1 . When almost everyone has a mobile phone, why are more than half of Australian homes still paying for a landline (座机)?

These days you’d be hard pressed to find anyone in Australia over the age of 15 who doesn’t own a mobile phone. In fact plenty of younger kids have one in their pocket. Practically everyone can make and receive calls anywhere, anytime.

Still, 55 percent of Australians have a landline phone at home and only just over a quarter (29%) rely only on their smartphones according to a survey (调查). Of those Australians who still have a landline, a third concede that it’s not really necessary and they’re keeping it as a security blanket — 19 percent say they never use it while a further 13 percent keep it in case of emergencies. I think my home falls into that category.

More than half of Australian homes are still choosing to stick with their home phone. Age is naturally a factor (因素)— only 58 percent of Generation Ys still use landlines now and then, compared to 84 percent of Baby Boomers who’ve perhaps had the same home number for 50 years. Age isn’t the only factor; I’d say it’s also to do with the makeup of your household.

Generation Xers with young families, like my wife and I, can still find it convenient to have a home phone rather than providing a mobile phone for every family member. That said, to be honest the only people who ever ring our home phone are our Baby Boomers parents, to the point where we play a game and guess who is calling before we pick up the phone (using Caller ID would take the fun out of it).

How attached are you to your landline? How long until they go the way of gas street lamps and morning milk deliveries?

1. What does paragraph 2 mainly tell us about mobile phones?

A．Their target users.	B．Their wide popularity.
C．Their major functions.	D．Their complex design.

2. What does the underlined word “concede” in paragraph 3 mean?

A．Admit.	B．Argue.
C．Remember.	D．Remark.

3. What can we say about Baby Boomers?

A．They like smartphone games.	B．They enjoy guessing callers’ identity.
C．They keep using landline phones.	D．They are attached to their family.

4. What can be inferred about the landline from the last paragraph?

A．It remains a family necessity.

B．It will fall out of use some day.

C．It may increase daily expenses.

D．It is as important as the gas light.

2 . Mental Health Crisis Among Teens Demands a New Approach

Since the CDC released its survey results last month showing alarmingly high rates of sadness and depressive thoughts among teens, fingers have been pointed from two sides at the causes of this crisis.     1    . Others say that today’s more secular(世俗的)culture has confused our most vulnerable young people. But neither side seems to grasp the true urgency of the issue.

According to the CDC’s findings, more than one in five of the 17,000 high school students surveyed reported mental breakdown. Their rates of sadness and hopelessness are the highest in a decade, reflecting an increasing trend exacerbated by society’s isolation(隔离)and stress.     2    .

Parents as well as teachers and others who have direct contact with children must accept this preventive approach. It is crucial that they not be afraid to ask direct questions about depressive thoughts.     3    . It is also especially important that parents understand what help is available to their children.

    4    . For example, we can demand equity equality, which means insurance coverage(保险范围)for behavioral illnesses health issues that is for physical , thus reducing the financial burden. We can also urge our congressmen to fund health programs and expand mental health professions.     5    . Put the politics aside. There are lives in the balance.

A．And they should resist the false idea that raising a question creates a risk that was not there before.

B．This means that we must put aside our disagreements and approach this issue as a matter of life and death.

C．Some have argued that the climate issue has created an existential threat and accompanying anxiety.

D．Hospitalization may also be appropriate when the person in question shows an immediate danger to themselves.

E．At the macro(宏观的)level, our country can do so much more to help people struggling with mental health problems and their families.

F．It’s time to stop blaming and turn our attention to this generation of struggling teenagers.

G．It’s time for those who have the power to amplify(放大)their voices and drive change to focus on helping teenagers and families access the help they need.

3 . In a world that often feels fast-paced and restrained to routines, the desire for van (房车) life and mobile living has captured the hearts of many seeking an alternative lifestyle.     1     From the freedom to explore new horizons to fostering a minimalist mindset, here are some captivating advantages of embracing van life.

Liberation from Materialism

The confined space of a van encourages a minimalist lifestyle, where experiences are valued over possessions.     2     With minimal monthly expenses, such as parking fees and fuel costs, van dwellers can allocate resources to experiences rather than high rent or house payments. This mobile living is supported by the degrowth movement, which believes that economies should focus on securing the minimal basic needs instead of consumption and consumerism.

Exploration and Flexibility

The ability to follow adventure wherever it takes you is one of the most amazing aspects of living in a van. You can choose to wake up at dawn over the ocean one day and find yourself in a forested mountainside the next. Living in a van frequently involves being close to the outdoors surrounded by the beauty of nature.     3    

Minimal Ecological Footprint

    4     They adopt solar panels and efficient water systems , further minimizing their impact on the environment. People who choose to live in mobile homes believe that eventually, global warming and extreme weather might bring an end to sedentary (定居的) living patterns.

Through the open road, the beauty of nature, and the friendship of fellow adventurers, van life presents a unique avenue for enriching the human experience.     5    

A．It’s thrilling to travel the world.

B．Many van lifers tend to go green.

C．Living in a van can often be more cost-effective.

D．They’ll find a sense of freedom of constant exploration.

E．The natural world becomes an essential part of your daily life

F．Better yet, it offers a way to reconnect with the essence of living.

G．The concept of van life offers benefits beyond just a change of scenery.

4 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

For parents who send their kids off to college saying, “These will be the best years of your life,” it would be very appropriate to add, “     1     you can handle the stress of college life.”

Freshmen are showing up already stressed out, according to the latest research study     2     reported students’ emotional health levels at their lowest since the survey started in 1985. While in school, more students are working part-time and near-full-time jobs. At graduation, only 29 percent of seniors     3     (offer) jobs.

Pressure to excel often creates stress, and many students are not learning how to effectively handle this stress. Let me show five facts that I believe every college student     4     know about stress.

First, stress can make smart people do stupid things. Stress causes     5     brain researchers call “cortical inhibition (皮层抑制).” In simple terms, stress prevents a part of the brain responsible for decision-making and reaction time and can negatively affect other mental abilities as well.

Second, the human body doesn’t discriminate between a big stressful event and a little one. Any stressful experience will create about 1,400 biochemical events in your body. If any amount of stress is left     6     (uncheck), many things can occur within the body, including premature aging and energy drain.

Third, stress can become your new pattern. When you regularly experience negative feelings and high amounts of stress, your brain recognizes this     7     your normal state. This then becomes the new norm (常态) for your emotional state.

Fourth, stress can be controlled. Countless studies demonstrate that people can restructure their emotional state using emotion refocusing techniques. One technique     8     (involve) slowing your thoughts, breathing slowly, and focusing on the positive feeling that you receive.

Finally,     9     (draw) to what you study can lessen stress. Barbara Frederickson, a leading international authority on the importance of positive emotions, says humans are genetically programmed     10     (seek) positive emotions such as love and joy. It’s suggested that you should choose a major or career path you love and enjoy. Otherwise, you could end up fighting against your own biology.

5 . Beating Burnout and Compassion Fatigue in the New Year

This year has continued to bring many of us closer to the pain, suffering and exhaustion of those experiencing burnout and compassion fatigue (疲倦). There is no doubt that 2021 has been filled with additional challenges.     1    

The data is clearly showing that our workforce shares feelings of burnout. A recent Gallup report indicated that 67% of us feel burned out either some or most of the time. At an organizational level, Hogan reports that burned out employees are 18% less productive and 2.6 times more likely to be actively seeking a different job.

Fatigue and burnout arise not when we fail to get sufficient rest but when we fail to appreciate the moments of purpose and joy in our lives.

There are a few myths around burnout and compassion fatigue:

Myth 1: Burnout is an individual's problem.

Many people believe that burnout is about an individual who needs to “figure it out”.     2     Team structure offers critical support and leaders should create environment where team burnout is addressed.

Myth 2:     3    

Surprisingly, the individuals most likely to experience burnout are committed employees and leaders who love their job and are highly engaged. These top performers are the people you are most likely to lose.

Myth 3: People who experience burnout are just less resilient.

Research shows a correlation between higher levels of resilience (复原力) and lower levels of burnout.     4     But resilience looks very different now from five years ago, and my guess is that it will continue to shift.

If 2021 has taught us anything, it is that we cannot separate burnout from our emotions, whether they may be fear, anger, shame or guilt.     5    

A．While fatigue is more sudden and results from carrying the pain and suffering of others, what we experience is similar.

B．Burnout results from lack of responsibility.

C．Burnout hurts individuals' enthusiasm and passion.

D．At this point, burnout and compassion fatigue has expanded into many aspects of our lives.

E．But burnout occurs at different levels and is the result from challenges to individuals, teams and organizations.

F．At one point, people believed resilience was established by “sucking it up”, or “just staying positive”.

G．And the path forward requires us to deepen the relationship with feelings of joy, passion, pride and fulfillment.

6 . In the 19th century, three pioneering women struggled to find their place in a male-controlled field. Elizabeth Blackwell, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Sophia Jex-Blake—among the first female doctors—are the heroines of Olivia Campbell’s new book. The story is lively and interesting, and the main characters are full of personality and individualism. Jex-Blake is described as “big and confident, a determined educational reformer with large eyes and an even lager personality”. Garrett Anderson, referred to as “Lizzie” throughout, was equally determined but also educated, and polite. The result is a great read for anyone looking for an introduction to the history of medical women.

The biographies of the three women are woven into a bigger, grander story about medicine in the 19th century and it is slow and unwilling acceptance of female physicians (医师). Though British, Blackwell attended medical school in the US. “Lizzie” was admitted to the medical school only via a loophole (漏洞) in the admissions policy. And Jex-Blake’s attempt to sit a medical exam in Edinburgh was met with a storm of protest.

Unsurprisingly, the three heroines faced many difficulties, but their efforts finally proved successful. Women in White Coats is, therefore, a successful tale of social progress. The final concluding chapter paints a sunny picture of present-day equality within the medical profession. However, in its efforts to tell an inspiring story, the book glosses over continuing problems within the profession today. Though more women than men now graduate from medical school, they face struggles with career progression and sexism.

We need more books that don’t offer a “great white men” approach to history. However, they have to deal with the incomplete and uneven nature of progress. Inspiring as it is to read stories of heroines trying hard and succeeding against the odds, that isn’t the whole picture. Medicine might be better for women now than in the past, but the problems of the Victorian era continue to exist and we still have far to go.

1. Who might particularly enjoy reading Women in white Coats?

A．People favoring science fiction novels.

B．Researchers studying great white men in history.

C．Those interested in female pioneers in medicine.

D．Students curious about the development of medicine.

2. Why does the writer tell the stories of the three women in Paragraph 2?

A．To praise their strong personality.

B．To state the success of women in medicine.

C．To prove their determination and confidence.

D．To show the challenges faced by female physicians.

3. What do the underlined words “glosses over” mean in Paragraph 3?

A．Solves.

B．Ignores.

C．Stresses.

D．Defends.

4. What can we infer from the last paragraph?

A．Gender equality has been achieved in medicine.

B．The problems faced by women are a thing of the past.

C．History books should inspire people with women’s success.

D．History books should cover the successes and struggles of women.

7 . The “reading wars,” one of the most confusing and disabling conflicts in the history of education, went on heatedly in the 1980s and then peace came. Advocates of phonics (learning by being taught the sound of each letter group) seemed to defeat advocates of whole language (learning by using cues like context and being exposed to much good literature).

Recent events suggest the conflict of complicated concepts is far from over. Teachers, parents and experts appear to agree that phonics is crucial, but what is going on in classrooms is not in agreement with what research studies say is required, which has aroused a national debate over the meaning of the word “phonics.”

Lucy M. Calkins, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College and a much-respected expert on how to teach reading, has drawn attention with an eight-page essay. Here is part of her argument: “The important thing is to teach kids that they needn’t freeze when they come to a hard word, nor skip past it. The important thing is to teach them that they have resources to draw upon, and to use those resources to develop endurance.”

To Calkins’s critics, it is cruel and wasteful to encourage 6-year-olds to look for clues if they don’t immediately know the correct sounds. They should work on decoding — knowing the pronunciation of every letter group — until they master it, say the critics, backed by much research.

Calkins’s approach “is a slow, unreliable way to read words and an inefficient way to develop word recognition skill,” Mark S. Seidenberg, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin, said in a blog post. “Dr. Calkins treats word recognition as a reasoning problem — like solving a puzzle. She is committed to the educational principle that children learn best by discovering how systems work rather than being told.”

Many others share his view. “Children should learn to decode — i.e., go from print on the page to words in the mind — not by clever guesswork and inference, but by learning to decode,” Daniel Willingham, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, told me. He said the inferences Calkins applauds are “cognitively (认知地) demanding, and readers don’t have much endurance for it. … It disturbs the flow of what you’re reading, and doing a lot of it gets frustrating.”

Yet a recent survey found that only 22 percent of 670 early-reading teachers are using the approach of phonics and what they mean by phonics is often no more than marking up a worksheet.

Both sides agree that children need to acquire the vocabulary and background information that gives meaning to words. But first, they have to pronounce them correctly to connect the words they have learned to speak.

Calkins said in her essay: “Much of what the phonics people are saying is praiseworthy,” but it would be a mistake to teach phonics “at the expense of reading and writing.”

The two sides appear to agree with her on that.

1. Critics of phonics hold the opinion that ________.

A．children should be taught to use context

B．teaching phonics is both boring and useless

C．kids acquire vocabulary in hearing letter groups

D．pronunciation has nothing to do with meaning of words

2. Which of the following statements is Mark S. Seidenberg most likely to agree with?

A．Tell me and I will forget; show me and I will remember.

B．Skilled reading is fast and automatic but not deliberative.

C．Word recognition skill should be developed in problem reasoning.

D．Learning to make reasonable inferences is also a way of decoding.

3. It can be inferred from the passage that ________.

A．phonics approach has been proved to be successful

B．children don’t shy away from difficulties in reading

C．the two reading approaches might integrate with each other

D．reading and writing are much more important than phonics

4. Which of the following might be the best title of the passage?

A．An everlasting reading war among critics

B．From print on the page to words in the mind

C．A battle restarts between phonics, whole language

D．Decoding and inferring confuse early-reading teachers

9 . How many bosses could rely on their employees threatening to quit in mass if they were abruptly forced out? Sam Altman received such a show of support from more than 700 staff after he was fired from Open AI that he was swiftly restored to his position by the board. But this level of loyalty is not typical and may not always be a good thing.

Management experts say staff who are loyal to their employer are inclined to invest more time and effort in their jobs, helping to create an engaged and higher performing workplace. In turn they receive promotions and pay rises. They have a greater sense of belonging and potentially a longer career at the same organisation. But it is not all rosy. People who are too loyal are more likely to take actions that are deemed wrong to keep their jobs and protect their employer, according to a 2021 academic paper. They might overlook wrongdoing and be less likely to expose corruption. Loyalty is sometimes seen as such a force for good that it can be used to justify bad behavior.

Often companies and senior bosses are the real winner a of employee loyalty. Research led by Matthew Stanley at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business published this year, found that managers were more likely to exploit loyal individuals. Stanley recruited almost 1,400 managers to read about a fictional 29-year-old employee called John, who worked for a company that was trying to keep costs down. They had to decide how willing they would be to ask John to work longer hours and take on more work without more pay. Researchers created various situations including labelling John as loyal versus other traits such as honest and fair. Managers were more willing to ask loyal John to take on the burden of unpaid work.

However, Consultancy Gallup’s latest state of the workplace report showed that half of the 122, 416 employees who took part in a global survey were looking out for new work. “You can’t guarantee anyone will stick around these days,” says a consultant who advises boards. This is particularly true of younger generations. They trust their bosses less and are not as patient when it comes to career progression, seeing little benefit in keeping their heads down and following orders if they do not see results quickly.

1. What does the author want to say by mentioning Sam Altman in Paragraph 1?

A．Open AI’s staff loyalty is quite high.

B．Staff loyalty’s rosy side in the work.

C．Sam Altman could count on his employees.

D．This level of loyalty is not always good.

2. How did Matthew Stanley conduct his research!

A．Through global surveys concerning a fictional employee named John.

B．By creating different situations to ask John ta take on more unpaid work.

C．By asking managers to make decisions about work arrangements of John.

D．By recruiting managers to read fiction about work traits like loyal and honest.

3. What can you learn from the passage?

A．Loyalty can be used by management to exploit employees.

B．Younger generations are more patient towards their employers.

C．Employees who are loyal are more likely to report wrongdoing.

D．Loyalty to an employer always leads to a positive work environment.

4. What can be a suitable title for the text?

A．How Job Loyalty Affects the Work Environment?

B．Why Staff Loyalty is Not Always a Good Thing?

C．Are Loyal Employees More Likely to be Promoted?

D．Does Work Loyalty Help Career Progress More Quickly?