1 . Gretchen Altman is smiling, leaning back casually, a cup of coffee in hand — Hills Bros. Coffee, to be precise. It looks like a casual shot, but if you hit like, leave a comment, and tag a friend, you can get three different cups of coffee, for free.
Altman is part of a growing trend of "micro-influencers". She has a small following — around 6,000 on Instagram(社交平台). Her going rate is $300 to $800 to promote something. She does some posts in exchange for free goods, as long as it’s stuff she believes in.
As a micro-influencer she has a much closer relationship with her followers than a big social media star. "I’m just living a normal life and people relate to that," she says. "They just feel like I’m a friend of theirs."
But it worries consumer rights groups. Several recent studies have found that young audiences are largely unable to understand when something is sponsored content.
In some cases, it’s clear. When a big star takes to a social media to advertise Coca-Cola, for example, the assumption is that he or she’s probably getting paid to do so. And the posts are clearly labeled as ads, with the caption "advertisement" or "sponsored content".
But what happens when an everyday person with just a couple thousand followers takes to social media to extol(颂扬) the virtues of a product? The motivations are not so clear cut. The problem with these social media posts is that you don’t know whether it’s an ad or not.
Altman is diligent about using those hashtags(标签). She loves what she does and sees it as a business, but she doesn’t necessarily want to be a social media celebrity.
"With social media being so integrated into our everyday lives, we have this unique opportunity that I don’t think anyone has ever had before where we can each be our own brand," Altman says.
1. What does a micro-influencer do according to the passage?| A．Give enough likes. | B．Post to promote sales. |
| C．Recommend some comments. | D．Design advertisements. |
| A．Sponsored ads content. |
| B．Ads with caption on posts. |
| C．The unclear motivations of the posts. |
| D．The increasingly growing number of audiences. |
| A．Annoyed. | B．Delighted. | C．Ambitious. | D．Depressed. |
| A．Instagram Advertising: Do You Know It, When You See It |
| B．To be a Micro-influencer or to be a Big Star |
| C．We Can Each Be Our Own Top Brand |
| D．Hills Bros. Coffee, Your Coffee |
2 . Musicals in Washington’s Historic National Theatre in 2020
The Last Ship
$49—$154
THE LAST SHIP, inspired by Sting’s 1991 album “The Soul Cages” and his own childhood experiences, tells the story of a community in Tyne and Wear. Sting will star and perform the role at every performance. It features an original score with music and lyrics by Sting as well as a few of his best-loved songs: “Island of Souls” “All This Time” and “When We Dance”. Learn more at TheLastShipMusical.com.
Recommended for ages 13 and up.
Run time: Approximately 2 hours, 30 minutes.
The King’s Speech
$54 — $104
THE KING’S SPEECH is based on the true story of King George VI’s struggle with a speech problem and the friendship he formed with his doctor, Lionel Logue. With the Nazi threat coming and civil unrest at home, royal secrets explode around the King as he appeared onto the world stage.
Recommended for ages 13 and up.
Run time: Approximately 2 hours, 50 minutes.
Blue Man Group
$64—$124
At BLUE MAN GROUP, you’ll rock, laugh, and party! As three blue men explore our world, together we’ll discover music, comedy and surprises at every turn. It is perfect for audiences of all ages and cultural backgrounds, and returns to D.C. with new music, fresh stories, custom instruments like never before.
Recommended for ages 4 and up.
Run time: Approximately 1 hour, 30 minutes
Summer: The Donna Summer Musical
$54—$114
Donna Summer was a girl from Boston with a voice from heaven. With a score featuring more than 20 of Summer’s classic hits including “Love to Love You Baby”, “Bad Girls” and “Hot Stuff”, this electric experience is a moving tribute to the voice of a generation.
Recommended for ages 13 and up.
Run time: Approximately 1 hour, 40 minutes
1. In which musical can you enjoy the song “All This Time”?| A．The King’s Speech. | B．The Last Ship. |
| C．Blue Man Group. | D．Summer: The Donna Summer Musical. |
| A．Tuesday, Feb. 11. | B．Friday, March 27. |
| C．Sunday, May 17. | D．Wednesday, July 22. |
| A．$49 — $154. | B．$64 — $124. | C．$54— $104. | D．$54 —$114. |
3 . Many scientists believe our love of sugar may actually be an addiction. When we eat or drink sugary foods, the sugar enters our blood and affects parts of our brain that make us feel good.
“It seems like every time I study an illness and trace a path to the first cause, I find my way back to sugar,” says scientist Richard Johnson. One-third of adults worldwide have high blood pressure, and up to 347 million have diabetes. Why? “
Our bodies are designed to survive on very little sugar. Early humans often had very little food, so our bodies learned to be very efficient in storing sugar as fat. In this way, we had energy stored for when there was no food. But today, most people have more than enough.
So what is the solution? It’s obvious that we need to eat less sugar.
But there are those who are fighting back against sugar.
| A．We take in more energy and fat. |
| B．Then the good feeling goes away, leaving us wanting more. |
| C．Our ancestors were used to poor food, clothing and shelter. |
| D．So the very thing that once saved us, may now be killing us. |
| E．Sugar, we believe, is one of the reasons, if not the major one. |
| F．The trouble is, in today's world, it's extremely difficult to avoid. |
| G．Many schools are replacing sugary desserts with healthier options like fruit. |
4 . To me, life without music would not be exciting. I realize that this is not true for everybody. Many people get along quite well without going to the concert, and listening to the record. But music plays an important part in everyone's life, whether he realizes it or not. Try to imagine, for example, what films or TV plays would be like without music. Would the feelings, the moving plot, and the greatest interests, be so exciting or dramatic? I'm not sure about it.
Now, we have been speaking of music in its more common meaning----the kind of music we hear in the concert hall. But if we look at some parts of music more closely, we discover them in our everyday life too----in the rhythm of the sea, the melody of a bird in the woods and so on. So music surely has meaning for everyone, in some way or other. And, of course, it has special meaning for those who have spent all their lives working on playing or writing music.
It is well said, “Through music a child enters into a world of beauty, expresses himself from his heart, feels the joy of doing things alone, learns to take care of others, develops his mind and makes his body strong.”
1. What does the writer say more about in the text?| A．Life full of music. | B．The importance of music. |
| C．Life without music. | D．The development of music. |
| A．go to the concert instead of enjoying music |
| B．get along quite well without music |
| C．don't realize the importance of music |
| D．think music would be less exciting than films |
| A．flying | B．living |
| C．looking | D．singing |
| A．is very necessary for our everyday life |
| B．is very important, especially for children |
| C．can make our life exciting and dramatic |
| D．can enter another beautiful world |
5 . You may have heard of the word “pub” . It is short for public house. There are around 60,000 pubs in the U.K. One of the oldest pubs，Ye Olde Fighting Cocks in St. Albans，Hertfordshire，is located in a building that dates back to the eleventh century.
Groups of friends normally buy “rounds” of drinks.
Most pubs offer a complete range of beers，local and imported，with German，Belgian and French beers being in demand.
The legal age to purchase alcohol is 18 in the UK. People aged 16 and 17，with the license's permission，may have only one glass of wine during a meal.
| A．British people like drinking beers in pubs. |
| B．Pubs are an important part of British life. |
| C．But they must be with an adult and the adult orders it. |
| D．In the salon bar the atmosphere is quieter and there are fewer people. |
| E．And it also allows pubs to play their traditional roles as community centers. |
| F．The person whose turn it is will buy drinks for all the members of the group. |
| G．Most people might think pubs are places where people simply drink alcohol. |
6 . Some high school students think it useless to receive higher education.
While limited within the walls of the educational places, we openly explore other cultures of the world!
When there’s a recession (衰退) in the economy, those who attended college will be more likely to find a new job than those who only finished high school and have a limited skill set. The more education you have, the more chances you will get to improve the quality of your life as you have a better job and earn a higher salary.
When you’re skillful and knowledgeable, you gain access to people of similar backgrounds and tastes.
| A．Therefore, they choose not to go to college. |
| B．We come to know that ours is not the only culture. |
| C．There is a negative side to earning a good education too. |
| D．A good education makes you a more interesting person. |
| E．It means a good education leads to excellent networking. |
| F．Schools and universities are the first places to get knowledge. |
| G．It has long been understood that an education can lead to long-term financial success. |
7 . Every year, thousands of teenagers participate in programs at their local art museums. But do any of them remember their time at museum events later in life? A new report suggests that the answer is yes - and finds that alumni (毕业生)of arts-based museum programs credit them with changing the course of their lives, even years after the fact.
The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Walker Art Center and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles recently asked researchers to conduct a study to find out how effective their long-standing teen art programs really are. They involved over 300 former participants of four programs for teens that have been in existence since the 1990s. Alumni, whose current ages range from 18 to 36, were invited to find out how they viewed their participation years after the fact.
Among the alumni surveyed, 75 percent of alumni rated die teen program experience as the most favorable impact on their own lives, beating family, school and their neighborhoods. Nearly 55 percent thought that it was one of the most important experiences they'd ever had, regardless of age and two-thirds said that they were often in situations where then experience in museums affected their actions or thoughts.
It turns out that participating in art programs also helps keep teens enthusiastic about arts even after they reach adulthood: 96 percent of participants had visited an art museum within the last two years, and 68 percent had visited an art museum five or more times within the last two years. Thirty-two percent of program alumni work in the arts as adults.
Though the study is the first of its kind to explore the impact of teen-specific art programs in museums, it reflects other research on the important benefits of engaging with the arts. A decade of surveys the National Endowment for the Arts found that childhood experience with the arts have linked arts education to everything from lower drop-out rates to improvement in critical thinking skills.
1. What does the underlined phrase “the fact” in Paragraph 1 refer to?| A．Changing the course of children's life. |
| B．Participating in childhood art programs |
| C．Organizing arts-based museum programs. |
| D．Remembering the time at museum events. |
| A．The result of the study. |
| B．The process of the study. |
| C．The approach to the study. |
| D．The object and content of the study. |
| A．Passion for arts may remain long in kids' whole life. |
| B．No other studies exist concerning the benefits of arts. |
| C．Age matters in how people view their art experiences. |
| D．Most children taking part in art programs will work in arts. |
| A．How is Art Connected to Our Life? |
| B．Can Art Education Affect Our Income? |
| C．What Should Art Museums do for Kids? |
| D．Should Children Walk into Art Museums? |
8 . In our annual Readers’ Choice Awards survey, we asked our readers to rate their favorite cities in the world for arts and culture. These cities are centers of music and dance, museums,and theaters. Here are four of them where you can find inspiration in the arts,starting with the top spot.
Rome, Italy
At its peak, the Roman Empire extended over nearly two million square miles of land across Europe, Asia Minor and North Africa. Today, that history is on display everywhere. The city’s main attractions are famous not because of tourist advertisements,but because they are really so impressive. No wonder it’s known as the Eternal City:You could spend forever here and find new artistic and cultural treasures every day.
Paris, France
Hemingway famously called Paris “a moveable feast”, but wherever you go while in the city, there is always something to see, hear, taste or feel. With some 150 museums, Paris doubles as an art history class, offering the very best of the discipline across centuries and styles.
London, United Kingdom
London is inspiration and setting for the rise of Shakespeare, Dickens, Orwell and Eliot and the breeding ground for all those iconic (标志性的) bands: The Kinks, The Clash and The Stones. London is also Banksy’s favorite canvas, home to more than 1,000 galleries, and the kind of place where you can spend a whole day in a single museum and still be ready for more when it opens the next morning.
Vienna, Austria
As we all know, Western music would be unrecognizable without Austria’s capital, which nurtured many famous musicians. It’s also the site of the Vienna Secession, a revolutionary art movement founded in 1897 by Gustav Klimt. Visitors today can see the fruits of all that creativity in the city’s 100 – odd museums.
1. Why is Rome regarded as the Eternal City?| A．It had an important role in history. |
| B．Its history can be seen everywhere. |
| C．People can easily find new art and culture. |
| D．People can spend money well there. |
| A．Produced. | B．Affected. |
| C．Attracted. | D．Changed. |
| A．History. | B．Art. |
| C．Education. | D．Life. |
9 . Two of the saddest words in the English language are “if only”. I live my life with the goal of never having to say those words, because they convey regret, lost opportunities, mistakes, and disappointment.
My father is famous in our family for saying, “Take the extra minute to do it right.” I always try to live by the “extra minute” rule. When my children were young and likely to cause accidents, I always thought about what I could do to avoid an “if only” moment, whether it was something minor like moving a cup full of hot coffee away from the edge of a counter, or something that required a little more work such as taping padding (衬垫) onto the sharp corners of a glass coffee table.
I don’t only avoid those “if only” moments when it comes to safety. It’s equally important to avoid “if only” in our personal relationships. We all know people who lost a loved one and regretted that they had foregone an opportunity to say “I love you” or “I forgive you.” When my father announced he was going to the eye doctor across from my office on Good Friday, I told him that it was a holiday for my company and I wouldn’t be here. But then I thought about the fact that he’s 84 years old and I realized that I shouldn’t give up an opportunity to see him. I called him and told him I had decided to go to work on my day off after all.
I know there will still be occasions when I have to say “if only” about something, but my life is definitely better because of my policy of doing everything possible to avoid that eventuality. And even though it takes an extra minute to do something right, or it occasionally takes an hour or two in my busy schedule to make a personal connection, I know that I’m doing the right thing. I’m buying myself peace of mind and that’s the best kind of insurance for my emotional well-being.
1. Which of the following is an example of the “extra minute” rule?| A．Start the car the moment everyone is seated. |
| B．Leave the room for a minute with the iron working. |
| C．Wait for an extra minute so that the steak tastes better. |
| D．Move an object out of the way before it trips someone. |
| A．keep her appointment with the eye doctor |
| B．meet her father who was already an old man |
| C．join in the holiday celebration of the company |
| D．finish her work before the deadline approached |
| A．abandoned | B．lacked |
| C．avoided | D．taken |
| A．To Keep Emotional Well-being | B．To Prevent “If Only” Moments |
| C．To Follow the Most Useful Rule | D．To Achieve the Peace of Mind |
10 . Michele Gentile, an Italian bookseller, is offering free books to children in exchange for plastic bottles to recycle.
Michele owns Ex Libris Cafe in Polla，a small town in southern Italy. He said he thought of the recycling program, because he wanted to inspire children in the small town to read and pay attention to the environment.
''My goal is to spread the passion and love for books among those people in Italy who do not usually read while at the time helping the environment," Gentile explained.
The idea for the initiative (倡议) came after Gentile collaborated with a nearby middle school on an aluminum recycling project. Working together, the schoolchildren and Gentile collected enough cans to purchase books for an entire classroom. His new program too off from there and has already spread into northern Italy: Gentile's hopes his work will continue to make headlines and become a worldwide initiative.
The free books come from customers in Gentile's shop who have donated money to purchase a ''suspended" book. The idea comes from a World War II practice in which customers would buy two Coffees: one for themselves and another for the next person in line. Gentile has been using the extra books as part of his recycling initiative,
While Gentile's program is a great way to recycle and get kids to read, it also brings awareness to the growing problem of plastic waste. Single-use plastics make up around 26 percent of all the plastics in the world, only 14 percent of which are recycled. Plastics that end up in landfills take around 500 years to decompose (分解),is a major concern for environmentalists.
Cutting down on plastic waste is important if we want to better the environment for future generations, and recycling programs like Gentile's book giveaway are a great way to meet that goal.
1. What is the purpose of Gentile's book giveaway?| A．To sell more coffee and books. | B．To attract more customers. |
| C．To collect money for a new project. | D．To inspire reading and recycling. |
| A．Working with a school to recycle cans. | B．Seeing school kids don't like reading. |
| C．Donating books for a local school. | D．Buying a “suspended” book for a child. |
| A．The local government. | B．Gentile himself. |
| C．Some publishers. | D．His customers. |
| A．An Italian's Reading Initiative | B．Recycling Can Get Kids Free Books |
| C．Michele's Way of Doing Business | D．A New Way to Deal with Plastic Waste |
