1 . There is such a group of singers in the western musical circle at present, who enter the business as online celebrities (名人)and then become top idols and giant stars globally. They become popular for their videos online and then they are discovered by talent agents and gradually cause huge storms in the musical circle. Troye Sivan, a singer who is nicknamed “chuoye”, became popular on YouTube from an early age.
As a popular video sharing website, YouTube has given rise to plenty of stars, creating a new celebrity culture. Providing a platform where anyone can post videos, YouTube presents the opportunity for anyone to achieve fame by simply uploading a short video. Sivan has been making YouTube videos since he was 12 to show his singing talent. In the digital age, Sivan has already developed large devoted audience online and his touching video blogs have earned him extreme popularity.
A survey has showed that US teenagers are more attracted to YouTube stars, which is a surprising result. YouTube stars are judged to be more attractive, outstanding and related than traditional stars. Looking at the survey comments and feedback, teens enjoy a close and real experience with YouTube celebrities, who aren't carefully directed by design. Teens also say they appreciate YouTube stars, sense of humor and risk-taking spirit, which are often limited by Hollywood stars. As a result, singers who make their first show in the traditional way no longer have a complete advantage in front of the audience. Online platforms open up a lot of doors for people. They become the best place to be discovered.
1. Why is Troye Sivan mentioned in Paragraph 1?| A．To give an example for the topic. |
| B．To uncover the secret of success online. |
| C．To add more background information. |
| D．To introduce the topic of the passage. |
| A．Learning to sing at an early age. |
| B．Developing lots of fans online. |
| C．Sharing his family stories online. |
| D．Starting a different music style. |
| A．They are more firmly connected with teens. |
| B．They are more hardworking than traditional stars. |
| C．They are often carefully designed. |
| D．They are discovered in a traditional way. |
| A．Worried. | B．Regretful. | C．Supportive. | D．Doubtful. |
2 . As children, many of us dreamed of being treasure hunters when we grew up. Few of us grow up to do this work, and those who do are often professional archeologists (考古学家). And then there’s Lara Maiklem, an editor, who has taken up the hobby of mudlarking, which is a kind of treasure finding, done along the banks of rivers.
Maiklem’s idea of “treasure” is self-defined. She says she was blessed with a mother who really taught her to look, and to take pleasure in the small things around her. So for her, treasure is anything extraordinary. “Finding dry snakeskin in the long grass, or broken china in the garden bed is like finding treasure to me,” she says.
About 20 years ago, Maiklem moved to London, but having grown up on a farm, she missed the peace of the countryside. Then, one day, she found herself at the top of a set of rickety (摇晃的) wooden steps looking down at the Thames’s foreshore. “The tide (潮) was low and the riverbed was exposed. I went down and started to look about. That day I found a short piece of clay pipe stem and reasoned that there was probably more, so I went back on another low tide and I found some china. Then I found myself going there regularly,” she says.
Maiklem says after she’s photographed and researched what she finds, she often takes objects back to the foreshore of the river. “What I do keep is limited to things I don’t already have, or better examples of things I already have,” she says.
In today’s busy, stressful world, arguably the best thing treasure mudlarkers take home is the relaxation and peace of mind found in the work of mudlarking. “You’ re doing a search, yet not really doing anything so you can let your brain wander. I mudlark for 5-6 hours, which sounds like a long time, but the time flies. By the time I leave the foreshore the river has taken away my problems, and that’s more valuable than treasure,” says Maiklem.
1. What does “treasure” mean to Maiklem?| A．Anything she believes special. |
| B．Anything her mother places around her. |
| C．Anything she and her mother take pleasure in. |
| D．Anything archeologists consider extraordinary. |
| A．The best place for mudlarking. |
| B．The typical way of mudlarking. |
| C．How Maiklem got into mudlarking. |
| D．What mudlarking brought for Maiklem. |
| A．She cleans them carefully. |
| B．She gives them to photographers. |
| C．She classifies them as limited editions. |
| D．She gets them back to their original places. |
| A．Finding special and valuable things. |
| B．Searching for solutions to problems. |
| C．Enjoying the beauty of the foreshore. |
| D．Gaining a peaceful state of mind. |
3 . A 62-year-old man has set an amazing world record, planking (平板支撑) for 8 hours, 15 minutes and 15 seconds. George Hood spent around 2,100 hours planking to train to win back his record from Chinese policeman Mao Weidong, who took the record in 2016 at an event Mr. Hood also competed in.
“Anybody can do what I do,” Mr. Hood said in an interview. “Everybody has to start somewhere. Every tree that’s planted has roots. Once that tree is planted, those roots start to grow, whether it be 30 seconds or a minute or five minutes or an hour of planking. You start repeating the process and taking care of your tree, it will grow and you will improve and you will actually get better.”
Mr. Hood’s preparation included four to five hours of planking a day and 2,000 sit-ups, 700 push-ups, and 500 squats a day. He also attended training camps and had a practice attempt in 2018 in which he lasted 10 hours and 10 minutes.
His new record-breaking plank was sponsored by a US gym called Fivel5 Fitness, which was set up to help people experiencing mental illnesses that affect their thinking, feeling, or behavior. Throughout the attempt, Mr. Hood spoke to groups and listened to words from guests with autism (自闭症) and adult learning difficulties.
After Guinness World Records judge, Philip Robertson, said that he had broken the record, Mr. Hood said he would never do plank record attempts again. However, he ended the event by doing 75 push-ups after his 8-hour plank, indicating that while his record-breaking plank days might be over, push-up record attempts are happening in the near future.
1. What was Hood talking about in the interview?| A．How to plant trees. |
| B．How to keep a record. |
| C．How to look after oneself. |
| D．How to plank as well as him. |
| A．Hood had been training hard to break the record. |
| B．Hood went to a month-long training camp in 2016. |
| C．Hood planked shorter in 2018 than the new record. |
| D．Hood likes doing all kinds of sports in his spare time. |
| A．Teach others to plank. |
| B．Work for Fivel5 Fitness. |
| C．Try to do push-up record attempts. |
| D．Continue doing plank record attempts. |
| A．To tell us a funny story about Hood’s life. |
| B．To describe the advantages of physical activity. |
| C．To provide us with information on a new record. |
| D．To record a change that happened in Hood’s body. |
4 . For years, Hainan, China's southernmost island province, has been an attractive tourist destination for people around the world because of its pleasant environment. Beginning this year, the beautiful island will have a new identity — an open and distinctive free trade port.
The Hainan Free Trade Port will serve as a special functional economic area and its level of openness will be better than any other port in the world. Products and funds from abroad will have free access to the port, and most goods will be duty-free. The decision shows China's willingness to further open up to the world.
The province of Hainan was founded in 1988. Later it became an appointed special economic (SEZ) to attract foreign investment. In 1992, the Yangpu Economic Development Zone, which was the first area in China to be comprehensively developed by foreign investors, was established. After eight years, in 2000, Hainan took the lead in carrying out a policy of visa on arrival. In the following years, a series of similar initiatives have been implemented for Hainan's continuous development, including a pilot zone for free trade founded in 2018.
Apart from an attractive landscape, Hainan's industrial structure features tourism and modern services. Not only will they become the highlights of the free trade port, but also they are in line with the rapid trade growth in global services as well as the development of many ports toward the service sector. In addition, as a free trade zone and port at provincial level, Hainan has a satisfying scale and full experience. All these advantages will enable Hainan to become a global trade center.
From SEZ to free trade pilot zone, and now today's free trade port, Hainan's development and its determination to build an open economy are evident to all. It's hoped that it will seize the chance of free trade and attract more business and experienced professionals from around the world to come to the island.
1. What's Hainan's future plan?| A．To construct a free trade port. |
| B．To boost Hainan's tourism and services. |
| C．To remove the tax on all imports and exports. |
| D．To strengthen environmental protection. |
| A．By analyzing causes. | B．By giving descriptions. |
| C．By following time order. | D．By making comparisons. |
| A．Its slow trade growth. | B．Its traditional services. |
| C．Its development of IT industry. | D．Its distinctive service industry. |
| A．Hainan: A Push for Global Economy |
| B．Hainan: A Witness to China's Opening-Up |
| C．Hainan: An Island Full of Ups and Downs |
| D．Hainan: An Unforgettable Tourist Destination |
5 . A recent study showed that the experiences children have in their first few years are important. These experiences affect the development of the brain. When children receive more attention, they often have higher IQs. Babies receive information when they see, hear and feel things, which makes connections between different parts of the brain. There are a hundred trillion connections in the brain o£ a three-year-old child.
Researcher Judit Gervain tested how good newborns are at telling different sound patterns. The researchers produced images o£ the brains of babies as they heard different sound patterns. For example5one order was mu—ba—ba. This is the pattern "A -B— B”. Another order was mu—ba—ge. This is the pattern "A-B—C”. The images showed that the part of the brain responsible for speech was more active during the "A—B-B” pattern. This shows that babies can tell the difference between different patterns. They also were sensitive（敏感）to where it occurred in the order.
Gervain is excited by these findings because the order of sounds is the base of words and grammar, "Position is key to language," she says. "If something is at the beginning or at the end, it makes a big difference： 'John caught the bear' is very different from 'The bear caught John.
Researchers led by scientist Patricia Kuhl have found that language delivered by televisions, audio books, the Internet, or smartphones——no matter how educational—— doesn't appear to be enough for children's brain development. They carried out a study of nine-month-old American babies. They expected the first group who'd watched videos in Chinese to show the same kind of learning as the second group who were brought face-to- face with the same sounds. Instead they found a huge difference. The babies in the second group were able to distinguish （辨别）between similar Chinese sounds as well as native listeners. But the other babies-regardless of whether they had watched the video or listened to the audio-learned nothing.
1. Why are early experiences so important to children according to the study?| A．They can show connections in their brains. |
| B．They can increase new information of IQs. |
| C．They can offer children more attention, |
| D．They can help to develop their brains. |
| A．By recognizing babies5 different appearances. |
| B．By producing images of new words for babies, |
| C．By testing how babies' brains learn to speak language. |
| D．By checking babies' brains to identify different sound patterns. |
| A．Grammar is important in learning languages, |
| B．Different orders of sounds have different meanings. |
| C．The order of words comes from its grammar meaning. |
| D．Different languages have different grammar rules. |
| A．Learning Chinese is of great benefit to babies' brains. |
| B．Babies are better than adults in learning a foreign language. |
| C．Face-to-face communication can improve babies' brains. |
| D．Babies learn a lot from television, audio books or the Internet. |
6 . Many people believe that goldfish have a three-second memory. In fact, goldfish have very good memories for fish. They can be trained to react in many ways to certain colors of light and different kinds of music. Researchers have successfully taught goldfish to play fetch, push levers, and even play football.
Around a certain person the goldfish are very familiar with, they will often be much more active and even sometimes stop considering the person any kind of danger, even if that person sticks their hand in the water and tries to touch them. Around strangers, on the other hand, the goldfish will often hide. Blind goldfish also show this same type of behavior, except they react to the voice of their owner, similarly to how the non-blind goldfish react to the sight of their owner.
In one experiment, researchers even got the goldfish to learn that if they pushed a certain lever at a certain time of day, they would get food. If the lever was pushed any other time of day, nothing would happen. In very short order, these goldfish learned to only push the lever during the time of day it would produce food; the rest of the time, they took no notice of it.
In another experiment, researchers trained young goldfish to connect a certain sound with feeding time. They then released them into the sea. About half a year later, when the fish were fully grown, the researchers played the sound over a loudspeaker and the fish swam from wherever they were in the sea, back to where they were released. This has been suggested as a method to cut down the cost of raising fish. Teach them to come when they are young and then release them into the sea and lakes to grow to adulthood naturally. It' s better for the environment and less cruel to the fish (relatively speaking).
1. What does Paragraph 2 mainly tell us?| A．Blind goldfish can easily realize dangers. |
| B．Goldfish are able to recognize their owner. |
| C．Goldfish don’t like to be touched by strangers. |
| D．Blind goldfish have better hearing than non-blind ones. |
| A．Goldfish have a good sense of time. | B．Goldfish are good at pushing levers. |
| C．Goldfish can play games with people. | D．Goldfish like to be fed at a certain time. |
| A．Goldfish are fully grown within three months. |
| B．Goldfish prefer living in the sea to living in the lake. |
| C．Goldfish react quickly to the sound over loudspeakers. |
| D．Goldfish can remember things they were taught a long time ago. |
| A．Education. | B．Environment. | C．Sport. | D．Science. |
7 . Every week in China, millions of people will sit in front of their TVs watching teenagers compete for the title Character Hero, which is a Chinese-style spelling bee. In this challenge, young competitors must write Chinese characters by hand. To prepare for the competition, the competitors usually spend months studying dictionaries.
Perhaps the show’s popularity should not be a surprise. Along with gunpowder and paper, many Chinese people consider the creation of Chinese calligraphy(书法) to be one of their primary contributions to civilization. Unfortunately, all over the country, Chinese people are forgetting how to write their own language without computerized help. Software on smart phones and computers allows users to type in the basic sound of the word using the Latin alphabet. The correct character is chosen from a list. The result? It’s possible to recognize characters without remembering how to write them.
But there’s still hope for the paint brush. China’s Education Ministry wants children to spend more time learning how to write.
In one Beijing primary school we visited, students practice calligraphy every day inside a specially decorated classroom with traditional Chinese paintings hanging on the walls. Soft music plays as a group of six-year-olds dip brush pens into black ink. They look up at the blackboard often to study their teacher’s examples before carefully attempting to reproduce those characters on thin rice paper. “If adults can survive without using handwriting, why bother to teach it now?” we ask the calligraphy teacher, Shen Bin. “The ability to write characters is part of Chinese tradition and culture,” she reasons. “Students must learn now so they don’t forget when they grow up.” says the teacher.
1. What can we learn about the Character Hero?| A．It’s open to people of all ages and all walks. |
| B．It’s the most-viewed TV programs in China. |
| C．It aims to spread Chinese culture to the world. |
| D．It draws great public attention across the country. |
| A．Chinese people don’t refer to dictionaries very often. |
| B．Chinese people no longer use brush pens or practice calligraphy. |
| C．Chinese people are using the Latin alphabet instead of the characters. |
| D．Chinese people needn’t write by hand as often with the help of technology. |
| A．necessary for adults to survive in China |
| B．a requirement made by the Education Ministry |
| C．helpful to keep Chinese tradition and culture alive |
| D．an ability to be developed only when you are students |
| A．A news report. | B．A science report. |
| C．An advertisement. | D．Children’s literature. |
8 . A new report connects eating eggs to an increased risk of heart disease. The results follow several earlier studies that found eating eggs was generally healthy. The study collects data from six other earlier studies. It shows a 6 percent increased risk of heart disease when the number of eggs a person ate each day increased by half an egg.
Norrina Allen, an associate professor at Northwestern University said that, in the United States, eggs are generally one of the top sources of cholesterol(胆固醇)in a person’s daily food. People with higher levels of cholesterol in their food are at increased risk of the development of heart disease later in life. However, Allen added that she would not say that eggs are completely unhealthy. “I’m not saying that people should take them completely out of their food,” she said. “I’m just suggesting that people eat them in a proper amount.”
Some experts believe the new study does not prove that eggs are causing heart disease. “Cholesterol’s role in the development of heart disease has been discussed for more than 30 years,” said Bruemmer, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. “This study does have clear shortcomings, including self-reporting at a single time point,” he added.
Bruemmer said, “Eggs in moderation(适度)are probably acceptable from a nutritional standpoint.” “Moderation,” he added, “is less than one egg a day, including eggs in foods such as bread”.
Holly Andersen, a doctor at the NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, agrees that the study has “real shortcomings”. One problem Andersen has with the study is that a lot of the egg-eating people in the study also appeared to be eating much meat and processed meat. “If you’re taking a lot of processed meat, it doesn’t matter how many eggs you’re eating,” Andersen said.
Also, Andersen said, “The study can only show there is a relation between eggs eating and heart disease. But it cannot prove eggs are the cause of the disease. It may just be that people eating a lot of eggs are also taking a lot of bacon.”
1. What does Norrina Allen agree with?| A．Eggs are completely unhealthy. |
| B．Eggs contain the most cholesterol. |
| C．Eggs should be eaten in a right amount. |
| D．Eggs have no connection with heart disease. |
| A．Interested. | B．Doubtful. | C．Concerned. | D．Hopeful. |
| A．Eggs and meat cannot be eaten together. |
| B．Processed meat may cause heart disease. |
| C．Processed meat should be avoided. |
| D．The study is supported by evidence. |
| A．Do eggs cause heart disease? |
| B．Are eggs the top source of cholesterol? |
| C．What’s the proper amount of eggs eaten? |
| D．Is the cholesterol to blame for heart disease? |
9 . With advanced communication technologics making the iconic British red telephone boxes expendable（可抛弃的）, a US firm is all set to bring them back to use. Call boxes would be changed into mini-offices for workers on-the-go and will offer free coffee to subscribers（认购者）.
Bar Works Inc's chief executive Jonathan Black, a Briton living in New York, said that his company will renew telephone boxes with fully functional printers, scanners, 25-inch screens and Wi-Fi. Bar Works specializes in offering bar-themed work stations in prime locations, charging customers with a monthly subscription in return for free access to the business and office supplies. The company plans to operate in a similar manner, offering British customers with monthly memberships to "Pod Works" for £19.99（$29）.
The company will refit telephone boxes in five major British cities and has already rented and changed 15 old call boxes in London and Edinburgh. As expected, they are coming into use by the public in the coming months. "Given the prime location, above all else, of the telephone boxes, the launch is expected to gain at least 10, 000 members by the end of 2021. It's an alternative to, say, Starbucks but obviously it provides you with total privacy. " said Black.
Thanks to mobile phones, the red telephone boxes have been effectively made expendable. According to a report by the Daily Mail, retired telephone boxes, especially those damaged deliberately, are sent to a "telephone box graveyard" of sorts, where they take great pains to restore to their former glory before being sold to collectors across the globe. Such is the demand for properly restored telephone boxes, that it is not uncommon for them to be sold for amounts as high as £10, 000.
Despite its setback, in a recent survey, the British red telephone box, which was originally designed in 1920, was voted the greatest British design of all time.
1. What will the red telephone boxes be used for?| A．Mini-offices. | B．Mini coffee boxes. |
| C．Bar-themed call boxes. | D．Leisure rooms for workers. |
| A．They will be put into use next year. |
| B．They offer as much privacy as Starbucks. |
| C．They will be equipped with office supplies. |
| D．They have been rented in five major British cities. |
| A．Doubtful. | B．Confident. | C．Cautious. | D．Uncertain. |
| A．To arouse concern for them. | B．To introduce their new role. |
| C．To expand a larger market. | D．To advertise their launch. |
10 . Despite the common appearing of tablet computers and e-readers, we simply cannot break our addiction to paper. An estimated four billion trees are cut down every year to make paper or cardboard, an energy-consuming process with a vast environmental footprint. Now chemist Yadong Yin of the University of California, Riverside, and his colleagues have developed “rewritable” paper that could help control that impact.
Printed rewritable paper is made using Prussian blue nanoparticles (纳米粒子). The researchers coated conventional paper with nanoparticles of two chemicals: Prussian blue that gives blueprints their characteristic color, and titanium dioxide (二氧化钛), a substance used in sunscreens.
UV light makes the titanium dioxide nanoparticles donate electrons (电子) to their Prussian blue neighbors, shifting its color from midnight blue to milky white.
By shining that UV light through a transparent (透明的) screen marked with black text, the researchers “printed” blue text on a white background. The text lasts about five days and then naturally fades away: “Every morning I could just push a button, and a printer would give me a fresh newspaper to read over breakfast,” Yin says.
The paper can also be reset by heating and reused more than 80 times, a significant improvement over previous types of rewritable paper. “The key advantages are high reusability and stability, easy handling and low cost,” says Sean X. Zhang, a materials scientist at Jilin University in China, who was not involved in the study but has also worked on developing rewritable paper. By comparison, technologies such as electronic ink—used for Amazon’s Kindle Paperwhite—involve moving charged black-and-white particles around, which requires electronics.
Since reporting their invention in Nano Letters early this year, the scientists have used a digital projector to replace their transparent screen. They are now working on increasing the number of times the paper can be reused. Zhang says a key difficulty will be persuading companies to develop the unconventional UV control needed for widespread use. Even though commercialization could be a few years away, Yin says, “We’ve had a lot of discussions with industry investors.”
1. What does the underlined “that impact” in the first paragraph refer to?| A．Human beings’ addiction to paper. |
| B．Common appearance of e-readers. |
| C．Green and sustainable environment. |
| D．A vast environmental footprint. |
| A．Working principles of the new invention. |
| B．Comparison between different papers. |
| C．Key benefits of the new invention. |
| D．The function of UV light. |
| A．expensive | B．unreliable | C．conventional | D．eco-friendly |
| A．Print, wipe, rewrite |
| B．The nanotech commercialized |
| C．The history of paper |
| D．Reduce, reuse, recycle |
