1 . Have you heard of the term “tweenager”? It’s a slang (俚语) word used in the UK to describe children between about ten and twelve years old. They are between being a junior and a teenager. Why do the press and media refer to kids in this way?

Well, more and more companies now create products and services for tweenagers. They seem to tell us that tweenagers must have more money, freedom and influence upon their parents than they’ve ever had before.

Most children in the UK today get more pocket money than kids did a decade ago. Despite problems happening fairly often and regularly in the economy, parents generally have more money to give than before, since they are having fewer children on average than in the past. In addition, a higher divorce (离婚) rate in the UK makes parents try to compensate by buying presents for their children. It’s a bad habit for both parents and children to get into, but parents are under constant pressure from commercial marketing and the requests of their children.

You may wonder how tweenagers have more freedom than previous generations. Well, UK children today are very media- and computer-literate. They have access to much more information about life and the world. They may have experienced a lot in life as well. With such sophistication (老于世故) at such a young age, it’s no wonder tweenagers are able to influence their parents.

Now UK tweenagers are also very fashion-conscious and concerned about their images. In a world of television programs that promise immediate success and fame at a young age, some people think it’s extremely important to look fashionable.

So what does tweenage fashion look like? It’s lots of brightly colored materials, particularly pink, and usually plain, not patterned. There are plenty of bows, necklaces and bracelets, too.

But can it really be healthy for us to encourage kids to be like adults at a young age? Are we stealing childhoods in return for a bit of profit? Well, the UK government is certainly concerned, and for that reason has strict laws preventing companies from clearly and openly marketing their products and services to children.

1. What is the use of the first paragraph?

A．To explain a concept and bring up the topic.

B．To tell the difference between a junior and a teenager.

C．To show why people in the UK prefer to use the slang.

D．To state how the slang came into being and make a summary.

2. Why are more products and services created for tweenagers?

A．Because children education is becoming more important.

B．Because they are more affordable to tweenagers.

C．Because it is better to study music from an early age.

D．Because more companies are creating products and services.

3. What does the underlined word “compensate” in Paragraph 3 mean?

A．Keep company.

B．Reward.

C．Make up.

D．Motivate.

4. Why do tweenagers pay more attention to their appearance?

A．They are afraid of being laughed at by others.

B．They have less freedom than previous generations.

C．They wish to become successful and famous quickly.

D．They are encouraged to be like adults at a young age.

4 . Last summer, my fiancé Eugeniu and I decided to drive to Provence for a holiday. The weather was beautiful, but then, about 700km into the journey, it suddenly______. I’d never seen the sky go so dark; the rain was heavy. We__a tunnel and when we came out onto a ______, the visibility was so bad that we could hardly see a meter in front of us.

______, we had the odd sensation that the car was lifting at the front. The next second, we were__into nothing. On the way down, I could hear rock pieces hitting the car and my heart pounding to my chest. After that, there was__.

Our car ended up landing on a road below the bridge. We were still_____, but I was in shock. I hadn’t______what was happening and was still thinking about my holiday. I had no idea the bridge had _________-thought it might have been an earthquake.

At first we shouted, but then stopped because we didn’t want to lose_______and pass out. We tried calling an ambulance, but there was no ________under the rock pieces. My leg was bleeding and I was too tense-because of the_____   I didn’t feel pain. My fiancé had broken his neck. Rescue workers eventually found us while saving a man whose van was__________from another section of the bridge above us. We’d been down there for four hours by the time we were pulled out.

It was only afterwards in the hospital that I realized the_______of the tragedy-43 people had died. Before, we had focused on earning money. When we went on this holiday, I had lovely clothes and shoes in my suitcase, and they were all buried under the ruin. Maybe that was a sign that these things don’t really _________

1.

A．cleared

B．switched

C．warmed

D．worsened

2.

A．crawled in

B．went through

C．looked for

D．emerged from

3.

A．road

B．stage

C．beach

D．bridge

4.

A．At any price

B．From side to side

C．Back and forth

D．Out of nowhere

5.

A．falling

B．running

C．turning

D．disappearing

6.

A．surprise

B．relief

C．silence

D．luck

7.

A．conscious

B．excited

C．curious

D．panicked

8.

A．complained

B．observed

C．realized

D．expected

9.

A．landed

B．reopened

C．collapsed

D．disappeared

10.

A．face

B．confidence

C．weight

D．strength

11.

A．signal

B．assistance

C．feeling

D．demand

12.

A．medication

B．rescue

C．stress

D．hunger

13.

A．missing

B．hanging

C．escaping

D．calling

14.

A．scale

B．urgency

C．origin

D．process

15.

A．differ

B．function

C．hurt

D．matter

6 . A shocking 53.6 million metric tons of electronic waste was discarded last year, a new UN-backed report has revealed. The report shows that e-waste is up by 21% from five years ago. This isn’t surprising, considering how many more people are adopting new technology and updating devices regularly to have the latest versions, but the report also shows that national collection and recycling strategies are nowhere close to matching consumption rates.

E-waste contains materials including copper (铜), iron, gold and silver, which the report gives a conservative value of $ 57 billion. But most are thrown away or burned rather than being collected for recycling. Precious metals in waste are estimated to be worth $ 14 billion, but only $ 4 billion-worth is recovered at the moment.

While the number of countries with national e-waste policies has grown from 61 to 78 since 2014, there is little encouragement to obey and a mere 17% of collected items are recycled. If recycling does occur, it’s often under dangerous conditions, such as burning circuit boards to recover copper, which “releases highly poisonous metals” and harms the health of workers.

The report found that Asia has the highest amounts of waste overall, producing 24.9 million metric tons (MMT), followed by Europe at 12 MMT, Africa at 2.9 MMT, and Oceania at 0.7 MMT.

But whose responsibility is it? Are governments in charge of setting up collection and recycling points, or should companies be responsible for recycling the goods they produce? It goes both ways. Companies do need to be held accountable by government regulations and have incentives to design products that are easily repaired. At the same time, governments need to make it easy for citizens to access collection points and deal with their broken electronics in a convenient way. Otherwise, they may turn to the easiest option — the landfill.

1. What does the underlined word “discarded” most probably mean?

A．increased

B．distributed

C．thrown away

D．consumed

2. What do the statistics in Paragraph 2 show?

A．The functions of policies.	B．The great damage to environment.
C．The change of consumption rates.	D．The urgency of recovering e-waste.

3. What is the problem with recycling e-waste at present?

A．It does harm to the workers’ health.	B．It lacks national policy support.
C．It hardly makes profits.	D．It takes too much time.

4. How should the problem be solved according to the passage?

A．New technology should be used to update old devices.

B．Governments and companies should take responsibilities.

C．Non-poisonous metals had better be used in e-device.

D．Citizens must play a key role in recycling e-waste.

7 . 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.

2. What do we learn from the second paragraph?

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.

3. What is the attitude of Dana Pysz when he mentions roommates reveal their conflicts in the media?

A．Disapproving.

B．Indifferent.

C．Supportive.

D．Unclear.

4. What should parents do according to the passage?

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.

8 . School uniforms are becoming more and more popular across the U.S.A. That’s no surprise, because they offer many benefits. They immediately end the powerful social sorting and labeling (标记) that come from clothing. If all students are dressed in the same way, they will not pay too much attention to their clothing, and some of them will not be laughed at for wearing the “wrong” clothes.

Some people are against the strict rule of school uniforms, but they do not realize that students already accept a kind of rule — wanting to look just like their friends. The difference is that the clothing students choose for themselves creates social barriers; school uniforms tear those barriers down.

As in other places, uniforms remind the wearers of their purposes and duties. For example, when a man or woman puts on a police uniform, he or she becomes, for a time, the symbol of law and order. The uniform means to the wearer his or her special duties and sends the same message to everyone the wearer meets. People with different jobs wear uniforms of one kind or another. For students, the school uniform reminds them that their task for the six or seven hours they are in school is to get an education.

Some parents are unhappy about uniforms, saying that school uniforms will affect their children’s “creativity.” First, as noted above, the clothes students choose to wear do not necessarily express their individuality. They just copy their classmates. Second, students have the rest of the day to be as creative as they like. While they’re in school, their job is to master reading, writing, and maths; this should take up all the creativity they have. Mastery of those skills will be good for the students to build up their creativity in every way.

1. In Paragraph 1, the word “benefits” probably means ______.

A．tasks

B．messages

C．differences

D．advantages

2. From the passage we learn that uniforms in general _______.

A．prevent the wearers from being laughed at	B．help the wearers keep their duties in mind
C．are seen as a symbol of power	D．help to create social barriers

3. Some people are against school uniforms because ______.

A．they believe that uniforms will make students less creative

B．they fail to realize that students have accepted the uniforms

C．they don’t agree that uniforms can remove social barriers

D．they think that school uniforms are too popular

4. The author would probably agree that ______.

A．it makes no difference whether to wear school uniforms or not

B．students’ individuality may not come from school education

C．students’ creativity is related to the clothes they choose

D．school uniforms help to create equality among students

10 . Free Wi-Fi has become incredibly important to us: many stores and shopping malls offer it, restaurants use it to attract customers, and for libraries and coffee shops it is a must-have service.

Even when people are traveling, they scan for free Wi-Fi, which, according to research released by London’s Amba Hotel on Dec 4, has become the most important standard for selecting a hotel.

According to the survey, as many as 67 percent of travelers questioned said that free Wi-Fi would make them more likely to choose accommodation, above other things such as the hotel’s location and friendly staff. When rating a hotel that they’d already stayed in, six in ten travelers believed that unlimited Wi-Fi was the most important factor in their rating.

“Today, people treat their smartphones, tablets and laptop s like clothes when they are about to travel to some places. They will never forget to pack it into the suitcase,” said the Daily Mail. “We rely on free Wi-Fi heavily when traveling—especially when it comes to checking social media, searching for travel tips, and accessing websites.”

However, despite the opportunities that free Wi-Fi gives us, “our over-reliance on technology has come at a price, with travelers feeling unable to escape social media”, said Lonely Planet, the world’s largest travel guide brand.

Anita Isalska, Lonely Planet editor and tech addict, was forced to unplug when she was stuck in an isolated camp in Greenland recently. “Adjusting to this slower pace, it began to dawn on me: somewhere, somehow, social media had changed into a reflex(条件反射),”   she wrote. “I had believed I was capturing moments, but in reality my busy thumbs were preventing me from enjoying travel’s most profound pleasures. How fully can you appreciate a huge glacier or grassland of wildflowers when your brain is subconsciously selecting the right photo filter(滤镜), or the perfect six seconds to film?”

In September, the brand released 10 predictions for the future of global travel. One of them was that true escapes will be highly valued in future, so remote hotels will start to make their lack of Internet into a feature. Would you like to have an unplugged holiday?

1. Why do travelers attach importance to free Wi-Fi when selecting a hotel?

A．They think hotels with free Wi-Fi are likely to provide better service.

B．They believe hotels with free Wi-Fi usually have better locations.

C．They hope to enjoy more profound pleasures while using free Wi-Fi.

D．They depend on free Wi-Fi to check social media and access websites.

2. What does the underlined word “unplug” in Paragraph 6 probably mean?

A．Check social media.	B．Disconnect from digital devices.
C．Appreciate beautiful scenery.	D．Cancel a travelling plan.

3. What is the lesson Anita Isalska learned from the isolated camp she attended in Greenland recently?

A．Travelers should adapt to a slower pace when checking social media.

B．Travelers should take more photos and videos during their journeys.

C．Addiction to social media has negatively affected the quality of travel.

D．Beautiful scenery could be appreciated better if films are shot cautiously

4. What is the author’s main purpose in writing this article?

A．To argue against people’s over-reliance on Wi-Fi.

B．To promote the growing importance of free Wi-Fi in daily lives.

C．To predict what global travel will be like in the future.

D．To protest against travelers’ standard when selecting a hotel.