1 . Are you happy with your appearance?
“Almost all the girls with single-fold eyelids (单眼皮) in our class have had double eyelid operations,” Zeng, a Senior 2 student from Chengdu, told Xinhua. Zeng had the same surgery done this summer.
From popular photo-editing apps to plastic surgery (整形手术), it seems that large eyes, pale skin and a skinny body are the only standard for beauty these days. But can following this standard really make us feel good about ourselves?
“Many teenagers are upset about their appearance because they believe in unrealistic standards of beauty,” experts say.
However, trying to live up to strict standards can make us feel anxious. What troubles us is not just our “imperfect” looks, but the fact that we criticize ourselves too much.
A.Beauty comes in all shapes and sizes. |
B.Body image anxiety is common among teenagers. |
C.Guys care just as much as girls do about their body image. |
D.Some teenagers might feel negative about their appearance. |
E.It’s common for teenagers to feel confident about their appearance. |
F.She and many of her classmates believe bigger eyes look more beautiful. |
G.Perfect faces and bodies are everywhere in advertising, TV shows and social media. |
After staying at home and taking care of her baby for nearly two years, Rebecca found it hard to make a decision between accepting an attractive offer from her former employer and going on looking after her son Tony at home. She talked, with her husband David, about sending Tony to a childcare center. David gave it a careful thought and decided to leave his job for a year to take care of Tony before he could be sent to a kindergarten, promising to be a super Dad and househusband. It was good news for Rebecca but she knew her husband too well. It would take David some time to get used to finicky(细致的) jobs of taking care of Tony. So she told David she wanted hourly updates on how Tony was handling his day away from Mom.
David was adapting quickly. He texted updates throughout the day, getting hourly instructions from Rebecca. It seemed that David was enjoying his new role and Tony liked the company of Dad, although they often got the home messy. What Rebecca didn’t expect is that David became famous on social media as Super Dad, because people liked watching the videos he posted.
One day, he sent his usual text updates and included a photo of Tony in his car seat during their trip to Walgreens. Rebecca’s reply was to correct Tony’s position in the car seat. And she reminded David that the straps(肩带) were too loose and the chest clip was too low. David laughed at his nagging(絮叨的) wife and rolled his eyes before tightening the car seat and fixing the chest clip. Fifteen minutes later, Rebecca’s phone rang with a call from her husband, “Honey, we had a car accident. We are fine, but the car is going to be totaled(彻底毁坏).”
注意:
1.续写词数应为150个左右;
2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Less than three miles from their house, David told Rebecca, a woman had pulled into traffic to turn left.
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Rebecca was so thankful that her husband took the extra one minute to put Tony in his car seat safely.
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3 . As you read this, pause to reflect on your recent interactions. As a politician, husband, and father, I encounter various spoken language styles: analytical or chatty, formal or informal, pointed or gentle, cooperative or decisive. Talk is the currency of politics. It is our way of negotiating, debating, and persuading. Talk is also the currency of learning-how we develop our ideas, deepen our thinking and share our feelings.
That’s why I want speaking skills, sometimes called “oracy”, to play an important part in Labor’s plans for a reformed school curriculum (课程).
Employers value speaking skills equally with reading and writing. The ability to speak well and express yourself should be something every child should master. But the curriculum doesn’t allow us to provide this. This is short-sighted. An inability to express your thoughts fluently is a key barrier to getting on and doing well in life.
Oracy is in part about good public speaking and debating skills, but in reality, it’s about teaching young people to make strong arguments, choose wise words, understand their audience, form meaningful social connections, and use facial expressions and body language to convey their message. Above all else it’s about finding your voice. To work out who you are and what you believe. If reading opens up a world of imagination and possibility, then speaking and listening opens up a lifetime of empowerment-a chance for those who feel invisible in their own country to be heard. It is about the confidence to speak out, to call out injustice or harm.
And the other side of speaking is listening, which can also be taught. Listening, truly listening, develops tolerance and understanding. And as parents we can play our part. We’ve all been there, at mealtimes, silent as we all stare at our devices. Our job, all of ours, is to get off our screens and give young people, and adults, the gift of listening.
So, oracy―speaking and listening―needs to be placed firmly at the heart of school life.
1. How does talk help a politician?A.It deepens his wishful thinking. |
B.It enhances his analytical skills. |
C.It strengthens persuasive power. |
D.It provides emotional support. |
A.Employers underestimate the value of speaking. |
B.Academic pressure makes students poor-sighted. |
C.Spoken language is regarded as least important. |
D.Oracy should deserve more attention at school. |
A.By sharing different opinions. |
B.By clarifying the definition. |
C.By describing personal experiences. |
D.By employing the concept. |
A.Set a good example for their children. |
B.Balance screen time and mealtime. |
C.Have oral face-to-face communication. |
D.Disconnect from the virtual world. |
4 . TikTok has pushed a new safety update to its app that allows parents to take more control of their teenager’s accounts, as social media companies come under increasing pressure to make their platforms safer for children.
The company said that its Family Pairing now enables parents to turn off comments on their children’s videos entirely or limit them to friends only. Parents whose accounts are linked to their kids will also be able to set their accounts to private ones, turn off the search function for content or users, and limit who can see which videos their children have liked.
The Family Pairing lets parents see how long their children are spending on TikTok each day and limit the content they can see.
TikTok allows children to register (注册) and create an account if they’re over the age of 13. All they need to do is provide their date of birth. However, because TikTok doesn’t require registrants (注册人) to prove their identities, some children under 13 have registered by lying about their age, according to U.K. regulator Ofcom (英国通信管理局)
Alexandra Evans, head of child safety public policy for TikTok in Europe, told CNBC that Family Pairing has “put itself in parents’ shoes”since it was launched. “If we’re thinking of it as a toolbox, we want to offer more tools,” she said on a video call ahead of the announcement.
1. What is the second paragraph mainly about?A.The safety tips from TikTok. |
B.The limits on Family Pairing. |
C.New apps explored by TikTok. |
D.The functions of Family Pairing. |
A.The low age limit of users. |
B.The demand for users’ birth dates. |
C.TikTok’s failure to check identities. |
D.The difficulty in opening an account. |
A.Uninterested. | B.Objective. | C.Disappointed. | D.Favorable. |
A.TikTok’s Safety Update |
B.New Guidelines for Safety |
C.Family Pairing under Debate |
D.Controlling Your Kids Online |
5 . There are many differences in ways of thinking between East and West. Many of them are reflected in daily behaviour. In particular, Chinese people sometimes attach more importance to their appearance and social status than to their inner qualities, while Westerners think the opposite. However, Socrates (Ancient Greek philosopher) and Confucius share significant similarities that are universal.
Both philosophers share several teachings in common; for example, their understanding of the nature of knowledge and their opinions on education. Socrates believed “There is only one good, knowledge;and only one evil, ignorance.” Similarly, Confucius said, “Isn’t it a pleasure to study and practice what you have learned?” But both also acknowledge the limits of knowledge. Socrates said: “All I know is that I know nothing.” Similarly, Confucius said, “When you know a thing, to hold you know it; when you don’t know a thing, to allow you don’t know it-this is knowledge.”
However, there are important differences in their understanding of morality. Confucius believed each person should follow certain regulations according to virtue(德行). Everyone should play their role in a society where people are interdependent in order to achieve harmony in the whole society. For instance, when asked how to govern a country, Confucius stated “An emperor should act like an emperor, a subject should act like a subject.” Socrates, however, places self-knowledge over social knowledge.
Another difference between them is their attitude towards political domination(支配). Confucius believed the best way to govern a country isn’t through legal system, but through virtue. Socrates, by contrast, declared that “nothing is more important than justice”.
Why have East and West developed such different cultural values? A widely accepted theory holds that Eastern civilization was an agricultural civilization. Hence the need for a collective society and friendly relations with neighbors was strong. Western civilization, however, was nomadic(游牧的). Their mobility makes them less dependent on society after migration.
In spite of their differences, the two cultures have more in common than differences. The shared concern for moral values in the teachings of Socrates and Confucius also shows us more fundamental similarities between Eastern and Western cultures in their pursuit of virtuous lives.
1. What do the two philosophers share about knowledge?A.The learning of knowledge is easy. | B.The learning of knowledge is endless. |
C.A man without knowledge is foolish. | D.A man shall not pretend to understand. |
A.Nothing is more important than a legal system. |
B.I am not a Chinese, but a citizen of the world. |
C.Not everyone should play his own role in society. |
D.A man does what is proper to the position he is in. |
A.The difference in political atmosphere. | B.The difference in the length of history. |
C.The difference in economic development. | D.The difference in levels of social dependency. |
A.Reasons for similarities of Eastern and Western cultures. |
B.The introduction of great figures of two different cultures. |
C.Comparisons of the thoughts of the two great philosophers. |
D.The contributions of two great philosophers to civilization. |
6 . The school hallway between classes may seem disordered. But there’s likely more order in the crowd than you think. In a heavy crowd with people going in opposite directions, there’s often a pattern. People tend to sort themselves into lanes (队伍) that run parallel to each other. If a space is wide enough, two groups of people passing each other head-on will form multiple lanes. Each lane will be about the width of two people. If two groups cross paths at right angles, they still form lanes. But these lanes behave differently. Each person stays in their lane, but the lane shifts to the side as the groups cross. Attempts to direct the crowd may not help, and it will mess up this natural flow. This slows everybody down.
Tim Rogers and Karol Bacik reported these results in a journal. They began working on crowds during the pandemic. They were working to design spaces where people could stay socially distanced to prevent viral spread. Decades ago, Dirk Helbing, a physicist in Switzerland, created a mathematical model that describes the direction a walker plans to go. Rogers and Bacik added factors related to crowd patterns to Helbing’s software. The resulting model describes lane formation as a result of two processes.
The first process is drift. As soon as a line of people starts to form headed one way, others going the same way are drawn to it. This encourages lane formation. The second one is diffusion (扩散) which causes people to spread out from a crowded space. In a crowd, the end result is lanes about two people wide — just big enough to resist diffusion.
The model’s predictions stood the test of a real crowd. The researchers filmed a group of 70 people walking through an open space. People consistently ordered themselves into lanes as expected, while past work has shown that crash and other problems are more common where more routes intersect (交叉). Public spaces can be designed to help prevent such disasters. The takeaway: When people are traveling two ways, trust the wisdom of crowds. When there’s a three-way or four-way intersection, watch out.
1. What is Paragraph 1 mainly about?A.The benefits of attempting to direct the crowd. |
B.The different behaviour habits of human beings. |
C.The automatic formation of a pattern in a crowd. |
D.The possible cause of mess in the school hallway. |
A.It lacks a clear conclusion. | B.It is aimed at detecting viruses. |
C.It is completed by observation. | D.It is based on previous research. |
A.Diffusion causes increase of crowd density. |
B.Lanes may not be erased when wide enough. |
C.Following others occurs in opposite directions. |
D.Moving on the right contributes to lane formation. |
A.The model’s predictions failed to be proven by the real situation. |
B.The natural flow of crowds can speed up if directed intentionally. |
C.The width of lanes in a crowded space is determined by diffusion. |
D.Public spaces with multiple intersecting routes are more dangerous. |
7 . The Internet has led to a huge increase in credit card (信用卡) fraud. Your card information could even be for sale in an illegal web site. Web sites’ offering cheap goods and services should be regarded with care. Online shoppers who enter their credit card information may never receive the goods they thought they bought. The thieves then go shopping with your card number or sell the information over the Internet.
Computers hackers have broken down security systems, raising questions about the safety of cardholder information. Several months ago, 25,000 customers of CD Universe, an online music retailer (零售商) , were not lucky. Their names, addresses and credit card numbers were posted on a Web site after the retailer refused to pay US $157,828 to get back the information.
Credit card companies are now fighting against online fraud. MasterCard is working on plans for Web-only credit card, with a lower credit limit. The card could be used only for shopping online.
However, there are a few simple steps you can take to keep from being cheated.
Ask about your credit card company’s online rules: Under British law, cardholders have to pay the first US $78 of any fraudulent spending.
And shop only at secure sites; Send your credit card information only if the Web site offers advanced secure system.
If the security is in place, a letter will appear in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen. The Web site address may also start https: //--the extra “s” stands for secure. If in doubt, give your credit card information over the telephone.
Keep your password safe: Most online sites require a user name and password before placing an order. Treat your passwords with care.
1. What do most people worry about the Internet according to this passage?A.A lot of stolen credit-cards were sold on the Internet. |
B.Fraud on the Internet. |
C.Many Web sites are destroyed. |
D.Many illegal Web sites are on the Internet. |
A.Cheating. | B.Sale. | C.Payment. | D.Safety. |
A.The customers give them the information. |
B.The thieves steal the information from Web sites. |
C.The customers sell the information to them. |
D.The thieves buy the information from credit-card firms. |
A.Four. | B.Three. | C.Five. | D.Six. |
A.Order the TV set at once. |
B.Do not buy the TV set on this site. |
C.E-mail the site your credit card information. |
D.Tell the site your password and buy the TV set for you. |
8 . Young children are significantly more likely than adults to have their opinions influenced by robots according to a new research. The study, conducted-at the-University of Plymouth, compared how adults and children respond to an identical (相同的) task when in the presence of both their peers (同龄人) and robots.
It showed that while adults regularly have their opinions influenced by peers, something also demonstrated in previous studies, they are largely able to resist being persuaded by robots. However, children aged between seven and nine were more likely to give the same responses as the robots, even if they were obviously incorrect.
The study asks people to look at a screen showing four lines and say which two match in length. When alone, people almost never make a mistake but when doing the experiment with others, they tend to follow what others are saying.
When children were alone in the room in this research, they scored 87%on the test, but when the robots join in their score drops to 75%. And of the wrong answers, 74% matched those of the robot.
Professor Belpaeme said, ”People often follow the opinions of others and we’ve known for a long time that it is hard to resist taking over views and opinions of people around-us. But as robots will soon be found in the home and the workplace, we were wondering if people would follow robots. What our results show is that adults do not follow what the robots are saying. But when we did the experiment with children, they did. It shows children can perhaps have more of an affinity (亲和力)with robots than adults, which does pose the question: What if robots were to suggest, for example, what products to buy or what to think?“?
1. What did the adults do when staying with robots?A.They generally refused the robots’ effects. |
B.They totally accepted the robots’ suggestions. |
C.They tried to persuade robots to resist them. |
D.They usually compared robots with their children. |
A.Because children were not as clever as the adults. |
B.Because robots reflected better than human beings. |
C.Because robots in the presence made mistakes. |
D.Because children wanted to affect the robots on purpose. |
A.He is optimistic about the result. | B.He is worried about the future. |
C.He doesn’t care about the result. | D.He doubts the result of the research. |
A.What is the meaning of the research? |
B.What should adults do to avoid the problem? |
C.Why are children more likely to be influenced? |
D.What will be done to solve the problem? |
9 . When you set a foot outside of your door to drop trash, go to a social event or go for a walk, thoughts like “I hope I don’t see anyone I know” or “please don’t talk to me” may run through your mind. I’ve also said such things to myself. Sometimes the last thing you want to do is to talk with someone, especially someone new.
Why do we go out of our ways to avoid people? Do we think meeting new people is a waste of time? Or are we just lazy, thinking that meeting someone new really is a trouble?
Communication is the key to life. We have been told that many times. Take the past generations, like our parents, for example. They seem to take full advantage of that whole “communication” idea because they grew up talking face to face while Generation-Y grew up staring at screens. We spend hours of our days sitting on Facebook. We send messages to our friends and think about all of the things we want to say to certain people and that we don’t have the courage to do in reality.
Nowadays, we are so caught up in our little circle of friends — our comfort zone. We love it that they laugh at our jokes, understand our feelings and can read our minds. Most importantly, they know when we want to be alone. They just get us.
Holding a conversation with someone new means agreeing with things that you don’t really believe and being someone you think they want you to be — it is, as I said before, a trouble. It takes up so much energy, and at some point or another, it is too tiring.
But meeting new people is important. Life is too short, so meet all the people you can meet, make the effort to go out and laugh. Remember, every “hello” leads to a smile — and a smile is worth a lot.
1. What do we learn about the author?A.He likes to meet someone new. |
B.He feels stressed out lately. |
C.He’s active in attending social events. |
D.He used to be afraid of talking to others. |
A.They are less confident in themselves. |
B.They rely on the Internet to socialize. |
C.They have difficulty in communicating. |
D.They are unwilling to make new friends. |
A.To stress the importance of friends. |
B.To encourage people to meet new people. |
C.To give tips on how to meet new people. |
D.To display the disadvantages of Generation-Y. |
10 . Thirteen-year-old Kaylee has a lot of friends — 532, actually, if you count up her online friends. And she spends a lot of time with them.
But is it possible that Kaylee’s online friendships could be making her lonely? That’s what some experts believe. Connecting online is a great way to stay in touch, they say. However, some experts worry that many kids are so busy connecting online that they might be missing out on true friendships.
Could this be true? During your parents’ childhoods, connecting with friends usually meant spending time with them in the flesh. Kids played Scrabble around a table, not Words With Friends on their phones. When friends missed each other, they picked up the telephone. Friends might even write letters to each other.
Today, most communication takes place online. A typical teen sends 2,000 texts a month and spends more than 44 hours per week in front of a screen. Much of this time is spent on social media platforms (平台).
In fact, in many ways, online communication can make friendships stronger, “There’s definitely a positive influence. Kids can stay in constant contact, which means they can share more of their feelings with each other,” says Katie Davis, co-author of The App Generation.
Other experts, however, warn that too much online communication can get in the way of forming deep friendships. “If we are constantly checking in with our virtual words, we will have little time for our real-world friendships.” says Larry Rosen, a professor at California State University. Rosen also worries that today’s kids might mistake the “friends” on the social media for true friends in life. However, in tough times, you don’t need someone to like your picture or share your blogs. You need someone who will keep your secrets and hold your hand. You would like to talk face to face.
1. What is the purpose of the first paragraph?A.To summarize the text. | B.To tell about true friends. |
C.To bring up a discussion. | D.To encourage online friendship. |
A.In person. | B.In advance. | C.In any case. | D.In full measure. |
A.Worried. | B.Positive. | C.Confused. | D.Unconcerned. |
A.It’s wise to turn to friends online. |
B.It’s easier to develop friendships in reality. |
C.Social media help people stay closely connected. |
D.Teenagers need focus on real-world friendships. |