1 . This week Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy released a warning about the risks that social media presents to the mental health of children and teenagers. Adolescent mental health has been declining for years, and an increasing amount of research suggests that social media platforms could be partially to blame. But experts continue to debate just how much impact they have.
Numerous studies demonstrate that adolescent rates of depression, anxiety and loneliness have skyrocketed in the U. S. and elsewhere since around the time that smartphones and social media became ever-present.
Yet the role social media plays has been widely debated. Some researchers have sounded the alarm, arguing that social media provides the most credible explanation for problems such as enhanced teen loneliness. Other researchers have been sitting on the fence. In 2019 Jeff Hancock founding director of the Social Media Lab at Stanford University, and his colleagues completed an analysis of 226 scientific papers dating back to 2006. They concluded that social media us was associated with a slight increase in depression and anxiety but also improvements in feelings of belonging and connectedness.
Some recent studies have attempted to clarify the link between social media and mental health, asking, for instance, whether social media use is causing depression or whether people are being more active on social media because they’re depressed. In an attempt to present evidence, Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Alexey Makarin and two of his colleagues conducted mental health surveys taken by college students across the country. Their study, published in 2022, found that swollen rates of depression and anxiety, as well as declined academic performance, followed Facebook’s arrival. Makarin says much of the harm they documented came from social comparisons: students viewed the online profiles of their peers and believed them to “have nicer lives, party more often, have more friends and look better.”
“In total, there’s an increasingly clear picture that, indeed, social media has a negative impact on mental health,” Makarin says. “We are not saying that social media can explain 100 percent of the rise of mental health issues... But it could potentially explain a sizeable portion.”
1. What do we know about social media?| A．It has negative influence on adolescent mental health. |
| B．It is the leading cause of adolescent depression. |
| C．It plays an important role in treating mental illness. |
| D．Its impact on mental health is still unknown. |
| A．Critical. | B．Objective. | C．Favorable. | D．Indifferent. |
| A．By threatening their academic performance. |
| B．By presenting them with online profiles. |
| C．By encouraging them to party more often. |
| D．By making them feel worse-off than others. |
| A．To advocate the harms of social media to teenagers’ mental health. |
| B．To analyze the causes of worsening adolescent mental health. |
| C．To present findings on the link between social media and mental health. |
| D．To propose an effective approach to handling mental illness. |
2 . Arthur Brooks, who teaches hundreds of anxious Harvard students how to be happy, has a happiness formula (配方), and he doesn’t think young people hear it enough.
When delivering the speech at the Catholic University on Saturday, Brooks warned new graduates against two common but terrible pieces of advice. One is to go find a job you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life; the other is you should save the world. To the first, he claimed it’s a great way to ruin youngsters’ life. He explained that expecting a job to be fun all the time is too ideal, which will set people up to hate any job, especially when the work unavoidably becomes difficult and not fun. As to the second, Brooks responded, “To expect one’s day job to solve the world’s various problems is another factor for disappointment in reality.”
Some may guess that the actual cause for job satisfaction are money, fame, power and admiration. However, Brooks never agrees with them. He has put forward his two answers to finding happiness at work.
The first key, according to Brooks, is what he calls earned success. For Brooks, happiness at work is not determined by your job title or income but the investment you put into your day. Put simply, “Don’t cut corner.” Brooks said, “What matters is that at the end of the day, you can say, you did your work with efforts and excellence.”
Some experts agree that positive relationships at work are a necessary ingredient for job satisfaction. Brooks’ second answer is in line with that finding: do your job in a way that serves others, not just yourself. He told graduates that for the greatest happiness, it does not matter if their job is fun all the time or whether it fixes the world. Instead, deeper satisfaction comes from work that can make a difference in the lives of some. And serving others comes from how you do your job, not whether you work in an bank, put roofs on houses or raise children as a fulltime mother.
1. What is the common problem of the two suggestions in paragraph 2?| A．They are fancy but impractical. |
| B．They fail to meet financial needs. |
| C．They set people to hate their jobs. |
| D．They may ruin young people’s life. |
| A．Finish your work at the end of the day. |
| B．Pursue big job titles for your job happiness. |
| C．Invest in your work to increase your income. |
| D．Work hard with excellence to gain satisfaction. |
| A．Put others first whenever possible. |
| B．Positive relationships develop in fun jobs. |
| C．Deeper satisfaction comes from serving others. |
| D．Types of jobs determine the difference one makes. |
| A．Love your work and save the world. |
| B．Earn your success and provide services. |
| C．Make differences and live to the fullest. |
| D．Stay excellent and make wise investments. |
3 . Park, a 30-year-old Korean housewife, recently took a personality test to figure out who she is. “Just like many other people, I don’t exactly know who I am,” she told The Korea Times. “Sometimes I am curious what makes me feel good or bad. I’ve taken several different types of tests to know myself better and the MBTI is one that I tried recently.” In Korea, the MBTI personality test has become the newest trend, particularly among millennials (千禧一代).
MBTI, which stands for Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, is a personality test. People answer a questionnaire based on a personality theory. A Hankook survey taken last December found that over half of Koreans have taken the MBTI test. Nine out of every 10 people aged between 19 and 28 responded they took the test. Meanwhile, for those who had never been involved in the test, three quarters showed strong interest, indicating the personality type test has become a phenomenon for younger generations.
The MBTI craze among the younger generation, who are struggling with an uncertain future, reflects their desire for acceptance and comfort in knowing there are like-minded people out there. “The country has limited resources and geography, while its people feature a certain devotion and goal-oriented (目标导向型的) characteristic,” said Lee Myung-jin, a professor of sociology at Korea University. Consequently, they have grown eager on various personality indicators that provide them comfort.
As MBTI has gone viral among younger Koreans, businesses and media have begun to promote products using the personality test. But such MBTI-based marketing strategies have annoyed some younger people who don’t rely on the results of the test. However, experts agree that the popularity of the test also brings some positive implications. “I believe we’re in a transition period,” Kim Jae hyoung, a head researcher of the Korea MBTI institute said. “This trend could develop a social acceptance and affection for mental guidance in the future.”
1. What’s the text mainly about?| A．A social phenomenon. | B．A disturbing crisis. |
| C．A young generation | D．A commercial test. |
| A．To give an example. | B．To establish the context. |
| C．To make a contrast. | D．To introduce the woman. |
| A．75% of them have taken the MBTI test while the rest have not. |
| B．They can secure a more definite future with the help of the test. |
| C．The trend reflects their inner desire to seek a sense of belonging. |
| D．The test serves as a handy approach for them to know more people. |
| A．The new trend brings about more harm than good. |
| B．Young Koreans should focus on their businesses. |
| C．Experts need to put efforts in adapting the test. |
| D．The test opens a window for mental guidance. |
4 . Recently a new study found that elephants in central African forests can encourage the growth of slow-growing trees and increase the ability of the forest to store carbon.
“As a tree, there’s a so-called balance that you can’t have it all,” explained Fabio Berzaghi, who led the study. Elephants prefer to eat fast-growing trees in more open spaces. As they feed and walk, they cause damage to these species, knocking over trees or breaking off branches, which results in an ecosystem that favors large, slow-growing hardwood trees. “As the elephants thin the forest, they increase the number of slow-growing trees and the forest is capable of storing more carbon,” said Stephen Blake, one of the paper’s authors.
Scientists collected field measurements in the Congo Basin and used a computer model to predict how elephants would affect forest structure, and carbon storage potential in the long term. The data confirmed that when elephants are present, the forest contains larger trees and higher abundances of species with high wood density. On the contrary, should forest elephants go extinct, leaving those slow-growing trees struggling to compete with fast-growing species, it would result in a 7 percent loss of above-ground biomass (生物总量). As a result, central African forests could lose up to three billion tons of carbon, potentially accelerating climate change.
The sad reality is that humans are doing their best to rid the planet of elephants. lain Douglas Hamilton, founder of Save the Elephants said, “It is shocking that just as we are beginning to understand how elephants might have a key role in Africa in storing carbon, they are under real threat of extinction.” One limitation of the study, Mr. Berzaghi said, is that we do not know how much carbon has already been lost because of the elephants’ decline. But it does seem certain, he added, that putting a stop to illegal hunting and restoring forest elephant populations would bring climate benefits.
1. What can we infer about slow-growing trees in Paragraph 2?| A．They are elephants’ favorite food. | B．They are easily hurt by elephants. |
| C．They may reduce elephant populations. | D．They can help forests store carbon. |
| A．Larger trees would defeat fast-growing species. |
| B．The forest structure would remain unchanged. |
| C．The forests would lose more fast-growing trees. |
| D．Climate change would possibly be sped up. |
| A．Lead a low-carbon life. | B．Protect forest elephants. |
| C．Stop destroying forests. | D．Evaluate the carbon loss. |
| A．Elephants Defend Against Climate Change |
| B．Elephants Disappear in Parts of Africa |
| C．Climate Change Affects Forest Structure |
| D．Humans and Nature Live in Harmony |
5 . Musa Haidar holds a coconut (椰子) to his ear and shakes it from side to side. Its sound pleases the market trader, who puts the large brown fruit back on the pile at his market stand in the suburb of Zanzibar, a city on the East African Island.
His customers are less happy, however. A coconut going for 500 shillings a few years ago today sells for 1,500 shillings. That makes it more expensive to cook curries or other dishes using coconut milk. “The prices are not normal,” says Mr. Haidar. “Coconuts have become expensive for local people.”
Why have prices gone nuts? “People are chopping (砍), chopping,” he explains. A count in 2014 found just 3.4 million coconut trees, down from 5.7 million in the late 1990s. Since hungry Zanzibaris still demand creamy fish curries and beans baked in coconut milk, falling supply has led to higher prices. Coconuts from the mainland are pricier because of high transport costs.
The logging of coconut trees reflects the urbanization wave in Zanzibar and the rest of Africa where urban sprawl is the most striking feature, cities extending outwards rather than growing upwards. Because of that, when people move to a new land, they chop down the coconut trees to make space for their new homes.
Moreover, some houses and island hotels have furniture made from coconut wood. Emmanuel Elias, a woodworker, explains that it is cheaper than the imported one. By law farmers cannot chop down fruit-bearing trees for furniture; in practice it is hard to stop them. Even if they obey the rules, many do not plant new trees, since these take at least six years to produce fruits, and fifteen years to reach maximum production levels. State subsidies (补贴) for seeds have proved no match for urban population growth.
In his workshop, Mr. Elias dusts off a solid dressing table he is selling for 400,000 shillings. He points out that it is made of coconut wood. “This is the land of coconut trees,” he says. But for how much longer?
1. What leads to the high price of coconuts in Zanzibar?| A．The demand going beyond the supply. |
| B．Local people raising the price randomly. |
| C．The transportation developing too slowly. |
| D．Residents consuming too much coconut milk |
| A．Structure. | B．Capacity. | C．Expansion. | D．Management. |
| A．They can’t get the state subsidies. |
| B．They can’t afford to wait for fruits. |
| C．They are following the existing regulations. |
| D．They have switched to the furniture industry. |
| A．He worries about their future. |
| B．He expects their faster growth. |
| C．He takes pride in their number. |
| D．He doubts their value for furniture. |
Zibo city in Shandong province has gone viral on Chinese social media since late February for its local barbecue specialty, and the local government takes the opportunity
On March 31 the Jinan bureau of China Railway
Barbecue is popular in China, but Zibo’s barbecue differs
The barbecue
7 . Accents are a sign of belonging and something that separates communities. Yet we can probably think of people who seem to have lost their accent and of others whose accent stays firmly in place. Given the personal and social importance of how someone speaks, why would anyone’s accent change?
A conscious or subconscious desire to fit in can influence the way you speak. If someone moves from Australia to America to work, for example, they will probably at least change their accent in order to get a better sense of belonging. This may be out of a need or desire to be more clearly understood and to be accepted in a new community. They might also want to avoid ridicule for the way they speak.
For people whose accents do shift, the way they speak may be less important to their sense of identity, or their identity with a social or professional group may be more pressing. Even before we are born, we are exposed to the speech patterns of those around us. We progress through various stages of speech development that result in us having speech patterns similar to those around us.
For others whose accent does not seem to change, it could be because they feel safe in their identity, and their accent is much part of that identity — or that keeping the difference is valuable to them.
Meanwhile, brain damage may result in foreign accent syndrome (FAS), which results from physical changes that are not under the speaker’s control. Suffering from FAS, speakers may lose the ability to speak at all or experience strange changes in the way they pronounce. In some cases, listeners might look down upon a person with FAS as they believe them to be foreigners. It’s no wonder many people unconsciously protect themselves by adapting their speech to those around them.
1. What does the underlined word ”This“ in Paragraph 2 refer to?| A．The desire to fit in. | B．The change of career. |
| C．The adjustment of accents. | D．The influence on language. |
| A．The result of brain damage. | B．Their strong sense of identity. |
| C．Their desire to learn about locals. | D．The need to adapt to new environment. |
| A．They may be taken as foreigners. |
| B．They can not help making a sound. |
| C．They suffer from emotional changes. |
| D．They may change accents to gain respect. |
| A．To explain the loss of accents. |
| B．To introduce the history of accents. |
| C．To analyze why accents are lost or kept. |
| D．To show the significance of accent changes, |
Zibo city in China’s Shandong province has
Zibo’s barbecue is different from other types in China as it
Zibo is now a must-visit destination for food lovers,
9 . We youngsters believe that our responsibilities to the country begin only when we enter the workforce. This is because we consider ourselves as helpless to do anything at that time.
Raise awareness of important social issues in the country. The voice of the young can make itself heard in areas like education, pollution and health care. These are issues that directly influence our lives and should be taken notice of by us.
Support the community by actively participating in volunteering. Volunteers are always needed to assist old people’s homes and other charity organizations.
Participate in all kinds of activities that promote our environment. Planting new plants and trees to minimize pollution and create a clean environment in which to live.
| A．Get well prepared for any possibilities. |
| B．Invest time and money to ensure a better future. |
| C．Other efficient strategies include not throwing rubbish everywhere in the streets. |
| D．As a result, we postpone any duty until we enter the workplace. |
| E．But we should realize that there are roles we may play at the moment. |
| F．Thus, by providing our services regularly, we are promoting a caring culture. |
| G．By showing that we care about our society, we can better ourselves and our country. |
10 . As a society we might want to rethink the time and money spent on education, so that these resources can benefit a greater percentage of the population. Ideally, both high schools and colleges can prepare individuals for the ever-changing roles that are likely to be expected of them.
High school degrees offer less in the way of preparation for work than they might, or than many other nations currently offer, creating a growing skills gap in our economy. We encourage students to go on to college whether they are prepared or not, or have a clear sense of purpose or interest, and now have the highest college dropout rate in the world.
We might look to other countries for models of how high schools can offer better training, as well as the development of a work ethic (勤奋工作的美德) and the intellectual skills needed for continued learning and development. I recommend Harvard’s 2011 “Pathways to Prosperity” report for more attention to the “forgotten half” (those who do not go on to college) and ideas about how to address this issue.
Simultaneously, the liberal arts become more important than ever. In a knowledge economy where professional roles change rapidly and many college students are preparing for positions that may not even exist yet, the skill set needed is one that prepares them for change and continued learning.
Learning to express ideas well in both writing and speech, knowing how to find information, and knowing how to do research are all-solid background skills for a wide variety of roles, and such training is more important than any particular major in a liberal arts college. We need to continue to value broad preparation in thinking skills that will serve for a lifetime.
Students also need to learn to work independently and to make responsible decisions. The lengthening path to adulthood appears exacerbated (恶化) by parental involvement in the college years. Given the rising investment in college education, parental concern is not surprising, but learning where and when to intervene will help students take more ownership of the outcomes of these increasingly costly educations.
1. What kind of education does the author think is ideal?| A．It encourages students to learn throughout their lives. |
| B．It benefits the great majority of the general population. |
| C．It prepares students to meet the future needs of society. |
| D．It ensures that students’ expectations are successfully fulfilled. |
| A．Teaching skills to be used right after graduation only. |
| B．Giving little attention to those having difficulty learning. |
| C．Creating the highest dropout rate in the developed world. |
| D．Ignoring the needs of those only with high school education. |
| A．Students majoring in liberal arts usually have difficulty securing a job. |
| B．New positions are constantly created that require people to keep learning. |
| C．People have to receive higher education to qualify for a professional position. |
| D．Colleges find it hard to teach student how to cope with the changing economy. |
| A．Rethinking the value of higher education |
| B．Investing wisely in their children’s education. |
| C．Helping their children to bring their talent into full play. |
| D．Involving themselves properly in their children’s education. |
