1 . “Don’t tell anyone”. We hear these words when someone tells a secret to us. But it can be hard to keep a secret. We often tend to “spill the beans”, even if we regret it later.
According to Asim Shah, professor in the Menninger Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Baylor College of Medicine, US, keeping a secret may well “become a burden”. This is because people often have an “obsessive and anxious urge to share it with someone”.
An earlier study, led by Anita E. Kelly, a scientist at the University of Notre Dame, US, suggested that keeping a secret could cause stress. People entrusted (受委托的) with secrets can suffer from depression, anxiety, and body aches, reported the Daily Mail.
But with secrets so often getting out, why do people share them at all?Shah explained that people often feel that it will help them keep a person as a friend. Another reason people share secrets is guilt over keeping it from someone close to them. A sense of distrust can develop when people who are close do not share it with each other. “Keeping or sharing secrets often puts people in a position of either gaining or losing the trust of someone,” according to Shah.
He added that talkative people could let secrets slip out (泄露). But this doesn’t mean that it is a good idea only to share secrets with quiet people. A quiet person may be someone who keeps everything inside. To tell such a person a secret may cause them stress, and make them talk about the secret.
Shah said that to judge whether to tell someone a secret, you’d better put yourself in their position. Think about how you would feel to be told that you mustn’t give the information away. Shah also recommended that if you accidentally give up someone’s secret you should come clean about it. Let the person know that their secret isn’t so secret anymore.
1. What does underlined words “spill the beans” mean?| A．Cut up beans. | B．Burst into laughter. |
| C．Let out the secret. | D．Keep the words. |
| A．It can help promote friendships between people. | B．It can result in mental and physical problems. |
| C．It can result in a sense of distrust between friends. | D．It can harm relationships between friends. |
| A．It’s not a good idea to share your secrets with others. |
| B．It’s better to share your secrets with quiet people. |
| C．Quiet people suffer less stress from keeping secrets. |
| D．Talkative people are unlikely to keep secrets. |
| A．Buy the person a gift as an apology. |
| B．Stay away from the person. |
| C．Exchange a new secret with the person. |
| D．Tell the affected person what happened. |
2 . Children's Books That Teach Empathy and Kindness
Little Blue Truck
By Alice Schertle
Little ones are introduced to Blue, a little pickup truck that gets stuck pushing a dump truck out of the mud in this board book. Thankfully, Blue made a group of animal friends along the way that are happy to do whatever they can to help him get back on the road. The main themes are kindness and the benefits of helping others.
Most People
By Michael Leannah
The book is an amazing lesson for kids that want to do good in the world and that there are plenty of good people out there. Told in the third person, the book tells the story of two pairs of siblings (兄弟姐妹) and the people they meet.
If You Plant a Seed
By Kadir Nelson
A mouse and a rabbit teach children how to plant and grow food, while also passing along some valuable lessons. After learning that a carrot seed will grow a carrot, and a cabbage seed will result in a cabbage, children also learn the value of thoughtfulness and how a seed of kindness can bear sweet fruit.
Save Me a Seat
By Sarah Weeks and Gita Varadarajan
Joe lived in the same town all his life and felt perfectly pleased until his best friend moved away. Ravi's family recently moved from India to the US and he's struggling to find where he belongs. Even though Joe and Ravi at first believe that they don't have much in common, they both realize they have a common enemy-the biggest bully (仗势欺人者) in their class. Save Me a Seat is a story about the true meaning of friendship and understanding.
1. What can children get from reading Little Blue Truck?| A．Happiness of helping others. | B．Importance of protecting animals. |
| C．Ways of dealing with trouble in mud. | D．Being friendly to strangers around you. |
| A．Little Blue Truck. | B．Most People. |
| C．If You Plant a Seed. | D．Save Me a Seat. |
| A．Joe was regarded as a bully by Ravi. | B．Ravi was used to living in India soon. |
| C．Ravi and Joe had nothing in common. | D．Ravi and Joe became friends at last. |
3 . Most teenagers are still trying to find their passion and purposes in life. However, not Gitanjali Rao. The 15-year-old girl has been coming up with innovative solutions to worldwide problems since she was ten. It is, therefore, not surprising that the teenager has won the honor of “America's Top Young Scientist”.
In the third grade, Rao was inspired to build a device after witnessing the shocking story unfold in Flint, Michigan, where cost-cutting measures led to the use of a polluted river as the city's primary water supply and incredibly high levels of lead made their way into people's drinking water.
After two months' research, Rao designed a small and portable device that used sensors to instantly detect lead in water. Called Tethys, after the Greek Goddess(女神) of freshwater, it attaches to a cellphone and informs the residents via an app if their drinking water contains lead. The design earned her the 3M Young Scientist Challenge in 2017. She is currently working with scientists and medical professionals to test Tethys' potential and hopes the device will be ready for commercial use by 2022.
Later, Rao took on another social issue-drug addiction. Her app, called Epione, which won the Health Pillar Prize at the TCS Ignite Innovation Student Challenge in May 2019, is designed to catch drug addiction in young adults before it's too late.
More recently, the teenager has developed an app named Kindly, which uses artificial intelligence technology to detect possible signs of cyberbullying(网上欺凌). When users type in a word or phrase, Kindly is able to pick it up if it's bullying, and then it gives the option to edit it or send it the way it is. It gives them the chance to rethink what they are saying so that they know what to do next time.
All kinds of awesome, Gitanjali Rao has been selected from 5,000 equally impressive nominees(被提名人) for TIME Magazine's first-ever “Kid of the Year”.
1. What gave Rao the idea of inventing the device Tethys?| A．The incident of lead pollution. |
| B．The issue with drug addiction. |
| C．The shortage of water supplies. |
| D．The high cost of purifying water. |
| A．It'll remove metal from water. |
| B．It'll make it to market soon. |
| C．It'll win her a higher prize. |
| D．It'll be fitted to cellphones. |
| A．Receive pre-warning signals of threat. |
| B．Input words into a computer automatically. |
| C．Choose from secure social networking sites. |
| D．Weigh their words before posting them online. |
| A．Ambitious and humble. | B．Optimistic and adventurous. |
| C．Talkative and outstanding. | D．Creative and productive. |
4 . Despite the lack of new releases due to the outbreak of COVID-19, there was no shortage of good films in 2020. We've rounded out the top 4 films. Check them out!
Soul
In the first Pixar cartoon to have an African-American lead character. Jamie Foxx provides the voice of a music teacher who dreams of making it as a jazz pianist. But just after a successful interview, he falls down a manhole and finds himself in a soul world where human spirits are assigned their personalities. And things get even stranger from there.
Nomadland
When Fern loses her husband and can't afford to live in a house, she packs her few belongings into a camper and drives off into the Nevada desert. She encounters a large community of senior citizens who have also been forced to live on the road, supporting themselves with short-term- jobs along the way. What makes Nomadland unique is that while Fern is played by an Oscar-winning actress, nearly all she meets are real people who relate their own experiences. Written and directed by Chloe Zhao, the film is a combination of documentary and fiction.
The Croods: A New Age
The prehistoric family from 2013's hugely enjoyable cartoon, The Croods, directed by Joel Crawford, makes a welcome return, so we can expect more crazy adventures and unusual animals. In the much-delayed- sequel, they meet another family, the Bettermans, whose advanced lifestyle and technology make the Croods look even more primitive than they did already. There's conflict but they learn to appreciate each other's differences.
Wolfwalkers
The year's finest cartoon film comes from Cartoon Saloon, an Irish studio specialising in stylised hand-drawn 2D art. Its latest production is set in the mid-17th Century, when English soldiers are trying to occupy the wild woods. One hunter's daughter meets with a girl wolfwalker and they make joint efforts to rescue the forest. It's a heartwarming story of friendship and an inspiring adventure about two girls finding themselves Wolfwalkers stands proud as new classic.
1. What is the film Soul about?| A．pianist's dream coming true. | B．A musician's romantic journeys. |
| C．A music teacher's unusual experiences. | D．An African-American actor's success story. |
| A．Soul. | B．Nomnadland. | C．The Croods: A New Age. | D．Wolfwalkers. |
| A．Science. | B．History. | C．Entertainment. | D．Medicine. |
5 . Singapore’s tradition of eating out in places called hawker centers is now recognized by the United Nations for its cultural importance.
A hawker is a person who sells food or goods and advertises by shouting at people walking by on the street. Hawkers are an important part of Singaporean culture. Open-air eating areas where hawkers sell their goods are very popular. Famous chefs, such as Anthony Bourdain and Gordon Ramsay have praised them.
On Wednesday, the United Nations, cultural agency, UNESCO, added the city’s “hawker culture,” to its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Singapore sought to have hawker culture added to the list about two years ago. Now that it has been recognized, Singapore must provide a report every six years to UNESCO. The report must show efforts the city-state has made to save and support its hawker culture.
“These centers serve as ‘community dining rooms’, where people from diverse backgrounds gather and share the experience of dining over breakfast, lunch and dinner,” UNESCO said.
In the 1970s, Singapore cleaned up its streets so the city moved street hawkers to new eating centers. These areas were part of an effort to improve the island. Now, the centers offer many different low-cost meals for local people and provide a pleasing social setting. The 2018 film Crazy Rich Asians showed its stars enjoying meals at a famous night market. Some sellers even received Michelin stars from a famous restaurant rating system for their meals costing only a few dollars.
But, now the average age of a hawker in Singapore is 60 years old. Younger Singaporeans now want to work in offices. They are less interested in working in small restaurants. The COVID-19 health crisis also hurt sales, preventing foreign visitors and locals from eating out.
1. What do we know about hawkers from paragraph 2?| A．They sell goods in the open-air area. |
| B．They are famous chefs. |
| C．They are Singapore natives. |
| D．They are popular all over the world. |
| A．For the efforts Singapore has made. |
| B．For its importance in showing Singapore’s culture. |
| C．For the report Singapore provided. |
| D．For the recommendation by UNESCO. |
| A．To advertise the film. |
| B．To introduce the stars. |
| C．To show the popularity of hawker centers. |
| D．To help the sellers receive Michelin stars. |
| A．The difficulties hawker culture are facing. |
| B．The average age of hawkers. |
| C．The effect caused by COVID-19. |
| D．The future of the hawker culture. |
6 . I sat in my old room, looking at the football on the shelve, feeling it laughing at me.
In college at Baylor, I’d been a star wide receiver, dreaming of making it big in the NFL, But I wasn’t picked in the NFL draft. Then I started as an undrafted free agent with the Indianapolis Colts. However, Colts called me back to practice. A second chance! Then something went wrong with my knee and I had to give it up. The next season, the Seattle Seahawks invited me to minicamp. They cut me at the end of the preseason.
Was that my fate? How would I move forward? I wept bitter tears. Then I got a call unexpectedly. A guy asked me to speak in his school. I wrote down all I should say. But the minute I stepped on stage, my mind went blank. I had no idea how to help these teens. All I could talk about was what I’d been through.
Those kids asked me questions afterward, hungry for more. I got a huge welcome, bigger than I ever got on the football field. That’s when it hit me: You needn’t be perfect to help people. All you have to be is real.
My life was coming. Without planning it, I had a whole new calling. I began posting to YouTube every day. The videos took off, getting thousands of views. It was inspiring. The comments and questions came pouring in. People came to ask for advice and help I’d never be able to offer if I were playing on Sunday.
Today I do many speaking engagements. Every day I post a video and respond to all those questions from people, always speaking from the heart, I’m still in progress. We all are, having so many ways to grow, and so much to learn and pass along.
1. Which can best describe the author’s dream of playing in the NFL?| A．Unreal. | B．Funny. | C．Failed. | D．Strange. |
| A．Confident. | B．Pleased. | C．Bored. | D．Nervous. |
| A．He is warm-hearted. |
| B．He is good-looking. |
| C．He wants to be a player. |
| D．He wants to ask for advice. |
| A．Find a way to get success |
| B．Be yourself to help others |
| C．Make progress little by little |
| D．Stick to your dream to the end |
7 . Robots are now being employed not just for dangerous tasks, such as discovering mines or rescuing people in disasters. They are also finding application as household helps and as nursing assistants. As the number of machines increases, which are equipped with the latest artificial intelligence and take on a growing variety of specialized and everyday tasks, the question of how people see them and behave towards them becomes ever more urgent.
A team led by Sari Nijssen of Radboud University and Markus Paulus, Professor of Developmental Psychology at Ludwig-Maximilians- Universitat (LMU), have carried out a study to determine the degree to which people show concern for robots and behave toward them based on moral principles.
According to Sari Nijssen, the study set out to answer the following question: "Under what circumstances would adults be willing to sacrifice robots to save human lives?" The participants were faced with a hypothetical (假设的) moral dilemma:Would they be prepared to put a single person at risk in order to save a group of injured persons? The intended victim presented in the situations was either a humanoid robot that had been humanized (人性化的) to various degrees or a robot that was clearly recognizable as a machine.
The study suggested that the more the robot was humanized, the less likely participants were to sacrifice it. Situations that included vivid stories in which the robot was described as a merciful being or as a creature with its own understandings, experiences and thoughts, were more likely to stop the study participants from sacrificing it in the interests of anonymous (无名的) humans.
"This result indicates that our study group attached a certain moral status to the robot," says Paulus. "One possible suggestion of this finding is that attempts to humanize robots should not go too far. Such efforts could come into conflict with their intended function—to be of help to us."
1. What has become a concern about robots?| A．How to treat them in life. | B．How to humanize them. |
| C．How to use them effectively. | D．How to find more applications. |
| A．where to experience risks. | B．when to sacrifice a robot. |
| C．which robot to work with. | D．what robots should be like. |
| A．Humanized robots offer less help to people. |
| B．Certain moral status should be attached to robots. |
| C．Humanizing robots too much may be improper. |
| D．Conflicts often happen between humans and robots. |
| A．Robots, a Must for Future | B．Robots Saved, People Take the Hit |
| C．Humanized Robots, a New Trend | D．Humanized Robots Replace Human |
8 . When most high school students complain about having to wake up extra early，they're usually referring to a swim practice before class or the last minute study before a test. But that was never the case for Corey Patrick，who woke up at 4：30 every morning last year in order to arrive on time at Tarrant High School in Alabama.
Patrick had attended Tarrant City Schools since his fourth grade，but things got difficult when his family moved to a town 14 miles away. Even though his family didn't have any forms of transportation，Patrick didn't want to miss out on his senior year with friends，so he woke up at 4：30 every morning in order to make it to a 5：41 a．m.bus that would help him get to Tarrant on time.And just as he had done every other school day of the year，Patrick got up one morning to start the journey from his home to his high school; the only obvious difference that morning was that he was wearing his graduation gown (毕业礼服)，which made that day's bus driver，DeJuanna Beasley, take some photos of him. She then shared them online with these words，“You tell me this isn't determination.He got on my bus to go to his graduation，and no one was with him.Sometimes it's all in what you want out of life.I was so proud of this young man.”
That was soon shared by many people online，and it caught the attention of radio host Rickey Smiley，who surprised Patrick by giving him a car later. Smiley confirmed that he would make sure that Patrick received help with getting his driver's license. A GoFundMe was also created for Patrick，which has raised over $20,000. And Patrick has got a scholarship (奖学金) to Jacksonville University，where he plans to study computer science.
1. Why was Patrick different from most students when it comes to rising early?| A．It had something to do with study. |
| B．It was a part of daily life for him. |
| C．He was unwilling to get up early. |
| D．He spent more time in studying. |
| A．Patrick dressed poorly on his graduation day. |
| B．It took Patrick an hour to get to the bus stop. |
| C．The driver was moved by Patrick's story. |
| D．There was no school in Patrick's town. |
| A．Patrick's request for help on the Internet. |
| B．The difficulties that Patrick experienced. |
| C．The information about Patrick's university. |
| D．The message published online by the driver. |
| A．GoFundMe. | B．Rickey Smiley. |
| C．Patrick's high school. | D．Jacksonville University. |
9 . Some students get so nervous before a test. They do poorly even if they know the material. Sian Beilock, a professor at the University of Chicago in Illinois, has studied these highly anxious test-takers. The students start worrying about the results. And when they worry, it actually uses up attention and memory resources (资源).
Professor Beilock and another researcher, Gerardo Ramirez, have developed a possible solution. Just before an exam, highly anxious test-takers spend ten minutes writing about their worries about the test.
The researchers tested the idea on a group of twenty anxious college students. They gave them two short maths tests. After the first one, they asked the students to either sit quietly or write about their feelings about the upcoming second test.
Professor Beilock says those who sat quietly scored an average of 12% worse on the second test. But the students who had written about their fears improved their performance by an average of 5%. Next, the researchers used younger students in a biology class. They told them before final exams either to write about their feelings or to think about things unrelated to the test. Professor Beilock says highly anxious students who did the writing got an average grade of B+, compared to a B-for those who did not.
“What we showed is that for students who are highly test-anxious, who’d done our writing intervention (干预), all of a sudden there was no relationship between test anxiety and performance. They were performing just as well as their classmates who don’t normally get nervous in these tests.”
But what if students do not have a chance to write about their fears immediately before an exam? Professor Beilock says students can try it themselves at home or in the library and still improve their performance.
1. What may the students start worrying about before an exam?| A．Whether they can pass the exams. |
| B．What other students do during the test. |
| C．Whether they have remembered the materials. |
| D．What kind of problems they will meet on the test paper. |
| A．Asking the students to ignore the test. |
| B．Asking the students to focus on the test. |
| C．Asking the students to sit quietly before the test. |
| D．Asking the students to write about their worries before the test. |
| A．became less nervous before the test |
| B．were better at controlling their feelings |
| C．did worse than those who wrote about their feelings |
| D．did better than those who wrote about their feelings |
| A．Writing about our worries before an exam can work a bit. |
| B．We can only write about our worries right before an exam. |
| C．The best place to write about our worries is in the test room. |
| D．It doesn’t matter where we write about our worries before an exam. |
10 . I think the biggest difference between middle and high school is the homework load (工作量) and size of the school. I went from maybe fifteen minutes of homework a night to several hours, so I had to learn how to make full use of time! Our class size is around 550, but joining in clubs, sports, music, and other activities at school makes it easier to get to know people in every grade.
The best advice I can give about the years you spend in high school is to learn things for yourself, not just to get a good grade. There have been so many tests that I’ve prepared for the night before. I have gotten an A, and not remembered anything later. I’ve changed that this year, and I enjoy school so much more. Don’t take easy classes just to have a simple year. If you have a choice between chemistry and sports, the first will prove to be a lot more useful!
While drinking and smoking might be present in some middle schools, they’re also around in high schools. I have a lot of friends who promised they’d never drink or smoke, but are now partying every weekend. If you have “fun” and spend your nights wasted instead of studying, you will regret it when you’re applying for (申请) college. The “friends” who say you’re a loser for not partying are really not your friends at all. It’s hard to see your closest friends grow apart and go in different directions, but don’t follow their footsteps. Create your own path in life and make your own decisions.
1. What does the author think of high school?| A．It requires hard work. |
| B．There are very few activities. |
| C．It’s hard to meet new people there. |
| D．There isn’t enough time for homework. |
| A．give up sports |
| B．choose useful classes |
| C．try their best to get good grades |
| D．get ready for tests the night before |
| A．The importance of making friends. |
| B．Not losing ourselves in high school. |
| C．Not going to any party in high school. |
| D．The trouble caused by drinking and smoking. |
