1 . Good afternoon. I am Sullivan. Now think about a question: What determines the way we are when we grow up? Let’s start with the TV program Seven Up. Do you still remember it? It started following the lives of a group of children in 1973. We first meet them as wide-eyed seven-year-olds and catch up with them at seven-year intervals: nervous 14-year-olds, serious 21-year-olds and then grown-ups.
There are ups and downs in their lives, but interestingly, in almost all the cases the children’s early hopes and dreams are shown in their future lives. For example, at seven, Tony is a lively child who says he wants to become a sportsman or taxi driver. When he grows up, he goes on to do both. How about Nicki? She says, “I would like to find out about the moon.” And she goes on to become a space scientist. As a child, soft-spoken Bruce says he wants to help “poor children” and ends up teaching in India.
But the program would have been far less interesting if the lives of all the children had followed this pattern. It was the children whose childhood did not prepare them for what was to come that made the program so fascinating. Where did their ideas come from about what they wanted to do when they grew up? Are children influenced by what their parents do, by what they see on television or by what their teachers say? Many film directors, including Steven Spielberg, say that an early visit to the cinema was the turning point in their lives. One of my colleagues, Dr. Margaret, who has devoted herself to researches in this area and published her findings in Science, thinks that the major factors are parents, friends and the wider society.
1. From Paragraph 2, we know that ________.| A．people will make great achievements if they have dreams in their childhood |
| B．the children’s childhood dreams are more or less the same |
| C．the lives of the children in the TV program are not smooth |
| D．a large number of poor people in India are in need of help |
| A．going to a movie at an early age helps a child learn about the space |
| B．parents and friends can help a child grow up properly |
| C．a single childhood event may decide what one does as a grown-up |
| D．films have more influence on a child than teachers do |
| A．The TV program is not so appealing. |
| B．One of the children, Bruce, ended up teaching in India because he is not strong. |
| C．The children in the TV program made good preparations for their future in their childhood. |
| D．In the TV program, the research on the children is done every seventh year. |
| A．a radio announcer | B．a professor | C．a librarian | D．a geologist |
2 . College debt is becoming as much of a problem for Americans close to retirement as it is for new graduates. There are now about 8. 7 million Americans aged over 50 who are still paying off college loans. They borrowed the money either to pay for an education for their children or themselves. Their debt is growing fast, increasing by about half since 2017 to a total of $ 370 billion — an average of $ 40, 900 per borrower. In 2019, roughly $4.9 billion was deducted (扣除) right from retirees’ Social Security income.
"Part of the blame falls on the federally backed PLUS program,” said Tara Siegel Bernard in The New York Times. "Parent PLUS loans”, which have few application requirements other than a basic credit check, have broadened access to capital for many parents. But the “loans can be unforgiving”. William and Kate Schweizer “didn’t want their two daughters to begin their adult lives burdened with college debt”. So they borrowed $ 220, 000 for their schooling. Increasingly they had trouble paying. Now their debt has ballooned to $500, 000. The consequences of defaulting (拖欠) are serious: “The government can take their wages and Social Security.”
“Unfortunately, President Biden’s $ 6 trillion budget doesn’t offer much assistance,” said Eric Levitz in NYMag.com. “During his campaign, Biden called for forgiving $ 10, 000 in federal student loan debt for every borrower among other ways to ease the college debt burden. But the chances of passing such measures through Congress are slim.”
“Don’t bankrupt yourself for your kids,” said Beth Akers in USA Today. The safer option to pay for college is “a student loan taken out in your child’s name”. A federal student loan — not a private one — can protect borrowers through income-driven repayment programs. There is also a better chance that a loan forgiveness program could materialize to help out student borrowers. And remember that “if you overextend yourself financially to make a college dream come true for your child, you are taking away your ability to be your child’s financial backstop.”
1. How does the author illustrate his point in Paragraph 1?| A．By using quotes. | B．By listing statistics. |
| C．By giving examples. | D．By giving definitions. |
| A．They have demanding requirements. |
| B．They can trap parents in financial crises. |
| C．They are not enough to cover college costs. |
| D．They set limits on how much one can borrow. |
| A．It is tight. | B．It is flexible. |
| C．It is beneficial. | D．It is impractical. |
| A．Americans Are Burdened by College Debt |
| B．Student Loans: A Stepping Stone to College |
| C．Lessons in Finance Help Repay Student Loans |
| D．Debt: College Costs Swallow Retirement Reserve Funds |
3 . 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. |
| 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. |
| A．Calming. | B．Disturbing. |
| C．Refreshing. | D．Challenging. |
| A．Artists’ Opinions on Plastic Safety |
| B．Media Interest in Contemporary Art |
| C．Responsibility Demanded of Big Companies |
| D．Ocean Plastics Transformed into Sculptures |
4 . If you could change your child's DNA in the future to protect them against diseases, would you? It could be possible because of technology known as CRISPR- Cas, or just CRISPR.
CRISPR involves a piece of RNA, a chemical messenger, designed to work on one part of DNA； it also uses an enzyme (If) that can take unwanted genes out and put new ones in, according to The Economist. There are other ways of editing DNA, but CRISPR will do it very simply, quickly, and exactly.
The uses of CRISPR could mean that cures are developed for everything from Alzheimer's to cancer to HIV. By allowing doctors to put just the right cancer-killing genes into a patient's immune system, the technology could help greatly.
In April scientists in China said they had tried using CRISPR to edit the genomes (基因组)of human embryos. Though the embryos would never turn into humans, this was the first time anyone had ever tried to edit DNA from human beings. With this in mind, the US' National Academy of Sciences plans to discuss questions about CRISPR s ethics(伦理问题).For example? CRISPR doesn't work properly yet. As well as cutting the DNA it is looking for, it often cuts other DNA, too. In addition, we currently seem to have too little understanding of what DNA gives people what qualities.
There are also moral questions around playing God”. Of course, medicine already stops natural things from happening-for example, it saves people from infections. The opportunities to treat diseases make it hard to say we shouldn't keep going.
A harder question is whether it is ever right to edit human germ-line(种系)cells and make changes that are passed on to children. This is banned in 40 countries and restricted in many others. However, CRISPR means that if genes can be edited out, they can also be edited back in. It may be up to us as a society to decide when and where editing the genome is wrong.
Also, according to The Economist, gene editing may mean that parents make choices that are not obviously in the best interests of their children: “Deaf parents may prefer their children to be deaf too； parents might want to make their children more intelligent at all costs.
In the end, more research is still needed to see what we can and can't do with CRISPR. “It's still a huge mystery how we work,” Craig Mello? a UMass Medical School biologist and Nobel Prize winner, told The Boston Globe, "We're just trying to figure out this amazingly complicated thing we call life.
1. What is the passage mainly about?| A．What we can and can't do with CRISPR. |
| B．How CRISPR was developed by scientists. |
| C．The advantages of CRISPR and arguments about its ethics. |
| D．Scientists' experiments of using CRISPR to edit human embryos. |
| A．is very safe because it only cuts the DNA it is looking for |
| B．is banned in most countries and restricted in many others |
| C．could cause parents to make unwise choices for their children |
| D．could help us discover the link between DNA and the qualities it gives people |
| A．all diseases could probably be cured through the uses of CRISPR |
| B．scientists had never edited genomes before CRISPR was invented |
| C．CRISPR is a technology that uses an enzyme to work on RNA and DNA |
| D．CRISPR has proven to be the most effective way to protect children against diseases |
| A．Supportive. | B．Worried. | C．Negative. | D．Objective. |
5 . Children in England will no longer be able to buy energy drinks.
In the UK, more than 2/3 of 10 to 17-year-olds buy energy drinks, according to the government. “
| A．They will also be listed unhealthy drinks in China. |
| B．However, these drinks have very high levels of sugar and caffeine. |
| C．Childhood fatness is one of the greatest health challenges this country faces. |
| D．Too much caffeine can cause health problems, such as headaches and sleeplessness. |
| E．The UK government has made plans to stop shops selling the energy drinks to kids. |
| F．So energy drinks are as important as three meals for every day. |
| G．Red Bull is one of the most famous energy drinks. |
6 . According to a study conducted in 2010, about 39 % companies had blocked employee access to Facebook. They think some employees spend their entire day sitting glued to Facebook, updating and commenting, which has a negative effect on their work.
Blocking access to Facebook means that the employer doesn’t trust the employees. People are dissatisfied with the company if they’re not allowed access to Facebook.
Today many companies have pages on Facebook which they use for spreading news and something about products. If Facebook pages are blocked in an office, how will employees like or share something from the company page? Employees can also interact with each other through Facebook. It creates a sense of bonding and they get along well with each other.
As far as I’m concerned, whether an organization should ban Facebook depends largely on factors like its culture, type of work, Internet policy, business goals, etc. As far as the employees are concerned, most of them will be in support of allowing access to Facebook.
| A．However, their banning isn’t widely accepted. |
| B．People hold different attitudes towards Facebook now. |
| C．People who have special skills are interested in Facebook. |
| D．Keeping in touch through it helps in improving their relations. |
| E．So the company should take the employees, interest into account. |
| F．In order to keep people active, essential that they are kept happy. |
| G．Firm, they think it’s necessary to take a break after working for hours. |
