1. What happened to the man?
| A．He hurt his nose. | B．He broke his leg. | C．He slipped over. |
| A．Fix his bone. | B．Cover his nose. | C．Stop the bleeding. |
2 . Exposure to new technologies including trackers,robots and AI-based software at work is bad for people's quality of life, according to a groundbreaking study from the Institute for the Future of Work.
The authors found that the more workers were exposed to technologies in three of these categories —software based on AI and machine learning; monitor devices such as wearable trackers; and robotics-the worse their health and wellbeing tended to be.
By contrast, use of more long-established information and communication technologies (ICTs)such as laptops, tablets and instant messaging at work tended to have a more positive effect on wellbeing.
Dr Magdalena Soffia,the study's lead author, said it was not necessarily the technologies themselves that are the problem,but the way in which they are adopted."We don't want to claim that there is some sort of determinism in what technology causes,in terms of wellbeing,"she said,“We say it really depends on the context:on lots of structural factors,on environmental conditions,how it is designed and how it is used.So lots of human decisions.”
“We wanted to give a more multidimensional understanding of what was happening in terms of wellbeing.So we used a well-established measure which is a very effective measure, used by the UK public health sector;"Soffia said.
Discussing the promotion to quality of life from ICTs,she suggested"one possible potential mechanism is that actually what they do is to streamline work processes,and they make working life a bit more efficient.And that in turn,gives you kind of a sense of achievement."
By contrast,the findings about trackers and monitor technologies corespond with recent wanings from trades unions and campaigners about the negative impact on workers whose performance is being constantly monitored.
Mary Towers,the TUC's lead on Al,said:"These findings should worry us all.They show that without strong new regulation,Al could make the world of work a cruel and unhealthy place for many.Things don't have to be this way.If we put the proper guardrails in place,AI can be controlled to genuinely enhance productivity and improve working lives."
1. What does the study find about new technologies?| A．They are well received. |
| B．They worsen people's life. |
| C．They consist of three items. |
| D．They are developing rapidly. |
| A．Influence on humans. |
| B．Origin of the problem. |
| C．Solutions to the problem. |
| D．Decisive role of the environment. |
| A．Increase work efficiency. |
| B．Enhance our confidence. |
| C．Ensure our safety at work. |
| D．Improve working conditions. |
| A．Critical. | B．Doubtful. | C．Hopeful. | D．Unclear. |
3 . Life can change in the blink of an eye. For Bridgette Ponson, one of those moments took place in the parking lot at her workplace, Layton Christian Academy. While she was in the parking lot, her 2-year-old boy and 3-year-old girl in tow, a car hit them. This left the mother and her kids trapped beneath the car. Thankfully, the woman driver wasn’t driving very fast. At that moment, she was blinded by the sun. However, she got out of the car to help as soon as possible. Plus, she wasn’t the only one who stopped what they were doing to save Bridgette and her kids.
Soon, Chris Crowder, CEO of the school, became aware of the accident. Without delay, he united a group of students to help. “It was split second,” Chris recalled. “I immediately just ran into the building because I knew I had to get a lot of people to lift this car. The students just heard me shout. All students from different countries just ran out and lifted it up.”
Still, this wasn’t an easy task. The car was heavy. But the whole group of students worked together to lift the car enough for Bridgette and her kids to get free. Finally, one kid was flown to Primary Children’s Hospital while Bridgette and the other kid were taken by ambulance to the hospital. Although Bridgette took the brunt of the injuries, all three of them were expected to make complete recoveries within a few days. The heroic students who helped out certainly got their well-deserved praise.
“I’m very proud of our kids. They ran out without hesitation, and they just knew what to do without even being told what to do. I’m even surprised by the driver who was behind the wheel. She immediately ran to help,” said Chris.
1. Which of the following caused the accident in the parking lot?| A．The car was speeding. | B．The driver was trapped in the car. |
| C．Bridgette ignored the surroundings. | D．The sunlight blocked the driver’s sight. |
| A．To meet foreign students. | B．To avoid the car accident. |
| C．To provide emergency aid. | D．To lift the kids out of the car. |
| A．Many hands make light work. | B．The hospital is no place to be sick. |
| C．Injuries may be forgiven, but not forgotten. | D．Praise makes good men better and bad men worse. |
| A．Passive. | B．Hesitant. | C．Timely. | D．Expected. |
4 . Once a week, Percy Buttons heads off to work, clocking in for a shift at a job one could say she was born to do. Percy, 18 months, is a baby “worker” at a nursing home, “hired” to brighten the days of residents whose own grandchildren may rarely visit. “It energizes me to see her, so this really helps me,” said Charles Alison, 93, one of about 100 residents at the nursing home in the city of Oklahoma.
The patter (啪嗒声) of little feet around wheelchairs and walkers here is meant to alleviate the isolation that can come with growing older, especially in a shrinking and rapidly aging nation. The nursing home’s director, Jasper White, came up with the idea of baby workers three years ago when her own newborn granddaughter was visiting and she saw how happy it made the residents. “When I saw the elderly people smile, I realized the power possessed by infants,” she said.
The nursing home now has about 70 babies, who can inspire even the toughest residents. They work flexible hours, strolling around the nursing home with their parents, mostly mothers. “It’s funny that I’m not working but Percy has a job,” said her mother, Gloria Gleam.
Percy and her colleagues are paid in diapers (纸尿裤) and milk powder. But those are not the only rewards, said Gloria, who started bringing Percy to the nursing home when she was 5 months old as a way to meet new people after the family moved to Oklahoma.
The requirements for Jasper’s recruits are simple: They should be under 3 years old, and the less they speak, the better. That’s because older people can struggle to speak and communicate, Jasper said, especially if they have cognitive impairment (障碍).
For nursing home residents, Jasper said, the visits from toddlers arouse the common experience of family members from multiple generations living under the same roof.
1. Why are baby workers needed in the nursing home?| A．To help ease the director’s burdens. |
| B．To offer physical care to the elderly. |
| C．To provide education for the nursing workers. |
| D．To bring joy and relieve the loneliness of the elderly. |
| A．The badly need for more workers. |
| B．The great power possessed by babies. |
| C．Her granddaughter’s visit to the nursing home. |
| D．The strong desires of the elderly residents. |
| A．A baby who is 3 minus and less talkative. |
| B．A baby who is 3 minus and very outgoing. |
| C．A baby who is 3 plus and communicates fluently. |
| D．A baby who is 3 plus and has cognitive impairment. |
| A．To recommend a career. | B．To popularize a practice. |
| C．To advocate a living style. | D．To introduce a phenomenon. |
Festivals are becoming more and more commercial, with businesses
It was 8 a.m. Kathy，a 25yearold nurse，had just finished a 2hour night shift at a hospital. She was tired, but glad to be sailing along highway to where she lived. Although the local government had posted a snow alert (预警), the calm grey sky convinced Kathy the drive would be safe. “I figured I'd be in bed in an hour，” she said.
Snow began when she was halfway home. Listening to the radio, Kathy learned the highway was closed because a tractor had slid off the road. She texted some friends and her mom, and tried not to sleep as she waited.
After a couple of hours, however, conditions worsened. Strong winds began rocking Kathy's car. She couldn't see anything outside, and snow was drifting up her doors. “It was”, she said, “a total white out and rows of cars and trucks”.
Late in the afternoon a police officer came and asked if she was in any difficulty. She said she was fine. She asked the police officer if there was any way to get past the trucks. “No, ma'am，” he answered. “You're not going anywhere.”
As it got dark, Kathy began to worry. She texted his brother Cris, telling him to drive snowmobiling buddy (雪地汽车) to get to the highway and find her.
As Cris rode slowly alongside the rows of cars and trucks, people would roll down their windows and ask for help. But Cris didn’t stop. He explained he was picking up his sister. He told them, “Nobody's coming and I can't take you.”
Near 10 p.m. Cris reached Kathy. He directed Kathy to pull her car onto the roadside and asked her to get into his snowmobiling buddy.
As they headed for home, the fun started. About five kilometres into the journey, Cris made a mistake. What he thought was a shallow ditch (浅沟) turned out to be a deep trough (水槽). Instead of coming out the other side, they just kept going down. They were trapped. And feathery snow was over their heads.
注意： 80词左右，衔接度，时态语态、标点符号、卷面书写。At that moment, they had to take action to get out of the deep trough.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________7 . In the rich countries of the West, the electric vehicle revolution is well occurring. Climate-conscious consumers drive Teslas or Polestars for reasons of morality (道德) and fashion. Poorer countries are also experiencing a wave of electrified trend. In Bangladesh, electric three-wheeler taxis, known as tuk-tuks, are rapidly replacing gas-powered ones on the streets. Such electric vehicles are climate friendly, cost effective, and help reduce air pollution.
Yet a glance under the hood (引擎盖) of these vehicles shows a poisonous secret: each tuk-tuk runs on five massive lead-acid batteries (铅酸电池), containing almost 300 pounds of lead (铅) in total. Every year and a half or so, when those batteries need to be replaced and recycled, about 60 pounds of lead leaks into the environment. Battery recycling, often at small-scale unregulated factories, is a highly profitable (高利润的) but deadly business.
Lead is dangerous, and any exposure to it is harmful to human health. Lead that has entered the environment hurts people on an unexpected scale. The numerous ways lead enters air, water, soil, and homes across the developing world and the enormous damage it does to human health, wealth, and welfare cause one of the biggest environmental problems in the world yet receives little attention.
The World Bank estimates that lead kills 5.5 million people per year, making it a bigger global killer than AIDS, malaria, diabetes, and road traffic deaths combined. On top of the shocking deaths, the social burden of lead poisoning is heavy, as is its contribution to global inequality — our research on the cognitive (认知的) effects of lead poisoning suggests that it may explain about one-fifth of the educational achievement gap between rich and poor countries.
But unlike many challenges faced by developing countries, lead poisoning is a problem that can be resolved through financial investment (财政投入). Better monitoring, research, and rules can help protect children all over the world from the unpleasant effects of lead poisoning and reduce the massive global costs it brings.
1. How does the author describe the lead problem in paragraph 2?| A．By listing some numbers. | B．By analyzing hidden causes. |
| C．By making an interesting comparison. | D．By explaining its working principle. |
| A．Lead enters poor countries in one way. |
| B．Lead leaking has been avoided in all the countries. |
| C．Lead will definitely not harm anymore. |
| D．Lead poisoning may make poor societies poorer. |
| A．Fixing these used batteries. | B．Reducing the cost of recycling lead. |
| C．Ignoring the illegal use of lead. | D．Putting certain effort and money. |
| A．The Impacts of Lead Poisoning on Man. |
| B．The Global Lead Poisoning Problem. |
| C．The Ways to Solve Lead Problem. |
| D．The Benefits of Using Electric Vehicles. |
| A．Janice’s arm injury. | B．Their messy house. | C．A car accident. |
9 . You may have visited antique stores and found cutting-edge goods in second-hand furniture stores, but have you ever stooping? On the streets of big cities at night, some young people are “looking for something”. Obsessed with the spiritual core of the old thing recycling, they fell in love with it. But what exactly is stooping?
In fact, this English word originally meant “bending over”, and now refers to a way of life of picking up discarded items and renovating and recycling old things, which originally emerged in New York and other foreign big cities.
Since the beginning of last year, the trend of “stooping” has spread to many big cities in China and many young people look for second-hand items such as discarded furniture on the streets, take home and repurpose them with a new look. In order to make the flow of information better, some “stoopers” have also built communities where group members can share “treasures” on the street with each other.
Mikiko, 27, is reportedly one of the first people in China to get involved in practicing stooping. At first, she posted online things that people no longer use, want to throw away, or exchange at home, and slowly hundreds of messages flooded in and since then, stooping has become more and more popular among young people. Mikiko admitted that she was surprised that the concept has become a hit on social media, as older generations often stigmatize picking up things from the street or using second-hand goods. “People like my mom consider stooping as’rubbish-picking’, and people will be looked down upon by doing this.” She even created an app called “Grecycle” where people can give away or take unwanted items for free, hoping people may realize that stooping can also be about doing good and helping others.
This generation of young people has given “new life” to old things, practiced social responsibility in their own environmentally friendly ways in life, and also contributed to the circular economy and sustainable society.
1. What do we know about “stooping” in this text?| A．It was developed in England. | B．It equals to rubbish-picking. |
| C．It is an expression to show respect. | D．It is a way to turn trash to treasure. |
| A．To show off their good use of items. |
| B．To argue about the misuse of good treasure. |
| C．To share the information of the discarded items. |
| D．To make some comments on the abandoned items. |
| A．Be skilled at. | B．Be ashamed of. |
| C．Be fed up with. | D．Be accustomed to. |
| A．Second-hand stores are worth visiting. |
| B．Big cities offer more job opportunities. |
| C．Young people spend less than older people. |
| D．The young have a stronger eco-awareness. |
1. Why did the accident happen?
| A．A fire broke out in the car. | B．The car lost control suddenly. | C．The driver was careless. |
| A．The car hit a big rock. | B．The car wasn’t badly damaged. | C．The man only got slight wounds. |
