1 . Cultural Differences of Teenagers
Knowing the cultural differences between yourself and others of your age can help you understand friends who are of a different race or culture.
Family
Family comes first in the Asian culture.
Friendship
Some Asian teens generally prefer having a small group of life-long friends. They are committed and loyal to their friends. Americans often prefer a larger group of friends. There might be less commitment to keeping friends for life because of their bigger pool of possible friendships.
Working Relationships
If you are working on a group project with teens from China or other Asian countries, they might focus on developing a good relationship with you.
In China and many other Asian countries, making direct eye contact is considered rude and disrespectful. However, in America and some European countries, it is not only seen as appropriate but also necessary because it means the person is paying attention. In Asian culture people are usually more comfortable with less personal space than Americans arc. A touch on the shoulder or an arm is common for Asians even if you don’t know one another.
It’s important to keep in mind that when learning about cultural differences, you should not generalize those differences.A.Eye Contact |
B.Body Language |
C.In this way, you’ll experience cultural differences. |
D.Teenagers have a strong attachment to their parents. |
E.With this understanding, you won’t be thought impolite. |
F.However, American teens tend to first focus on the task. |
G.The key to understanding them with your friends is to ask them for advice. |
A. Interestingly, audiences have in recent years turned to television series such as Sherlock or Mad Men, which can have many characters and gradual plot development.
B. Furthermore, books and movies are two different forms of media and therefore have different rules.
C. Perhaps, one day, readers of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s most admired work will find themselves glued to their screens by episodes of The Great Gatsby.
D. There are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people’s eyes.
E. With this in mind, perhaps we should judge a movie in its own right, and not against its original source.
3 . Most people will tell you that without a cup of coffee in the morning, they cannot function. Coffee is a good drink when consumed in right amount.
Legend says that Kaldi, an Ethiopian, discovered his goats enjoy eating coffee plants. Curious, he tasted the leaves and began to dance around. A passing monk (僧侣) witnessed the scene and took some back to his fellow monks. Later that night, the monks experienced extreme inspiration.
Caffeine (咖啡因) is the major chemical in coffee. Caffeine poisoning can occur if more than 400 milligrams of caffeine is drunk in a short period, which is about four to five cups of coffee.
A.Coffee has many benefits. |
B.Caffeine will also cause sleep difficulty. |
C.The more you drink, the more you depend on it. |
D.The caffeine in coffee can actually help fight disease. |
E.However, it is considered harmful if coffee is taken in large amount. |
F.Drinking coffee while you have this kind of disease will make it worse. |
G.Whether the legend is true or not, the discovery of coffee dates back to 800 A. D. |
A. When the cultural distances are wide, some people feel anxious. They remain so homesick and feel so sad about being separated from their friends back home that they long to return, especially within the first year.
B. You can do some research on the new culture such as the history, customs, and religious beliefs, so you can get prepared for the new culture that is different from yours.
C. Besides, having trouble with the native language often makes them unwilling to communicate with other people. Actually, staying in a foreign country helps you to know more of the new culture.
D. Studying the language is also a great way to help bridge the gap between the cultures. The more of it is understood, the more of the new culture can be understood. In this way, you will begin to feel comfortable in a foreign country.
E. When you go to a foreign country, you often enter a new culture. The differences between cultures may make you feel stressed and you often find it difficult to adapt to the new surroundings, which is usually called “culture shock”.
When Jack was a small boy, he was once asked to give a speech about “A Big Challenge in My Life”. To talk before the whole class, he was
A real trial began when Jack stood on the platform with his legs
From then on, his fear of talking before a big audience disappeared. Actually Jack had his
As we know, the
6 . It’s perhaps the world’s most famous underwater attraction that remained in film and in legend: the Titanic. But now experts say the ocean liner, once a wonder of the high seas, is falling to pieces.
Capt. Alfred McLaren, the scientist who in July led the most recent expedition to the ship’s underwater grave, said his team saw clear signs of the accelerating damage of the wreck (残骸). There was damage likely caused by rust and sea life, and the captain’s cabin had collapsed.
“I was absolutely astonished,” McLaren said.
Worse still, the fallen mast (桅杆) that crushed the ship’s deck is believed by many to be the result of an unapproved salvage (打捞) operation. “It was almost depressing to see how quickly she was getting worse,” McLaren says. “I would be really surprised if there’s very much standing up from the bottom, two decades from now.”
Ed Kamuda, who runs the Titanic Historical Society in Springfield, Mass., says adventure tourists — who pay $36,000 each to visit the wreck — are also contributing to the destruction of it.
“This is something I expected. I just didn’t expect it to happen so quickly,” Kamuda said. “People are going down just as an ego trip to say ‘I was there.’ All this takes a fare on the ship.”
The Titanic has sat at the bottom of the Atlantic since it sank after hitting an iceberg on its maiden voyage on April 14, 1912. More than 1,500 people died that night. The ship came to rest at the bottom of the freezing North Atlantic, more than 2 miles beneath the waves. The wreck was discovered in 1985, and since then it has been repeatedly visited by treasure hunters.
But still some scientists say those divers, and other thrill seekers are not necessarily to blame for the Titanic’s current problems.
Capt. Craig McLean of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration went on an expedition to the Titanic in June as part of a government study that is monitoring the condition of the ship. He says it’s unclear what part of the damage is from Mother Nature and which is from human nature.
“It’s too early and there isn’t enough evidence to put our fingers on anything,” McLean said.
Regardless, most agree there’s little that can be done for this most famous of wrecks. And soon, the mighty Titanic could well be lost again.
1. McLaren expected that in twenty years _______.A.Only a minor part of the wreck would remain as it is |
B.The wreck would be getting worse at a faster speed |
C.Only salvage operation with the purpose of research would be approved |
D.The wreck would be completely destroyed by unapproved treasure hunters |
A.To contribute to the breaking down of the Titanic. | B.To help finance the preservation of the Titanic. |
C.To satisfy their curiosity and adventurousness. | D.To better understand the history of the Titanic. |
A.Visitors should not be prohibited from the Titanic and other famous wrecks |
B.The influence of the thrill seekers on the wreck will finally be determined |
C.The government should contribute more to the monitoring of the Titanic |
D.The damage of the Titanic is not necessarily attributed to the adventure tourists |
A.promising | B.discouraging | C.controllable | D.vague |
7 . People tend to cut corners and allow trusted workmates to do their work when working as a team. Now researchers have found that the same thing happens when humans work with robots.
Dietlind Cymek at the Technical University of Berlin in Germany and her colleagues designed an experiment to test whether humans would put in less effort when they think that their personal contribution to a task won’t be noticed.
In the experiment, the researchers asked a group of 42 people to examine images of circuit boards (电路板) for errors using a computer that tracked their work. Half of them looked at boards that had already been checked by a robot, and half were told that they were the only ones responsible for quality control.
People working in partnership with the robot caught fewer errors, after they had already seen that the robot had successfully flagged lots of errors.
The researchers say such teamwork could lead to a drop in motivation if individual effort isn’t visible and warn that there could be safety risks if teams of people and robots work on safety-related tasks in the same way.
Kathleen Richardson at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK, says it is fine to use robots as long as they are effective, but that they should be considered tools rather than workmates or team members. “It just strikes me that workers think when a tool can do something, they let it,” says Richardson.
This is probably down to poor management style, in which individual work isn’t recognised. “I bet you if there was an motivation behind it, and if the humans could get extra pay for spotting errors in the circuit boards, then they’d put a bit more effort into it,” she adds.
1. What is the experiment mainly about?A.Workplace safety. | B.Management style. |
C.Industrial innovation. | D.Working productivity. |
A.They preferred to work individually. |
B.They paid less attention to their work. |
C.They were not appreciative of robots’ effort. |
D.They worried about being replaced by robots. |
A.Favorable. | B.Unclear. | C.Uninterested. | D.Doubtful. |
A.Correct errors. | B.Increase work time. |
C.Reward hard work. | D.Encourage teamwork. |
8 . In department stores and closets all over the world, they are waiting. Their outward appearance seems rather appealing because they come in a variety of styles, patterns, materials, and colors. But they are eventually the biggest deception (欺骗) that exists in the fashion industry today. What are they? They are high heels ― a woman’s worst enemy (whether she knows it or not). High heel shoes are the downfall of modern society. Fashion myths have led women to believe that they are more beautiful or stylish for wearing heels, but in reality, heels succeed in creating short as well as long term troubles. Women should fight the high heel industry by refusing to use or purchase them in order to save the world from unnecessary physical and psychological suffering.
For the sake of fairness, it must be noted that there is a positive side to high heels. First, heels are excellent for aerating lawns (草坪通气). Anyone who has ever worn heels on grass knows what I am talking about. A simple trip around the yard in a pair of those babies gets rid of all the need to call for a lawn care specialist, and provides the perfect-sized holes to give any lawn oxygen without all those messy blocks of dirt lying around. Second, heels are quite functional for defending against potential enemies, who can easily be scared away by threatening them with a pair of these sharp, deadly fashion items.
Regardless of such practical uses for heels, the fact remains that wearing high heels is harmful to one’s physical health. Talk to any podiatrist (足病医生), and you will hear that the majority of their business comes from high-heel-wearing women. High heels are known to cause problems such as deformed feet and torn toenails. The risk of severe back problems and twisted or broken ankles is three times higher for a high heel wearer than for a flat shoe wearer. Wearing heels also creates the threat of getting a heel caught in a narrow sidewalk gap and being thrown to the ground ― possibly breaking a nose, back, or neck. And of course, after wearing heels for a day, any woman knows she can look forward to a night of pain as she tries to comfort her aching feet.
1. Women don’t take the disadvantages of high heels too seriously because of _______.A.their attempt to show off their status |
B.the rich variety of high heel styles |
C.their wish to improve their appearance |
D.the multi-functional use of high heels |
A.ironic | B.favorable | C.sympathetic | D.objective |
A.to show their fragile characteristic |
B.to show women’s affection for them |
C.to emphasize their small size |
D.to indicate their trendy appearance |
A.refuse to buy the products of the fashion industry |
B.go to a podiatrist regularly for advice |
C.avoid following fashion too closely |
D.see through the very nature of fashion myths |
9 . Carried by the wind, dust particles (微粒) from places such as the Sahara Desert can float halfway around the world before settling to the ground. As the plastics abandoned by humans break down into tiny pieces in the environment, they, too, travel through the atmosphere. Now scientists are a step closer to understanding how these microplastics travel in the globe — both locally and on long-distance flights.
Researchers spent more than a year collecting microplastics from 11 national parks and wilderness areas in the western U.S. They examined the particles that settled on dry days and those that fell along with rain or snow. In addition to making clear how microplastics move around, the results, published on Thursday in Science, reveal the seriousness of the problem: more than 1 million kilograms of microplastics — the weight of 120 million to 300 million plastic water bottles — fall on protected lands in the country’s western region each year.
The new findings add to scientists’ concern over microplastic pollution’s potential impacts on the environment and human health. “We’re not supposed to breathe in this material,” says Steve Allen, a microplastics researcher at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland, who was not involved in the new study. “Plastics in the environment “carry all sorts of pesticides (农药), heavy metals and all the other chemicals that we’ve made over time,” he adds. “They’re going to carry them directly into our lungs.”
Since their discovery in oceans in the 1970s, microplastics — which can be as large as a grain of rice or smaller than a particle of dust — have been found nearly everywhere researchers have looked: in cities, in Arctic snow, on remote mountaintops. Their presence in areas distant from the place where human live has pointed to them being carried by winds.
1. What do the scientists further understand now?A.Why Sahara Desert is expanding to the south of Africa. |
B.How plastic particles travel on the wind. |
C.Why it is hard for plastics to break down. |
D.How dust particles are spreading through the wind. |
A.The results showed the amount of microplastics is huge. |
B.Researchers collected microplastics across the U.S. |
C.Researchers focused on plastic particles in dry days. |
D.Numerous plastic water bottles were found each year. |
A.They should be recycled. | B.They do harm to weather. |
C.They can be used to make all sorts of pesticides. | D.They carry harmful chemicals to human lungs. |
A.Dust Particles Is Harmful to Our Lungs | B.The Environment Is Threatened by Plastics |
C.Microplastics Are Falling from the Sky | D.Microplastics Do Harm to Health |
10 . Teenagers are spending more money than ever. Just last year, 31.6 million teens spent 155 billion, according to the North-brook, Illinois-based market research group Teenage Research Unlimited.
Shocked at how much money kids spend? Maybe you haven’t checked the price tags lately on some of the younger generation’s must-haves. To some, such luxurious spending on the changeable young might seem unbearable.
One factor is surely the sheer power of marketing through mass media. Teenagers are exposed to an estimated 3,000 advertisements each day. Combine the ads with programming itself, like the fashion-, music- and skin-filled shows on MTV, and you’ve got a large number of messages telling kids what they should own if they want to fit in.
Many working parents probably compensate by spending money on their kids.
For many families, of course, keeping up with their children’s costly demands for designer clothing, CDs, and concert tickets is a financial impossibility. Marshall says, even for those families who can afford such luxurious spending, striking a compromise between spoiling the kids and denying them is tricky, but possible.
A.Why do some parents give in? |
B.How did they persuade parents to pay? |
C.Teaching kids how to budget and save is key. |
D.Kids shouldn’t always take money for granted. |
E.Much of that money, of course, comes from parents. |
F.We need to step up and tell kids where the boundaries are. |
G.There is probably some guilt involved in not spending enough time at home. |