As schoolwork becomes more important, teenagers spend less time playing. However, being playful with friends and messing around with art and music are opportunities for teens to be mature. For one thing, making mistakes and learning from
On Christmas, we stuck up a board displaying “A Merry Christmas”, so did the enemy.
3 . Sleepy-eyed, I arrived in Jordan just before midnight: Picking up the rental car, the agent mumbled (咕哝) something about a gas station. Trying to stay
The next morning, I headed the desert castle excitedly. While driving, I noticed that there wasn’t a fuel gauge (指示器) on the dashboard. That was
After passing numerous gas stations, I was finally in the open desert. Complete
What? In the middle of nowhere, I stared at the engine with no idea what to do.
Within 10 minutes, a Jordanian
The man
When I pulled out my wallet to pay him, he refused. My thanks, a smile, and one photo together were all he wanted. Before we fully
Today, whenever I think of Jordan, this memory
| A．humble | B．awake | C．silent | D．calm |
| A．unlucky | B．unsafe | C．odd | D．foolish |
| A．isolation | B．damage | C．chaos | D．darkness |
| A．Anger | B．Curiosity | C．Fascination | D．Panic |
| A．turned over | B．pulled over | C．passed over | D．took over |
| A．examining | B．repairing | C．stopping | D．moving |
| A．required | B．encouraged | C．prepared | D．signaled |
| A．talked | B．parted | C．engaged | D．understood |
| A．hesitantly | B．gradually | C．instantly | D．randomly |
| A．gratefulness | B．cautiousness | C．kindness | D．positiveness |
4 . When my father died, one of the tasks that fell to me was to sort through and decide which objects to save and which to throw away. Now I look at the objects of my life as if I were dead, wondering, what will my children do with the human skull that sits on the bookcase? They’ve been wanting to throw it out for some years, but will they know how much can be learned from living with a skull? And I know they will throw the white plastic head of a horse on my desk into a rubbish bag without a thought, never knowing that it is the only piece remaining from the first chess set I owned. It is me at age twelve.
But the final decisions are left to those who know us least — our children. I was the closest to my father and knew him well; however, only when I was going through his study did I learn he had collected picture postcards of hotels. What was I to do with all the objects that had been him? The sad part of me wanted to put everything in my car and take it home. The rational won, however, and I filled rubbish bags with old newspapers, magazines, apologizing to his spirit as I did. I could not throw out the thousands of pictures he had taken on his travels. I brought the pictures home, though I will never look at them. I brought twelve boxes of my father home.
I look at the objects that are my life and the only way my children can satisfy me is by not touching a thing. But they must if I am to go on with my death. And I wonder how many boxes of me will my children keep? I look at these objects that are me and know, too, that they are symbols of how alone I and each of us is, for no one knows what any object means except he or she who owns it. Every object of our lives is a memory, and emotion surrounds around it, hiding and protecting a tiny truth of the heart. Only I have the memories of when and how each one was obtained; I look at the objects that are me, and the memories are warm and permeated (弥漫) with love.
1. Why does the writer keep the plastic head of a horse?| A．Because his father gave it to him as a gift. |
| B．Because it makes him a very good chess player. |
| C．Because it brings back memories of his childhood. |
| D．Because he accepted it as a prize for a competition. |
| A．He threw everything away. |
| B．He saved some of the worthless objects. |
| C．He took some of them to his own house. |
| D．He sorted them and put them into good order. |
| A．He is very strict with his children. |
| B．He prefers to collect different skulls. |
| C．He relies on his children to deal with his possessions. |
| D．He knows more about his father after his father died. |
| A．serve as the symbols of our social class | B．are reminders of past experiences |
| C．are quite expensive and valuable | D．make us proud of ourselves |
The Weight of White Lies
A man taking his mother to a surprise party tells her they’re going to the mall. A woman fibs that the store was out of her overweight boyfriend’s favorite junk food. A tutor assures his student that her spotty resumé looks fine.
Even benevolent forms of deception come in shades of acceptability, and people who learn that they have been misled don’t always see it the way deceivers do. A lie that’s meant to inflate someone’s confidence or discourage a bad habit, for example, often involves making a judgment about what’s best for that person. That presumption can backfire.
In recent experiments, participants playing an economic game on a computer received a tip that led them to one of two possible payoffs. Some learned that the sender of the tip had lied to them to secure them a particular option. If the best option had been debatable rather than obvious—such as receiving $10 right away rather than $30 after three months—participants judged that person as less moral for lying and were less satisfied with the outcome, on average, even if it was the one they had previously said they preferred. “People seem to feel they have a right to the truth, and that by taking that away, you diminish their ability to act freely,” says study co-author Matthew Lupoli, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, San Diego.
Making up falsehoods isn’t the only way to kindly deceive, though: You might also simply leave out unpleasant facts. Recent studies by University of Chicago researcher Emma Levine and colleagues examined both types of lie in hypothetical patient-doctor talks and other contexts.
People in the role of deceiver tended to view the omission of potentially harmful details (such as a poor prognosis) as comparable to or more acceptable than offering a comforting fiction (that a patient’s outlook was favorable). But those in the role of the deceived often considered false-but-supportive statements more tolerable than lies of omission. For deceivers, actively committing a lie feels more intentional and might provoke more guilt than omission, Levine says. But the targets of deception “aren’t likely to be sensitive to these differences because they just experience the consequences.”
In general, honesty is probably still the best policy. A lie that provides some emotional benefits and has little downside could be the closest second.
1. What is the presumption people make when telling a white lie (a lie that’s meant to be good)?2. What are the ways to kindly deceive others?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
Those in the role of the deceived often considered lies of omission more tolerable than false-but-supportive statements.
4. Do you prefer to be honest or tell a white lie when informing your friend of something unpleasant? Why? (In about 40 words)
6 . Every day, thousands of rangers patrol national parks and other protected areas in Africa. Their job is fraught with danger, both from hostile humans armed with automatic weapons and from the unappreciative and potentially aggressive wildlife, armed with tusks, teeth and claws, which they are helping to preserve.
That is particularly true of data on poaching (偷猎), which remains, in both senses of the word, an elephantine problem. Since 2006 African elephant populations have declined by around 30%. In 2021, according to Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants (MIKE), a conservation programme, around 40% of elephant deaths were a result of poaching.
Elsewhere, there is great variation in the pressure on animals like elephants. Some parks, like Garamba in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), are badly hit — with more than 90% of the bodies found by rangers being victims of poachers.
Natural variables such as habitat type, they discovered, make little difference.
One factor that was unquantifiable, and therefore untestable, according to Dr Kuiper, was local political will to preserve wildlife. But this study does nevertheless confirm observations made elsewhere, that the best form of conservation is a prosperous population.
| A．Human ones predominate. |
| B．The severity of elephant poaching varies from place to place. |
| C．Humans are the biggest factor defining elephant ranges across Africa. |
| D．There was one unexpected result, though — the impact of armed conflict. |
| E．But their work is important, not least because the data they collect are crucial to conservation planning. |
| F．In others, like Chobe, in Botswana, less than 10% of dead elephants discovered have been killed illegally. |
| G．Current discussion of how to reduce poaching focuses on two areas: reducing demand and reducing supply. |
7 . The question of how trucking capacity is growing or declining is common in industry, but the reality is that demand fluctuations are far more important to monitor as they swing much more violently.
Since December of 2018, the total tractor count from for-hire fleets (non-private) has grown 18%, according to the FMCSA, but has never shown a monthly change of over 2%. By contrast, the Outbound Tender Volume Index (OTVI), a measure of total truckload demand, has grown 12% over the same period, but monthly fluctuations topped 20% at times.
Even before the pandemic, the OTVI had 5-7% monthly swings in demand. Given the OTVI measures total tenders and is not a pure proxy (指标) for shipments, it is reflective of how fast demand-side conditions change in trucking.
The point is that capacity shifts are slow and stable, while demand changes much more rapidly and is very unpredictable over time. This is the consummate struggle of supply chains and transportation companies across the globe — how much infrastructure (capacity) is needed to be able to flex up but not have too much overhead when demand softens?
The process of ordering and seating a truck takes close to a year. That truck can haul roughly seven 500-mile loads per week, or 360 loads per year. This only occurs if shipping patterns are consistent and drivers are readily available, and neither are true. So it isn’t a pure question of how much capacity is available in aggregate, but are those trucks available in the right places at the right times in general? This metric is extremely difficult to attain.
Since demand is uneven and spread unevenly throughout the country, trucks and drivers need to exceed the number of shipments available. So even if capacity grows by 1%, it just increases the chances that loads will be covered marginally.
Probably more important than any of the previous points is that there are already measures of the relationship between supply and demand in trucking. Tender rejection rates (OTRI) and spot rates (NTI) measure when capacity is meeting demand in the contract and spot markets, respectively.
There is little use for knowing how much capacity is available in the for-hire freight market other than being interesting. But there is exceptional value in knowing how well capacity and demand are lining up and in what direction they are trending. Since December 2021 tender rejection rates have fallen from over 20% to under 4%, while spot rates are down 27%.
Demand-side indicators are probably the most crucial to getting the earliest signs of market shifts, while rejection rates and spot rates answer the two most important questions that companies want answered: Can I get a truck and how much will it cost me?
1. The Outbound Tender Volume Index ________.| A．is a proxy for shipments only |
| B．is a measure to track truckload demand |
| C．can tell the current trucking capacity in the US |
| D．can tell the relationship between supply and demand in trucking |
| A．How capacity can meet the changing demand. |
| B．How capacity and demand can be predicted. |
| C．What facilities are needed to ship the goods. |
| D．What trucks can function the best. |
| A．They are both measures in the contract and spot markets. |
| B．They are of little use to know the capacity and demand. |
| C．They can change the uneven demand situation in the US. |
| D．They can help to tell the companies how market might change. |
| A．In a school newspaper. | B．In a book. | C．In a biography. | D．In a magazine. |
8 . Golf has a length problem. The farther players drive the ball, the longer holes need to be, so that skills like iron play and putting (打球入洞) remain important. But the longer courses are, the more they cost to maintain and the worse their environmental impact. They also become more daunting for recreational golfers, who keep them in business.
In 2004, golf’s regulators introduced limits on the size of clubs (球杆), hoping to slow the trend of ever-longer drives. Nonetheless, the inflation has continued quickly. On November 15th a famous record tumbled (下跌): someone completed the Masters Tournament in fewer than 270 strokes, the mark Tiger Woods set when he won his first major title in 1997. The new low of 268 belongs to Dustin Johnson, who has averaged more than 300 yards a pop throughout his career. He achieved the feat even though the Augusta National course is 8% longer than in 1997.
How have golfers continued to blast the ball farther than ever? The PGA Tour publishes ball-tracking statistics, which suggest that, although better equipment may have helped, players’ recent gains stem largely from their technique — and even bigger improvements now appear inevitable.
The data come from ShotLink, a system that tracks how fast a golfer swings (“clubhead speed”), his ball’s trajectory (“launch angle”) and its rotation speed (“spin rate”). A statistical model using these metrics was built to predict driving distances. Together, the three factors explained 70% of the differences between players’ distances, and almost all of the increase in length over time.
The model’s lessons are intuitive. To thump the ball as far as possible, one should maximise clubhead speed and launch angle while minimising spin. However, most players face a trade-off between these goals. Harder impacts usually mean flatter trajectories.
One golfer, however, has escaped this constraint. Bryson DeChambeau, a physics graduate with oddly designed club, is nicknamed the “Mad Scientist”. He gained 18kg of weight while the PGA Tour was suspended. This has allowed him to swing faster than anyone else. But he has also managed to smash the ball with a high launch angle — an unprecedented combination that might owe something to his unusually stiff wrists and robotic technique. Using both his brains and his brawn, Mr DeChambeau is now hitting 15 yards farther than his closest competitors do.
Mark Broadie, a golf statistician, reckons that other professionals will try to beef up. But golf history is full of players who lost their edge after making small changes to their swings. And time may yet show that the risks of Mr DeChambeau’s bombs-away approach offset some of the rewards. He strayed into the rough (球场长草区) often at the Masters.
Nonetheless, the Mad Scientist’s breakthrough is bad news for course designers. They will probably have to keep fiddling with their fairways on the golf courses for years to come.
1. The author mentions Tiger Woods in Paragraph 2 to show ________.| A．golf drives are increasingly farther | B．the number of records is falling |
| C．game time is lengthening gradually | D．golf courses are growing longer |
| A．finer equipment | B．longer courses | C．larger build | D．better techniques |
| A．He has invented the never-failing bombs-away approach. |
| B．He is a golf statistician who spends a lot of time in the gym. |
| C．He actively urges course designers to update the golf courses. |
| D．He has managed to swing the ball fast without flatter trajectories. |
| A．Changes to the swing shall be made with great caution. |
| B．Longer courses will cause more problems than benefits. |
| C．Professionals should follow Mr DeChambeau’s lead. |
| D．Other golfers should be brave enough to take risks. |
9 . She spent over two decades working her way up in the science industry, either as a chemist in a lab or in a management role. Now Berkeley Middle School teacher Mrs. Amy Adams is employing her science skills in a different environment. She decided to mix things up a bit and came up with a winning formula to help make a difference in the classroom. Mrs. Amy Adams is our Cool School teacher of the week.
She took a couple of years off after having children. While volunteering at her kids’ school, she was fascinated by education. Adams says, “This is where I am supposed to be. I loved my job and the people I worked with, but I just kept feeling unsettled, so finally, I channeled my energy into something meaningful.”
Adams says she stepped out on faith, and the rest is history, well actually it’s science. She’s now in year six of teaching seventh-grade science at BMS. “This is my alma mater. I walked the halls of Berkeley Middle. So it is with all four of my children. My youngest is walking the halls now. It just feels like home,” Adams said.
Adams describes her teaching style as interactive. She says, “I want them to have a voice and learn critical thinking, so we feature colorful activities. Whether it’s note-taking, worksheets, doing DNA extractions on a strawberry or dissecting frogs, the process is always interactive. By doing so, I intend to cultivate a culture of learning and arouse their interest in science.”
LaTanya Butler, principal at BMS says, “She was in the science industry, so she can relate the concepts she teaches to real life, which is one of the great attributes to have in a teacher.”
Butler says Mrs. Adams also pushed to add an additional day to her work week. “I’ve had to open the building at her request so she can work on Saturdays. That’s just the attitude she adopts, to go over and beyond for our students here. I just appreciate Mrs. Adams for hearing the call to switch to education. If I could clone Mrs. Adams fifty more times, not only Berkeley Middle but schools in general would benefit from that spirit of dedication.”
When asked if she misses working in the industry, Mrs. Adams says, “I’ll tell you I work harder now than I ever did, that I’m more tired now than I ever was, but I absolutely love what I do, and I feel like what I’m doing makes a difference. I can’t imagine not being here.”
1. What was the main cause for Adams’ changing her job?| A．Her love of education. | B．Her lack of inspiration. |
| C．Her spirit of volunteering. | D．Her desire of being perfect. |
| A．learn critical thinking | B．enjoy science classes |
| C．have colorful activities | D．improve teaching effects |
| A．Adams can associate theory with practice. |
| B．Adams’ dedication will inspire more teachers. |
| C．Adams works overtime to teach students more. |
| D．Adams owes her success to her work experience. |
| A．Creative and competent. | B．Patient and imaginative. |
| C．Devoted and passionate. | D．Warm-hearted and modest. |
| A．Keep looking, don’t settle. | B．Action speaks louder than words． |
| C．To know oneself is true progress. | D．Live your passion, follow your dreams. |
10 . Students applying to colleges that use the Common Application should hand in an essay of 650 words. That includes the essay title, notes, and any other text that you include in the essay.
What Can You Accomplish in 650 Words?
Even if you take advantage of the full length available to you, keep in mind that 650 words is not a long essay. It’s roughly the equivalent of a two-page, double-spaced essay. Most essays tend to be between three and eight paragraphs depending on the applicant’s writing style and essay strategy.
As you plan your essay, you definitely want to keep the length requirement in mind. Many applicants attempt to do too much with their essays and then struggle to edit them down to 650 words. Realize the purpose of the personal statement is not to tell your life story or to give an exhaustive overview of all of your accomplishments. Let your list of extracurricular activities, academic record, letters of recommendation, and supplemental essays and materials show your range of accomplishments. The personal statement is not the place for long lists or catalogs of achievement.
To write an engaging and effective 650 word or shorter essay, you need to have a sharp focus. Narrate a single event, or illuminate a single passion or talent. Allow enough space for self-reflection so that whatever your topic is you spend at least some time talking about its significance to you.
Again, use the essay to narrate an engaging story. Make sure it highlights something you care about deeply, and be sure to provide a window into your interests or personality that isn’t already obvious from the rest of your application.
A Final Word About Essay Length
With the primary Common Application essay, you will need to come in at 650 words or fewer. However, you will find that most supplemental essays on the Common Application have different length guidelines, and colleges that don’t use the Common Application will have differing length requirements. No matter what the circumstances, make sure you follow the guidelines. If an essay should be 350 words, don’t write 370.
Finally, keep in mind that what you say and how you say it is far more important than whether you have 550 words or 650 words. If you’ve said all you have to say in 500 words, don’t try to pad your essay to make it longer. Regardless of length, the best writing will tell a compelling story, provide insight to your character and interests, and are written with crisp and engaging prose.
1. According to the passage, what might be a right thing to do while writing an essay?| A．To tell some interesting life stories. |
| B．To list all the possible achievements. |
| C．To show the range of accomplishments. |
| D．To highlight the focus of one single event. |
| A．should follow the guidelines. |
| B．can set his or her own limit accordingly |
| C．should make sure it no less than 650 words |
| D．can write more than 650 words when necessary |
| A．To stress the importance of essay writing. |
| B．To introduce methods of writing a good essay. |
| C．To advertise a writing course for college students. |
| D．To remind the applicants of the length of their essay. |
