1 . 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.

2 . 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.

3 . 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.

The Internet is an     1     (amaze) information resource. Students, teachers     2     researchers use it as     3     important tool. Journalists use it to find information for stories. Doctors use it to learn more about unfamiliar diseases and the     4     (late) medical development. Ordinary people use it for shopping, banking, bill-paying, and communicating with family and friends. People all over the world use it     5     (connect) with individuals from other countries and cultures. However, while there are many positive developments associated with the Internet, there are also certain fears and     6     (concern). One concern is a lack of control over what     7     (appear) on the Internet. With television and radio the editors will check the accuracy of the contents of programs, and with television there are limits on what kinds of programs can     8     (broadcast) and at what time of the day. However,     9     the help of the Internet, parents can check a published guide to determine what     10     (suit) for their children to see.

7 . Television has changed our lives in many ways. Many people now spend more time watching TV than doing anything else. Researchers in the USA has estimated (估计) that when most students leave school they have spent 11000 hours in the classroom and 22000 hours watching television. But what effect does this have?

Benefits (好处) of television:

1. Television helps us to learn more about the world and to know and see many new things. Television can offer present information to us in a more effective way than books. It can also make things more memorable.

2. It entertains (使欢乐) us. It is an enjoyable way to relax. For millions of people around the world, television is a source of companionship and helps them to cope with everyday life.

3. It has increased the popularity of sports and arts.

4. It has made us aware of our global responsibilities. In 2000, for example, 1.5 billion people in 147 countries watched a TV pop concert and helped to collect more than ＄100 million for people in Africa.

Dangers:

1. Television can make us passive (消极的). We don’t have to think and our brains become lazy.

2. It encourages us to buy things that we don’t need, and can make us unhappy with our own life.

3. It takes time away from activities such as reading, conversation, and games.

4. It gives a false picture of society. A study in 2003 showed that people who watch a lot of TV are more afraid of crime. They also think that there is a lot more crime than there really is.

5. Some critics (批评家) say that television make people violent. A ten-year study in the United States showed that children who watch violent television programmes are more likely to be violent themselves.

10 . Even though one out of three American children live within a mile of their schools, almost not half of those students often bike or walk to class, scientists report. Children who live in the South, in country areas, or who have college-educated parents, are among those least likely to bike or walk to school, which is reported in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Sarah Martin and her workmates at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) studied materials from more than 7,000 children between 9 and 15 years of age. They found that almost 35 percent of the children lived within one mile of their schools. Children between 11 and 13 years old were more likely to walk or bike than 9-year-olds. Children whose parents had a high school education were more likely to ride a bike or walk than children with college-educated parents.

“The majority of children are missing an opportunity to increase daily physical activity,” Martin said in a prepared statement. According to the CDC, nearly one in five (18.8 percent) children between 6 and 11 years old are overweight. Increased daily physical activity is one of the methods the CDC gives to help deal with the problem among children.

According to Martin, there are all kinds of reasons why children in city areas might be more likely to bike or walk to school. They pointed out the fact that if schools are in places where there are fewer safe sidewalks, the students will be less likely to ride or walk to school. The students should try to ride or walk to school as much as possible and parents are advised to pay great attention to their children’s health.