2 . You’ve heard that plastic is polluting the oceans — between 4.8 and 12.7 million tonnes enter ocean ecosystems every year. But does one plastic straw or cup really make a difference? Artist Benjamin Von Wong wants you to know that it does. He builds massive sculptures out of plastic garbage, forcing viewers to re-examine their relationship to single-use plastic products.

At the beginning of the year, the artist built a piece called “Strawpocalypse,” a pair of 10-foot-tall plastic waves, frozen mid-crash. Made of 168,000 plastic straws collected from several volunteer beach cleanups, the sculpture made its first appearance at the Estella Place shopping center in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Just 9% of global plastic waste is recycled. Plastic straws are by no means the biggest source (来源) of plastic pollution, but they’ve recently come under fire because most people don’t need them to drink with and, because of their small size and weight, they cannot be recycled. Every straw that’s part of Von Wong’s artwork likely came from a drink that someone used for only a few minutes. Once the drink is gone, the straw will take centuries to disappear.

In a piece from 2018, Von Wong wanted to illustrate (说明) a specific statistic: Every 60 seconds, a truckload’s worth of plastic enters the ocean. For this work, titled “Truckload of Plastic,” Von Wong and a group of volunteers collected more than 10,000 pieces of plastic, which were then tied together to look like they’d been dumped (倾倒) from a truck all at once.

Von Wong hopes that his work will also help pressure big companies to reduce their plastic footprint.

1. What are Von Wong’s artworks intended for?

A．Beautifying the city he lives in.	B．Introducing eco-friendly products.
C．Drawing public attention to plastic waste.	D．Reducing garbage on the beach.

2. Why does the author discuss plastic straws in paragraph 3?

A．To show the difficulty of their recycling.

B．To explain why they are useful.

C．To voice his views on modern art.

D．To find a substitute for them.

3. What effect would “Truckload of Plastic” have on viewers?

A．Calming.	B．Disturbing.
C．Refreshing.	D．Challenging.

4. Which of the following can be the best title for the text?

A．Artists’ Opinions on Plastic Safety

B．Media Interest in Contemporary Art

C．Responsibility Demanded of Big Companies

D．Ocean Plastics Transformed into Sculptures

3 . We live in a town with three beaches. There are two parts less than 10 minutes’ walk from home where neighborhood children gather to play. However, what my children want to do after school is pick up a screen — any screen — and stare at it for hours. They are not alone. Today’s children spend an average of four and a half hours a day looking at screens, split between watching television and using the Internet.

In the past few years, an increasing number of people and organisations have begun coming up with plans to counter this trend. A couple of years ago film-maker David Bond realised that his children, then aged five and three, were attached to screens to the point where he was able to say “chocolate” into his three-year-old son’s ear without getting a response. He realised that something needed to change, and, being a London media type, appointed himself “marketing director from Nature”. He documented his journey as he set about treating nature as a brand to be marketed to young people. The result was Project Wild Thing, a film which charts the birth of the World Network, a group of organisations with the common goal of getting children out into nature.

“Just five more minutes outdoors can make a difference,” David Bond says. “There is a lot of really interesting evidence which seems to be suggesting that if children are inspired up to the age of seven, then being outdoors will be on habit for life.” His own children have got into the habit of playing outside now: “We just send them out into the garden and tell them not to come back in for a while.”

Summer is upon us. There is an amazing world out there, and it needs our children as much as they need it. Let us get them out and let them play.

1. What is the problem with the author’s children?

A．They often annoy their neighbours.	B．They are tired of doing their homework.
C．They have no friends to play with	D．They stay in front of screens for too long.

2. How did David Bond advocate his idea?

A．By making a documentary film.	B．By organizing outdoor activities.
C．By advertising in London media.	D．By creating a network of friends.

3. Which of the following can replace the underlined word “charts” in paragraph 2?

A．records

B．predicts

C．delays

D．confirms

4. What can be a suitable title for the text?

A．Let Children Have Fun	B．Young Children Need More Free Time
C．Market Nature to Children	D．David Bond: A Role Model for Children

4 . It’s no secret that reading good news feels a lot better than reading bad news. Like, would you rather bite into a lemon, or sip on a fresh glass of lemonade?

    1    The world is full of problems and conflicts and we need to stay informed and alert (警觉的) to what’s going on around us. While reading traditional, more negative news is important, consuming good news is also part of staying informed.     2    And it also brings meaningful benefits, like reduced stress and anxiety, higher rates of engagement, community building skills, and inspiration for creating a better world. Plus, knowing what to look for in the good news landscape is a key part of improving our media literacy skills and being thoughtful news consumers.

In fact, good news, known as solutions journalism, is becoming more popular, as publishers and news stations discover the benefits of sharing positive stories. Good Good Good is one of them.     3     A team of reporters and editors there work daily to deliver stories that make readers feel hopeful and equipped to do more good with possible solutions.

“If it bleeds, it leads.” has long been a saying used in the media to describe how news stories about violence, death and destruction draw readers’ attention.       4     The thing is, however, there’s also good stuff out there—the delightful and kind parts of humanity. “Beautiful stories are happening worldwide.    5    When you do find them, the world can suddenly feel like a very different place. Good news is a vital part of how we learn about the world and solving the world’s problems.” Hervey, one of Good Good Good’s editors said.

A．Share good news with people around you.

B．It’s just that we don’t hear as much about them.

C．But the “bad news” has its place in the world.

D．It provides a more balanced view of the world.

E．And so, negative news stories are everywhere on news media.

F．Heartwarming stories make you cry and feel good.

G．The news media company is devoted to providing good news intentionally.

5 . One of the curious things about social networks is the way that some messages, pictures, or ideas can spread like wildfire while others that seem just as catchy or interesting barely register at all.

Before you go deep into the puzzle, consider this: If you measure the height of your male friends, for example, the average is about 170 centimeters. You are 172 and your friends are all about the same height as you are. Indeed, the mathematical concept of “average” is a good way to capture the nature of this data set.

But imagine that one of your friends was much taller than you. This person would dramatically skew the average, which would make your friends taller than you, on average. In this case, the “average” is a poor way to capture this data set.

Exactly this situation occurs on social networks. On average, your coauthors will be cited more often than you, and the people you follow will post more frequently than you, and so on.

Now Lerman from University of Southern California has discovered a related paradox, which they call the majority illusion. They illustrate this illusion with an example. They take 14 nodes linked up to form a small network. They then color three of these nodes and count how many of the remaining nodes link to them in a single step.

In one situation, the uncolored nodes see more than half of their neighbors as colored. This is the majority illusion — the local impression that a specific feature is common when the global truth is entirely different.

So how popular is it in the real world? It’s found out that the majority illusion occurs in almost all network scenarios. “The effect is largest in the political blogs network, where 60% of nodes will have majority active neighbours, even when only 20% of the nodes are truly active,” says Lerman.

It immediately explains many interesting phenomena. For a start, it shows how some content can spread globally while other similar content does not — the key is to start with a small number of well-connected early adopters fooling the rest of the network into thinking it is common. The affected nodes then find it natural to follow the trend. A real spread finally comes into being.

But it is not yet a marketer’s charter. For that, marketers must first identify the popular nodes that can create the majority illusion for the target audience. These influencers must then be persuaded to adopt the desired behavior or product, which is essential to the prospect of the marketing plan.

1. The phrase skew the average in the passage most probably refers to the action of ________.

A．hiding the real average to be unrecognizable to others

B．producing an average against the general feature of data

C．working out the common feature suggested by the average

D．ignoring the average because of the frequency by which it is reviewed

2. Which of the following statements is TRUE according to the passage?

A．Majority illusion rarely has impacts except in political blogs field.

B．The majority illusion on social networks relies on that people you follow post more than you.

C．The essence of successful opinion spread is to initiate the trend with well-connected sharers.

D．The spread scale of ideas on networks mainly depends on the quality of content.

3. To guarantee the success of marketing promotion, it’s vital to ________.

A．thoroughly understand the concept of majority illusion

B．accurately figure out who is the powerful person to affect others

C．definitely decide who are the target audience for the promotion

D．successfully convince the influencers to practice certain action

4. What is most probably the title of the passage?

A．The social network vision that tricks your mind.

B．Who is stealing your network identity?

C．Minority network opinion spread, curse or blessing?

D．Have you been misled during the last political voting?

6 . 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.

2. It is suggested in paragraph 4 that ________.

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

3. What can we infer from the passage?

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.

4. What’s the best title for the passage?

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

9 . Technology seems to discourage slow, immersive reading. Reading on a screen, particularly a phone screen, tires your eyes and makes it harder for you to keep your place. So online writing tends to be more skimmable and list-like than print. The cognitive neuroscientist Mary Walt argued recently that this “new norm” of skim reading is producing “an invisible, game-changing transformation” in how readers process words. The neuronal circuit that sustains the brain’s capacity to read now favors the rapid absorption of information, rather than skills developed by deeper reading, like critical analysis.

We shouldn’t overplay this danger. All readers skim. Skimming is the skill we acquire as children as we learn to read more skillfully. From about the age of nine, our eyes start to bounce around the page, reading only about a quarter of the words properly, and filling in the gaps by inference. Nor is there anything new in these fears about declining attention spans. So far, the anxieties have proved to be false alarms. “Quite a few critics have been worried about attention span lately and see very short stories as signs of cultural decline,” the American author Selvin Brown wrote. “No one ever said that poems were evidence of short attention spans.”

And yet the Internet has certainly changed the way we read. For a start, it means that there is more to read, because more people than ever are writing. If you time travelled just a few decades into the past, you would wonder at how little writing was happening outside a classroom. And digital writing is meant for rapid release and response. An online article starts forming a comment string underneath as soon as it is published. This mode of writing and reading can be interactive and fun. But often it treats other people’s words as something to be quickly harvested as fodder to say something else. Everyone talks over the top of everyone else, desperate to be heard.

Perhaps we should slow down. Reading is constantly promoted as a social good and source of personal achievement. But this advocacy often emphasizes “enthusiastic”, “passionate” or “eager” reading, none of which adjectives suggest slow, quiet absorption.

To a slow reader, a piece of writing can only be fully understood by immersing oneself in the words and their slow comprehension of a line of thought. The slow reader is like a swimmer who stops counting the number of pool laps he has done and just enjoys how his body feels and moves in water.

The human need for this kind of deep reading is too tenacious for any new technology to destroy. We often assume that technological change can’t be stopped and happens in one direction, so that older media like “dead-tree” books are kicked out by newer, more virtual forms. In practice, older technologies can coexist with new ones. The Kindle has not killed off the printed book any more than the car killed off the bicycle. We still want to enjoy slowly-formed ideas and carefully-chosen words. Even in a fast-moving age, there is time for slow reading.

1. What is the author’s attitude towards Selvin Brown’s opinion?

A．Favorable.

B．Critical.

C．Doubtful.

D．Objective.

2. The author would probably agree that          .

A．advocacy of passionate reading helps promote slow reading

B．digital writing leads to too much speaking and not enough reflection

C．the public should be aware of the impact skimming has on neuronal circuits

D．the number of Internet readers is declining due to the advances of technology

3. What does the underlined word “tenacious” in Paragraph 6 probably mean?

A．Comprehensive.

B．Complicated.

C．Determined.

D．Apparent.

4. Which would be the best title for the passage?

A．Slow Reading Is Here to Stay

B．Digital Technology Prevents Slow Reading

C．Screen vs. Print: Which Requires Deep Reading?

D．Reading Is Not a Race: The Wonder of Deep Reading

10 . Two and a half millennia ago, Socrates complained that writing would harm students. With a way to store ideas permanently and externally, they would no longer need to memorize. However, studies today have found that writing on paper can improve everything from recalling a random series of words to better understanding complex concepts.

For learning material by repetition, the benefits of using a pen or pencil lie in how the motor and sensory memory of putting words on paper reinforces that material. The scribbling (涂鸦) on a page feeds into visual memory: people might remember a word they wrote down in French class as being at the bottom-left on a page.

One of the best-demonstrated advantages of writing by hand seems to be in note-taking. Students typing on computers wrote down almost twice as many words directly from lectures, suggesting they were not understanding so much as rapidly copying the material. However, handwriting forces note-takers to process and organize ideas into their own words. This aids conceptual understanding at the moment of writing, resulting in better performance on tests.

Many studies have confirmed handwriting’s benefits, and policymakers have taken note. Though America’s curriculum from 2010 does not require handwriting instruction past first grade (roughly age six), about half the states since then have required more teaching of it. In Sweden there is a push for more handwriting and printed books and fewer devices. England’s national curriculum already includes the teaching of basic cursive writing (连写体) skills by age seven.

However, several school systems in America have gone so far as to ban most laptops. This is too extreme. Some students have disabilities that make handwriting especially hard. Nearly all will eventually need typing skills. Virginia Berninger, professor of psychology at the University of Washington, is a longtime advocate of handwriting. But she is not a purist; she says there are research tested benefits for “manuscript” print-style writing but also for typing.

Socrates may or may not have had a point about the downsides of writing. But no one would remember, much less care, if his student Plato had not noted it down for the benefit of future generations.

1. According to the text, why does writing on paper have benefits for learning?

A．It provides visual enjoyment in class.

B．It improves the effect of memorization.

C．It promotes the motor and sensory ability.

D．It helps to remember the information forever.

2. How does the author show the emphasis on handwriting instruction at school?

A．By giving examples.	B．By providing statistics.
C．By making comparisons.	D．By making classification.

3. What is paragraph 5 mainly about?

A．Difficulties faced by the disabled.

B．Unreasonableness of forbidding typing.

C．The research-tested benefits of typing.

D．The longtime advocacy for handwriting.

4. Why does the writer mention Socrates and Plato in the last paragraph?

A．To thank Plato for his efforts.

B．To defend Socrates’ point of view.

C．To show people’s indifference to typing.

D．To confirm the importance of handwriting.