1 . Have you ever made your life look a little more attractive on social media than it actually is? If so, you may be damaging your mental health.
The posts we make on social media platforms allow us to look back and see what we did on a given day. But what happens when, in an effort to impress our online friends, photos and videos we post become beautiful versions of the things we did?
A young girl named Sophia went out to a romantic anniversary dinner with her boyfriend, had a near relationship-ending fight during dessert, then came home and posted, “Had the best time out with the love of my life!”—even with a photo of the meal. No surprise, but according to a new study, Sophia was by no means unique. Two-thirds of users admit lying about their lives on social media with 20 percent of young people between the ages of 18 and 24 stating that they edit their own stories by frequently lying about relationships and promotions.
By beautifying our online stories, we are harming our memories. We start believing the stories we tell rather than remembering what really has happened. Soon, the real experience is lost and all that remains is the beautified version of history.
Scientists fear that these edited stories will end up changing our memories. It’s well confirmed through research that our own memories are often unreliable and can be easily controlled. Writing down one’s life in the form of a journal, or even on social media can help us keep our memories undamaged, but only if we tell the truth. And recording our experiences through whatever medium, to later recall lessons we have learned, is not only acceptable but desirable. In fact, looking back on our own past—however embarrassing or uncomfortable—is not just healthy but can be enjoyable.
1. Why did Sophia post her story with a photo of the meal?| A．To make herself attractive. | B．To show her photography skill. |
| C．To convince others of her story. | D．To show how amazing the meal was. |
| A．Encouraging. | B．Critical. | C．Humorous. | D．Enthusiastic. |
| A．recalling the unpleasant past can also be enjoyable |
| B．writing down our life on social media does no good to us |
| C．recording our experiences through media is unacceptable |
| D．editing our own stories will make us unreliable |
| A．Leaving others a good impression is desirable. |
| B．Editing our online stories weakens our memory. |
| C．Posting our experiences on social media is risky. |
| D．Beautifying our history ends up hurting ourselves. |
2 . Physical education, or PE, isn’t required for all high school students. In some schools, it isn’t offered for some different reasons. But should high school students have physical education? The answer is certainly “yes”.
Today many people don’t do sports. But as is known to all. doing sports is very important for an adult. Teaching teens the importance of a healthy lifestyle and making fitness plans now can help teens put exercise in the first place as an adult.
High school isn’t that easy. Many students are under a lot of stress. Stress can be harmful to a student’s studies and life. Doing sports can help them deal with stress better, helping them live a happier life at school.
The American Heart Association says that 10 million kids and teens suffer from obesity (肥胖). Teens should get 60 minutes of physical activity per day to control their weight and to help their bones get stronger. The increase in activities that don’t get teens to move around, such as computer games, means many teens don’t get their required exercise. PE classes act as a public health measure (措施) to encourage physical activities and help teens have healthy weights.
Not doing sports increases teens’ hazard of developing many diseases. An active lifestyle offers a good way of protection from these health problems. As much as 75 percent of health-care spending goes toward treating medical conditions that can be prevented by lifestyle changes, according to the American College of Sports Medicine.
According to the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition (PCFSN), students who performed five hours of physical activities each week improved their academic (学业的) performance. Students from programs with no physical activity, who used the extra time for classroom study, did not perform better on tests than those who gave up some study time in support of physical education.
1. According to Paragraph 2, what does physical education in high school mean?| A．Making teens attach importance to ęxercise later. |
| B．Removing the stress faced by teens at school. |
| C．Getting teens to encourage adults to exercise. |
| D．Helping teens learn to make good plans |
| A．Happiness. | B．Risk. | C．Safety. | D．Sadness. |
| A．means making students choose between sports and studies |
| B．helps students make good use of all their time |
| C．means students adjust to their studies better |
| D．helps students do better in their studies |
| A．Why high school students should receive physical education. |
| B．Why some schools consider physical education important. |
| C．How schools can help students love doing sports. |
| D．How high school students can live a better life. |
3 . Summer is a great time to hit the beach, but a few East Coast beach goers have recently had their fun in the sun turned into a nightmare. In July alone, there have been at least five known shark attacks at Carolina beaches. Although shark attacks are actually quite rare, these animals still inspire fear in ocean waters.
Skip feeding time.
You don't need to dump shark repellent（驱鲨剂）into the sea when you swim, but it helps to be less attractive as a target. Since sharks tend to attack individuals, swim or surf in groups. Don't wear brightly colored or high-contrast swimwear that is attractive to sharks, and leave the shiny jewelry at home in case of being mistaken for the scales（鳞片）of a fish.
Fight back.
When a shark wants to eat you, you'll know in advance: It will hunch its back, lower its fins, and rush at you in a zigzag pattern. Use your dive knife or anything else you' re packing to discourage it.
| A．Don't act like dinner. |
| B．Don't go into the water individually. |
| C．Also watch your movement in the water. |
| D．Nevertheless, the following three aspects could help. |
| E．If you have a surfboard or bodyboard, use it as a shield. |
| F．If you actually get trapped, avoid irregular movements and splashing. |
| G．The time of a day has always been a factor in a possible shark attack on humans. |
4 . A dying battery is a huge annoyance for cell phone users. But for engineers? It’s an inspiration. “Can we design a smartphone which can make a phone call and have a conversation without the need for any kind of battery?”
Shyam Gollakota is a computer scientist at the University of Washington. He and his team have indeed designed a battery-free phone. It looks like a circuit board（电路板）, with touch-responsive number buttons. And it runs on just a few microwatts of power, which it harvests from light, and from the radio signals coming from a nearby wireless base station.
The team achieved the battery-free, energy-efficient design by abandoning two of power-hungry features of modern cell phones. One, it skips digital-to-analog conversion（数模转换）. And two, it does not produce its own wireless signals to make calls. Instead, when receiving signals, it absorbs incoming radio waves from the base station, and changes them directly into vibrations（震动）of its speaker. When sending signals, it uses the vibrations of its onboard microphone to change the way radio waves are reflected back to the base station. And it works.
This piece of equipment does have limitations：It can be only 50-foot away from the base station. The voice quality is pretty low. And you can’t check Facebook either. “Yet, we’re going to get there. This is again a first step. Think of it as like：you need to make a first move to basically get someplace where you can harvest power to do other operations,” said Shyam.“Andit’s those other operations that will be extremely important. Because, battery or not, you could argue that voice calls are by now just a completely basic feature of our smartphones.”
1. What can we learn about the battery-free phone?| A．It is in a large size. | B．It has no need of power. |
| C．It is in the shape of a box. | D．It must rely on a nearby base station. |
| A．Radio waves. | B．Wireless signals. | C．Digital signals. | D．Microphone vibrations. |
| A．It has made great progress. | B．It will have a bright future. |
| C．It can’t function like a smartphone. | D．It has too many disadvantages. |
| A．Information on new types of battery. | B．A report about a science experiment. |
| C．News about the phone development. | D．An introduction to a new invention. |
5 . When you feel like everyone around you is having more fun and spending more time with friends, you might feel bad about yourself—even if it is not true. A study published by Whillans and her colleagues found that 48 percent of college freshmen believed that their friends had made more friends than they had since school began. In the study, more than 1,000 first-year students reported they had 3.63 close friends on average, but they believed their friends had 4.15 close friends.
According to Ashley Whillans, this fear of missing out on parties or events is actually very common. It may be particularly severe among college freshmen because entering into university is one of the key transition points in their life in establishing their identity in a new social environment. In other words, it’s their first taste of navigating social situations as an adult.
“Since social activities, like eating or studying with others, tend to happen in cafes and libraries where they are easily seen, students might overestimate (高估) how much their peers are socializing because they don’t see them eating and studying alone,” says Frances Chen, the study’s senior author and an assistant professor in the UBC psychology department.
Another study they published at the same time indicates that feeling left out made the students pretty unhappy. “This was surprising,” Whillans says, “because many high-achieving people—i.e. the ones most likely going to college—believe they’re better equipped than their peers to handle challenges. But when peers appear to be doing better socially, that can contribute to feelings that there’s something wrong with us.”
This study also suggests that for some people, feeling slightly behind on the friend curve (曲线) was motivating because the students’ view of how they were doing socially compared to peers changed several months later. It indicates that if people think making friends is something they can change and something they can get better at, they will work toward that goal.
Greg Walton, a psychologist at Stanford University, says that many first-year students could benefit from things like having older students share stories of how they felt left out socially as freshmen, or encouraging teachers to express criticism about students’ work in a more positive way.
1. What can we infer from the first two paragraphs?| A．It’s normal that you think others have more friends. |
| B．It’s obvious that you should believe in your friends. |
| C．It’s vital that you need more friends to enrich your life. |
| D．It’s possible that you have more friends as a freshman. |
| A．They have high expectations of themselves. |
| B．They lack enough courage to face challenges. |
| C．They have a strong desire to make achievements. |
| D．They lose good chances to show off their abilities. |
| A．Every dog has its day. | B．Every coin has two sides. |
| C．Actions speak louder than words. | D．All good things will come to an end. |
| A．To draw a logical conclusion. | B．To give a detailed explanation. |
| C．To provide a possible solution. | D．To show the outcome of the study. |
6 . Although problems are a part of our lives, it certainly doesn't mean that we let them rule our lives forever. One day or another, you'll have to stand up and say—problems, I don't want you in my life.
But good news is that all problems can be dealt with. Now read on to know how to solve your problems.
Talk, it really helps. What most of us think is that our problem can be understood only by us and that no talking is going to help.
Write your problems.
Don't lose faith and hope. No matter what you lose in life, don't lose faith and hope. Even if you lose all your money, family…you should still have faith.
Your problems aren't the worst. No matter what problem you get in life, there are another one million people whose problems are huger than yours.
Go about and solve your problems because every problem, however big or small, always has a way out.
| A．Of course, we've been fighting troubles ever since we were born. |
| B．When we have a problem, a pressing, critical, urgent, life-threatening problem, how do we try and solve it？ |
| C．Having a personal diary can also be of huge help if you don't want a real person to talk with. |
| D．But the truth is that when you talk about it, you're setting free the negative energies that have been gathering within you. |
| E．We can often overcome the problem and achieve the goal by making a direct attack. |
| F．Tell yourself：when they can deal with them, why can't I？ |
| G．With faith and hope, you can rebuild everything that you lose. |
7 . I wanted to be a journalist. But my parents reminded me that maths makes money, so off to an engineering school I went. In my post-university young-adult life, I’ve managed to become “conventionally successful”. As a female engineer, I worked for a big oil company and owned a home. My life was laid out in front of me, and I didn’t like what I saw.
So, I did what any respectable 24-year-old would do and left my life behind. I said goodbye to my boyfriend and pulled out my suitcase. I threw myself alone into the world with the grace and beauty of a baby deer taking its first steps with skateboards under its feet. I bloodied my knees riding a mountain bike through the red rocks of Utah. I went to a thermal (温暖的) bath party in Budapest. I spent four days trudging (费力地走) through Yellowstone with 50 pounds on my back. Two Peruvian women along my Andean trek taught me how to roast coffee and helped me practise Spanish. It wasn’t Vienna’s cultural museums; it was a sunny patch of grass beside the Danube river with someone from my hostel who quickly became a friend. It wasn’t Yellowstone’s Old Faithful Geyser (老实泉) launching into the air; it was charging through Montana’s ordinary landscape playing music so loud that the car windows shook. The truth is that I didn’t actually need to be abroad to have almost any of my favourite experiences. They were just small everyday moments that happened to happen abroad, leading me to realise that the true value of my flight tickets was not the landmarks, but rather becoming an active participant in my own life.
I now spend less time shopping online and more time lying alone on the floor listening to an album cover-to-cover. I ask my friends how they’re doing; sometimes, I surprise them with flowers to see them smile. I tell everyone to have a good day.
Maybe I’ll continue to be selfish for the next five years and touch down in more countries. Maybe I’ll stay grounded in my home city, but the idea no longer bothers me. Armed with new wisdom earned in a year of travel, I know with complete confidence that there’re adventures hiding in any aspect of my life—as long as I’m awake enough to look for them.
1. What can we know about the author from the first paragraph?| A．She preferred maths to journalism. | B．She found her work challenging. |
| C．She was dissatisfied with her life. | D．She dare not challenge her parents. |
| A．To introduce the landmarks she loved. | B．To prove the importance of travel. |
| C．To express her joy of being with new friends. | D．To show what she learnt from these journeys. |
| A．She has become more independent. | B．She begins to value her family’s opinion. |
| C．She begins to enjoy her daily life more. | D．She has become more interested in foreign cultures. |
| A．We shouldn’t pay attention to what others say. | B．We shouldn’t think life is better elsewhere. |
| C．It’s necessary to get out of your comfort zone. | D．Interest is the best teacher in choosing jobs. |
8 . You are the original teachers of our students,and your attitudes towards education are going to influence your kids. So let' s help each other and do the best for kids with five important steps:
1. Stop making excuses for your kids
Everyone makes mistakes, especially kids.
2.
If kids had a choice of what to eat they' d probably pick ice cream that is not nutritious. The same is true of doing homework一it' s usually not as much fun as diving into video games. So how do kids manage to turn homework in on time? The answer is good parenting.
3. Cut the distractions
Video games are the bane (烦恼之源) of every teacher’s existence. TVs, iPads, and the smartphone--all of these compete against developmental activities; like socialization, outdoor exercise, and reading books.
4. Model good habits at home
Kids learn from parents first and they learn from parents most.
5. Work with their teachers, not against them
| A．Help teachers out by cutting them out of your kids' daily activities |
| B．Make sure they' re doing their work |
| C．Thus, what you do, your kids will do |
| D．Be on our side |
| E．As such, the quality of our days is dependent on your leadership at home |
| F．It might be uncomfortable for a moment, but those are valuable experiences for your children |
| G．Education is built on being able to make mistakes and then face the consequences of them |
A. Amazon Rainforest Tour
B. Machu Picchu Tour
C. Cusco Tour
D. Lake Titicaca Tour
1. Alessandro, a hiking lover, hopes to spend some days hiking while enjoying the beautiful natural scenery. |
2. Elisabeth, who has retired recently, is planning for a leisurely vacation. She hopes to visit the museums, buy something special and taste some delicious food. |
3. Mike, a well-paid photographer, has great interest in adventuring and exploration. He hopes to have an active holiday and shoot some pictures of different kinds of birds. |
4. Alfred and his girlfriend hope to have a chance to experience local people’s life, and want to go traveling by boat in a romantic way. |
10 . The guy who tried to edit English
The English vocabulary is not only huge, but also full of words that mean practically(几乎) the same thing- Get, obtain, acquire. Shine, gleam, glow, sparkle.
That was the thinking of a British writer named C. K. Ogden, who in the 1930s proposed (提议) a new form of English with a vocabulary of just 850 words. He called the project Basic English
Ogden arrived at his 850-word list through experimentation, rephrasing texts over and over until he was satisfied. The words he finally included were not necessarily the shortest or most concrete.
Winston Churchill was a fan of the concept as a way to get foreigners to speak English, and he encouraged the BBC to use it.
| A．Do we really need them all? |
| B．How many words are there in English? |
| C．Ogden himself didn't actually use Basic English. |
| D．Plenty of seemingly basic words did not make the list at all. |
| E．He also tried to persuade President Franklin Roosevelt to promote it. |
| F．He believed it would make the language more efficient and easier to learn. |
| G．Despite attention from world leaders, Basic English never got very far off the drawing board. |
