1 . Adolescents refer to boys and girls at high-school level—more specifically the second, third and forth years of high schools. In dealing with students at this level, we must bear in mind that to some degree they are at the difficult stage, generally called adolescence.
Students at this level are likely to be confused mentally. They usually find it hard to concentrate on what they intend to do and often have romantic dreams.
Regarding school issues, although they seldom say so, they really want to be consulted and given an opportunity to direct their own affairs, but they need a good amount of guidance. They seldom admit that they need this guidance and they frequently rebel against it. But if it’s intelligently offered they accept it with enthusiasm. As to personal beliefs, most of adolescents are trying to form political ideals and they have a tendency to be sometimes extremely idealistic, and at other times conventional, blindly accepting what their fathers and grandfathers believed in.
| A．The critical abilities are beginning to develop in adolescence. |
| B．Their view on life usually falls on two extremes. |
| C．Of all periods of life, this is what may best be called the “plastic age”. |
| D．They are basically timid or self-conscious. |
| E．Despite that, it is also in this period that strong ties between teachers and students develop. |
| F．Fundamentally they want to be kept busy but they refuse to admit it. |
2 . Celebrity has become one of the most important representatives of popular culture. Fans used to be crazy about a specific film, but now the public tends to base its consumption on the interest of celebrity attached to any given product. Besides, fashion magazines have almost abandoned the practice of putting models on the cover because they don’t sell nearly as well as famous faces. As a result, celebrities have realized their unbelievably powerful market potential, moving from advertising for others’ products to developing their own.
Celebrity clothing lines aren’t a completely new phenomenon, but in the past they were typically aimed at the ordinary consumers, and limited to a few TV actresses. Today they’re started by first-class stars whose products enjoy equal fame with some world top brands. The most successful start-ups have been those by celebrities with specific personal style. As celebrities become more and more experienced at the market, they expand their production scale rapidly, covering almost all the products of daily life.
However, for every success story, there’s a related warning tale of a celebrity who overvalued his consumer appeal. No matter how famous the product’s origin is, if it fails to impress consumers with its own qualities it begins to resemble an exercise in self-promotional marketing. And once the initial attention dies down, consumer interest might fade, loyalty (忠诚) returning to tried-and-true labels.
Today, celebrities face even more severe embarrassment. The pop-cultural circle might be bigger than ever, but its rate of turnover has speeded up as well. Each misstep threatens to reduce a celebrity’s shelf life, and the same newspaper or magazine that once brought him fame has no problem picking him to pieces when the opportunity appears. Still, the ego’s potential for expansion is limitless. Having already achieved great wealth and public recognition, many celebrities see fashion as the next frontier to be conquered. As the saying goes, success and failure always go hand in hand. Their success as designers might last only a short time, but fashion - like celebrity - has always been temporary.
1. Fashion magazines today ________.| A．seldom put models on the cover |
| B．no longer put models on the cover |
| C．need not worry about celebrities’ market potential |
| D．judge the market potential of every celebrity correctly |
| A．ordinary consumers are more concerned with price rather than brand name |
| B．celebrity branded products can be an instant success |
| C．consumer’s enthusiasm for celebrity branded products prove to be inconstant |
| D．to consumers, quality matters more than the outside of products. |
| A．decrease the popularity of a celebrity and the sales of his products |
| B．damage the image of a celebrity in the eyes of the general public |
| C．cut short the artistic career of a celebrity in show business |
| D．influence the price of a celebrity’s products |
| A．celebrity and personal style | B．celebrity and market potential |
| C．celebrity and fashion design | D．celebrity and clothing industry |
3 . Some years ago a young man applied to a large United States optical firm for a job as a lens designer. He apologized for lack of training, but on announcing that he owned two copies of the classic Conrady's Applied Optics and Optical Design, one for his office and a second for his bedside table, he was hired on the spot. Perhaps the story will be repeated some day with Buchdahl's Introduction to Hamiltonian Optics as a similar certificate of qualification.
Hamiltonian theory describes with powerful generality the overall properties of optical systems considered as ‘black boxes’, although it does not describe the detailed structure needed to construct the systems and achieve these properties. Buchdahl's book is therefore on the subject of geometrical optics, but it is not about how to design lenses. It is, however a compact comprehensive account of the fundamentals of the theory written with the lens designer's needs very much in mind. Every lens designer worth his salt has at some time in his career attempted to apply the broad concepts of Hamiltonian optics to the solutions of practical problems. Success has been sufficiently rare that the theory, as such, has made little direct contribution to techniques for optical instrument design. The failures have been frustrating because of the obvious fundamental power of the theory and because of its conceptual elegance. The indirect effects have been large, however, both in contributing to an understanding of fundamental principles that govern the overall behavior of optical systems and in pointing the way to other, more practical, theoretical approaches.
Buchdahl approaches the subject not only as a capable mathematical physicist, but as one who with a knowledge of practical optics has made a significant contribution to geometrical optical theory. Buchdahl's approach has, over the last decade, had a major impact on modern lens design with computers. Thus, he brings to this exposition of Hamiltonian optics a familiarity with practical optics not usually found in authors on this subject.
The author claims his book to be non-mathematical, and indeed it might be so viewed by a professional mathematician. From the point of view of many physicists and engineers, it will appear to be quite mathematical. Moreover, this is a tightly written book. The subject matter is developed with precision, and the author expects the reader, at very point, to be master of the preceding exposition.
1. Hamiltonian theory met with failures as a result of ______.| A．newer finding related to the wave particle nature of light |
| B．very complicated concepts too difficult to understand by most lens designers |
| C．too much mathematical detail in the theory |
| D．not enough practical information offered by the theory to allow for use by lens crafters |
| A．the students who are major in mathematical geometry |
| B．those who want to grasp the basic principles of optical systems |
| C．the lens designers who look for instructions on practical designs |
| D．those who are interested in physics |
| A．indirect ways of learning mathematics |
| B．a fundamental power within the theory |
| C．the conceptual elegance of the theory |
| D．the practical applications of the theory in finding new approaches to old problems |
| A．a review of a book | B．a chemistry textbook |
| C．an optician's essay | D．a general science text |
4 . The Native American of northern California were highly skilled at basketry, using the reeds, graeses, barks, and roots they found around them to fashion articles of all sorts and sizes-not only trays, containers, and cooking pots, but hats, boats, fish traps, baby carriers, and ceremonial objects.
Of all these experts, none excelled the Pomo-a group who lived on or near the coast during the 1800's, and whose descendants continue to live in parts of the same region to this day. They made baskets three feet in diameter and others no bigger than a thimble (顶针). The Pomo people were masters of decoration. Some of their baskets were completely covered with shell pendants；others with feathers that made the baskets’ surfaces as soft as the breasts of birds. Moreover, the Pomo people made use of more weaving techniques than did their neighbors. Most groups made al their basketwork by twining--the twisting of a flexible horizontal material, called a weft, around stiffer vertical strands of material, the warp. Others depended primarily on coiling-a process in which a continuous coil of stiff material is held in the desired shape with tight wrapping of flexible strands. Only the Pomo people used both processes with equal ease and frequency. In addition, they made use of four distinct variations on the basic twining process, often employing more than one of them in a single article.
Although a wide variety of materials was available, the Pomo people used only a few. The warp was always made of willow, and the most commonly used weft was sedge root, a woody fiber that could easily be separated into strands no thicker than a thread. For color, the Pomo people used the bark of red-bud for their twined work and dyed bullrush root for black in coiled work. Though other materials were sometimes used, these four were the staples in their finest basketry.
If the basketry materials used by the Pomo people were limited, the designs were amazingly varied. Every Pomo basket maker knew how to produce from fifteen to twenty distinct patterns that could be combined in a number of different.
1. The word “fashion” in paragraph 1 is closest in meaning to ______.| A．maintain | B．organize | C．trade | D．create |
| A．The neighbors of the Pomo people tried to improve on the Pomo basket weaving techniques. |
| B．The Pomo people were the most skilled basket weavers in their region. |
| C．The Pomo people learned their basket weaving techniques from other Native Americans. |
| D．The Pomo baskets have been handed down for generations. |
| A．bullrush and coiling | B．weft and warp |
| C．willow and feathers | D．sedge and weaving |
| A．Baskets produced by other Native Americans were less varied in design than those of the Pomo. |
| B．Baskets produced by Pomo weaves were primarily for ceremonial and religious purposes. |
| C．There were a very limited number of basket-making materials available to the Pomo people. |
| D．The basket-making production of the Pomo people has been increasing over the years. |
5 . Some people actually read to get sleepy. But in general, we do not want to fall asleep while reading a book or studying. Reading books was taught to us as an activity that should be done in our spare time.
Many people, even if they are enthusiastic about reading, start to fall asleep after reading for a while.
According to experts, the act of reading a book causes the brain and eyes to work hard, causing sleepiness after a while. While following the words on the pages and transforming them into meaningful sentences by interpreting the letters, both the brain and the eyes exert effort.
| A．This action, which requires intense work of the brain and eyes, causes sleep after a while. |
| B．However, it is one of our most important needs, as human beings. |
| C．Therefore, the reading environment should be chosen correctly. |
| D．It is necessary to accept that reading a book is a job that requires energy |
| E．There are many different factors that can cause this situation. |
| F．There are people among us who are eager to read books and have made it a habit. |
Join a Project There are many opportunities to become a citizen scientist in national parks. Check out some park-sponsored projects below. You can find additional projects on external sites like SciStarter.com and CitizenScience.gov. And if you're accustomed to using programs like eBird or iNaturalist, you can continue to do so in any national park, even on your own. What can you do as a citizen scientist in a national park? Most likely you’ll collect data and upload them to a database. In some cases, you can explore, graph, and analyze data. If the project is new, you may be able to make suggestions about study design or procedures. In all cases, you will learn and experience real science. And you'll do it in the places you love. | |
| Acadia National Park (ME) Sundew Phenology Trail Purpose: Monitor phenology (seasonal timing) of trees, plants, and shrubs in coastal Maine to help the park understand long-term trends. Activities: Use Nature's Notebook mobile app to record and upload phenological stages of specific plants. Location & Timing: Participate in the park; spring, summer and fall every year. Requirements: Anyone can participate, young children should be supervised by adults; training is provided. To Participate: Groups enroll in park’s residential education programming; individuals enroll in park’s public programs. | Denali National Park and Preserve (AK) Snowshoe Hare Pellet Plot Project Purpose: Estimate the population density of snowshoe hares on an annual basis. Activities: Volunteers count snowshoe hare fecal pellets (粪球) at established plots within the park. Location & Timing: Participate in the park; June- August every year. Requirements: Must be a teen or adult, or part of a school/organization group; training is provided. Volunteers must be able to take difficult hikes in the backcountry, spend time on hands and knees, and follow verbal instructions. To Participate: Email to express interest. |
| Homestead National Historical Park (NE) Black Homesteading Project Purpose: Reveal the history of Black homesteaders who obtained titles for about 650,000 acres of prairie land from the General Land Office in the 1870s-1930s. Activities: Online volunteers will transcribe original historical documents into digital formats so they can be shared with scholars and the public worldwide. Location & Timing: Online, no time restrictions. Requirements: Stable Internet connection. Open to adults, teens, and families. To Participate: Please sign up through the Federal Government's volunteer page: Volunteer I Opportunity Detail | Rocky Mountain National Park (CO) Lily Lake Phenology Project Purpose: Monitor seasonal changes (phenology) of plants and animals at Lily Lake to help the park understand long-term trends. Activities: Record observations of plants and animals using the mobile app Survey 123. Location & Timing: Participate in the park, year- round. Best opportunities are April-October. Requirements: Must be a teen or adult. No special training is required. Participants need a mobile device. To Participate: See the project website to download the data collection form and Instructions to your mobile device. |
1. Which of the following is TRUE about a citizen science project?
| A．Joining citizen scientist project is an essential step to become a real scientist. |
| B．A citizen scientist is an expert at exploring, graphing, and analyzing data, |
| C．The participants’ main responsibility is to generate and develop new ideas for a project. |
| D．The project helps spread scientific knowledge through public participation in scientific research. |
| A．Sundew Phenology Trail |
| B．Black Homesteading Project |
| C．Snowshoe Hare Pellet Plot Project |
| D．Lily Lake Phenology Project |
| A．Acadia National Park |
| B．Denali National Park and Preserve |
| C．Homestead National Historical Park |
| D．Rocky Mountain National Park |
7 . Early decision-you apply to one school，and admission is binding--seems like a great choice for nervous applicants，Schools let in a higher percentage of early-decision applicants,which arguably means that you have a better chance of getting in.And if you do，you're done with the whole process by December.But what most students and parents don't realize is that schools have hidden motives for offering early decision.
Early decision，since it's binding，allows schools to fill their classes with qualified students；it allows admissions committees to select the students that are in particular demand for their college and know those students will come.It also gives schools a higher yield rate，which is often used as one of the ways to measure college selectivity and popularity.
The problem is that this process effectively shortens the window of time students have to make one of the most important decisions of their lives up to that point.Under regular admissions，seniors have until May 1 to choose which school to attend；early decision effectively steals six months from them，months that could be used to visit more schools，do more research，speak to current students and alumni and arguably make a more informed decision.
There are，frankly，an astonishing number of exceptional colleges in America，and for any given student，there are a number of schools that are a great fit.When students become too fixated（专注）on a particular school early in the admissions process，that fixation can lead to severe disappointment if they don't get in or，if they do，the possibility that they are now bound to go to a school that，given time for further reflection，may not actually be right for them.
Early decision offers a genuine admissions edge，but that advantage goes largely to students who already have numerous advantages.The students who use early decision tend to be those who have received higher-quality college guidance，usually a result of coming from a more privileged background.In this regard，there's an argument against early decision，as students from lower-income families are far less likely to have the admissions know-how to navigate the often-confusing early deadlines.
Students who have done their research and are confident that there's one school they would be thrilled to get into should，under the current system，probably apply under early decision.But for students who haven't yet done enough research，or who are still constantly changing their minds on favorite schools，the early decision system needlessly and prematurely narrows the field of possibility just at a time when students should be opening themselves to a whole range of thrilling options.
1. What are students obliged to do under early decision？| A．Consult the current students and alumni. | B．Think twice before they accept the offer. |
| C．Attend the school once they are admitted. | D．Look into a lot of schools before they apply. |
| A．It places too high a demand on their research ability. |
| B．It makes their application process more complicated. |
| C．It exerts much more psychological pressure on them. |
| D．It allows them little time to make informed decisions. |
| A．It is biased against students at ordinary high schools. |
| B．It interferes with students' learning in high school. |
| C．It causes unnecessary confusion among college applicants. |
| D．It places students from lower-income families at a disadvantage. |
| A．Look beyond the few supposedly thrilling options. |
| B．Find sufficient information about their favorite schools. |
| C．Avoid choosing early decision unless they are full prepared. |
| D．Refrain from competing with students from privileged families. |
8 . I recently had the unique honor of returning to my university, as a guest lecturer, to talk about opinion and fact in news media and how to tell the two apart. During my class, I quizzed the students using 10 statements which they had to decide were either opinion or fact. Some students did a good job while others failed.
A Pew Research poll conducted among Americans in 2018 showed that only 26 percent of adults could identify the five factual statements, and only 35 percent could identify the five opinion statements.
This is possibly because, according to a recent report by the RAND Corporation — a non-profit, non-partisan think-tank based on Los Angeles — “US-based journalism has gradually shifted away from objective news and offers more opinion-based content that appeals to emotion and relies heavily on argumentation and advocacy.”
Their study looked at US news reporting over a 28-year period and found that “journalism in the US has become more subjective and consists less of the detailed event or context-based reporting that used to characterize news coverage,” according to Jennifer Kavanagh, a senior political scientist and lead author of the report.
This will probably come as a surprise to no one, or at least no one outside the United States where subjective and emotive reporting has clearly hampered the population’s ability to separate fact and opinion and deal with each with a healthy amount of skepticism.
So, what is opinion?
Opinion is someone’s subjective belief or view that cannot be proven as fact. Opinion will often feature adjectives like amazing, perfect, unbeatable, dreadful, grotesque, embarrassing.
As an opinion writer myself, you’ll often see those kinds of words here in my column, but since my weekly rants are clearly not news reports, you know to take whatever I say just as an opinion and form your own opinion if you so desire.
Here’s an example of an opinion-based statement: “Wes Anderson is an amazing filmmaker.” There’s no way of proving that statement as fact, because it’s subjective.
What is fact?
Fact is an objective statement or account of something real which can be proven. Factual accounts should not include adjectives like amazing, perfect, unbeatable, dreadful, grotesque or embarrassing. Here’s an example: “Wes Anderson won the Silver Bear for Best Director in 2018.”
Sound easy? Well, it really is, apart from the fact that news media in-the United States often purposefully or subconsciously mix opinion and fact, effectively blurring the line between the two so much that now many Americans can’t tell the difference.
Spotting deception
You can improve your news reading skills by keeping an eye out for the common markers of opinion in news reporting. The easiest is to look for adjectives, which are usually always markers of opinion and will sometimes be hidden inside news reporting to nefariously affect the reader’s understanding.
Here’s a quick example using a headline: “Impressive crowd of 10,000 turn out for march.” Can you see the adjective in that headline? The word “impressive” is the writer’s own opinion mixed in with a factual statement about the number of people who turned out for a march. By using that adjective, the writer is pushing you to see the march as a success and to feel that the cause behind the march has a lot of public support. That isn’t necessarily the case, and similarly a writer with another opinion could pen this headline: “Only 10,000 turn out for march.” See the difference?
Improve your news eye
I hope this short foray into a tiny aspect of news media has helped a little and that now you’re just a little bit more apt at separating fact from, well, fiction. In today’s world, that skill is more important than ever.
1. Which of the following statements about US-based journalism is true?| A．It is characterized by the detailed event or context-based reporting. |
| B．It fails to appeal to people’s emotion when reporting news events. |
| C．It results in people’s inability to distinguish facts from opinions. |
| D．It helps to cultivate a healthy amount of skepticism in people. |
| A．Turning to opinion writers for help. |
| B．Looking for specific adjectives. |
| C．Reading as much news as possible. |
| D．Figuring out the hidden meaning. |
①Increasing the federal minimum wage to US$15 an hour is essential for the health of the US economy.
②Health care costs per person in the US are the highest in the developed world.
③Immigrants who are in the US illegally have some rights under the Constitution.
④Democracy is the greatest form of government.
⑤Immigrants who are in the US illegally are a very big problem for the country today.
⑥President Barack Obama was born in the United States.
| A．①②③ | B．④⑤⑥ | C．②③⑥ | D．①⑤⑥ |
| A．To attract more readers for his column. |
| B．To call for joint efforts by news agencies to cooperate. |
| C．To warn the danger of lack of news reading skills. |
| D．To provide advice on how to distinguish facts from opinions. |
9 . The factors that cause youth unemployment often differ among regions and labor systems. In much of Western Europe overemphasized labor protection makes it more difficult for youths to land good jobs. Since firing full-time workers is so complicated and expensive, employers are unwilling to take on new staff, while people who are already employed, mainly older workers, often keep their jobs for life. In developing countries with high birthrates and very young populations, like the Philippines, growth isn't strong enough to absorb the wave of youngsters entering the workforce each year.
Facing such obstacles, young people everywhere are finding that traditional route to success -education - isn't paying off as much as in the past.
| A．Young graduates often find themselves competing with more-experienced workers. |
| B．More and more college graduates are forced to take jobs below their skill level. |
| C．They started applying for any positions they could find in other countries. |
| D．In some parts of the world, such jobs are all that is available to college graduates. |
| E．Yet youth unemployment also has common roots throughout the world. |
| F．Those young workers who do find employment are often trapped in awful contracts. |
10 . If you followed the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, you may have noticed that several athletes, including US swimmer Michael Phelps, had circular bruises on their bodies. These bruises were the results of “cupping therapy”, a traditional Chinese medical practice that has been around for more than 2,000 years.
Cupping therapy involves attaching circular cups to the skin using suction(吸力). The suction is created either by heating the cup inside or by using a handheld pump. This suction pulls the skin upward into the cup. Sometimes it can leave dark red bruises, other times there is no mark at all.
Many athletes say that they have benefited from the therapy. Phelps used the therapy in the fall of 2014 and has used it about twice a week since, reported ABC News. Another US swimmer, Dana Vollmer, also believes that “it really helps with blood flow, and helps pull swelling out of different areas.”
However, some have said that the supposed health effects result from people feeling that the treatment works, rather than any physical effects of the treatment.
To figure out whether cupping therapy has any physical effects, last year researchers from Germany carried out a test in which a sham(假装的) treatment was provided.
In the study, the same type of cups was used in the real treatment and the sham treatment. But in the sham treatment, the cups had a hole at the top so that they couldn’t create the proper suction.
The tested patients, who suffered from a disorder(疾病) that causes a lot of pain, were told that they would receive either a traditional cupping or “soft cupping”. But they were not informed that the so-called “soft cupping” was a sham treatment.
It turned out that most patients correctly guessed which kind of cupping they had received. In both groups, patients also experienced about the same reductions in pain. The results suggest the effects of cupping therapy might come fro factors that are not necessarily part of the treatment itself, the researchers told the Live Science website.
The question of whether cupping therapy works still needs to be answered. But because the treatment is relatively safe and it could be helpful for some people, “the therapy can be used as a part of a comprehensive treatment program involving other exercises, nutritional choices and lifestyle interventions(干预)”, Dr Brent Bauer, director of the US’ Mayo Clinic Complementary and Integrative Medicine Program, told Live Science.
1. Which of the following statements is TRUE about cupping therapy?| A．It leaves bruises every time. | B．Heating is crucial to cupping therapy. |
| C．The key to cupping therapy is suction. | D．It has been widely used in Western countries. |
| A．prove the health effects of cupping therapy |
| B．see whether cupping therapy has a physical effect |
| C．compare traditional cupping and the soft cupping |
| D．compare cupping therapy’s effects on different groups of people |
| A．Different types of cups were used for different cupping therapies. |
| B．Patients knew which kind of cupping treatment they would receive before the treatment. |
| C．The real treatment and the sham treatment were almost equally effective for patients. |
| D．The results show the effects of cupping therapy result from people’s belief in the treatment |
| A．easy and convenient to carry out |
| B．newly invented and untraditional |
| C．requiring a long period of time to take effect |
| D．including everything that is important and necessary |
