1 . When your home becomes a tourist attraction

Have you ever looked at a beautiful little news house in London and thought “It must be so amazing to live there?”    1     But for the people who actually do live in those homes, social media photography has changed what it means to live in a picturesque place.

Alice Johnston is a longtime resident of Notting Hill, the London neighborhood famous for pastel-painted row houses and for being the setting of the movie of the same name. Johnston, a journalist, has complicated feelings about her Instagram-beloved neighborhood. She lives on Portobello Road, one of the capital’s most famous streets.     2    

Once, she and a friend were walking his French bulldog when a tourist asked if they could “borrow” the pup for a quick photo. The friend and the dog agreed, the Instagrammer posed with the Frenchie in front of a bright blue door and then handed over five pounds as a thank you. In that story, everybody had a good time.     3    “I was once woken up at 6 a.m. on Easter Sunday by French teenagers taking pictures outside,” Johnston says.

    4     Johnston tries to be sympathetic to travelers coming to her hometown, recalling how she loved taking pictures of historic neighborhoods like the Marais in Paris and Alfama in Lisbon. In fact, she recently found photos of herself as a teenager hanging out at the Notting Hill Carnival, years before she moved to the capital herself. “I love to travel, so I have to be pretty understanding when people travel to where I live, and I feel lucky that it’s cool enough that people want to come where I live.”

A．And she has witnessed all kinds of crazy behavior committed in the pursuit of the perfect snapshot.

B．But there can be a darker side to living inside what some people think is a movie set.

C．“For us it’s a tremendous pleasure to be able to share the house and see so many people happy and excited about it.”

D．If so, you’re not the only one.

E．When private homes become tourist attractions, conflicts can occur.

F．When it comes to living in a much-photographed place, some people try to take the good with the bad.

2 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. benefit   B. displayed   C. documentation   D. elegantly   E. improbable   F. intrusive G. label       H. lessen     I. massive            J. positively   K. promotional

Norway’s new law on edited photos

A new law in Norway makes it illegal for advertisers and social media influencers to share     1     photos online without disclosing whether the images were altered.It modifies the 2009 Marketing and Control Act and sets to go into effect when the King of Norway decides it should.

The law concerns advertisers and people who receive “payment or other     2    ” in exchange for their posts. It will impact “brands, companies, and influencers’ sponsored posts,” and concerns posts on all social media sites.

The new law requires disclosures for edits made after the image was taken and before, such as Snapchat and Instagram filters that modify one’s appearance. Examples of edits that people who are being paid for pictures are required to     3    include “enlarged lips, narrowed waists, and exaggerated muscles,” among other things.

Body pressure, or “kroppspress” in Norway, is a major topic of conversation in the country, the Ministry of Children and Family Affairs said in its report. “Young people are exposed to a(n)    4     pressure to look good through advertising and social media, and the models     5     are often digitally retouched, which exposes young people to an ideal of beauty that is impossible to achieve.”

By prohibiting advertisers and influencers from posting such photos without proper     6     with a government-authorized stamp, the Ministry said it hopes to    7     the negative impacts of body pressure on young people. “It is especially important to prevent the desire to make more     8     and long-lasting changes in one’s own look,” the Ministry said.

Some of Norway’s top influencers have already thought     9     about the new law, “Young people today are growing up to a completely     10     beauty ideal,” Husebye, who was awarded “Influencer of the Year”,said “I feel that the new law can only help them to understand that this is not how you look, but it has been edited.”

3 . It’s a reader’s rite of passage to walk into a movie theater to see a favorite book come to life and walk out bitterly disappointed. Sometimes, there’s no softening the truth: what you read on the page is so much better than what you watched on the screen. The following are four beloved books that are undoubtedly better than their film adaptations.

Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine

Passionate fans of this young adult classic will agree that a true film adaptation of Ella Enchanted does not yet exist. Levine’s 1997 retelling of Cinderella, which earned a prestigious Newbery Honor, was adapted for the screen in 2004, with Anne Hathaway in the starring role. But the movie took significant liberties with Levine’s original plot, adding characters and excluding beloved scenes. The moods of the film and the book feel disparate. As David Rooney wrote in Variety, “The filmmakers also pushed the tone into a far more jokey comic realm, which dilutes the romantic-magical chemistry of the book, downplaying its central idea of a ‘Cinderella’ overhaul.”

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

This 1850 work of historical fiction about the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1640s has inspired a number of adaptations to film, page and stage, but the most bizarre of these may be the 1995 film starring Demi Moore, Gary Oldman and Robert Duvall. It was labeled “trashy and nonsensical” by Caryn James in the NewYork Times, and is frequently disparaged for changing much of the source material, including the ending. Receiving a shockingly low score of 13% on Rotten Tomatoes, this movie took home the award for the Worst Remake or Sequel at the 1995 Golden Raspberry Awards.

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

The Golden Compass, published in 1995, is the first novel in the beloved young-adult fantasy series, His Dark Materials, a magical story set in a parallel universe. This first part of the trilogy follows a young girl named Lyra as she embarks on a rescue mission to the Arctic. The widely panned 2007 film took five years to complete, slowed down by disagreements over the script and the direction. The studio bought the rights to the trilogy in 2002 and commissioned Tom Stoppard to write the screenplay. Chris Weitz was hired to direct. But Stoppard’s script was rejected and Weitz was fired. In his place, the studio hired Anand Tucker to direct, though Tucker resigned in 2006. Then Weitz returned to write the screenplay and direct the project. The result was a disappointing (and extremely expensive) movie that cut or changed many elements of the novel.

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

This bestselling novel from 2002 tells the story of a teenage girl who is raped and murdered and watches her family grieve from heaven. The 2009 film adaptation boasts terrific performances by Saoirse Ronan and Stanley Tucci as the girl and her attacker, but has little else to offer. The fine balance of sentiment and violence that Sebold strikes in the novel is lost in the movie. The film “strikes clashing tones, veering from lightheartedness to heavy-handedness,” Claudia Puig wrote in USA Today, adding that the device of main character narrating from heaven “works on the page but comes off artificial and emotionless on-screen.”

1. All the reviews mention the actors or actresses starring the film adaptations except ______.

A．Ella Enchanted	B．The Scarlet Letter
C．The Golden Compass	D．The Lovely Bones

2. Which of the following is NOT among the causes of unsatisfactory film adaptations?

A．Disappointing changes to the original story.

B．Being not so ground-breaking as the book.

C．Taking too much time and money for filming.

D．Being not so vividly expressive as the book.

3. We can conclude from the passage that ______.

A．it is always the truth that books are better than film adaptations

B．an all-star cast results in the excellence of film adaptations

C．changes to original plots can’t influence film adaptations positively

D．words can be more powerful than images in expressiveness

4 . A hundred years ago it was assumed and scientifically “proved” by economists that the laws of society made it necessary to have a vast army of poor and jobless people in order to keep the economy going. Today, hardly anybody would dare to _______this principle. It is generally accepted that nobody should be_______ from the wealth Western industrialized countries, where a system of insurance has been introduced which guarantees everyone a minimum of subsistence (生活维持费) _______ unemployment, sickness and old age. I would go one step further and argue that, even if these _________ are not present, everyone has the right to receive the means to subsist (维持生活). In other words, he can claim this subsistence minimum ________ having to have any “reason”. I would suggest, ________, that it should be limited to a definite period of time, let’s say two years, so as to avoid the _________ of an abnormal attitude which refused any kind of social obligation.

This may sound like a fantastic proposal, but so, I think, our insurance system would have sounded to people a hundred years ago. The main objection to such a scheme would be that if each person were _______ to receive minimum support, people would not work. This _______ rests on the fallacy of the inherent laziness in human nature. ________, aside from abnormally lazy people, there would be very few who would not want to earn more than the minimum, and who would prefer to do nothing rather than work.

However, the suspicions against a system of _________ subsistence minimum are not groundless, from the standpoint of those who want to use their ________ of capital(资金) for the purpose of forcing others to accept the work conditions they offer. If nobody were forced to accept work in order not to starve, work would have to be sufficiently________ to attract one to accept it. Freedom of contract is possible only if both parties are free to accept and________ it; in the present capitalist system this is not the case.

But such a system would not only be the beginning of real freedom of contract between employers and employees, its principal________ would be the improvement of freedom in inter-personal relationships in every sphere of daily life.

1.

A．challenge

B．voice

C．question

D．disapprove

2.

A．excluded

B．separated

C．spared

D．rescued

3.

A．in terms of

B．in case of

C．in light of

D．in spite of

4.

A．fees

B．citizens

C．solutions

D．conditions

5.

A．without

B．with

C．by

D．as

6.

A．therefore

B．however

C．moreover

D．hence

7.

A．shaping

B．displaying

C．discouraging

D．encouraging

8.

A．entitled

B．accustomed

C．adapted

D．forbidden

9.

A．conclusion

B．deception

C．assumption

D．truth

10.

A．Actually

B．Importantly

C．Surprisingly

D．Unfortunately

11.

A．limited

B．limitless

C．guaranteed

D．confirmed

12.

A．transfer

B．flow

C．lack

D．ownership

13.

A．boring

B．interesting

C．tiring

D．chilling

14.

A．reverse

B．restore

C．revise

D．reject

15.

A．advantage

B．weakness

C．problem

D．setback

5 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. stillness       B. refuge   C. thundering   D. withered   E. oppressive F. unattended G. gripped       H. creaked   I. approaching J. somewhere   K. hastily

On the morning of the first of September, Scarlett awoke with suffocating sense of dread upon her, a dread she had taken to her pillow the night before. She thought, dulled with sleep: ‘What was it that I was worrying about when I went to bed last night? Oh, yes the fighting. There was a battle,     1    ,yesterday! Oh, who won?’ She sat up    2    , rubbing her eyes, and her worried heart took up yesterday’s load again.

The air was    3     even in the early morning hour, hot with the scorching promise of a noon of glaring blue sky and pitiless bronze sun. The road outside lay silent. No wagons    4     by. No troops raised the red dust with their tramping feet, no pleasant sounds of breakfasts being prepared, for all the near neighbors except Mrs. Meade and Mrs. Merriwether had sought    5    in Macon. And she could hear nothing from their houses either. Farther down the street the business section was quiet and many of the stores and offices were locked and boarded up, while their occupants were somewhere about the countryside with rifles in their hands.

The     6    that greeted her seemed even more sinister this morning than on any of the mornings of the queer quiet week preceding it. She rose quickly, without her usual preliminary burrows and stretches, and went to the window, hoping to see some neighbor’s face, some heartening sight. But the road was empty. She noted how the leaves on the trees were still dark green but dry and heavily coated with red dust, and how     7    and sad the untended flowers in the front yard looked.

As she stood, looking out of the window, there came to her ears a far-off sound, faint and sullen as the first distant thunder of a(n)    8    storm.

‘Rain,’ she thought in the first moment, and her country-bred mind added, ‘We certainly need it.’ But, in a split instant: ‘Rain? No! Not rain! Cannon!’

Her heart racing she leaned from the window, her ear cocked to the far-off roaring, trying to discover from which direction it came. But the dim     9    was so distant that, for a moment, she could not tell. ‘Make it from Marietta,’ she prayed. ‘Or Decatur. But not from the south! Not from the south!’ She    10    the windowstill tighter and strained her ears and the far-away booming seemed louder. And it was coming from the south.

6 . Directions: Read the following three passages. Summarize the main idea and the main point(s) of the passage in no more than 60 words. Use your own words as far as possible.

Are Competitive Game Harmful to Children?

There is a cry of rage, and a tennis racket crashes to the ground. Jake, age 7, has just lost another match and is now in tears beside the court. His sister Sally, just one year older, looks at her mother and rolls her eyes: it is hard to enjoy when this keeps happening. It is not an unusual situation, and it is one reason why many people argue that competition is bad for children. However, the truth is that competitive games are a valuable preparation for life.

Games with winners and losers given children the chance to experience life’s ups and downs. Take Jake, for example: even though is unhappy now, he will probably be smiling and laughing with his sister in a few minutes, just like the last time this happened. Gradually, he will learn that the world does not end when you lose a game. Eventually, he may even be able to lose with a smile on his face. This is an important lesson. Not everything in life goes the way you would like, and it is important to know how to handle disappointment when it occurs.

Children who participate in competitive games develop qualities that will allow them to succeed in the complex world of adult life. For example, one of the missions of the Youth Olympic Games is to inspire young people to adopt the Olympic values, which include striving, determination, and optimism. Competition creates the desire to do better. Children have to learn to succeed in a competitive atmosphere in order to take advantage of opportunities in the future. Although it is possible to win by chance occasionally, people who win and keep winning work very hard to achieve their success.

Of course, there are parents who argue that children of Jake’s age are too young to handle the pain of losing. But whether we like it or not, adult life is very competitive, and keeping children away from competition does them more harm than good.

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7 . Lego in China

Engineers gather around a table-sized model of the China Art Museum, a landmark of Shanghai, adding airports for helicopters, car parks and other improvements with colorful bricks.     1    Li Yang, visiting for a few days from Shenzhen, has been waiting for her daughter for two hours. Zhu Yunfei, watching his son, marvels at the variety: “Coming here to play with him is making up for my childhood,” he says. They drop by every week.

Lego’s rise in China has been shiningly attractive. In 2017 it overlook Alpha Group, a local giant, to become the country’s leading toy company (not including video games). In the past two years it has opened 89 stores and wants 50 more by December, which will bring it to 30 cities. Its first Chinese factory started making bricks in 2016. The toy industry is growing by 9% annually in the country, but the Danish firm’s Chinese section has won “very strong double digits(两位数)”, says Paul Huang, its boss.

    2     In 2017 Lego cut 1,400 jobs and recorded its first drop in revenues and profits in over a decade. But last year both ticked up again, by 4% each. Lego has thus retained its status as the world’s biggest toy-maker, snatched from Mattel in 2014 - even as its American rival last year earned its highest revenues in five years from its Barbie dolls.

Newly wealthy parents in China have helped Lego recover. “We have not reached the extreme out there, by far,” says Niels Christiansen, whom Lego brought in as chief executive two years ago.     3     Last year 98% of those surveyed by Lego said that play was essential for their child’s well-being, even more than Americans and Danes.

Lego has also sensibly managed to meet the demands of local tastes.     4     Fans were delighted at the attention to cultural detail. One was a Chinese New Year’s Eve dinner kit, with tiny red envelopes and chunlian, lucky couplets on banners pasted around doorways. A dragon boat race set included a sticky-rice dumpling, a popular festival snack. The high-quality kits are pricey, costing up to 700 yuan ($100) a piece.

A．It has done so even though the brick-maker’s global business has looked shakier.

B．It has been sold in great volumes with various kinds of sets and earned the fame as the most suitable toys for children to play with.

C．Removing a child from Lego’s vast shop near People’s Square can be like unsticking two stubborn bits of Lego.

D．Over the past decades, Lego’s sales volume in China is not as satisfying as it expected.

E．As in the West, the educational merits of bricks appeal to Chinese parents.

F．This year the firm launched several sets specifically for China, the first time it has done so for any country.

8 . Housing prices have been growing less and less affordable across the U. S.     1    

Paragon Real Estate, a San Francisco real estate(房地产)company, has calculated that the median housing price in the city has risen $205, 000 since the end of 2017, the highest six - month gain in at least a quarter century.     2    . That’s more than double the 7.2% rise in 2017, but not as high as the 26.1% rise in housing prices in 2000, during the peak of the bubble. It’s also below the 20% rise in 2007, just before the housing market crashed.

    3    . But it also reflects a broader trend in the U. S. The average home price in U. S. stands at around $260,000, after having risen for the past six years, Paragon said.

Home-buyers who can’t afford such inflationary(通货膨胀引起的)housing prices might consider buying an apartment.     4    .

Paragon said that a sudden increase in both the asking prices for homes and the bids being placed by buyers, coupled with a multi - year decline in the number of homes listed for sale, have contributed to the sudden increase in prices. Housing activists in the Bay Area have grown more outspoken in calling for more available housing in the region.

There are signs that the affordable - housing problems that many residents in San Francisco struggle with are recurring in other cities, even if at a smaller scale. Home prices across the U. S. are by some measures at their least affordable levels since the financial crisis.

A．The median price for San Francisco apartments rose by $71,000 in the first half of 2018, a comparative bargain.

B．On a percentage basis, the median home price in San Francisco rose 14.5% over the past year to $1.6 million.

C．No city is a more fitting poster child for that trend than San Francisco.

D．The current housing construction pick-up supported overall GDP growth in first quarter and should do so in second quarter.

E．San Francisco may offer an extreme example of rising home prices.

F．In part, house prices have risen because interest have fallen and incomes have risen.

9 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. hike       B. requires          C. hosts          D. man-made       E. attraction      F. Belonging   G. peak   H. introduce   I. romantic     J. fascinating     K. sun-bathe

Touring “Treasure Island”

Chinese mainland tourists will be able to visit Taiwan via charted flights in July according to two landmark agreements signed on June 13. So, 21^st Century invited two young Taiwanese to     1     their favorite site on the island.

Yangming Mountain, north of Taipei

Young couples can definitely enjoy a     2     evening on the mountain and a bird’s eye view of the Taipei city. College students often visit the mountain for a     3    : others ride motorbike to the top. The mountain and the nearby town of Pei-tou have many hot springs, which often appear in romantic Taiwan TV dramas.

Ali Mountain, Jiayi County

Ali Mountain is the general name for 18 hills. The highest     4     of Ali Mountain is Tower Hill, which has a height of 2,663 meters. Ali Mountain is famous for its “five rare sites” - the sunrise, the Ali mountain Forest Railway, the famous Alishan Sacred Tree, the Grand Sea of Clouds and the Flamboyant Cherry Blossom. The best time to visit the     5     scenery is during the comfortable midsummer.

Taipei 101 tower, Taipei

The 101-floor landmark is one of the world’s tallest completed skyscrapers. Besides the shops inside and outside the tower, Taipei 101     6     splendid firework shows during festivals. A new     7     next to the tower is under construction. It will be a     8     beach on which the public will be permitted to     9    .

Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s Memorial Hall and Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, Taipei

The squares in front of these halls are open all day to the public. They have become a paradise to colleges students, who often meet there for an activity that     10     space. You will run into students dancing, rehearsing skits or even playing musical instruments.

10 . 概要写作

The Metaverse(元宇宙): The Future of Web Design and Development?

To many, the Metaverse might seem like this is something that is still far from becoming a reality. To others, it is the inevitable future of web design and development.

The Metaverse is an ambitious project that seeks to bring together many different web development and HiTech technologies in order to offer users a new experience of the web. Today, users view content on the web. On the Metaverse, users will be immersed(沉浸在)in the content thanks to technologies like Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Machine Learning, and other forms of Artificial Intelligence.

In brief, it is the next iteration(迭代)of the Internet where users will be able to navigate through a virtual space instead of the current two-dimensional screens. Although much has been said about it, there is still much that needs to be done, and this is both an opportunity and a challenge. Whatever the case is, it is the future of web design, and companies need to start thinking about how to reap the benefits of it.

One of the most important implications of this upgraded version of the web is the impact it will have on apps and websites. The rise of the Metaverse will not eliminate digital products as we currently know them. On the contrary, it will most likely be the case that both will coexist in new and more powerful forms.

This means that business websites will not become obsolete(淘汰的). As a matter of fact, they will probably become more relevant. Traditional websites will probably end up coexisting with the Metaverse, creating synergies(协同作用)that benefit users and businesses alike.

Aside from the impact on business websites, it is also important to consider operational aspects like the changes in the role of the typical web designer and developer. Digital product teams will have to rethink the tech stacks(一大推)they use in order to build interfaces and experiences for the user journeys coming our way.

Business decision-makers need to understand this and allow their teams to experiment with what might be the future of web experiences for users. Yes, it is a risky bet, but this is something that is gaining a lot of strength, and we might be hearing more about it sooner than we expect.

As mentioned above, traditional websites and other digital products aren’t going anywhere, but they surely need to be reworked in terms of what is expected of the future of web design.

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