1 . Several studies in recent years have suggested that ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft can worsen traffic problems in cities, which continue to have high rates of private vehicle ownership.
Recently, a new study has found that ride-sharing services result in much more pollution than other kinds of private and public transportation. Ride-sharing trips also draw passengers away from more environment-friendly methods of travel, like public transportation, walking or biking, the study found.
The new study, carried out by the not-for-profit group Union of Concerned Scientists, represents an attempt to center on how ride-sharing services affect pollution. The research examined the effects of ride-sharing services on seven of America’s largest cities.
Overall, the researchers reported that ride-sharing trips now “result in an estimated 69 percent more climate pollution on average than the trips they displace.” The study notes that the same passengers could have chosen to travel by bus, train, bike, scooter or on foot.
One of the big reasons they give for this result is that ride-sharing vehicles are often driven with no passengers in the car. This happens when drivers are either waiting for rider requests, are on the way to pick up passengers or are driving in between pickups. This situation, known as “deadheading”, takes up about 42 percent of all ride-sharing driving activity, the study found. The researchers said that deadheading results in about 50 percent more carbon dioxide than one person driving in a private vehicle. Both Uber and Lyft do offer a choice of a “pooled” ride, which involves drivers picking up additional riders during the same trip.
The study urges services like Uber and Lyft to work to increase the number of pooled rides. It also urges the two companies to increase the number of electric vehicles on the road and to improve connections to public transportation centers.
Both Uber and Lyft have said in the past that most studies on the subject overstate the effects of their services on pollution. They have noted that the majority of vehicles on the road belong to private individuals or companies. Uber told Reuters news agency in a statement it had no comment on the latest report. But the company said it aims to be part of the solution to address climate change by working directly with cities. The statement added that Uber would continue to promote pooled trips and other means of transportation.
1. What does the underlined word “they” in Para. 4 refer to?| A．The researchers. | B．Ride-sharing trips. |
| C．The same passengers. | D．Environment-friendly methods of travel. |
| A．Most studies have overstated the effects of Uber’s and Lyft’s services on pollution. |
| B．Ride-sharing services are playing an active role in dealing with climate change. |
| C．People may be discouraged from taking public transportation due to ride-sharing services. |
| D．Climate pollution resulting from ride-sharing trips has increased by 69 percent on average. |
| A．Ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft can worsen traffic problems in cities. |
| B．The reasons for more pollution caused by ride-sharing services have been found. |
| C．Ride-sharing trips lead to more pollution than other kinds of private and public transportation. |
| D．The disadvantages of ride-sharing trips outweigh the advantages they have brought to people. |
2 . Walking in the city is very different from walking in the park. A small psychology study suggests urban(城市的) environments can slow your step and possibly increase your mental load. A walk through nature, on the other hand, appears to ease your mind and quicken your pace. The findings show that natural settings may potentially reduce cognitive (认知的)tiredness and improve reaction times straight away. The study, which includes two experiments with two different approaches, was conducted among 65 university students in the lab.
The first of the two experiments in the new study focused on people’s way of walking and cognitive load. During this trial, participants were fitted with sensors and a dozen motion control cameras were set up to watch them repeatedly walk down a 15-metre room at their natural speed. The wall opposite them showed an image of either a nature scene or a city scene. After each walk, participants were asked to rate their feelings of discomfort in the visual environment. On the whole, when walking in city settings, people reported more discomfort and they walked at a slower pace, indicating a higher cognitive load.
The second experiment dug into some of the higher-level cognitive processes that might be at play. In the trial, participants were asked to distinguish between basic visual shapes on the computer while also in the presence of a natural or urban image(the same ones from the first experiment). Measuring reaction times in both natural and urban settings, the team found results to support their idea. In urban environments, participants were slower in distinguishing between simple shapes. The authors think this is because urban environments are more distracting(令人分心的) for our brains and take longer to process, but more research is needed to prove that idea.
1. How were the experiments conducted mainly?| A．By comparing. | B．By giving data. |
| C．By giving examples. | D．By explaining facts. |
| A．It can make us feel relaxed and react quickly. | B．It can activate our thinking and speed up our step. |
| C．It can make us less tired and improve our memory. | D．It can make us become more focused and creative. |
| A．They had a lower cognitive load. | B．They had to slow down their pace. |
| C．They couldn’t concentrate properly. | D．They felt uncomfortable after walking. |
| A．Urban environment makes us more concentrated. | B．People’s feelings are decided by their pace of walking. |
| C．The result of the experiments is widely appreciated. | D．People tend to get tired more easily walking in the city. |
3 . A 9-year-old boy is called a hero after he rescued his dad when a car fell on him. Brave J.T. Parker’s
“ We were
At that moment, Mason had gone inside the house
He said he
“ I couldn’t move at all,” Parker said. “I was totally
J.T., who weighs about 50 pounds, said he, too, didn’t think he would be able to
It took him
Parker was then sent to the nearest hospital with 13 broken ribs (肋骨). He was
| A．creative | B．quick | C．considerable | D．present |
| A．Fearful | B．Considerate | C．Proud | D．Brave |
| A．event | B．disaster | C．conflict | D．accident |
| A．pushing | B．pulling | C．fixing | D．watching |
| A．easily | B．normally | C．hardly | D．unwillingly |
| A．though | B．until | C．before | D．because |
| A．started | B．suspended (暂停) | C．continued | D．tried |
| A．yelled | B．ran | C．aimed | D．pointed |
| A．put | B．get | C．make | D．find |
| A．buried | B．trapped | C．dead | D．covered |
| A．lift | B．push | C．step | D．blow |
| A．seconds | B．days | C．hours | D．minutes |
| A．gradually | B．eventually | C．absolutely | D．completely |
| A．police | B．neighbor | C．doctor | D．passer-by |
| A．sent | B．recovered | C．energetic | D．persuaded |
1. Who are the audiences probably?
| A．College students. | B．News reporters. | C．Movie fans. |
| A．Racism. | B．Heightism. | C．Sexism. |
| A．Get more attention. | B．Get more choices. | C．Get more income. |
| A．They can earn high income from it. |
| B．They can get satisfaction from it. |
| C．Nobody cares about their height. |
1. 表示欢迎；
2. 介绍社团并推荐；
3. 你的愿望。
注意：
1. 词数80左右；
2. 开头语和结束语已为你写好。
Dear John,
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Yours,
Li Hua
6 . I decided to write the article on British Sign Language (BSL) being taught in school. This is because both of my parents are completely deaf which means they can’t hear at all and another reason I decided to do this topic is because I have realised how much of a problem it has become.
It might come to a surprise to learn that nearly all communication is non-verbal (非语言的) and only a little bit is verbal. Over half of the non-verbal communication is body language. Deaf pupils often struggle (挣扎) in school because they can’t get proper help from their teachers as they might not understand each other.
Sign Language is a language that uses hand gestures and body language. These are different ways of communication that deaf or hard of hearing people use to communicate with people. Some deaf people are what you might call “mute”, which means they use Sign Language but don’t use speech. Other deaf people may use speech, most of whom either use hearing aids or have a cochlear implant (人工耳蜗) which can help them hear.
By teaching BSL it would open doors for the deaf community and it would reduce a lot of language barriers (障碍) between deaf and hearing people. The more people learning BSL through education means that it would give deaf people more options for further education and good jobs. By teaching Sign Language in school it can help deaf awareness (意识). With young people growing up and learning it together there wouldn’t be a problem with getting jobs.
I think that deaf awareness is better than it used to be but it still isn’t good enough. In the end teaching Sign Language will be the best for everyone. There would be less language barriers, which means communication will be easier between hearing people and deaf people.
1. What made the author write the text?| A．His own hearing problem. | B．The difficulty of the deaf. |
| C．The school’s sincere invitation. | D．His parents’ encouragement. |
| A．They are too shy to ask for help. |
| B．Their classmates use body language. |
| C．Their teachers are unwilling to help them. |
| D．They have difficulty communicating with others. |
| A．We should offer deaf people good jobs. |
| B．Schools should teach British Sign Language. |
| C．Schools should provide further education for the deaf. |
| D．Young people should learn more about Sign Language. |
| A．It is nearly close to success. | B．It still needs to be improved. |
| C．It isn’t understood by hearing people. | D．It’s bad for breaking language barriers. |
7 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。
Every day many teens wake up frightened of
School bullying can threaten students’ physical and mental
For younger kids, the best way of solving the bullying problem is to tell
Bullying is a problem that can cause serious damage unless the problem
8 . Every festival has its own meaning. Labor Day, for example, celebrates the value of hard work. Thanksgiving is about showing thanks to people around you. And Valentines’ Day is a time when you express love to your loved ones. But somehow it now seems that all festivals we just care about one thing — shopping. And that can be a big problem.
“In a way, over-consumption (过度消费) is the mother of all our environmental problems,” Kalle Lasn once told CNN. Lasn is the organizer of Buy Nothing Day, a day set up in Canada in 1992 to fight against unhealthy spending habits, and has now become an international event. It’s held on the day, which is known as Black Friday — a famous shopping day in the US and Canada.
You can see the irony (讽刺) here.
Even though the idea of Buy Nothing Day was brought up 26 years ago, we seem to need it now more than ever. It’s just as Lasn said, all the different kinds of pollution in our lives today — bad air quality, the reduction of forest area, endangered animal species, and plastic bags found in the ocean — seem to be the same cause: over-consumption.
The latest example is the Singles’ Day shopping craze of Nov 11, which saw a new sales record. But as Nie Li, a campaigner at Greenpeace, told Reuters, “Record-setting over-consumption means record-setting waste.” And it was reported that last year the Singles’ Day packages left more than 160,000 tons of waste, including plastic and cardboard. The Collins Dictionary has also just named “single-use” its Word of the Year, pointing out the problem that there’re too many things we tow out after only using them once.
So, Buy Nothing Day might only be here for one day a year, but it’s not just to remind us to the a break from shopping on that day, but to change our lifestyle completely, focusing on fun “with people we care about” rather than wasting money on useless things.
1. What’s the authors purpose of writing the first paragraph?| A．To express the people’s love for all festivals. |
| B．To talk about the meaning of the festivals. |
| C．To appreciate the value of the festivals. |
| D．To bring out the topic of the passage. |
| A．To help people save money. | B．To cut the cost for daily life. |
| C．To prevent over-consumption. | D．To set up a new sales record. |
| A．Opposed (反对的). | B．Supportive. |
| C．Unknown. | D．Neutral (中立的). |
| A．Creating a New Lifestyle | B．Buy Nothing Day |
| C．Festivals Around the World | D．A Change in People’s Life |
9 . In 2020, Pink launched the world Regret Survey, the largest survey on the topic ever undertaken. With his research team, Pink asked more than 15, 000 people in 105 countries, “How often do you look back on your life and wish you had done things differently?” Most of them said regret was at least an occasional part of their life. Roughly 21 percent said they felt regretful all the time. Only 1 percent said they never felt regretful.
If you are of the “no regrets” school of life, you may think that all this regret is a recipe for unhappiness. But that isn’t the case. Letting yourself be overwhelmed by regret is indeed bad for you. But going to the other extreme maybe even worse. To extinguish your regrets doesn’t free you from shame or sadness but causes you to make the same mistakes again and again. To truly get over our guilt requires that we put regret in its proper place.
Uncomfortable as it is, regret is an amazing cognitive (认知的) feat. It requires that you go back to a past scene. Imagine that you acted differently to change it, and with that new scene in mind, arrive at a different present — and then, compare that fictional present with the one you are experiencing in reality. Not all regrets are the same, of course. Pink says they come in four basic varieties, and an instance of regret may involve just one combination.
Many connection regrets overlap (重叠) with moral regrets, which can come about after you go against your own values. For example, you may pride yourself on being a loving person, and thus regret not living up to this image in the relationship you harmed. Moral regrets can also involve (涉及) just yourself. Maybe you regret not living up to your commitment (承诺、保证) to your health when you ate a whole pizza or skipped the gym.
If not analyzed and managed, any variety of regret can be harmful to your health. Regret is linked to depression and anxiety, and excessive regret can have a bad effect on your immune system. But regret doesn’t have to be put aside and ignored.
1. What could be concluded from Pink’s research ?| A．Half of the people felt regretful. |
| B．Most people lived without regrets. |
| C．None could live a life without regrets. |
| D．The majority of the people had regrets. |
| A．Admit. | B．Destroy. | C．Treasure. | D．Advance. |
| A．The harm of moral regrets. |
| B．The importance of commitment. |
| C．The relationship between regrets and values. |
| D．The connection between reality and imagination. |
| A．Types of regrets. | B．Causes of regrets. |
| C．Benefits of experiencing regrets. | D．Ways of dealing with regrets. |
10 . Researchers from Arizona State University (ASU) published their latest report. When men expressed their opinions with anger, people considered them more believable. But when women expressed anger, they were viewed as more emotional (情绪化) and, thus, less trustable. In other words, a man could benefit from using anger in power and persuasion. A woman, however, could be ignored or hurt by her group if she expressed anger.
The study was based on the responses of 210 students. They were shown evidence online from a murder (谋杀) trial. A man was said to have murdered his wife. The students were asked to decide if the man was guilty or not. Before making their decisions, the students discussed the case online with five jurors (陪审员). But these jurors were computers responses and comments. Some of the jurors had male identities. Others had female identities.
Some male jurors were angry about the verdict (裁决). When this happened, the students reacted by doubting their own decisions about the case. Confidence in their responses on the verdict dropped. However, when female jurors seemed angry, the students became more confident in their original verdicts.
Jessica Salerno, a psychologist and co-author of the study, said, “Our results provide something important for any woman who is trying to have an influence on a decision in her workplace and everyday life.”
In a political debate, a female candidate might have less influence if she shows anger. In the entertainment world, actor Jennifer Lawrence recently wrote that women and men in Hollywood get the opposite reactions when expressing their opinions angrily. “All I hear and see are men speaking their opinions,” she wrote. “When I give mine in the quite similar manner, you would have thought I said something annoying”.
1. What’s the new finding from the ASU report?| A．Men usually do harm to angry women. |
| B．Women are more likely to become angry. |
| C．People prefer to believe the angry women. |
| D．Angry men appear to gain influence in a group. |
| A．Male jurors agreed with them. |
| B．They became angry with the jurors. |
| C．Angry female jurors didn’t agree with them. |
| D．Angry male jurors showed opposite opinions. |
| A．It helps women avoid losing influence. |
| B．It asks men to get away from angry women. |
| C．It causes men to change their attitude to women. |
| D．It shows men and women should be treated equally. |
| A．By showing differences. | B．By giving examples. |
| C．By presenting research findings. | D．By setting down general rules. |
