1 . The parents’ interpersonal strength, such as kindness, love, and social intelligence, is one of the salient points in nurturing their children. As social psychologist John Bowlby puts it, “We do as we have been done by.”
Here is the example of my grandmother. When other children came over to play with my mother, my grandmother would fix them delicious butter sandwiches-the crusts (面包皮) delicately removed from the bread for “the guests” but unavoidably left on for her own children. This is how we ought to treat guests in our home-guests are worthy of kindness, but you are not. The kindness that my grandmother modeled and instructed her children to emulate (效仿) was not ultimately what they experienced - kindness was seen but not felt.
Generally, we often treat others the way we ourselves were treated. So much of what we learn as children and adults is experience-dependent. First-hand experience, especially when repeated over time, literally shapes the brain and nervous system, with downstream consequences for the way we engage with the world around us, deal with emotions, and behave socially.
We don’t learn to love by being instructed to love; we learn to love by experiencing love. We don’t learn kindness by being told to be kind; we learn kindness by experiencing kindness in our darkest moments. Recent research shows that children who received help while playing a game were more likely to share with another child, possibly motivated by feelings of gratitude to the person who helped them. They could learn that they don’t just repay the kindness but they need to pay it forward.
This transforms one of the key questions about raising kids: Perhaps we should ask not how to teach our children kindness, but how we want our children to experience kindness from us. If we want to create a kinder society, we might start with policies that ensure kinder treatment of kids. This means reimagining our education and foster care systems around compassion and support. Science tells us that experiences of kindness in childhood have long-term, biological, intergenerational effects on children’s development; our parenting and political systems should reflect the science.
1. What does the underlined word “salient” in the first paragraph mean?A.Obvious. | B.Important. | C.Interesting. | D.Controversial. |
A.Understandable. | B.Instructive. | C.Disappointing. | D.Impractical. |
A.Action speaks louder than words. |
B.Kindness makes better cooperation. |
C.It is important to repay others’ kindness. |
D.Gratitude is a motivation for helping others. |
A.To give suggestions on parenting. |
B.To call on people to learn science. |
C.To show the advantages of being kind. |
D.To offer evidence supporting his point of view. |
1. What do people in China like using to pay nowadays?
A.Cash. | B.Credit cards. | C.Mobile payments. |
A.They will never equal Paypal. |
B.Old people don’t like to use them. |
C.Nearly everyone who has a smart phone is using them. |
A.Easy and safe. | B.Simple and free of charge. | C.Popular but awkward to use. |
3 . About ten years ago, logging into Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram would mostly show posts from friends and family in the order they were posted. Today, these platforms present a mix of content, tailored by algorithms (算法) to match users’ interests, whether it’s plants, sports, cats, or politics.
Kyle Chayka, a writer for The New Yorker, discusses this topic in his book, Filterworld. He explains that algorithms analyze user data to predict and influence what they will likely engage with. This means that instead of a simple, chronological feed, users encounter a dynamic stream, constantly adapting to their preferences. Chayka examines how these algorithmic recommendations control what we consume, from music and movies to food and travel destinations. He argues that this machine-driven selection process has turned us into passive consumers, making our preferences and tastes more similar.
Chayka points out that algorithms make us passive by always showing us content that we’re unlikely to click away from but won’t find too unexpected or challenging. This constant stream of recommendations reduces our exposure to diverse or challenging content, subtly shaping our preferences and behaviors.
Moreover, Chayka points out that algorithms also pressure content creators, like musicians and artists, to tailor their work to fit these digital platforms. For instance, musicians on Spotify or TikTok might focus on creating catchy hooks at the beginning of their songs to grab the listener’s attention.
Despite the strong presence of these algorithms, Chayka believes that regulation could reduce their influence. He suggests that if Meta, the parent company of Facebook, were required to separate its various services, like Instagram or WhatsApp, and make them compete with each other, it could give users more control and choice over their digital consumption.
In summary, the change from simple, time-ordered social. media posts to algorithm-driven content has a big impact on both the viewers and the creators, influencing what we see, hear, and even think. Chayka’s insights highlight the need for greater awareness and potentially more regulation in our increasingly digital world.
1. According to the text, how have social media platforms changed in the past ten years?A.They show posts in a time-based order. |
B.They prioritize posts from friends and family. |
C.They make adjustments to satisfy users’ needs. |
D.They provide more content to meet different needs. |
A.They make users more active consumers. |
B.They shape users’ preferences and behaviors. |
C.They reduce the influence of content creators. |
D.They expose users to diverse and challenging content. |
A.By encouraging musicians to create longer songs. |
B.By discouraging musicians from using catchy hooks. |
C.By giving musicians more control and choice over their music. |
D.By requiring musicians to create their work to fit the platforms. |
A.Tech companies should have more departments. |
B.Social media algorithms give content creators less opportunities. |
C.Social media algorithms flatten our culture by making decisions for us. |
D.Network platforms have increased the common recommendations for 10 years. |
4 . The U. S. is in the midst of a “loneliness epidemic”. For a lot of people, the feeling is even more noticeable during the holidays. In addition to the emotional impact of chronic loneliness, it has some dramatic health consequences: increased risk of heart disease and stroke, infections, cancer, even death.
People may feel lonely when their social needs are not met by the people around them. Laetitia Mwilambwe-Tshilobo, a social cognitive neuroscientist at Princeton University, says loneliness epidemic captures two distinct groups: first, people with a low number of social connections; second, people who feel they have poor quality existing relationships.
Elisa Baek, a social neuroscientist at the University of Southern California, co-authored a study that looked at whether lonely people view the world differently than non-lonely people, specifically among college freshmen. Baek found that while non-lonely people were all similar in their neural responses, lonely people had responses that were really different — not just from the non-lonely group, but also from each other. Baek says that these idiosyncrasies (特性) in how lonely participants process the world, “may pose challenges in how these people are able to achieve social connection and feel connected with others.”
To study these changes to the brain, Baek’s team collected fMRI data — a measure of blood flow changes in the brain — while first-year college students watched short videos to measure how similarly participants’ brains responded to the videos. The videos ranged from dramatic and comedic clips to instructional demonstrations in order to reproduce experiences participants might have in daily life. She says it’s the closest they could get to study people’s brain activity — and how they process the world — while they were going about their lives.
Mwilambwe-Tshilobo, who is not involved in the study, says the research accurately highlights how individual differences affect people in experiencing loneliness. “Trying to connect more deeply with one or two or three other people may be more important than to try to get to know everybody and being on good terms with everybody. It doesn’t have to be someone who is like-minded. It’s more like: How can we get on the same page with people who we might not start off on the same page with, but that might form deeper connections afterwards?” she adds.
1. Which description best characterizes the “loneliness epidemic”?A.Harmful mentally and physically. | B.Exclusive to people with few friends. |
C.Striking throughout the year. | D.Spreading between people. |
A.Its findings focus on the differences between lonely and non-lonely people. |
B.It targets freshman students at the University of Southern California. |
C.It casts light on how lonely people perceive the world. |
D.It challenges lonely people to be more social. |
A.To monitor the response speed. | B.To model everyday situations. |
C.To study the recreational activities. | D.To look into the brain structures. |
A.Expand the social network. | B.Befriend with those in high places. |
C.Seek out friends who think alike. | D.Deepen connections with patience. |
5 . In the coming era of budget cuts to education, remote learning could become a common thing.
The appeal to those in charge of education budgets to trade teachers for technology is so strong that they tend to ignore the disadvantages of remote learning. School facilities are expensive to build and maintain, and teachers are expensive to employ. It’s true that online classes do not require buildings and each class can host hundreds of people, which can result in greater savings, but moving away from a traditional classroom in which a living, breathing human being teaches and interacts with students daily would be a disaster.
Physically attending school has hidden benefits: interacting with peers and communicating with teachers are important skills to cultivate(培养)in young people. Moreover, schools are more than simple places of traditional learning. They are also places that provide meals, places where students receive mental help and other support.
Those policy-makers are often fascinated by the latest technology in education and its potential to transform education overnight. But online education does not allow a teacher to keep a struggling student after class and offer help. Educational videos may deliver academic content, but they are unable to make eye contact or assess a student’s level of engagement. Distance education will never match the personal teaching in a traditional classroom. In their first 18 years of life. American children spend only 9% of their time in school. Yet teachers are expected to prepare them to be responsible citizens, cultivate their social skills, encourage successful time management, and improve their capacity to compete in a competitive job market. Given these expectations, schools should not become permanently “remote”.
The power of the classroom is rooted in the qualities of the people gathered in the same place, at the same time, including their nature, empathy, devotion and so on. Technology, no matter how advanced, should simply be a tool of a good teacher.
1. What is one possible benefit of students attending school physically?A.Transforming traditional teaching. |
B.Eating nutritionally-well-balanced-meals. |
C.Growing into living and breathing human beings. |
D.Developing relationships with peers and teachers. |
A.It may reduce face-to-face interaction. |
B.It may make many teachers jobless. |
C.It may add to student’s financial burden. |
D.It may revolutionize classroom teaching. |
A.complexity | B.inequality | C.responsibility | D.capability |
A.It lacks humanity. | B.It can‘t meet personal needs. |
C.It is still not advanced. | D.It can’t track students’ growth. |
6 . “Few articles change owners more frequently than clothes. They travel downwards from grade to grade in the social scale with remarkable regularity,” wrote the journalist Adolphe Smith in 1877 as he traced a coat’s journey in the last century: cleaned, repaired and resold repeatedly; cut down into a smaller item; eventually recycled into new fabric. But with the improvement in people’s living standards, that model is mind-boggling in the era of fast fashion. The average British customer buys four items a month. And it is reported that 350,000 tonnes of used but still wearable clothes go to landfills in the UK each year.
Yet the gradual revival of the second-hand trade has gathered pace in the past few years. At fashion website Asos, sales of vintage clothes (古董衫) have risen by 92%. Clothing was once worn out of necessity, and now it is simply a way of life. Busy families sell used items on eBay, teenagers trade on Depop and some fashion people offer designer labels on Vestiaire Collective. Strikingly, it has become big enough business that mainstream retailers (零售商) want a slice of the action.
For some buyers and sellers, the switch to the second-hand is born of financial difficulties. Only a few have become worried about the impact of their shopping habit on the planet. But the shift is only a partial solution. Some people worry that some mainstream brands may “greenwash” — using second-hand goods to improve their image, rather than engaging more seriously with sustainability.
However, the biggest concern may be that people keep buying because they know they can resell goods, still chasing the pleasure of the next purchase but with an eased conscience (愧疚). Boohoo, a powerful fast fashion company, has seen sales and profits rise, despite concerns about environmental problems in its supply chain that led to an investigation last year.
A new Netflix series, Worn Stories, documents the emotional meanings that clothes can have: Each old item is full of memories. Actually, a handbag from a grandmother and a scarf passed on by a father are both valuable for us. A love of style is not a bad or an unimportant thing. But a committed relationship is better than a quick flash. Can we learn to appreciate our own old clothes as well as others’?
1. What does the word “mind-boggling” underlined in paragraph 1 probably mean?A.Unbelievable. | B.Popular. | C.Reasonable. | D.Influential. |
A.old clothes are more popular than new pieces |
B.the online second-hand markets are booming |
C.the fashion world begins to favor vintage clothes |
D.many clothing brands are innovative in their new products |
A.It makes people feel free to pursue fast fashion. |
B.It makes people more cautious about their budgets. |
C.It encourages people to choose eco-friendly clothes. |
D.It pushes people to be more engaged with sustainability. |
A.Old items have lost favor with the public. |
B.Old items are worthy of being long cherished. |
C.Older generations attach great importance to old items. |
D.Older generations care about the quality of their clothes. |
7 . Television has transformed politics in the United States by changing the way in which information is spread, by altering political campaigns, and by changing citizen’s patterns of response to politics. By giving citizens independent access to the candidates, television reduced the role of the political party in the selection of the major party candidates. By centering politics on the person of the candidate, television accelerated the citizen’s focus on character rather than issues.
Television has altered the forms of political communication as well. The messages on which most of us rely are briefer than they once were. The stump speech, a political speech given by traveling politicians and lasting 1 to 2 hours, which was popular in the nineteenth-century, has given way to the 30-second advertisement and the 10 second “sound bite” in broadcast news. Increasingly the audience for speeches is not that standing in front of the politician but rather the viewing audience who will hear and see a short video of the speech on the news.
In these simplified forms, much of what comprised the traditional political speech of earlier ages has been lost. In 15 or 30 seconds, a speaker cannot establish the historical context that shaped the issue in question, cannot detail the probable causes of the problem, and cannot examine alternative proposals to argue that one is preferable to others. In short videos, politicians assert (断言) but do not argue.
Because television is an intimate (亲密的) medium, speaking through it requires a changed political style that is more conversational, personal, and visual than that of the old-style stump speech. Reliance on television means that increasingly our political world contains memorable pictures rather than memorable words. Schools teach us to analyze words and print. However, in a world in which politics is increasingly visual, informed citizenship requires a new set of skills.
Recognizing the power of television’s pictures, politicians craft televisual, staged events designed to attract media coverage. Much of the political activity we see on television news has been crafted by politicians, their speechwriters, and their public relations advisers for televised consumption. Sound bites in news and answers to questions in debates increasingly sound like advertisements.
1. What do we know about “stump speech” in paragraph 2?A.It’s an event created by politicians to attract media attention. |
B.It’s an interactive discussion between two politicians. |
C.It’s a kind of political presentation typical of the nineteenth century. |
D.It’s a style of speech common to televised political events. |
A.politicians need to learn to become more personal |
B.attractive politicians are favored by citizens |
C.citizens tend to favor a politician who analyzed issues |
D.citizens need to learn how to evaluate visual political images |
A.Political presentations today are more like advertisements than in the past. |
B.Politicians today tend to be more familiar with the views of citizens than in the past. |
C.Citizens today are less informed about a politician’s character than in the past. |
D.Political speeches today focus more on details about issues than in the past. |
A.Television: an Agent of Change in Politics | B.Television: a Platform for Political Debate |
C.Television: an Alternative to Stump Speech | D.Television: a New Medium for Communication |
In recent years, China has been working hard to improve living conditions in rural areas through a program called the New Rural Development Initiative.
One important aspect of the initiative is the improvement of rural infrastructure
Another key focus is the promotion of modern agricultural
machinery, farmers are able to increase their productivity and income
Furthermore, the initiative emphasizes the importance of preserving traditional culture and heritage in rural communities. Efforts
Through the initiative, China is working hard to create a more prosperous (繁荣的) and
9 . Two new community initiatives offering the opportunity to borrow everything from sewing machines to party supplies are aiming to reduce waste and consumption.
Tools n Things Library in Leederville, Perth is a community library designed to allow community members to get access to the things they might need around the house instead of buying them in a hardware (五金店) store.
“That’s our philosophy — don’t buy, borrow. Many people buy things just for a small task at home, and then they won’t use them for a couple of years,” library volunteer Rex Breheny said.
The project is run by volunteers who founded it in 2019, and after an interruption in 2020 because of the pandemic (大流行病), it has now grown to several hundred members who can come and borrow things twice a week. In a way it is a return to an old tradition of neighbors borrowing each other’s tools and forming connections in the process.
Tools n Things Library is the first of its kind in Perth, and another called Share Shed has just started in Bassendean. Its co-founder Renee McLennan said they wanted to expand beyond tools to all sorts of things that people might use rarely, like camping equipment or entertaining needs.
“We’re doing the kind of equipment you’d use for a party. Instead of everybody buying disposable plates, and cups and things like that, we’ve got quality glasses and cutlery (餐具), as well as decorations that people can use for those events that they might have once a year,” she said.
The Share Shed is being considered as a way to tackle consumer culture. The world cannot continue to support our current level of resource consumption — at present overconsumption means that each year we consume 75 per cent more than the planet can regenerate.
“Borrowing items and shifting our thinking from an ownership to an access model helps to reduce the number of things that are produced and limits waste. At the same time, sharing the things that we use every now and then is a great way of connecting with people who live locally,” Bod Anderson, an officer in Perth said.
1. Why were the initiatives launched?A.To introduce two new communities. |
B.To advocate consuming fewer resources. |
C.To call on people to fight against pandemic. |
D.To encourage people to borrow daily necessities. |
A.It is out of use. | B.It is well received. |
C.It is out of fashion. | D.It is often interrupted. |
A.Wider options. | B.Better quality. |
C.Longer duration. | D.Newer equipment. |
A.Doubtful. | B.Supportive. | C.Critical. | D.Objective. |
10 . Housing officials say that lately they are noticing something different: students seem to lack the will, and the skill, to deal with ordinary conflicts. “We have students who are mad at each other and they text each other in the same room,” says a teacher. “So many of our conflicts are because kids don’t know how to solve a problem by formal discussion.”
And as any pop psychologist will tell you, bottled emotions lead to silent discontent (不满) that can boil over into frustration and anger. At the University of Florida, emotional conflicts occur about once a week, the university’s director of housing education says, “Over the past five years, roommate conflicts have increased. The students don’t have the person-to-person discussions and they don’t know how to handle them.” The problem is most dramatic among freshmen; housing professionals say they see improvement as students move toward graduation, but some never seem to improve, and they worry about how such students will deal with conflicts after college.
Administrators guess that reliance on cell phones and the Internet may have made it easier for young people to avoid uncomfortable encounters. Why express anger in person when you can vent (发泄) in a text? “Things are posted on someone’s wall on Facebook like: Oh, my roommate kept me up all night studying,” says Dana Pysz, an assistant director at the University of California, Los Angeles. “It’s a different way to express their conflict to each other, consequently creating even more conflicts as complaints go public.” In recent focus groups at North Carolina State University, dorm residents said they would not even deal with noisy neighbors on their floor.
Administrators point to parents who have fixed their children’s problems in their entire lives. Now in college, the children lack the skills to attend to even modest conflicts. Some parents continue to interfere (干涉) on campus.
1. What is the main reason for many roommate conflicts?A.Students are not good at reaching an agreement about the problems. |
B.Students are not satisfied with each other. |
C.Housing directors are not responsible for them. |
D.Students are not strong-willed. |
A.Students, especially freshmen, should bottle up their dissatisfaction. |
B.Students in Florida sit down and have a person-to-person talk once a week. |
C.Not all students are able to handle conflicts by the time they graduate. |
D.The number of conflicts among roommates has decreased in the past five years. |
A.Disapproving. | B.Indifferent. | C.Supportive. | D.Unclear. |
A.They should be involved in their children’s life on campus. |
B.They should deal with their children’s problems in their whole lives. |
C.They should constantly contact the administrators of the college. |
D.They should teach their children the skills to tackle the conflicts. |