| A．engage | B．process | C．facilitate | D．emphasize |
| A．periodically | B．ultimately | C．especially | D．individually |
| A．regenerate | B．illustrate | C．shorten | D．recognize |
| A．annual | B．pilot | C．distant | D．advanced |
| A．applications | B．collections | C．observations | D．rejections |
| A．stream | B．cooperate | C．generate | D．applaud |
The Secret to Improving Your Memory
If you want to improve your memory, you need to know how your brain works. You might be surprised to hear that your lifestyle habits might be making it difficult for you to correctly record each piece of information, experience, or learning.
It would appear that the secret to improving your memory is really simple. It’s to take breaks. As a matter of fact, the brain has more limited energy resources than you probably think. Therefore, it tires quickly and its levels of attention begin to drop after about 30 to 45 minutes.
The hippocampus is the area of your brain that’s responsible for consolidating (巩固) your short-term memories in the long term. Furthermore, for this consolidation to be possible, there must be an connection with different regions of the cerebral cortex (大脑皮层). Currently, we know that, for best connectivity, we must rest. Therefore, factors such as tiredness, negative feelings, or stress make it difficult to connect one area to the other.
Michaela Dewar, a researcher at the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom, conducted a study with other experts to understand how to improve memory consolidation processes. What they found was that something as simple as taking breaks of between nine and 15 minutes improves memory, both in healthy people and in those with neurological damage.
However, there’s one small detail that’s important. The rest must be real rest. In other words, you should go to a quiet space and not have any distractions (分心的事) around you. This includes not having your cell phone nearby. The secret to improving your memory requires you to rest for between ten and 15 minutes leaving your mind completely empty. In fact, knowing how to rest is decisive for your cognitive function, balancing your emotions, and renewing your energy.
Your lifestyle plays an extremely important role in the way your memory functions. Rest isn’t wasting time. In fact, allowing yourself small breaks is investing in your health and well-being.
1. What is the secret to improve your memory?2. What factors may influence the connection between different regions of cerebral cortex?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
Taking rests is important for your memory and spending about 15 minutes in playing with your phone will help improve it.
4. In addition to what is mentioned in the passage, what else can you do to improve your memory? (In about 40 words)
8 . What is a mistake? A mistake is something wrong. It can be an action, a concept (概念), or a thing that was not done correctly. It can leave you feeling negative and unsuccessful. However, research shows that making mistakes is beneficial to you. Whether mistakes are beneficial or harmful depends on how much you know about them.
There are many reasons why humans make mistakes. A lack (缺乏) of experience in a certain field or situation may result in the mistakes.
What do I do when I make a mistake?
| A．The first thing to do is to reflect. |
| B．Today’s mistake helps you get it right tomorrow. |
| C．Overconfidence can also cause us to make many mistakes. |
| D．The first thing when you make a mistake is to control your emotions. |
| E．Most people are afraid of making mistakes because they think it is not good. |
| F．So it is important to understand why you make mistakes and what to do with them. |
| G．Reflecting on your improvement can help you view mistakes positively in the future. |
9 . Recently, environmentalists have encouraged us to buy local food. This reduces “food miles”, that is, the distance food travels to get from the producer to the seller. They reason that the higher the food miles, the more carbon emissions (碳排放). Buying local food, therefore, has a lower carbon footprint and is more environmentally friendly.
However, the real story is not as simple as that. If our aim is to reduce carbon emissions, we must look at the whole farming process, not just transportation. According to a 2008 study, only 11% of carbon emissions in the food production process result from transportation, and only 4% came from the final delivery of the product from the producer to the seller.
In fact, imported food often has a lower carbon footprint than locally grown food. Take apples, for example. In autumn, when apples are harvested, the best option for British people is to buy British apples. However, the apples we buy in winter or spring have been kept refrigerated for months, and this uses up a lot of energy. In spring, therefore, it is more energy-saving to import them from New Zealand, where they are in season. Heating also uses a lot of energy, which is why growing tomatoes in heated greenhouses in the UK is less environmentally friendly than importing them from Spain, where the tomatoes grow well in the local climate.
We must also take into account the type of transport. Transporting food by air creates about 50 times more emissions than shipping it. However, only a small number of goods are flown to foreign countries, and these are usually high value, perishable (易腐烂的) goods which we cannot produce locally, such as seafood and out-of-season berries. Even then, these foods may not have a higher carbon footprint than locally grown food. For example, beans flown in from Kenya are grown in sunny fields using human labour and natural fertilisers (肥料), unlikein Britain, where we use oil-based fertilisers and machinery. Therefore, the total carbon footprint is still lower.
It’s also worth remembering that a product’s journey does not end at the supermarket. The distance customers travel to buy their food, and the kind of transport they use will also add to its carbon footprint. So driving a long way to shop for food will wipe out any environmental benefits of buying locally grown produce.
Recently, some supermarkets have been trying to raise awareness of food miles by labelling (标记) foods with stickers that show it has been imported by air. But the message this gives is too simple. Lots of different factors contribute to a food’s carbon footprint besides the distance it has travelled.
1. What can we learn about “food miles”?| A．It influences how people deliver and transport food. |
| B．It will increase if people are encouraged to buy local food. |
| C．It is the key factor contributing to a food’s carbon emissions. |
| D．It shows how far the food goes from farmland to supermarkets. |
| A．transporting food by air is the most energy-saving type of shipping |
| B．storing local food creates more carbon emissions than importing food |
| C．human labour and natural fertilisers can increase the carbon footprint |
| D．growing out-of-season food takes less energy than importing food in season |
| A．Supportive. | B．Negative. | C．Confused. | D．Doubtful. |
| A．Food miles: Is buying local food always better? |
| B．Carbon emissions: How to grow food in a greener way? |
| C．Transportation: Is delivering food creates carbon footprint? |
| D．Carbon footprint: What does importing food bring to environment? |
10 . Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO)
We’ve all felt it; that uncomfortable feeling when you look through your social media feed and see photos of friends having a better time than you, or that feeling when you read about a friend’s amazing job that you chose the wrong life path. This feeling is called FOMO, or fear of missing out.
Although people have felt FOMO for hundreds of years, the growth of social media seems to have made the phenomenon (现象) worse. For many, it has now become habit to compare your life with others’ lives — or rather the highlights of their lives; something that previous generations could not do so readily. This skews your sense of normal and brings about feelings like hate, envy and dissatisfaction. What’s more, marketers have made use of FOMO phenomenon as a means to drive sales. Sales that last a limited time and pop-ups that show other people buying all take advantage of our FOMO.
Since the FOMO phenomenon was recognised, it has been increasingly studied by scientists eager to discover its trends and influences. Scientists at Carleton and McGill University discovered that negative FOMO feelings were experienced more often towards the end of the day and at the end of the week and that FOMO was experienced more by people carrying out obligatory (强制性的) work, like jobs and study.
This is not to say that people only experience FOMO when they join in an mundane (单调的) activity. In a follow-up study, researchers found that participants who specifically selected one activity over another experienced FOMO when reminded about the other activity, even if their chosen activity was sociable and enjoyable, and if the other was unsociable. Moreover, they experienced FOMO whether they were reminded about the other activity through social media or in conversation.
Interestingly, although FOMO is widely connected with teenagers and young adults and those who use social media, research has found that people of all ages experience it. Researchers at Washington State University found that it is more closely linked to factors like loneliness and low self-respect. However, for those people, social media can make the problem worse.
Some researchers recognise an upside to FOMO, saying that it can drive you to take action, connect with others and get out of your comfort zone. More often than not, though, FOMO leads to increasing loneliness and even FOJI, fear of joining in, in the belief that your own insights or contributions will not be valued.
A rising counter-culture to FOMO, though, is JOMO — the joy of missing out. This includes the pleasure and satisfaction of a night in, doing what you enjoy best, turning off your phone notifications and living in the moment, focusing not on what you lack but on what you have.
1. What does the underlined word in paragraph 2 probably mean?| A．Influences. | B．Reflects. | C．Causes. | D．Strengthens. |
| A．results in JOMO and FOJI in the end |
| B．makes people eager to join in sociable activities |
| C．is more often felt by those with low self-respect |
| D．has come into being since the social media appeared |
| A．Offering customers good bargains in the sale. |
| B．Comparing the goods with the ones in other shops. |
| C．Showing an advertisement about the quality of the goods. |
| D．Reminding customers that many people have bought the goods. |
