1 . The teenage years are probably the most unsettled and stressful years in a person’s life. Teens experience significant physical, emotional, social and cognitive changes. And teens of today face more challenges as they go through more uncertain times of the 21st century.
As teens experience massive physical, social and emotional changes, the challenges are managing social expectations of ideal body images, developing their identity and finding their place in the world. In the past, a teen who was criticized for his or her larger figure or pimpled (有粉刺的) face, might feel embarrassed and dejected in school.
There have been many discussions about new technologies and ways of working, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and automation, which will impact future jobs.
| A．They can also be spread quickly by sharing with others. |
| B．Furthermore, social media has taken bullying to a new level. |
| C．The future has always been a dreamland for teens to anticipate. |
| D．Today, these same sufferings can be expanded by social media. |
| E．Social media, and technological advances are posing new challenges. |
| F．Additionally, social media is a strong tool for a teen to defend himself. |
| G．The challenge for a teen today is preparing for a largely unknown future. |
2 . China has been the birthplace of many of the world’s greatest inventions. It was, for example, the first country to produce paper money. Before the invention of paper money and coin, people used many different kinds of things for buying and selling.
In the years which followed this invention, many other countries around the world began to do the same.
About 1,000 years later, leather was used as money in China, and in 806 AD, the first banknotes were produced by the Chinese people.
| A．As time went by, trade between countries increased. |
| B．People also began collecting foreign coins as souvenirs. |
| C．They also used tiny shells as money for buying and selling. |
| D．It was still many years before paper currency appeared in Europe. |
| E．However, as the economy developed, such exchanges became impractical. |
| F．During that time, for example, buying a chicken might cost several potatoes. |
| G．The very first coins often had holes in them so that people could string them together. |
3 . It’s common that everyone wants to be happy. Everything we think, say, and do is connected with our innermost(内心深处的) desires to achieve happiness.
So how is it that some people seem to be happy all the time?
They smile.
Happy people smile, even when they don’t have much to smile about.The important part about smiling is that the change in physiology actually causes a change in psychology.
They create value.
Happy people often focus on the long term.
They eat healthy.
It’s hard to be happy when you spend most of your day worrying about the past or living in fear of the future.Happy people are present in the here and now.
They set goals.
Happy people also tend to set goals for the future.The goals give them an intended direction of travel. They’re buried in their hopes and aspirations of whatever they’re trying to achieve in life.
They think positive.
When thinking positive, and looking past problems and negativity, not only do we feel better mentally, but our minds are better able to process the heretonow.
Stick to the advice above for two or three months, and maybe you’ll find some amazing changes on yourself.
| A．They live in the moment. |
| B．In fact, positive thinking is the basis for being happier in life. |
| C．They build and develop relationships. |
| D．But for some reasons, often whatever we do, happiness is just out of reach. |
| E．The goals give them a clear direction of travel. |
| F．Happy people eat foods that are high in energy, raw and nutritious. |
| G．They work to create value in whatever they’re doing in life. |
4 . Artwork Contest-Create a Character!
Are you an artist? Do you love testing your creative abilities? This may be the perfect contest for you! For this contest,we want you to create your own character. You must create a backstory for the character and give it a name make sure to leave these in the author’s notes section of your submission!
Your character must be completely original. Any character that is not created from your own idea and work will not be considered for the contest.
Rules:
·You must be a teen (aged 13-19) with a Teen Ink account to enter.
·No inappropriate content.
·Submissions must relate to the topic (Create a Character).
Guidelines and Details:
·All art mediums are accepted.
·There is no limit to the number of pieces you can submit.
·Give your character a name and backstory. Leave these in the “Author’s Comments”section of your submission.
How to Submit:
·Submit entries through our website. All entries submitted to Teen Ink are automatically considered for the contest. See our submission guidelines for more information. ·Include the words“Character Contest“ in your submission’s title.
·Submit your reviews to the “Artwork” category on our site. Select the art type that is relevant to what you are submitting.
Prizes:
·Honorable mentions will have their characters published in our magazine.
·The overall winner will receive a $ 200 Amazon gift card.
1. What is the requirement for your submission?| A．It must be original work. | B．It must be about your own life. |
| C．It must include a story of yourself. | D．It must include several characters. |
| A．The form of art. | B．The age of a participant. |
| C．The number of pieces submitted. | D．The name given to your character. |
| A．It’s a magazine. | B．It’s an art club. |
| C．It’s an art school. | D．It’s a student organization. |
5 . WHEN KIM JI-UN lived in Seoul, she worried about finding a good job. Now, she is worried that drought may ruin her crop. The 23-year-old started a farm last year. Her first harvest was a success; she was surprised that her black beans did better than her strawberries.
Ms Kim is part of a phenomenon called kwichon, or returning to rural life. Created a millennium ago, kwichon appears during periods of economic hardship. This time, in the wake of the pandemic, many new farmers have never lived in the countryside before. By planting young farmers in rural areas, the government hopes to enjoy big rewards in future.
The plan is working. In 2021 nearly 380, 000 people moved to the countryside. Comfort with digital technology gives young farmers a leg up, says Cho Kyung-ik, the director of the Beginning Farmer’s Centre, an institution educating those who wish to kwichon at its downtown offices. They sell fresh produce on Naver, South Korea’s largest search engine.
The centre teaches techniques like how to use a tractor or select the best crops. It arranges a trial period during which ambitious farmers work under the guidance of an old hand, learning what it means to do back-breaking labour from dawn to dusk.
The most important lesson is how to get on with the locals. The villagers are also offered tips on how to act towards the newcomers. That part is not yet a total success. Ms Kim says her neighbors have a bad temper. “The old people come in here and give me unwanted advice, or say that I will never be able to grow anything,” she says. Her black beans beg to differ. She and the South Korean government will be hoping that her crops put the argument to rest for good.
1. Why does the writer tell Ms Kim’s story?| A．To explain a solution. | B．To introduce a topic. |
| C．To start a discussion. | D．To make a comparison. |
| A．A helping hand. | B．A new identity. |
| C．A big reward. | D．A different idea. |
| A．Farming techniques. | B．Hard work. |
| C．Communicative skills. | D．Unwanted advice. |
| A．Farming makes huge profits. | B．Locals need technical training. |
| C．It helps to bring rural areas back to life. | D．Government should help farmers. |
6 . Genetic information is important because it stores, processes and transmits biological data from generation to generation. Some scientists even assume that knowing genetic information itself matters.
For example, in quantum mechanics (量子力学), there is a popular theory known as the “observer effect”, which states that the act of observing a phenomenon (usually by making some kind of measurement) necessarily changes that phenomenon. In other words, just by being there and having an interest in the outcome, we affect that outcome.
While the explanations behind the observer’s influence in quantum mechanics come down to the measuring instrument and not the observer’s conscious mind, we also see strong evidence for the “placebo effect” in medicine: a patient’s condition can improve if they just believe they are receiving an effective treatment. And those beneficial effects can happen even if the patient is not actually receiving that treatment or if the treatment doesn’t actually work.
If our minds truly do have power over our surroundings and our bodies, what does having the genetic information do to us? Does simply knowing more about our own physiology (生理机能) change it? A recent study on exercise and obesity suggests that the answer is yes.
Those who were told they were at low genetic risk for obesity produced 2.5 times more of the fullness hormone and claimed to feel fuller despite eating the same meal as they had one week prior. Those who were told they had lower endurance because of their genes did worse on their physical test than they had before receiving that information: they showed lower lung capacity and quit sooner.
Thus, having information about our genetic risk can lead to improvements in our physiology (as was true for the eaters of the study), but it can also put us at a disadvantage (as with the poor exercise performers). So we certainly need to be cautious of incorrect genetic information. But as the Stanford study shows, even if the genetic information we receive is correct, how we receive it is also important.
1. How does the “placebo effect” in medicine work?| A．The patient recovers with the timely treatment. |
| B．The patient’s condition worsens due to a lack of treatment. |
| C．The patient’s condition remains unchanged despite their belief. |
| D．The patient’s condition improves with the belief in the treatment. |
| A．They showed lower lung capacity. |
| B．They quit their physical test sooner. |
| C．They needed more food to satisfy their appetite. |
| D．They felt fuller with more fullness hormone released. |
| A．Positive. | B．Objective. |
| C．Ambiguous. | D．Negative. |
| A．The great power of the observer’s mind. |
| B．The influence of knowing genetic information. |
| C．The amazing application of genetic information. |
| D．The connection between Quantum Mechanics and Medicine. |
7 . Have you ever had the urge to open a book and stick your nose straight into the pages? The smell of old books can refresh any book lovers. We don’t know why, but it is just pleasant to us.
Describing the smell can be a challenge. And mere adjectives will likely be of little use to future generations of historians trying to document, understand or reproduce the scent of slowly decaying books. Now, that task may have just gotten easier thanks to the Historic Book Odor Wheel.
In one experiment, researchers asked visitors at the historic library to characterize the scents they smelled. All the visitors selected words like “woody”, “smoky” and “earthy” from the list, and described the smell’s intensity and perceived pleasantness. In another experiment, the study authors presented visitors to the Birmingham Museum with eight smells — one of which was an unlabeled historic book scent and seven were non-bookish, such as coffee, chocolate, fish market and dirty clothes. The researchers then had those museum goers describe the historic book smell.
The top two responses? Chocolate and coffee. “You tend to use familiar associations to describe smells when they are unlabeled,” study author Cecilia Bembibre says.
The team even analyzed the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) (挥发性有机化合物) in the book and the library. Using the data from the chemical analysis and visitors’ smell descriptions, the researchers created the Historic Book Odor Wheel to document the “historic library smell”. Main categories, such as “sweet/spicy”, fill the inner circle of the wheel; descriptors, such as “chocolate/cream”, fill the middle; and the chemical compounds likely to be the smelly source, like furfural, fill the outer circle. The researchers want the book odor wheel to be a tool that “untrained noses” can use to identify smells and the compounds causing them, which could address conservators’ concerns about material composition and historic paper conservation. And hopefully, smells of the past can be reproduced in the lab someday and museums and historians can use it to reconstruct a past we can no longer smell.
1. What is mainly talked about in the first paragraph?| A．An strange reading habit. | B．Fascination for smells of books. |
| C．Addiction to reading books. | D．A dislike for smelling books. |
| A．By referring to familiar items. | B．By using adjectives to label them. |
| C．By analysing chemical compounds. | D．By connecting them with food smells. |
| A．To record historic library smells. | B．To identify smells and compounds. |
| C．To remove the conservators’ worries. | D．To put different scents into different libraries. |
| A．Creating a whole new scent. | B．Improving the people’s sense of smell. |
| C．Restoring smells of historic documents. | D．Extracting components of “old book smell”. |
8 . More than the challenge of fitting into a new culture, there are many benefits that a student can get from an exchange program. These benefits include:
·Diverse academic opportunities. In fact, students want to study abroad rather than travel.
·
·Personality development.
So, why not let your child have the benefits of a student exchange program? Exchange programs or study-abroad programs are a great investment for the student.
| A．Improved protection of social rights. |
| B．Better awareness of cultural differences. |
| C．More importantly, it is helpful for the improvement of the society. |
| D．Most of them are more confident and have better decision-making skills. |
| E．The hosting school can also benefit by making a student’s dream come true. |
| F．Although students really love traveling, studying is not an activity filled with travel fun at all times. |
| G．Being an exchange student often means living far away from home and parental guidance. |
9 . Despite the bad reputation of sharks, they are crucial to the health of the marine ecosystem and can even help fight climate change.
In the shallows of Shark Bay, Western Australia, seagrass is food for the sea cows, which can weigh as much as 500 kg and eat roughly 40 kg of seagrass a day. Sea cows are a rich source of food for tiger sharks. By keeping the sea cow population controlled, tiger sharks here help the seagrass grow sustainably. A booming seagrass meadow stores twice as much CO2 per square mile as forests typically do on land.
But tiger shark numbers are declining. Off Australia’s northeast coast of Queensland, tiger sharks are estimated to have fallen by at least 71 percent, largely due to overfishing. A reduction in tiger sharks means more seagrass consumed by herbivores (食草动物) and less carbon stored in sea vegetation. This raised the question: What if they were absent from the Shark Bay — would the seagrass-dominated ecosystem survive?
To find out, researchers led by Rob Nowicki of Florida International University, spent time in Eastern Australia, where shark numbers were lower and sea cows ate seagrass largely undisturbed. “When uncontrolled, sea cows can rapidly destroy wide areas of seagrass,” said Nowicki.
Those findings emphasized that tiger sharks were playing an important role in preventing the reduction of seagrass in Shark Bay. If their populations continue to decline, the resilience of carbon-rich ocean ecosystems will likely decrease.
When it comes to stimulating shark numbers, there have been movements toward more sustainable fishing, but a large percentage of the industry have not changed their methods, which is a reason why the population of many marine top predators (捕食者) continues to decline.
Aside from supporting sustainable fishing, Nowicki said the only way to truly protect marine life is to reduce our global greenhouse gas emissions. “Ultimately, if we are going to protect our ecosystems in the centuries to come, we are going to need to solve climate change while undertaking species protection at the same time.”
1. Why are tiger sharks vital to the marine ecosystem?| A．They feed on various sea animals. |
| B．They can store large amounts of CO2. |
| C．They can prevent the loss of seagrass. |
| D．They influence marine species distribution. |
| A．How sea cows destroy the seagrass community. |
| B．How shark population influences the ocean ecosystem. |
| C．What was contributing to the declining number of tiger sharks. |
| D．What to do to recover the seagrass-dominated ecosystem. |
| A．Climate change. | B．Water pollution. |
| C．Loss of seagrass. | D．Unsustainable fishing approaches. |
| A．We should protect our environment. |
| B．The number of tiger sharks is decreasing. |
| C．Climate change causes the loss of seagrass. |
| D．Tiger sharks are vital to the health of the marine ecosystem. |
10 . The idea of low material desire, low consumption and refusing to work, marry and have children, concluded as a “lying down” lifestyle, recently struck a chord with many young Chinese who are eager to take pause to breathe in this fast-paced and highly-competitive society.
Many millennials (千禧一代) and generation Zs complained to the Global Times that burdens, including work stress, family disputes and financial strains, have pushed them “against the wall”. They said they hate the “involution(内卷),” joking that they would rather give up some of what they have than get trapped in an endless competition against peers.
“Instead of always following the ‘virtues’ of struggle, endure and sacrifice to bear the stresses, they prefer a temporary lying down as catharsis (宣泄) and adjustment,” said a scholar. “It is no wonder that some young people, under the growing pressures from child-raising to paying the mortgage (按揭) today, would try to live in a simple way and leave the worries behind.”
Interestingly, the majority of millennials and Gen Zs reached by the Global Times, who claim to be big fans of the lying down philosophy, acknowledged that they only accept a temporary lying down as a short rest. It is true that with the great improvement of living conditions, some Chinese youth have partially lost the spirit of hardship and are not willing to bear too much hard work. But in fact, lying down is not entirely comfortable. Young people who lie down always feel guilty about their constant loss of morale (士气) far beyond their reach.
“Young people on campus have both aspirations and confusion about their future, but most of us have rejected setting ourselves up in chains to waste opportunities and challenges,” a postgraduate student told the Global Times. “It’s no use running away. I have to ‘stand up’ and face the reality sooner or later.”
1. What does the underlined phrase in paragraph 1 mean?| A．Warned. | B．Punished. | C．Amused. | D．Touched. |
| A．Improvements in living conditions. |
| B．Growing pressure from family and social life. |
| C．Increasing material possessions from families. |
| D．Temporary adjustment to failure in competitions. |
| A．Understanding. | B．Intolerant. | C．Supportive. | D．Unclear. |
| A．They never really drop their responsibilities. |
| B．They really enjoy the “lying down” lifestyle. |
| C．They find their dreams far beyond their reach. |
| D．They would rather escape than take challenges. |
