1 . Yue-Sai Kan was born in China. In 1972, she moved to New York. When Kan was a child, she was told by her father that she should always aim to (力争) be the first because no one remembered the second. What her father said has been a driving inspiration over the years for her to become a bestselling author and a successful businesswoman.
Her new book Be a Pioneer, which is the tenth she has written and her first Chinese-language autobiography (自传), was produced after three years, inspired by her father’s words.
When writing an autobiography, the biggest challenge is not how to present one’s life, but to remember it. To help with reconstructing her story, Kan asked many friends and colleagues she made over the years to write down their memories of her from earlier times. So besides featuring Kan’s own words, the new book is also filled with those of her friends’s, which gives Kan a new understanding of herself — a woman who works hard, studies hard. and the most important thing is that she is a woman filled with a sense of responsibility.
“My helper Stephanie mentioned that I was worried because we were running out of money for the company. My housekeeper reminded me that before the start of one of my events she found that I had fainted (晕倒) in the bathroom. I was so tired that I was getting sick. They know more about me than myself,” Kan says.
“Writing a book is a good business to be in, not so much to make money but to grow the brain. I believe what I do will benefit the world. All the things I have done in Be a Pioneer — my successes and my failures — can be a good example to young people in particular. That’s the main reason why I wrote the book,” adds Kan.
1. What can we know about Kan’s book Be a Pioneer?| A．It took her 10 years to finish. |
| B．It is full of her father’s words. |
| C．It was completed with her friends’ help. |
| D．It tops the tenth on the bestseller list. |
| A．Being short of money. | B．Having no supporters. |
| C．Having to write it in Chinese. | D．Remembering her past. |
| A．To tell Kan is weak in health. |
| B．To show Kan is a worried woman. |
| C．To report the path of writing is difficult. |
| D．To state how Kan’s story was reconstructed. |
| A．Setting an example. | B．Earning money. |
| C．Making herself popular. | D．Proving herself to her father. |
2 . Amsterdam Destination Guide
Amsterdam is one of the most popular travel destinations in the world, famous for its beautiful canals, top art museums, cycling culture and so on. It is the capital and most populous city in the Netherlands and often referred to as the “Venice of the North” because of its expansive system of bridges and canals. Here are some of the key points to remember as you plan your trip to Amsterdam.
Boom Season | Population | Language(s) | Currency | January Climate | July Climate |
May to October | 813,562 | Dutch | Euro | Average high: 5.8℃ | Average high: 22.0℃ |
Most visitors begin their Amsterdam adventure in the Old Centre, which is full of traditional architecture, shopping centers, and coffee shops. You’ll also want to check out Amsterdam’s Museum Quarter in the South District, which is great for shopping at the Albert Cnyp Market and having a picnic in the Vondelpark. The top museums to visit there are the Rijksmusuem, the Ann Frank House, and the Van Gogh Museum.
If You Have Time
There are several other unique districts in Amsterdam, and you should try to explore as many of them as time allows. The Canal Ring is a UNESCO World Heritage Site that was originally built to attract wealthy home owners and is a center for celebrity spotting and nightlife today. The Plantage area has most of the city’s museums, including the Jewish Historical Museum, the Scheepvaart Museum, and the botanical gardens.
Money Saving Tips
●Unless you really want to see the tulips blooming, avoid booking between mid-March and mid-May. This is when hotel and flight prices rise.
●Look for accommodations in Amsterdam’s South District, where rates are generally cheaper than in the city center.
●Buy train tickets at the machine instead of the counter to save a bit of money.
●Instead of hiring a tour guide, hop on a canal boat. They’re inexpensive and will give you a unique point of view of the city,
Check out our homepage to view price comparisons for flights, hotels, and rental cars before you book.
1. What can be learned about Amsterdam from this passage?| A．Amsterdam is called the “Venice of the North” because of its location. |
| B．The Van Gogh Museum lies in Amsterdam’s Museum Quarter. |
| C．The Old Centre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. |
| D．The Canal Ring is a place to attract garden lovers. |
| A．arrange a guided canal tour |
| B．buy train tickets at the counter |
| C．reserve a hotel in the South District |
| D．book flights between mid-March and mid-May |
| A．A magazine. | B．An essay. | C．A report. | D．A website. |
3 . When a marketing genius walks into your store, it might benefit you to pay attention, even if that genius is only a small child. When a store owner saw a young girl playing an imaginary hopscotch(跳房子) game using his wood flooring, it sparked (引发) a brilliant idea.
The store owner marked out a hopscotch board in multi-colored tape leading to the sales window. When the girl returned, she immediately began using the new store hopscotch board.
Once the board was in place, the store owner noticed an amazing thing happening in the store. It started with a grown man looking a little nervous and glancing (瞥) around the store. The owner thought he might be checking for cameras to steal something. But what he did next shocked the owner. The man started jumping along the hopscotch board!
With total ignoring “how it looked,” the grown man hopped along the hopscotch board like a seasoned professional! And he smiled! But that was just the beginning of the surprise for the store owner. As more people entered the store, more and more of the adult customers took the opportunity to hop to the cash register.
The simple addition of a hopscotch board brought smiles, laughter, and true joy into the tiny convenience store. People were smiling and feeling happier. The in-store cameras record the hoppers merrily jumping along.
Big, small, men, women, old, and young: everyone seems to enjoy the opportunity to be a kid again. The feeling may only last for a few seconds, but if it brings joy to your life, do it!
Some customers carefully walk around the board. However, many enjoy those few seconds of being a kid again. The response delighted the store owner. If you’re the type of person who would hop along the board, share the hopscotch game with your fellow hoppers!
1. What did the girl inspire the store owner to do?| A．He invited the girl to return to the store. | B．He also jumped along the hopscotch board. |
| C．He prevented a man from stealing something. | D．He created a hopscotch board in the store. |
| A．He tried to steal things from the store. | B．He encouraged others to join the game. |
| C．He laughed at the girl playing the game. | D．He played the game after some hesitation. |
| A．Because they all cared for the girl. | B．Because they could get joy from it. |
| C．Because the game was fit for them. | D．Because the game was easy to learn. |
| A．Considerate and creative. | B．Knowledgeable and honest. |
| C．Humorous and outgoing. | D．Modest and ambitious. |
4 . Are you crazy about teaching young children? Are you looking for an exciting overseas working experience? Then we are the right place for you in Switzerland.
Ylaa Child Care Center has opened its first location in Basel, Switzerland in 2011.The concept has been very successful, and a second location has been opened in May 2012. Ylaa is a day care center for children starting 3 months old till 6 years old. Ylaa is aimed to provide high-quality child care services and an exciting and individual-focused learning program in a multicultural environment.
We are looking for a full time Nursery Teacher.
YOUR TASKS:
● Preparing the program together with other managers and team members
● Working with 1 or 2 other team members to take care of a group of children (6-10 children)
● Managing communication with parents including daily reports, regular meetings and yearly development reports
● Backing up other team members for absences
REQUIREMENTS:
● You are a fluent English speaker and have completed a degree in Early Childhood Education or similar
● You have 2-3 years of working experience with young children in day care centers or nurseries
● Knowledge of German is a plus
● You are at least 24 years old
WHAT WE OFFER:
● Good working conditions: salaries according to Swiss standards, paid vacation, lunch subsidies, insurances
● Internal and external trainings
● Career development opportunities in a growing organization
Please email your complete application. Applications sent via Post will not be considered nor returned.
For more information visit our website www.ylaa.cn.
1. Who is the text intended for?| A．Salesmen. | B．Job hunters. |
| C．College students. | D．Actors. |
| A．be less than 24 years old |
| B．have worked with young children for 4-5 years |
| C．speak two more foreign languages fluently |
| D．have a degree about early childhood education |
| A．By posting letters. |
| B．By sending an email. |
| C．By telephone. |
| D．By interviewing for yourself. |
5 . Styrofoam, or polystyrene, is a light-weight material, about 95 percent air, with very good insulation (隔热) properties, according to Earthsource. org. It is used in products from cups that keep your drinks hot or cold to packaging material that protects items during shipping. With the above good features, Styrofoam still enjoys a bad reputation. It cannot be recycled without releasing dangerous pollution into the air. The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency says it is the fifth-largest creator of harmful waste.
But now the common worms which are usually disgusting can come to the rescue, specifically, meal-worms. Scientists from the U. S. and China have discovered that meal-worms can digest plastic. One meal-worm can digest a pill-sized amount of plastic a day. Study co-author Wei-Min Wu says that in 24 hours, the plastic is turned into carbon dioxide.
Since Styrofoam has no nutrition at all, are the worms hurt by eating plastic? Much to the scientists’ surprise, the study found that worms eating Styrofoam were as healthy as worms eating bran (谷糠) . The researchers will study the worm’s eating habits and digesting system, looking to copy the plastic breakdown but on a larger scale. Once the way can be put into practice, it will make a revolutionary difference to the disposal of plastic.
“Solving the issue of plastic pollution is important”, says Wu, a Stanford University environmental engineering instructor. After all, our earth is small and landfill space-is becoming limited with too much garbage waiting to be dealt with, he says.
About 33-million tons of plastic are thrown away in the United States every year. Plastic plates, cups and containers take up 25 percent to 30 percent of space in America’s landfills. One Styrofoam cup takes more than 1 million years to recycle in a landfill, according to Cleveland State University.
1. What do we know about Styrofoam?| A．It can be used to cool drinks. | B．It is a weightless material. |
| C．It is harmful when recycled. | D．It is usually used on ships. |
| A．Meal-worms have amazing digesting power. | B．Meal-worms are not bad in their nature. |
| C．Meal-worms can rescue people’s lives. | D．People misunderstood meal-worms in the past. |
| A．by raising amounts of meal-worms | B．by environmental engineering instructors |
| C．using a method inspired by eating meal-worms | D．without sending out dangerous pollution |
| A．Styrofoam is widely used in daily life. | B．Meal-worms are genius at eating plastic |
| C．Plastic recycling may be no more a problem. | D．Plastic can be turned into carbon dioxide |
6 . We talk continuously about how to make children tougher and stronger, but whatever we’re doing, it’s not working. Rates of anxiety disorders and depression are rising rapidly among teenagers. What are we doing wrong?
Nassim Taleb invented the word “antifragile” and used it to describe a small but very important class of systems that gain from shocks, challenges, and disorder. The immune (免疫的) system is one of them: it requires exposure to certain kinds of bacteria and potential allergens (过敏原) in childhood in order to develop to its full ability.
Children’s social and emotional abilities are as antifragile as their immune systems. If we overprotect kids and keep them “safe” from unpleasant social situations and negative emotions, we deprive (剥夺) them of the challenges and opportunities for skill-building they need to grow strong. Such children are likely to suffer more when exposed later to other unpleasant but ordinary life events, such as teasing and social rejection.
In the UK, as in the US, parents became much more fearful in the 1980s and 1990s to those rare occurrences of crimes and accidents that now occur less and less. Outdoor play and independent mobility went down; screen time and adult-monitored activities went up.
Yet free play in which kids work out their own rules of engagement, take small risks, and learn to master small dangers turns out to be vital for the development of adult social and even physical competence. Depriving them of free play prevents their social-emotional growth.
What can we do to change this situation? How can we raise kids strong enough to handle the ordinary and extraordinary challenges of life? We can’t guarantee that giving primary school children more independence today will bring down the rate of teenage suicide tomorrow. The links between childhood overprotection and teenage mental illness are suggestive but not clear-cut. Yet there are good reasons to suspect that by depriving our naturally antifragile kids of the wide range of experiences they need to become strong, we are systematically preventing their growth. We should let go — and let them grow.
1. Why does the author mention the immune system in Paragraph 2?| A．To stress its importance. | B．To help understand a new word. |
| C．To question the latest discovery. | D．To analyze the types of anxiety. |
| A．Because their children are not independent enough. |
| B．Because they want to keep their children from being teased. |
| C．Because parent-monitored activities are a must. |
| D．Because they are concerned about their children’s safety. |
| A．It can reduce children’s risky behavior. | B．It can strengthen children’s friendship. |
| C．It can promote children’s toughness. | D．It can develop children’s leadership skills. |
| A．Parents should stop trying to protect their children. |
| B．Parents should try their best to raise their children on their own. |
| C．Parents should try to teach their children all about life. |
| D．Parents should prepare the children for the road, not the road for the children. |
7 . Looking out of the window of his truck, Bob Fitzgerald sees dying forests and empty farmland. Fitzgerald says the land has been in his family since the 17th century. “I can show you land around here that people grew tomatoes on when I was a little boy. And now it’s gone.”
Climate change is making things worse. As sea levels rise, salt water is entering rivers and other waterways. As a result, the land is becoming too salty for crops to grow on. Hundreds of millions of people will be forced to move inland because of rising waters.
Kate Tully, a researcher in the University of Maryland, wants to keep coastal farmers in business as the seas rise. She has seen the forests filled with pine trees killed by the increasingly salty soil. The United States Department of Agriculture gave Tully and other researchers $1.1 million to study the problem. She and her team hope to give farmers ways to stay on their land.
They are testing different crops on pieces of land around the Eastern Shore. “Sorghum (高粱) is my new favorite crop because it can grow without rain and it can grow with lots of rain.” The grain (谷物) crop may be a good choice to feed the nearly 600 million chickens kept in the area each year. As farmers know, chickens can deal with salt, dry weather conditions and heavy rains. Yet just being able to grow a crop is not enough. The crop has to bring in money.
Some people believe the land should be given back to nature. They say the fields should be turned into wetlands, which are popular with duck hunters. “There’s money in duck hunting,” Tully said. “Hunting organizations will pay farmers for hunting on their land. Farmers could make a lot of money from duck hunting.”
Tully and her team are just getting started. It will be a few years before they really understand how to save the farms.
1. What is the purpose of Paragraph 1?| A．To lead to the main topic. | B．To describe the farm scenery. |
| C．To illustrate a memorable experience. | D．To provide the background information. |
| A．To help farmers stay on their land. | B．To study new crops for coastal farmers. |
| C．To study climate change in recent years. | D．To help farmers start their own business. |
| A．Concerned. | B．Doubtful. | C．Positive. | D．Negative. |
| A．Climate Change Making Things Worse. | B．Rising Seas Forcing Changes on Farms. |
| C．Coastal Farmers Saving Their Homeland. | D．Scientists Teaching Farmers to Plant Crops. |
Poor Bobby was getting cold sitting out in the backyard in the snow. With only one dime (10美分硬币) in hand, he could not come up with an idea for his mother’s birthday gift. Ever since his father had passed away, the family of five had struggled. Although the family was short of money, they had love and family unity(团结).
Bobby had three sisters, all of whom had already made beautiful gifts for their mother. Wiping tears from his eyes, Bobby kicked the snow and started to walk down to the street where the stores opened. Anyway, he wanted to try his luck.
Bringing together all his courage, he walked into the first store he saw. His heart quickly turned cold when salesperson after salesperson told him that he could not buy anything with only a dime. Finally he saw a flower shop and went inside to wait in line. When the shop owner asked if he could help him, Bobby presented the dime and asked if he could buy one flower for his mother. The shop owner looked at Bobby and his dime. Then he put his hand on Bobby’s shoulder gently and said, “You just wait here and I’ll see what I can do for you.” Then the shop owner left. All alone in the shop, Bobby began to feel alone and afraid. After a little while, the shop owner came out with a bunch of red roses, with leaves of green and tiny white flowers all tied together with a big silver bow.
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3. How might Bobby react when he saw the roses? Why?
4. What might the shop owner do next?
9 . Children at boarding school get the best night’s sleep because of strict lights out time, according to a recent study, which was presented at Sleep Down Under, the 33rd yearly scientific meeting of the Australasian Sleep Association. Professor Kurt Lushington, a psychologist who led the study; said, “It is a naturalistic experiment showing the key to good sleep in teenagers is quite simple: a good timetable and no mobile devices(设备) at night.”
Over the past 20 years, the time children spend sleeping has fallen and only half regularly get more than seven hours. The recommended amount is eight to ten. The biggest problems are smartphones and tablets (平板电脑) whose blue light wakes the brain, making it harder to drop off.
An Australian team compared sleep patterns of 15 to 18-year-olds at a school in Adelaide. The 59 boarders had to leave their phones in a kitchen area or on their desk before bed and turn their lights out by a set time. They slept for an average 8 hour 26 minutes a night compared with 7 hours 46 minutes for day pupils.
Lack of sleep affects mental health and school performance and causes behavioral problems. It has also been connected with the child obesity epidemic and other diseases. This year an American study found that teenagers who didn’t get enough sleep took in extra sugar during a school year. They ate sweets, cakes, chocolate and biscuits and drank fizzy drinks to promote their energy levels.
Lushington recommends that parents reach agreement on not using a phone. This is most likely to work if they do likewise and offer other enjoyments, such as books. “I think if you put these rules in place, kids will go along with them,” he told New Scientist.
1. What is the secret to teenagers’ good sleep according to Paragraph 1?| A．Strict lights out time. | B．More physical exercise at school. |
| C．Good bedtime plan and more playtime. | D．Regular schedule and no mobile devices. |
| A．Fall asleep. | B．Fall behind. | C．Give up. | D．Calm down. |
| A．Bad examples of school performance. |
| B．Bad effects connected with lack of sleep. |
| C．Behavioral problems caused by bad eating habits. |
| D．The relationship between school performance and sleep. |
| A．Teachers leaving less homework. |
| B．Students choosing proper sleep patterns |
| C．Parents as well as children not using phones. |
| D．Parents sending their children to boarding schools. |
10 . “Playing Shop” Social Activity
Children are invited to get behind the shop counter (柜台) of Susannah Place Museum, recreated 1915 shop.
This is a good time for your children to put on an apron (围裙) and become shopkeepers. They learn how to wrap (包裹) an egg, weigh out goods on a scale (秤) and count in pounds and shillings (先令)!
Suitable for the children between 5 and 7, the Playing Shop activity will see your children:
■ Use an old-fashioned shop scale.
■ Wrap goods.
■ Fill an order and make a delivery (配送).
Tickets for Playing Shop are now on sale through sydneylivingmuseums.com.cn. Choose from the following periods:
9:15 a.m.-10:30 a.m. or 10:45 a.m.-12 p.m. on Wednesday, May 12, 2023.
9:30 a.m.-10:45 a.m. or 11:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m. on Friday, May 21, 2023.
Please note children must be accompanied (陪伴) by an adult.
You can continue your fun at Susannah Place Museum by joining a guided tour at 2 p.m., 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. at an additional (额外的) cost on the day.
1. Who might the article be intended for?| A．5 to 7-year-old kids. | B．Parents. |
| C．Middle school students. | D．College students. |
| A．For 45 minutes. | B．For one hour. | C．For 65 minutes. | D．For 75 minutes. |
| A．Use a fashionable scale. |
| B．Weigh out goods and count money. |
| C．Continue fun at a museum for free. |
| D．Wrap goods for customers and accompany them home. |
