaurant geared towards tourists is the best way to have a meal in Bali on a budget. A good meal should cost you around 100,000 rupiah (around $7), but if you’re willing to subsist mostly off of local specialties such as nasi goreng (fried rice) and eat at local restaurants, you can expect to pay around 30,000 rupiah ($2) to get fed. Best of all, most hotels and guesthouses in Bali come with free breakfast, and many offer heavier options of noodles and meat that may keep you full until lunch.
1. Which of the following situation can be best described by the underlined word trade-off in paragraph 2?| A．Jack got a reward after he returned the lost bag to its owner. |
| B．Lily spent much money buying some handicrafts at the local fair. |
| C．Wendy cancelled her trip in order to prevent the spread of the virus. |
| D．Sam was scolded by his parents for what he did in school last night. |
| A．It’s better for outdoor enthusiasts to visit Bali during the off season. |
| B．Passengers had better fix the price with drivers before the taxi pulls out from the station. |
| C．If on a tight budget, one is advised to visit Bali at the end of December every year. |
| D．It’s relatively economical to eat merely at average restaurants tailored to visitors. |
| A．City and Transport. | B．Travel and Recreation. |
| C．Nature and Environment. | D．Food and Health. |
7 . A robot with a sense of touch may one day feel “pain”, both its own physical pain and sympathy for the pain of its human companions. Such touchy-feely robots are still far off, but advances in robotic touch-sensing are bringing that possibility closer to reality.
Sensors set in soft, artificial skin that can detect both a gentle touch and a painful strike have been hooked up to a robot that can then signal emotions, Asada reported February 15 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. This artificial “pain nervous system,” as Asada calls it, may be a small building block for a machine that could ultimately experience pain. Such a feeling might also allow a robot to “sympathize” with a human companion’s suffering.
Asada, an engineer at Osaka University, and his colleagues have designed touch sensors that reliably pick up a range of touches. In a robot system named Affetto, a realistic looking child’s head, these touch and pain signals can be converted to emotional facial expressions.
A touch-sensitive, soft material, as opposed to a rigid metal surface, allows richer interactions between a machine and the world, says neuroscientist Kingson Man of the University of Southern California. Artificial skin “allows the possibility of engagement in truly intelligent ways”.
Such a system, Asada says, might ultimately lead to robots that can recognize the pain of others, a valuable skill for robots designed to help care for people in need, the elderly, for instance.
But there is an important distinction between a robot that responds in a predictable way to a painful strike and a robot that’s able to compute an internal feeling accurately, says Damasio, a neuroscientist also at the University of Southern California. A robot with sensors that can detect touch and pain is “along the lines of having a robot, for example, that smiles when you talk to it,” Damasio says. ‘It’s a device for communication of the machine to a human.” While that’s an interesting development, “it’s not the same thing” as a robot designed to compute some sort of internal experience, he says.
1. What do we know about the “pain nervous system”?| A．It is named Affetto by scientists. | B．It is a set of complicated sensors. |
| C．It is able to signal different emotions. | D．It combines sensors and artificial skin. |
| A．Delivered. | B．Translated. | C．Attached. | D．Adapted. |
| A．Robots can smile when talked to. |
| B．Robots can talk to human beings. |
| C．Robots can compute internal feelings |
| D．Robots can detect pains and respond accordingly. |
| A．Machines Become Emotional | B．Robots Inch to Feeling Pain |
| C．Human Feelings Can Be Felt | D．New Devices Touch Your Heart |
8 . When I was a kid, my sister and I would fight all the time over nearly everything. But as we grew older, our bond strengthened by sharing secrets, offering advice and trading clothes. Having a sister by my side while growing up taught me many lessons about the unique bond.
And now, thanks to an 8-year long study that’s making the rounds on the Internet again, science is confirming what I know is true. In the study, researchers discovered that having an older or younger sister can help ease the anxiety for kids between the ages of 10 and 14 years. They also found that people with sisters can “learn how to make up and to have control over their emotions again, which are skills that undoubtedly serve children well.
The revival of this study actually comes on the heels of another newer study, which shows that it’s not just the older kids and parents who influence and shape children as they grow. It turns out that younger siblings(兄弟姐妹) do too, and what’s more, they may also give their older siblings a greater chance of developing empathy (同情).
The Canadian study followed 452 pairs of siblings, all between a year-and-a-half and 4 years old. The researchers found that having a younger sibling increased the older sibling's level of empathy.
This research confirms that sisters are pretty amazing in making the world a much lovely place. As the mom of two boys, I often wonder what kinds of lessons they will learn from their younger sister. Perhaps they will be the same lessons I learned from mine that cooler heads always win. This study gives me hope that all those endless arguments between my kids may actually be laying the groundwork for conflict-settlement skills.
1. What can we learn from the study?| A．Children under four develop empathy fastest. |
| B．It is normal for siblings to quarrel. |
| C．Having siblings is not always a headache. |
| D．Having sisters is helpful to mental health. |
| A．Result | B．Beginning. |
| C．Reappearance. | D．Significance. |
| A．They love their mom very much. |
| B．They have a higher level of empathy. |
| C．They often quarrel with one another. |
| D．They have learned the same lessons as the the author. |
| A．Siblings have a unique bond. |
| B．Siblings have something in common. |
| C．Having siblings is good to children. |
| D．Children having siblings are considerate. |
9 . Wildlife Crossing Bridges
The Wildlife Bridge
In 2018, Utah built a wildlife bridge over the busy highway 1-80. A 4.8-kilometer fence was created to help guide animals to the bridge. Normally, animals take a long time to discover and begin using wildlife bridges, so experts didn’t expect the bridge to get much traffic for several years. But recently, they’ve discovered many different kinds of animals are beginning to move by using the bridge.
The Rope Bridge
On China’s Hainan Island in 2015, scientists created a bridge for Hainan gibbons that are the world’s most endangered primates and normally cross the forest by swinging high in the trees. But after a 2014 typhoon, landslides caused huge gaps in the forest, which were forcing the gibbons to make dangerous jumps. Scientists created a simple and cheap rope bridge, which settled the problem.
The Eco-Bridge
In Uttarakhand state in India, the forest department has built a special "eco-bridge" , made from all-natural materials. It’s 27.5 meters long and runs over one of the busiest highways in the area. Though the bridge is high in the trees, forest department workers hope the bridge will help smaller animals on the ground, too. Already, the bridge has gotten a lot of attention on the Internet, with many people taking photos in front of it every day.
The Park Bridge
The Phil Hardberger Park lies in San Antonio, Texas, and recently it has opened what they say is the largest wildlife bridge in the US. This bridge, unlike the others mentioned here, was built for use by both animals and humans. The park says they have already seen deer using the bridge.
1. What has made experts feel unexpected about the Wildlife Bridge?| A．It’s been completed within 2 years. | B．It’s being used by animals already. |
| C．It’s become an Internet-famous site. | D．It’s America’s biggest wildlife bridge. |
| A．The Wildlife Bridge and the Eco-Bridge. | B．The Wildlife Bridge and the Rope Bridge. |
| C．The Eco-Bridge and the Park Bridge. | D．The Rope Bridge and the Park Bridge. |
| A．To attract more tourists. | B．To reduce traffic accidents. |
| C．To save endangered animals. | D．To create wildlife passageways. |
10 . It is the stock response to a parent struggling with a crying baby or a bad-tempered teenager: “Treasure every moment because they grow up so fast.” Now researchers have found there may be something in the old saying. Watching children grow up really does seem to make time fly. Scientists have found that parents feel time passing more quickly than non-parents.
The findings could be due to the fact that children change fast. “Over ten years, children go through dramatic changes not only in their physical appearance, but also in their understanding abilities and their status, ” the researchers said. The results could also be a consequence of parents spending a large amount of their time on their children, they said, even though they found no difference in the time pressures recorded by parents compared with non-parents in the study.
For the study, published in the journal Timing & Time Perception (感知), the researchers asked 431 people aged from 20 to 59 to fill in a subjective time questionnaire, a tool used by psychologists to measure time perception. They were asked: “How fast did the last ten years pass for you?” An answer of very slowly gave a score of-2; slowly was-I; neither fast nor slow was 0; fast was I and very fast scored 2. So the higher the score, the faster they felt time had passed. The parents had an average score of I. 22, compared with 0. 76 for the non-parents.
Participants were also asked how quickly the last year, month and week had passed, but there were no differences between the groups for these shorter intervals (间隔). Previous studies have suggested that time also seems to speed up when we get older. Research published in 2019 by Duke University in North Carolina suggests this could be due to physical changes in our bodies, with a slowdown in image processing speeding up our perception of time passing.
Days that seemed to last forever in our youth were “not due to experiences being much deeper or meaningful”, the researcher Adrian Bejan said, “but due to the fact that they were being processed rapidly.”
1. What probably makes parents feel time passing more quickly than non-parents?| A．The pressure of raising children. | B．Devoting much time to children. |
| C．The slowdown in image processing. | D．Noticing children’s daily physical growth. |
| A．Time seems to speed up for the young. |
| B．Parents responded differently to the old saying. |
| C．Non-parents have deeper experiences. |
| D．The older people are, the higher scores they may get. |
| A．Experiences. | B．Researchers. | C．Days. | D．Youths. |
| A．The perception of time passing. |
| B．Teenagers experience dramatic changes. |
| C．Time really flies when you are having children. |
| D．Comparison between parents and non-parents. |
