As an independent, self-reliant person who always handled everything by myself, I didn’t expect parenting to be hard. Oh, sure, it’s difficult for other people. I heard parents complaining all the time — kids are challenging; nothing is ever clean; there’s not enough time in the day to do everything. But that was “other people” and I knew I could handle it. How complicated could it be?
I’d always dreamed of adopting a child, and finally my dream came true one summer afternoon. Even though we had requested only one child, the worker asked, “Could you take another baby and his eleven-year-old brother?” Of course, we could. We had room to have all three boys together.
The first week after they moved in, I spent my days rushing from task to task, cleaning and making sure they had all they needed. I constantly organized our living room, which was suddenly full of toys, and picked up the path of destruction left in the boys’ wake. Cooking and cleaning after meals and snacks seemed to take half of my day. I hardly ever sat; something always needed to be done.
“I think we need a break,” my husband told me one evening as I was falling asleep on the couch as usual.
“No,” I refused. The idea of sending them to a stranger sickened me. However, with each passing day, I was growing more and more exhausted. Besides meeting the physical needs of the boys, there were medical and emotional needs. Both the little ones constantly clung (黏住) to me. It was never quiet in our house; I felt overwhelmed.
One night, my husband said firmly that he needed a break. Whether I “needed” one or not, we were going to take one. With tears rolling down my cheeks, I nodded, knowing it was true, although I didn’t want to admit my weakness.
I called my parents.
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Asking for help is something I must keep re-learning as time goes on, but it’s getting easier.
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3 . Imagine you need milk, so you go to the grocery store to pick some up, only to find there are dozens of options. These days, you have to make a decision on not only the percentage of fat you want, but also what source you want your milk to be coming from: cows, soybeans... You have no idea what milk to pick. There are so many choices that you are confused.
This phenomenon is known as the paradox (悖论) of choice and it is becoming a concern in the modern world, where more and more options are becoming easily available to us. While we might believe that being presented with multiple options actually makes it easier to choose one that we are happy with, and thus increases consumer satisfaction, having too many options actually requires more effort to make a decision and can leave us feeling unsatisfied with our choice.
The idea was popularized by American psychologist Barry Schwartz when he published his book, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. Schwartz, who has long studied the ways in which economics and psychology intersect (交叉), became interested in seeing the way that choices were affecting the happiness of citizens in Western societies. He identified that the range of choices that we have available to us these days is far greater than that people had in the past; however, consumer satisfaction has not increased as much as traditional economics theories might expect.
Schwartz identified that the paradox of choice carries the most consequence for people that are maximizers. Maximizers, unlike satisficers, are concerned with making the best choice instead of simply making a choice that they are happy with. When there are many options available to maximizers, it becomes harder for them to determine which is the best, which can cause them to feel a great deal of regret after they have made a choice.
Instead of believing that freedom of choice is unlimited, Schwartz advocates that the role of psychology and behavioral economics should be to find the kind of limitations on freedom that can lead to the greatest level of happiness within society.
1. What’s the author’s purpose in mentioning buying milk in paragraph 1?| A．To lead in the topic. |
| B．To draw a conclusion. |
| C．To show that we have more choices when shopping. |
| D．To indicate that people pay greater attention to health when shopping. |
| A．More options mean less satisfaction. |
| B．Consumer satisfaction has greatly increased. |
| C．People are happy with more choices. |
| D．Modern people are happier than their ancestors. |
| A．They aim for the very best. | B．They tend to follow their feelings. |
| C．They often regret their decisions. | D．They have trouble making a decision. |
| A．Hold on to their beliefs. | B．Accept their own behavior. |
| C．Give up freedom. | D．Limit their own choices. |
A SPECIAL DAY
When the 6 a. m. alarm went off on Father’s Day, Helen’s parents were awakened with a loud bang as she smashed (打碎) the piggy bank with hammer. “What’s wrong?” exclaimed by Helen’s mother, but Helen said it was a secret. She picked up the money on the ground, and rushed to the shoe cabinet to find father’s shoes secretly. Ten minutes later, Helen came out of the door with a piece of paper in her hand without telling anyone.
Helen hurried to a shoe shop and said to the salesman, “I want to buy a pair of shoes for adults. Can you recommend one for me?” The salesman said, “What size do you want?” Helen immediately took a piece of paper out of her bag and gave it to the assistant. “Why are there shoes prints on the paper?” asked by the clerk curiously. Helen said, “It was my little idea. I drew a picture of my dad’s shoes with a pen, and it was a great way to get the right shoes for him without letting him know.” At the salesman’s recommendation, Helen chose a pair of shoes, because her father had not bought a pair of good shoes for a long time, and his shoes were worn out and always wet on rainy days. The salesman took different sizes of shoes to make a comparison with the shoes on the paper, and finally decided on the right size. Then he smiled and handed it to Helen.
Helen took out a pile of one-dollar coins from her bag, and said to the clerk, “Here is all the pocket money I have saved.” The salesman was amazed by this 6-year-old girl when counting the coins. He said to Helen, “Your money is just enough, you are a good girl and your father will be very happy for that.”
注意：
1、所续写短文的词数应为150词左右;
2、续写部分分为两段，每段的开头语已为你写好。
Paragraph 1:
When Helen returned home, she found her father standing at the door, angry but worried.
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Paragraph 2:
Helen took out the new shoes for her father from her bag.
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1. How much snow can people see this morning?
| A．A lot. | B．A little. | C．None. |
| A．About five degrees. | B．About two degrees. | C．About zero degree. |
| A．Tomorrow. | B．This weekend. | C．Next Monday. |
| A．A sports report. | B．Another weather report. | C．A speech by the president. |
December strode (阔步走) into the mountains of Colorado, shooting snowflakes and blowing them into a thick blanket of white. As Christmas approached, the farmers there closed down most wooden houses for a holiday cheer. Not all were closed, however. There was still work to be done, and someone had to stay. That someone was Slim Carter.
Old Jake, another farmer there, had offered to keep him company, but Slim shook his head. “After all, a young man like me has got plenty of Christmases ahead,” Slim joked. Before Jake offered to stay again, Slim hurried on. “I’ll just have a private Christmas this year, and that’s the way I want it.” So he was left alone at the house. Alone, with his horse in the farm and the wolves roaring in the forest nearby.
Truth was, Slim had decided not to celebrate Christmas at all. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Christmas. In fact, his Christmas memories were good ones. His mother would fill their house with the light of candles and the smell of candy. His father would make their Christmas tree hunt an all-day, men-only affair. Slim smiled as he remembered sitting on the broad back of their horse with the freshly cut tree along behind. Back home, they would cover the tree with paper snowflakes and homemade decorations and sing all the Christmas songs they knew. And that’s the way he liked it. Those were the memories he pulled out on nights when he was working alone. Such memories warmed him inside, even if his outsides were aching with cold.
This was Slim’s first year away from home. “Christmas is nothing if not spent with family,” Slim declared to the empty house. That was the real reason he’d sent Jake away. He figured he would handle Christmas better if he just pretended it was an ordinary winter workday.
But on Christmas Eve, as Slim headed back with snow beneath his feet and stars overhead, his head hung low. It was Christmas, even without the tree and the gifts. Christmas, and he was all alone.
注意：1.续写词数应为150左右；
2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Then he remembered decorating the tree with his family again.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________While singing to his decorated Christmas tree, Slim heard a knock on the door.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________1. What is Uncle Meyer?
| A．A teacher. | B．A librarian. | C．A historian. |
| A．The zoo. | B．The museum. | C．The library. |
| A．Support museums. | B．Study Chinese. | C．Go on a trip to China. |
| A．Four. | B．Three. | C．Two. |
8 . In South Korea, students should pay for everything they learn in classes from K-pop auditions to real estate deals. Now, top Korean firms are introducing artificial intelligence in hiring and job seekers want to learn how to defeat the robots to get a job.
Many major South Korean companies like SK Innovation and Hyundai use AI in hiring, which generates classes for AI hiring booming fast. Career advisor Park Seong-jung is now offering a three-hour training course in handling recruitment, screening by computers, not people.
Preparing for such tests doesn’t necessarily involve simply memorizing answers. “Don’t force a smile with your lips,” Park Seong-jung told students looking for work in a recent session, one of many in which he said he has conducted for hundreds of people. “Smile with your eyes.”
One AI video system reviewed by Reuters asks candidates to introduce themselves, during which it spots and counts facial expressions including “fear” and “joy” and analyses word choices. It then asks questions that can be tough: “You are on a business trip with your boss and you spot him using the company credit card to buy himself a gift. What will you say?”
Kim Seok-wu, a 22-year-old senior at a top university, recently failed to get beyond an AI interview for a management position at a retail company. “I think I will feel hopeless if all companies go AI for hiring,” Kim said. “The AI interview is too new, so job hunters don’t know what to prepare for and any preparations seem meaningless since AI will read our faces if we make something up.”
1. Why do students in South Korea pay to study courses like AI hiring?| A．They want to be more competitive when faced with AI interview. |
| B．Big companies are in favor of it and want them to beat the androids. |
| C．They want to learn some AI knowledge and learn how to smile before AI. |
| D．AI can analyze their facial expressions and help to prepare for the interviews. |
| A．By making a self introduction and answering some questions. |
| B．By asking interviewees how to deal with the boss’s asking for a gift. |
| C．By looking at what words the interviewees use when answering difficult questions. |
| D．By demanding an introduction, observing facial expressions and asking challenging questions. |
| A．Supportive. | B．Disapproving. | C．Uncaring. | D．Contradictory. |
| A．A news report. | B．A job interview. |
| C．Scientific paper. | D．A job-seeking lecture. |
1. What is the talk mainly about?
| A．How to improve self-confidence. |
| B．How to write a good speech. |
| C．How to get high grades. |
| A．His classmate. | B．His teacher. | C．A drama actor. |
| A．Sales. | B．Education. | C．Drama. |
| A．Facing mistakes bravely. |
| B．Taking part in the school play. |
| C．Talking with the head teacher. |
I had a secret. I had been considering the decision for some time, but hadn’t discussed it with anyone. As an English Language Arts teacher in my fourth year, I had to leave my beloved profession.
I kept praying for a sign to stay, but my father was very ill and needed someone to take care of him. Although many students liked my class and I had received hundreds of letters from former students appreciating my influence on their lives, I still made this difficult decision.
It was nearing the end of what I had come to think of as my last year. A senior named Lyric, who was my assistant, asked if I could meet him and another student named Ari for dinner to discuss how to prepare for college. I agreed but didn’t think anything of it.
It was on a Saturday evening and my schedule for that day was already packed. I attended an academic conference that morning and then spent the next four hours at the boys’ basketball game where I was the assistant coach of the school team. By the time the game ended, I had about an hour to get to the dinner. I was so tired that I almost called Lyric to re-schedule. But I had promised, so I got in my car and headed to the restaurant.
As I was walking up to the restaurant, I saw Lyric, Ari, and Sal, another former student, all dressed up. I asked Lyric, “Why are you guys so dressed up?” He responded, “Follow us and you’ll see. “The three of them led me to the outside patio (露台) where there was a long table full of some forty students. They had decorated the patio with fairy lights and flowers, and the table was adorned (装饰) with a beautiful tablecloth and candles. They had even prepared my favorite dishes and drinks!
注意：
1.续写词数应为150左右；
2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Paragraph1
When they saw me, they all stood up and started clapping.
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Paragraph2
A week later, I was voted Teacher of the Year.
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