1 . The curb cut (下斜路缘) is a convenience that most of us rarely, if ever, notice. Yet, without it, daily life might be a lot harder — in more ways than one. Pushing a baby stroller (婴儿推车) onto the curb, skateboarding onto a sidewalk or taking a full grocery cart from the sidewalk to your car — all these tasks are easier because of the curb cut.
But it was created with a different purpose in mind.
It’s hard to imagine today, but back in the 1970s, most sidewalks in the United States ended with a sharp drop-off. That was a big deal for people in wheelchairs because there were no ramps (斜坡) to help them move along city blocks without assistance. According to one disability rights leader, a six-inch curb “might as well have been Mount Everest”. So, activists from Berkeley, California, who also needed wheelchairs, organized a campaign to create tiny ramps to help people dependent on wheels move up and down curbs independently.
I think about the “curb cut effect” a lot when working on issues around health equity (公平). The first time I even heard about the curb cut was in a 2017 Stanford Social Innovation Review piece by PolicyLink CEO Angela Blackwell. Blackwell rightly noted that many people see equity “as a zero-sum game.” Basically, there is “a prejudice that intentionally supporting one group hurts another.” What the curb cut effect shows, Blackwell said, is that “when society creates the circumstances that allow those who have been left behind to participate and contribute fully, everyone wins.”
There are multiple examples of this principle at work. For example, investing in policies that create more living-wage jobs or increase the availability of affordable housing certainly benefits people in communities that have limited options. But the action also provides those people with opportunities for better health and the moans to become contributing members of society — and those benefits everyone. Even the football huddle (围成一团以秘密商讨) was initially created to help deaf football players at Gallaudet College keep their game plans secret from opponents who could have read their sign language. Today, it’s used by every team to prevent the opponent from learning about game-winning strategies.
So, next time you cross the street, or roll your suitcase through a crosswalk or ride your bike directly onto a sidewalk, think about how much the curb cut, the design that benefits one group of people at a disadvantage, has helped not just that group, but all of us.
1. By “might as well have been Mount Everest” (paragraph 3), the disability rights leader implies that a six-inch curb may become ______.A.as famous as the world’s highest mountain | B.an almost impassable barrier |
C.a connection between people | D.a most unforgettable matter |
A.it’s fair to give the disadvantaged more help than others |
B.it’s impossible to have everyone be treated equally |
C.it’s necessary to go all out to help the disabled |
D.it’s not worthwhile to promote health equity |
A.Reading machines for blind people helped build the navigation system in the car. |
B.The four great inventions of ancient China spread to the west. |
C.Your reaching out to the disadvantaged contributes to more people doing it. |
D.A butterfly flapping its wings in one country leads to a Tornado in another country. |
A.Everyday items are originally invented for people with disabilities. |
B.Everyone in a society should pursue what is in his or her interest. |
C.A disability rights leader changed the life of his fellow men. |
D.Caring for disadvantaged groups may finally benefit all. |
2 . In the days before the Internet, critical thinking was the most important skill of informed citizens. But in the digital age, according to Anastasia Kozyreva, a psychologist at the Max Planck Institute of Human Development, and her colleagues, an even more important skill is critical ignoring.
As the researchers point out, we live in an attention economy where content producers on the Internet compete for our attention. They attract us with a lot of emotional and eye-catching stories while providing little useful information, so they can expose us to profit-generating advertisements. Therefore,we are no longer customers but products, and each link we click is a sale of our time and attention. Toprotect ourselves from this, Kozyreva advocates for learning the skill of critical ignoring, in which readers intentionally control their information environment to reduce exposure to false and low-quality information.
According to Kozyreva, critical ignoring comprises three strategies. The first is to design ourenvironments, which involves the removal of low-quality yet hard-to-resist information from around. Successful dieters need to keep unhealthy food out of their homes. Likewise, we need to set up a digital environment where attention-grabbing items are kept out of sight. As with dieting, if one tries to bank onwillpower not to click eye-catching “news”, he’ll surely fail. So, it’s better to just keep them out of sightto begin with.
The next is to evaluate the reliability of information, whose purpose is to protect you from false and misleading information. It can be realized by checking the source in the mainstream news agencies which have their reputations for being trustworthy.
The last goes by the phrase “do not feed the trolls.” Trolls are actors who internationally spread false and hurtful information online to cause harm. It may be appealing to respond to them to set the facts straight, but trolls just care about annoying others rather than facts. So, it’s best not to reward their bad behaviour with our attention.
By sharpening our critical ignoring skills in these ways, we can make the most of the Internet while avoiding falling victim to those who try to control our attention, time, and minds.
1. What can we learn about the attention economy from paragraph 2?A.It offers little information. | B.It features depressing stories. |
C.It saves time for Internet users. | D.It seeks profits from each click. |
A.To discuss the quality of information |
B.To prove the benefits of healthy food. |
C.To show the importance of environments. |
D.To explain the effectiveness of willpower. |
A.Reveal their intention. | B.Turn a deaf ear to them. |
C.Correct their behaviour. | D.Send hard facts to them. |
A.Reasons for critical thinking in the attention economy. |
B.Practising the skill of critical ignoring in the digital age. |
C.Maximizing the benefits of critical ignoring on the Internet. |
D.Strategies of abandoning critical thinking for Internet users |
3 . People tend to cut corners and allow trusted workmates to do their work when working as a team. Now researchers have found that the same thing happens when humans work with robots.
Dietlind Cymek at the Technical University of Berlin in Germany and her colleagues designed an experiment to test whether humans would put in less effort when they think that their personal contribution to a task won’t be noticed.
In the experiment, the researchers asked a group of 42 people to examine images of circuit boards (电路板) for errors using a computer that tracked their work. Half of them looked at boards that had already been checked by a robot, and half were told that they were the only ones responsible for quality control.
People working in partnership with the robot caught fewer errors, after they had already seen that the robot had successfully flagged lots of errors.
The researchers say such teamwork could lead to a drop in motivation if individual effort isn’t visible and warn that there could be safety risks if teams of people and robots work on safety-related tasks in the same way.
Kathleen Richardson at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK, says it is fine to use robots as long as they are effective, but that they should be considered tools rather than workmates or team members. “It just strikes me that workers think when a tool can do something, they let it,” says Richardson.
This is probably down to poor management style, in which individual work isn’t recognised. “I bet you if there was an motivation behind it, and if the humans could get extra pay for spotting errors in the circuit boards, then they’d put a bit more effort into it,” she adds.
1. What is the experiment mainly about?A.Workplace safety. | B.Management style. |
C.Industrial innovation. | D.Working productivity. |
A.They preferred to work individually. |
B.They paid less attention to their work. |
C.They were not appreciative of robots’ effort. |
D.They worried about being replaced by robots. |
A.Favorable. | B.Unclear. | C.Uninterested. | D.Doubtful. |
A.Correct errors. | B.Increase work time. |
C.Reward hard work. | D.Encourage teamwork. |
4 . It was reported that a worker’s strike happened because industry bosses are planning to cancel paper tickets and close almost 1,000 station ticket offices in England. The government says nothing has been decided in reply to this strike. But some officials advise to save money in this way.
Regardless of the outcome of the strike, the direction of digital change is clear. With time going by, station ticket offices are likely to become a sepia-tinted memory. For us, we who have been used to organising travel via a smartphone feel little sadness. But for people without online skills — who may be older, poorer and weaker — another small social barrier will be built.
From doctor appointments to payment apps, more and more key services are now provided online. Local government, lack of money, has to do business in this way. As this change takes place, some people hold that it can be unfair to some users. In the case of health and social care, those who need help most are unable to navigate (导航) a digital route to the place. A recent report estimated that around 6% of households have no internet access. As digital technology becomes the gatekeeper to everyday life, some groups may face the problem of exclusion and isolation.
The debate over ticket offices offers an opportunity to reflect on the increasing role of technology in our society. Clearly, it is important to help marginalised groups gain easy online access. Some people will never become comfortable using smartphones or tablets. Some offline options must be maintained for important services. This will cost more. But that is the price of being fair to those who find themselves on the wrong side of the digital divide.
1. What is paragraph 1 of the text mainly about?A.The desire of the government. | B.The disappearance of paper tickets |
C.The causes of an employee’s strike. | D.The problem of station ticket offices. |
A.Latest. | B.Different. | C.Profound. | D.Dated. |
A.The digital divide risks | B.The majority households. |
C.The exclusion process. | D.The individual estimates. |
A.Indifferent. | B.Negative. | C.Doubtful. | D.Approving. |
5 . As athletes get stronger and faster, the pace of play continues to increase. The burden of making sure games are played according to the rules and that the officiating (裁判) is accurate is now being taken out of human hands and falling more and more into the lap of technology. It’s called the video replay.
The National Football League is expanding its replay system this upcoming season to include pass interference (传球干扰). Major League Baseball now relies on it for safe-or-out and home run calls. If you’ve been watching the FIFA World Cup, you may have noticed that the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) played a key role in almost every game. And in the Kentucky Derby, a horse was disqualified for knocking another horse. No one knew why until a video replay confirmed the call and controversy was avoided.
However, many purists—those who want people to follow rules carefully and do things in the traditional way—especially in soccer, argue it’s not the way the game was invented, and that the video replay is tainting the sport. But don’t you want to see the proper application of the rules throughout the games? I know I do. Yes, it can slow the game down, but I feel it is worth it. If technological advancements allow fans watching from home to spot mistakes instantly, those same views need to be available to the officiating crews. Another example occurred in the most recent National Football Conference (NFC) Championship Game between the Los Angeles Rams and the New Orleans Saints. When obvious pass interference was committed by the Los Angeles Rams player Nickell Robey-Coleman, with just 109 seconds to play, no flag was raised on the field. It weakened the New Orleans Saints spirits. The Los Angeles Rams won a 26-23 overtime victory. The no-call deeply angered the public. The video replay showed the referees had just missed one of the most apparent pass interference calls.
There are no easy answers regarding replay technology and whether it is a curse (魔咒). But for me, keeping the officiating honest and on task is the right step in limiting controversy.
1. What trend in sports can be observed in paragraph 2?A.The video replay has been widely used. |
B.League games have become competitive. |
C.Rules of professional games are becoming stricter. |
D.People are showing more interest in sports than before. |
A.Tricking. | B.Promoting. | C.Damaging. | D.Restoring. |
A.They relied a lot on the video replay. |
B.They cared too much about details. |
C.They were definitely stressed out. |
D.They were terribly disqualified. |
A.Video replays: high-end technology in sports |
B.Is technology like VAR a blessing in sports? |
C.Officiating: a duty that requires honesty |
D.What do qualified referees really mean? |
6 . Parents have been urged to stop pretending Father Christmas is real in case the “lie” damages relations with their children. Making up stories about Santa risks destroying a child’s trust and is morally unbelievable, according to two experts.
Psychologist Professor Christopher Boyle and social scientist Dr. Kathy McKay also criticize the idea employed by parents—Santa Claus judges children to be nice or naughty. Writing in a well-known journal, they argue, “If they are capable of lying about something so special and magical, can they be relied upon to continue as the guardians of wisdom and truth?”
Defending the claims, Prof Boyle said, “The morality of making children believe in such myths has to be questioned. All children will eventually find out they’ve been consistently lied to for years, and this might make them wonder what other lies they’ve been told. Whether it’s right to make children believe in Father Christmas is an interesting question, and it’s also interesting to ask whether lying in this way will affect children in ways that have not been considered.”
Dr. McKay, from the University of New England in Australia, said there was clear evidence from the world of make-believe in movies and TV that adults looked for a chance to be children again. “The persistence of fandom(影迷) in stories like Harry Potter and Star Wars indicates their desire to briefly re-enter childhood,” she said. “However,” she added, “if adults have been lying about Santa, even though it has usually been well intentioned, what else is a lie? If Santa isn’t real, are fairies real? Is magic? Is God?”
They conclude, “Many people may long for a time when imagination was accepted and encouraged, which may not be the case in adult life. Might it be the case that the harshness of real life requires the creation of something better, something to believe in, something to hope for in the future or to return to a long-lost childhood a long time ago in a galaxy far far away?”
1. What did parents do that drew criticism from Dr. Kathy McKay?A.They were fond of Harry Potter and Star Wars. |
B.They acted as the guardians of wisdom and truth. |
C.They said Santa Claus could judge a kid to be good or bad. |
D.They have told many lies to their children besides Santa Claus. |
A.Parents are capable of making up stories about Santa Claus. |
B.Lies about Santa Claus can have a negative impact upon children. |
C.Stories about Santa Claus develop children’s trust in their parents. |
D.Experts think it right to make children believe in Father Christmas. |
A.They desire to return to the long-lost childhood. |
B.Everything will become better in movies than in real life. |
C.They want to get away from pressure from life and work. |
D.They didn’t watch such exciting movies when they were young. |
A.Positive. | B.Indifferent. | C.Disappointed. | D.Concerned. |
7 . If you only have a few close friends, you may feel like an outcast in society. However, studies show that loners typically have greater intelligence than popular folks. So, if you prefer being alone most of the time, don’t beat yourself up about it.
Evolutionary psychologists Satoshi Kanazawa and Norman Li conducted a national survey involving 15,000 respondents aged from 18 to 28. The research revealed that people who lived in densely populated urban areas reported lower life satisfaction in general and that the more people socialized with close friends, the higher their self-reported happiness was. Of course, the only exception occurred when it came to intelligent individuals.
“The effect of population density on life satisfaction was therefore more than twice as large for low-IQ individuals than for high-IQ individuals,” they found. More intelligent individuals were actually less satisfied with life if they socialized with their friends more frequently. In other words, when intelligent people hang out more with their friends, they feel less happy.
What makes highly intelligent people so different from the average person? They prefer to spend their time alone usually because they have a larger goal in mind. They see socializing as a distraction when they could use their time more wisely. Also, they don’t appear to be as sensitive to population density as those with lower IQs. Therefore, they can navigate the challenges of modern living more efficiently and perhaps find novel solutions to most significant problems.
According to Kanazawa and Li’s savanna theory of happiness (稀树草原幸福理论), in the past, we would have lived in tribes instead of densely populated cities, helping to avoid loneliness. “Our ancestors lived as hunter-gatherers in small bands of about 150 individuals,” they explain. “In such settings, having frequent contact with friends was necessary for their survival.” While we no longer live in small tribes now, most of us still require close friends and family to survive. That may explain the epidemic of loneliness affecting millions of people worldwide.
However, highly intelligent people are the exception to this theory. They don’t mind spending most of their time alone. So, if you don’t have many friends, you may have learned to overcome your primitive instincts. Perhaps you represent this small group of humans who can thrive in the modern era.
1. What do Kanazawa and Li find out?A.People today like living in densely populated urban areas. |
B.People today have lower life satisfaction than before. |
C.Socializing can enhance one’s happiness generally. |
D.Happiness mainly lies in the joy of achievement. |
A.They are extremely sensitive to the environment. |
B.They dislike spending much time socializing. |
C.They can’t handle life challenges effectively. |
D.They enjoy the company of other people. |
A.Loneliness poses a great health threat to us. |
B.People now are smarter than our ancestors. |
C.Densely populated urban areas are harmful to us. |
D.We still need to make contact with others to survive. |
A.Why do smart people keep just a few close friends? |
B.Why do most people tend to live in urban areas? |
C.How do the brains of intelligent people work? |
D.What is the key to happiness? |
8 . My grandparents were always busy with food. My grandmother could pull out the feathers of a chicken in less than half an hour. They picked vegetables from their garden. Animal fat was saved.
It took hours and made my fingers hurt. After an adult life spent buying rather than growing food, as a so-called new farmer, I finally began to understand my grandparents.
My grandparents’ generation spent a third of their income on food.
But until I began talking to the farmers around me, I had not understood the human costs faced by those asked to produce milk sold for less than bottled water.
Research has found that regenerative farming not only benefits the land, but profits can be 78% higher than conventional farms.
A.We spend less than a tenth. |
B.And any leftover meat was cut up for pies. |
C.Regenerative farming is welcomed by thousands of farmers now. |
D.I began to understand the work that we took for granted. |
E.I realized that keeping a big family was really a big burden for them. |
F.New technology helped these farmers raise a diversity of crops and farm animals. |
G.Then I came across a farming reform that sought to change this traditional system. |
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.
We shouldn’t overplay this danger. All readers skim. Skimming is the skill we acquire as children as we learn to read more skillfully. Nor is there anything new in these fears about declining attention spans, the length of time we spend concentrating on reading. 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. 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 enjoy s 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 and the iPad have 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. |
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 the brain |
D.the number of Internet readers is declining due to the advances of technology |
A.Straight-forward. | B.Old-fashioned. |
C.Deep-rooted. | D.Well-balanced. |
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 . It was decades ago now, but it’s still one of the most memorable conversations of my life. On a long, slow train heading north, with nothing to do but watch the rain, the man sitting opposite began trying to talk to me. Like most young women who have learned the hard way to be careful of strangers, I was unfriendly. But curiosity took over when he said that he was just bored, and liked talking.
So that’s what we did for hours and hours as the man turned out to be quite talkative. When the train finally pulled in, we didn’t change numbers. However, I still think about it sometimes on long, boring journeys, before getting a phone out and scrolling silently like everyone else. It’s a rare person who can cheerfully break the social rule about not talking to strangers without any ill intention, but life would be more interesting if more of us knew how to do it.
And that’s why I can’t be as cynical as I probably should be about “Tube Chat” campaign launched to encourage Britons to talk to each other. All anyone is being asked to do is to start a conversation they wouldn’t otherwise have had — maybe with a friend from whom they’ve been apart or a neighbor they don’t know.
Obviously, it takes more than a bit of small talk over garden fences to unite strangers together. More people live alone than did so a generation ago, and the rise in freelancing (自由职业) means more of us work alone too. We socialize increasingly through screens, sending texts instead of bothering to call.
It’s true that the “Tube Chat” campaign of a few years back failed in its attempts to make Londoners talk to each other on public transport. But even city people who would normally die rather than make eye contact with strangers still happily gather in large numbers by the Thames for the New Year’s Eve fireworks. They would get a far better view at home on television — it’s not really about the fireworks, but about being part of something communal (公共的).
There’s no guarantee (保证) that this latest campaign to reconnect will succeed wherever others have failed. But if there ever a moment to stop social disbelief it may start a fire to warm a world that sometimes feels cold. Wherever my train friend is now, I hope he’s still talking.
1. The author introduced her train friend to .A.share her most memorable but boring journey |
B.express her deep regret for losing touch with him |
C.show that talking to strangers can add interest to life |
D.explain why people are becoming indifferent |
A.doubtful | B.supportive | C.confused | D.disappointed |
A.“Tube Chat”, failed in its attempts to unite strangers together |
B.it’s hard to break the social rule about not talking to strangers |
C.people have a wish to be socially connected by nature |
D.“Tube Chat” made some difference to reconnecting people |
A.Keep our desire to connect. | B.Avoid talking to strangers. |
C.Show respect for social disbelief | D.Socialize with our friends. |