1 . America’s youth is turning its back on tobacco. According to a study recently published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), cigarette smoking among US high school students is at an all-time low. One in 5 US high school students in 2016 reported using a tobacco product within the past 30 days, an improvement from 1 in 4 students just one year before.
“These findings show the importance of continuing to implement the evidence-based strategies that we now work to reduce all forms of tobacco product use, including e-cigarettes, among our nation’s youth,” says Brian King, of the CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health and senior author of the study.
And it’s not just tobacco: Drug use among US teens is down across the board. The National Institute on Drug Abuse has published annual reports on US teens’ drug use since 1996, and the 2016 survey shows the lowest rates of illegal drug and alcohol use. Marijuana (大麻) use remained “mostly steady”. “It is encouraging to see more young people making healthy choices not to use illegal substances,” says former National Drug Control Policy Director Michael Botticelli.
All individual forms of tobacco such as cigarettes, e-cigarettes, cigars, and smoke-less tobacco saw declines in usage in 2016. Experts are especially encouraged by the decline in cigarettes, the most popular tobacco product among teens. In 2016, 11.3 percent of high school students reported using e-cigarettes, down from 16 percent in 2015.
Dr. King says adaptation is key to the decline of e-cigarettes. “We have over a half-century of science telling students about the harmful effects of tobacco use and what works best to prevent it,” says King. “E-cigarettes are the most commonly used tobacco product among our nation’s youth, and it’s critical that our proven strategies are modernized to keep pace with the changing tobacco product landscape.”
1. What does the underlined word “implement” in Paragraph 2 mean?| A．Delay. | B．Perform. | C．Schedule. | D．Control. |
| A．US teens’ drug use has decreased. |
| B．There are many forms of tobacco. |
| C．E-cigarettes are popular among US teens. |
| D．The strategies are put forward by experts. |
| A．Disapproving. | B．Suspicious. | C．Favorable. | D．Ambiguous. |
| A．US teen tobacco use declines. | B．High percent of teen tobacco use. |
| C．The harmful effects of tobacco use. | D．The strategies to reduce tabasco use. |
2 . A major emergency can create hundreds of thousands of refugees (难民) overnight. The most immediate way in which organizations like UNHCR and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) can help these refugees is by setting up refugee camps. Refugee camps are designed to be temporary, but they often remain in place for decades. In some parts of the world, children have grown up and had children of their own without ever leaving their camp.
Critics argue that they force refugees to be entirely dependent on donations. One journalist who visited the Nyadeou camp in the south of the Republic of Guinea A (Africa) in 2001, described how normally peaceful people were reduced to fighting with each other when the food truck arrived.
Refugees camps can easily become dirty, overcrowded and are overrun with disease or crime. In many camps, drug dealers hide themselves among the majority of innocent refugees.
One alternative for refugees is to settle in a town or village, making them become part of the local population. This is known as the “self-settlement”. Several aid agencies argue that the self-settlement is a better option in many cases than refugee camps. They say that self-settled refugees can start to rebuild their lives straight away, and are freer and safer than refugees in camps. Oxfam, the ICRC and many other international aid agencies support programs in which refugees are helped to self-settle.
Representatives of UNHCR argue that refugee camps are the best way of saving the greatest possible numbers of lives. They point out that it is much easier to help people if they are all gathered in one place. This is certainly true of emergency relief, for example the distribution of food, water, shelters and medical supplies. It is also true that long-term aid programs, such as family tracing, orphan support and, perhaps most importantly, education, can all be carried out much more easily when refugees are all living together in one place.
1. Who are responsible for the refugees’ dependence on donations?| A．Critics. | B．Children. | C．Refugee camps. | D．UNHCR and the ICRC. |
| A．More personal aid. | B．More living space. |
| C．Better training programs. | D．A better sense of security. |
| A．It can help save much land. | B．It’s easier for them to get schooling. |
| C．It can reduce the number of orphans. | D．It allows families to better help each other. |
| A．The advantages of refugee camps. | B．The disadvantages of refugee camps. |
| C．The advantages of the self-settlement. | D．The disadvantages of the self-settlement. |
3 . Keeping fit often means sharing a busy pathway with cyclists,runners and walkers,but imagine facing the task of doing it all without being able to see or hear.It is a challenge many disabled athletes face,unless someone agrees to be their eyes and ears.
Newly formed group Achilles Brisbane pairs visually and audibly impaired (视觉和听觉受损的) athletes with people who would like to guide them.
Jane Britt,president of Achilles Brisbane,who is—vision and hearing—impaired,said,“When we go out,it’s much less frightening to have someone beside us that has full hearing to listen for us and tell us what’s there.”
Ms.Cullen and Ms.Britt meet up most Saturday mornings to take part in the five-kilometer park run.Their partnership is built on trust,but Ms.Britt said that it took time to develop.
Ms.Britt said it took an unexpected storm for her to trust Ms.Cullen completely.“There was violent rain,my glasses were broken and we were walking together.I suddenly had to tell her I couldn’t see anything,and I was going to have to completely trust her.From that time I knew it was going to work because she was so good about dealing with the special situation we both found ourselves in,” she said.
Isabella Allen and her seeing eye dog Tatum are two new additions to the Achilles Brisbane.Ms.Allen kept active by rowing,running and cycling but found it difficult to keep going as her vision became worse.After nearly giving up completely,she worked up the courage to ask Achilles Brisbane to find someone to share a boat with her.
Ms.Allen said the fear of not finding anyone to row with almost stopped her from reaching out to Achilles Brisbane.“But,they found people and matched me to them,” she said.“It’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”
1. How does Jane Britt feel about going out alone?| A．Relaxed. | B．Excited. | C．Worried. | D．Bored. |
| A．She developed a strong sense of teamwork. |
| B．She led Ms.Cullen forward on the road. |
| C．She began to rely on Ms.Cullen as her guide. |
| D．She fell down on the ground. |
| A．Asking Achilles Brisbane for help. |
| B．Working in Achilles Brisbane. |
| C．Exercising non-stop. |
| D．Meeting Tatum. |
| A．The danger of walking on a busy road. |
| B．The difficulty the disabled athletes face. |
| C．The exercise people do to keep fit. |
| D．The necessity of building roads for the blind. |
1. 给出理由；
2. 你的建议。
注意： 1. 词数100左右；
2. 短文题目已为你写好。
Why Students Should Learn to Cook
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5 . Facing the growing digital economy and new positions incubated (孵化) in the sector such as deliverymen and live-streaming hosts, young people, especially those born after 2000, are expressing a stronger willingness for flexible work relations with companies, and also wish to become “digital workers” with flexible work locations and schedules.
A report from Peking University’s National School of Development released on Wednesday said that nearly 66 percent of surveyed employees born after 2000 prefer to work from home. The number is higher than surveyed people born after 1970, with about 54. 4 percent of them preferring the new way.
“The Internet can do anything for me. I check emails from my clients and submit my proposals through WeChat, then we discuss plans via teleconference. I love working from home actually,” said Mi Lu, a 28-year-old new media operator in Beijing. “It’s a much more convenient and cooler thing. We work everywhere, perhaps in a cafe, or on a bullet train or even on the table of a restaurant.”
Hu Jiayin, an associate professor in Peking University’s National School of Development, concluded that their survey shows that young people desire freedom in their jobs, but also wish for stability in their careers because of uncertainties brought by the fast-changing digital economy.
“But the development of the digital economy also brings great uncertainties and a sense of insecurity to the working population, so we’ve found some interesting things during our surveys that over 30 percent of job seekers we’ve surveyed wish to have a stable job at state-owned companies,” she added.
Li Qiang, vice-president of Zhaopin, said that the greatest risk to those seeking flexible work is whether the company pays the salary fully and on time. “It’s necessary for job seekers to set up a long-term development plan, rather than be shortsighted.” He added that companies may bear risks that flexible employees can’t deliver high-quality work in a limited time period, which requires the companies to establish a sound work delivery standard to help evaluate employee performance.
1. What attracts the young people to become “digital workers”?| A．The increasing network security. | B．The convenient transportation. |
| C．The flexible working style. | D．The bright prospects. |
| A．Digital economy is interesting and promising. |
| B．Young people pay little attention to instability in working. |
| C．30% of surveyed job seekers desire to work in government agencies. |
| D．The development of digital economy is a double-edged sword for job seekers. |
| A．Job seekers lack ambitions. | B．Employers are shortsighted. |
| C．Some companies require working overtime. | D．Flexible work conditions needs improving. |
| A．Favorable. | B．Objective. | C．Ambiguous. | D．Disapproving. |
6 . Recently, a big change quietly took place in agriculture. Yet neither drought nor frost is ever a concern for growers of plants currently grown inside large greenhouses. Vegetables are increasingly being grown indoors, using an advanced form of growing called controlled environment agriculture, a method that has the potential to help feed the planet, even while it threatens to further warm it.
Controlled environment agriculture has many advantages. Crops are not subject to unexpected extreme weather. Furthermore, these greenhouses can produce more food with fewer pesticides and less water. With computer-controlled temperatures and nutrients, the plants grow with less water and produce much higher yields. Above all, the produce can be bred for flavor, instead of for tolerance to heat, rain and long-distance transportation.
The carbon footprint of any given greenhouse tomato can vary quite a bit depending on energy sources, surrounding temperatures and natural light. But various studies have estimated that, on average, the production of a pound of tomatoes in an American or northern European greenhouse releases 3 to 3.5 pounds of carbon into the atmosphere. That is about 6 times the caron footprint of a field tomato, even taking into account the emissions from refrigerated trucks that often transport field vegetables hundreds or even thousands of miles to reach consumers. Greenhouses, by contrast, can be built near major population centers.
Nevertheless, in a rapidly warming world, should we be increasing agriculture’s contribution by moving some of it indoors? “We have little choice,” say advocates. “With the global population expected to grow by 25 percent to nearly 10 billion people by 2050,food production will need to increase by 60 percent to 100 percent. With freshwater supplies and land suitable for farming decreasing, and droughts getting worse due to climate change, where will this additional food come from?”
1. What does the underlined part “a big change” in paragraph 1 refer to?| A．The rapid increase of population. |
| B．The threatens of warming the planet. |
| C．The way to deal with natural disasters. |
| D．The tendency to grow vegetables indoors. |
| A．Making crops taste good. |
| B．Planting crops with less water. |
| C．Growing crops in extreme weather. |
| D．Transporting crops from a long distance. |
| A．They are not high-yielding crops. |
| B．They are not really environmentally friendly. |
| C．They are grown far from population centers. |
| D．They are mainly exported to norther Europe. |
| A．Greenhouse planting is a necessary temporizing measure. |
| B．Greenhouse planting is tailored for small-population nations. |
| C．Greenhouse planting can help spread the idea of healthy eating. |
| D．Greenhouse planting should be stopped from warming the world. |
7 . Liu Yexi has taken Douyin by storm. As of Nov. 17, the virtual idol, who appeared on the social media platform on Oct. 31, had only released two short videos but attracted over 5 million followers. Different from other virtual idols, Liu is defined as a “virtual beauty vlogger”. In her first video, Liu is doing makeup with an eye brush while dressed in a traditional Chinese costume. When she turns around, the onlookers are terrified, except one boy. Then Liu slightly brushes the boys eyes, allowing him to see the fantasy world in her own eyes.
The internet users were impressed by its storyline, science-fiction elements and special visual effects with cyberpunk style. Liang Zikang, the CEO of the production team, told China Newsweek that the team spent two months making the video.
Lius instant popularity online further reflects that the virtual idol industry in China has been booming. There are over 32,400 virtual idols that have opened accounts on video-sharing platform Bilibili in the past year, seeing a year-on-year rise of 40 percent, Chen Rui, the CEO of Bilibili, said in a speech.
“Compared with real idols and stars, the virtual ones seem to be more approachable for fans,” Shine News noted. Additionally, these virtual web celebrities won't have scandals.
As more young people are fascinated by these virtual figures, their commercial value has been on the rise. Generally, they earn money by endorsements (代言), online concerts, livestreaming and related products. For example, Luo Tianyi, a well-known virtual singer, cooperated with livestreamer Li Jiaqi to promote goods in 2020.
Therefore, some people are wondering whether they will replace real humans. “These so-called virtual idols have real human teams to back them up and control them. They are not really virtual,” Ding Daoshi, an independent analyst in the internet sector, told the Global Times. The real virtual idol will come when artificial intelligence achieves a new level of self-learning and self-training and then interacts with others, he added.
1. Which of the following contributes to the popularity of Liu Yexis video?| A．The video involves sci-fi elements. |
| B．The video features funny visual effects. |
| C．The video teaches useful makeup skills. |
| D．The video tells a traditional Chinese story. |
| A．They can attract more followers. |
| B．They have higher commercial value. |
| C．They can be approached more easily. |
| D．They are equipped with better talents. |
| A．They can interact with each other. |
| B．They will replace human idols soon. |
| C．They are dependent on human teams. |
| D．They can learn and train by themselves. |
| A．Virtual idols are sweeping the Internet. |
| B．People raise concern about virtual idols. |
| C．AI technology has made a new breakthrough. |
| D．Social media platforms are gaining popularity. |
8 . While video games used to be considered harmful to young people, various studies have also proved the positive effects of computer games, especially action video games.
Angela Pasqualotto from the University of Trento and her team have now tested whether such video games can help primary school children learn to read. They’ve developed such a computer game called Skies of Manawak.
“Reading involves many important skills, including knowing how to move our eyes on the page or how to use our working memory to connect words into a meaningful sentence,” explains Pasqualotto. “It’s known that action video games improve these still, such as vision, general attention, working memory and cognitive (认知的) flexibility.”
For their study, the researchers tested 150 school children between the ages of eight and twelve. Half of them played the game Skies of Manawak two hours a week for six weeks. The other half, the control group, received the educational game Scratch, which is intended to teach children the basics of programming. Both games are basically to train the executive (执行的) functions of the brain.
“We started by examining the children’s ability to read words, non-words and paragraphs and their attention control,” explains Pasqualotto. “After six weeks, these skills were tested again.”
“We found a seven-fold improvement in attention control in the children who played our action video game compared to the control group,” said Pasqualotto. The team also saw significant improvements in reading speed and accuracy among Skies of Manawak players—there were no improvements in the kids who played Scratch. It’s also worth mentioning that the children’s reading skills have improved, although the game itself doesn’t contain any reading exercises.
“For the study, we also carried out three further evaluation tests six, twelve and eighteen months after the training. Each time, the trained children performed better than the control group,” adds Pasqualotto.
Of course, while the study suggests some benefit in action video games, it does not mean that one must do nothing else.
1. What did the 150 school children do in the study?| A．They received training on programming. | B．They finished some reading ability tests. |
| C．They created video games on their own. | D．They played games with reading exercises. |
| A．Its influence on reading skills is not temporary. | B．The study results about it seem to be untrustworthy. |
| C．Reading ability can’t be improved with its assistance. | D．Kids need consistent reading training after playing it. |
| A．They have nothing to do with reading. | B．People shouldn’t get addicted to them. |
| C．School kids are supposed to avoid them. | D．They should be replaced with Scratch. |
| A．Video Games Prove Harmless to Young People at School |
| B．Time for Children to Play Video Games Should Be Limited |
| C．Children Easily Fall in Love With Reading in a Video Game |
| D．Playing Action Video Games Improves Kids’ Reading Skills |
1.导致该现象的原因;
2.提出相应的建议。
注意：1.词数100左右;
2.可适当增加细节。以使行文连贯;
3.文章开头已给出，不计入总词数。
Recently, I have read an article about the mental state of teenagers, which said that
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10 . Futurism is all around us, even if we usually don't notice it. When it comes to the weather, forecasting is normal. When it comes to cultural or social predictions, though, futurism can feel more fantastical. But over the last decades, such forecasts have gradually become serious business, shaping our expectations and the world.
A range of professions - from sociologists to economic forecasters-have long devoted time and energy to predicting where the world might go. By the middle of the 20th century, futurology, or the study of the future, became more systematic as social scientists developed futurological methods. At the RAND Corporation, during the 1960s, strategists such as Herman Kahn established long-range planning techniques. Companies also involved themselves in encouraging the new study's rise. In 1967, Royal Dutch Shell began to experiment with scenario (情境)planning or the technique of using storytelling to speculate (推测) about the future. Called the Year 2000 study, Shell's earliest scenarios suggested that the company needed to plan for discontinuity, helping it to better deal with political and social changes that might impact its bottom line.
Faith Popcorn, who runs the futurist consulting firm BrainReserve, did something revolutionary in the 1970s and 1980s; Rather than predict product prices or sports scores, Popcorn and other futurists studied consumer culture. They realized that rapid cultural change could shake up what products people wanted. They studied human behavior and tracked new cultural developments to help imagine and design goods and services that were on trend, and soon consumers would see new things being marketed and sold. When BrainReserve predicted that more people would be staying home, Domino's made moves to dominate pizza delivery to unsocial customers. In 1982, John Naisbitt's best-selling book “Megatrends” predicted the trend of humanizing. Companies then made office spaces more open, or offered ATMs that asked “How are you” as a bank teller might.
Futurists and trend forecasters found a broad audience in the US for their predictions in the 1970s, and still do to this day. If anything, fast-paced technological changes, and current social and political issues, have increased people's appetite for where the world might go. And even when they get it wrong, forecasters continue to capture attention and market share-anyone today seems to have a burning desire to glimpse what the future might hold.
1. What role did the Year 2000 study play?| A．It caused Shell to make wrong decisions. |
| B．It promoted the development of futurology. |
| C．It provided data for the RAND Corporation. |
| D．It started a new method of studying the future. |
| A．It helped create new products. | B．It helped predict product prices. |
| C．It helped humanize office spaces. | D．It helped deliver goods to consumers. |
| A．Favorable. | B．Cautious. |
| C．Indifferent. | D．Uncertain. |
| A．Different futurological methods. |
| B．Forecasters influence on culture. |
| C．The history of predicting the future. |
| D．Important changes in consumer culture. |
