1 . Experts worry that teen texting is out of control. Instead of
Garcia, a high school senior from Grand Kennedy, has also felt the need to stay constantly
Dr. Dowdell, at Villanova University, says that many people expect to be able to
So we decided to have Kenny and Garcia do an experiment. These were the
“Wow, it was completely
A.sleeping | B.exercising | C.reading | D.working |
A.studies | B.discusses | C.argues | D.texts |
A.power | B.urge | C.approval | D.commitment |
A.submit to | B.feed on | C.respond to | D.struggle against |
A.surrounded | B.accepted | C.connected | D.acknowledged |
A.avoid | B.count | C.anticipate | D.accumulate |
A.access | B.challenge | C.consult | D.influence |
A.appealing | B.annoying | C.frustrating | D.encouraging |
A.benefit | B.expectation | C.assumption | D.concern |
A.resist | B.advance | C.concentrate | D.pause |
A.components | B.applications | C.rules | D.options |
A.painful | B.enjoyable | C.serious | D.helpful |
A.instructed | B.hesitated | C.rejected | D.admitted |
A.In spite of | B.Instead of | C.But for | D.Along with |
A.direct | B.depressing | C.joyful | D.practical |
1. What did the woman do with the thief?
A.She pretended not to see him. | B.She fought with him. | C.She did as he asked. |
A.A necklace. | B.Some money. | C.Nothing. |
A.Fit a home alarm system. | B.Call the police. | C.Keep a dog. |
A.She is puzzled. | B.She is brave. | C.She is frightened. |
3 . In a policy address to lawmakers, Japan’s Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, said the country’s population problem was a case of solving the issue “now or never”, and that it “simply cannot wait any longer because it can affect social functions”.
“In thinking of the sustainability and inclusiveness of our nation’s economy and society, we place child care support as our most important policy,” he said, adding that he wants the government to double its spending on child-related programs, and that a new government agency would be set up in April to focus on the issue.
Japan has one of the lowest birth rates in the world, and it recorded fewer than 800,000 births in 2022 for the first time since records began in 1899. The country also has one of the highest life expectancies in the world; in 2020, nearly one in 1,500 people in Japan were age 100 or older, according to government data.
These trends have driven a growing population problem, with a rapidly aging society, a shrinking workforce and not enough young people to fill the gaps in the stagnating (停滞) economy. The country’s high cost of living, limited space and lack of child care support in cities make it difficult to raise children, meaning fewer couples are having kids. Experts point to the pessimism young people in Japan hold towards the future, many frustrated with work pressure and economic stagnation.
How about other parts of East Asia? South Korea recently broke its own record for the world’s lowest birth rate, with data from November 2023 showing a South Korean woman will have an average of 0.79 children in her lifetime — far below the 2.1 needed to maintain a stable population. Japan’s birth rate stands at 1.3, while the United States is at 1.6. Meanwhile, China’s population shrank in 2022 for the first time, adding pressure to its economic growth.
1. How does the Japanese government feel about the falling birth rate?A.Surprised. | B.Confused. | C.Embarrassed. | D.Worried. |
A.The rapidly aging society. | B.The high life expectancies. |
C.The shortage of workforce. | D.The various stresses of life. |
A.Ignorance of the birth rate. | B.Serious population crisis. |
C.Weak care services for children. | D.Potential harm to women’s health. |
A.Society. | B.Health. | C.Education. | D.Science. |
1. How many kids were there in the research?
A.10. | B.14. | C.400. |
A.Less than 3 hours. | B.About 5 hours. | C.More than 6 hours. |
A.Students should reduce their time on the screen. |
B.Parents shouldn’t buy mobile phones for their children. |
C.Parents should communicate with their children more frequently. |
5 . PEER PRESSURE
Have you ever been forced to do anything? Have you ever felt that you are in a tight corner because of someone’s comment?
Peer pressure can influence how people dress, how they talk, what music they listen to, what attitudes they adopt and how they behave. Teenagers want to be liked, to fit in and to be accepted.
Students can do a lot to avoid peer pressure. The most important thing is to build up self-confidence, so that it is easier to say “no” to the peer group.
A.Why does peer pressure happen? |
B.Teens can talk to a grown-up they trust. |
C.Students can do this by choosing their friends wisely. |
D.If they give in to peer pressure, what could be the result? |
E.This means peer pressure can be powerful and hard to resist. |
F.We’ve all experienced the situations like that—peer pressure. |
G.We need to recognize when it is positive and when it is negative. |
6 . Many industries are facing a shortage of labour. Warehousing has grown rapidly. And robots are now indispensable, picking items off shelves and helping people pack an exponentially rising numbers of boxes. They are even beginning to walk slowly along some pavements, delivering goods or food right to people’s doors. Having more robots to boost productivity would be a good thing.
And yet many people fear that robots will destroy jobs. A paper in 2013 by economists at Oxford University was widely misinterpreted as meaning that 47% of American jobs were at risk of being automated.
In fact, concerns about mass unemployment because of robots are overblown. The evidence suggests robots will be ultimately beneficial for labour markets. A Yale University study found that an increase of one robot unit per 1, 000 workers boosted a company’s employment in Japan. Another study, by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and colleagues elsewhere, looked at Finnish firms and concluded that their use of advanced technologies led to increases in hiring.
For all that, the march of the robots will bring big changes to workplaces. The skills and firms that are rewarded will shift, too. But that need not be the disaster many fear. One supposed example of “bad automation” is self-service checkouts in supermarkets because they displace human workers. Checkout staff who retrain to help customers pick items from aisles may well find that dealing with people in need is more rewarding than spending all day scanning barcodes.
Certainly, some people will be on the losing end of change even as the robots make society as a whole better off. One lesson from the freewheeling globalization of the 1990s and 2000s is that the growth in trade that was overwhelmingly beneficial contributed to a political backlash (强烈抵制) because the losers felt left behind. That’s one more reason why firms and governments would do well to recognize the value of retraining and lifelong learning. As jobs change, workers should be helped to acquire new skills, including how to work with and manage the robots that will increasingly be their colleagues.
The potential gains from the robot revolution have just started. It won’t be the plot in some films where the robots fight against their human masters and cause mass unemployment.
1. What does the underlined word “indispensable” mean in Paragraph 1?A.Essential. | B.Spare. | C.Detective. | D.Complicated. |
A.To prove that robots will not be a disaster. |
B.To remind us of the big changes at workplaces. |
C.To illustrate checkout staff will scan barcodes slowly. |
D.To tell firms the value of retraining and lifelong learning. |
A.It will push losers to leave behind. |
B.Robots may lead to mass unemployment. |
C.People will help robots to gain new skills. |
D.Robots and people may become co-workers. |
A.Jobs will be at risk due to robots. |
B.No evidence shows that robots will destroy jobs. |
C.Lifelong learning will quickly boost mass employment. |
D.People have benefited a lot from the robot revolution. |
7 . Like so many other ABCs (American-born Chinese) and younger first and second-generation Chinese immigrants (移民), sisters Sarah and Kaitlin Leung reached a point in their adult lives when they started to long for the Chinese food they’d grown up on, but found it really difficult to learn how to prepare it. There was such a “representation gap”, as Sarah puts it, in terms of what kinds of cuisines were noticeably featured in those early days of TV celebrity chefs and the emerging food blogosphere (博客圈).
As it turns out, though, the Leungs were uniquely positioned to do something about it. Bill, the father, had spent years cooking beef at his family’s Chinese American takeout restaurant. Judy, the mom, was born and raised in Shanghai and had deep knowledge about traditional Shanghainese cooking. Meanwhile, the two sisters had grown up in the New Jersey suburbs, eating their parents’ food, but also growing in America’s own food-obsessed culture.
So, in 2013, the Leungs started The Woks of Life. What distinguished their blog from others was that the intergenerational heritage (传承) of knowledge that the Leungs were so eager for was baked right into the concept—The four family members took turns posting recipes, each sharing their own favorites, tapping into their own areas of expert knowledge.
Kaitlin is proud that The Woks of Life follows along line of pioneers-folks like Joyce Chen, Martin Yan and Ming Tsai, who first started to bring Chinese home cooking into the mainstream in the US. “We feel proud that we have made a meaningful mark over the past decade, casting light that there’s a huge demand for these recipes,” she says .“It’s about representation, yes, but there’s also a huge demand. Asian Americans look to reconnect with the food of their heritage.”
Five years ago, you wouldn’t have been able to find a ton of Chinese recipes in the New York Times food section, Kaitlin notes. Now you can.
1. What do the underlined words “representation gap” in paragraph 1 refer to?A.The shortage of Chinese chefs. |
B.The lack of Chinese food recipes. |
C.The gap between young and old ABCs. |
D.The difference between chefs and bloggers. |
A.To prove how unique the Leung sisters are. |
B.To show why the Leung sisters prefer Chinese food. |
C.To point out the Leungs’ advantage to start a food blog. |
D.To stress the Leung sisters’ love for home cooking food. |
A.The concept of baking food. |
B.The large number of followers. |
C.The bloggers, way of posting recipes. |
D.The intergenerational heritage of knowledge. |
A.It strengthens bonds between individuals. |
B.It marks the popularity of Chinese cuisine. |
C.It has developed many new Chinese recipes. |
D.It links Asian Americans with their food tradition. |
内容包括:
1.大家的看法及理由;
2.你的观点。
注意:
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Is Reading a Book Better than Listening to It?
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________9 . California has been using recycled wastewater for many years. A team has used it to make ice surfaces for the game of hockey(冰球运动). It has been used to make snow for the sport of skiing. And farmers use it to water their crops. But it has not been used directly for drinking water.
Recently, California officials approved new rules to let water agencies recycle wastewater and put it right back into the pipes that carry drinking water to homes, schools, and businesses. It is a big step for California.
California’s new rules would let—but not require—water agencies to take wastewater, treat it, and then put it right back into the drinking water system. That means proving to people that recycled water is not only safe to drink but also not dirty. California would be just the second US state to permit this, following Colorado. It has taken officials more than 10 years to develop these rules, a process that included several studies by independent groups of scientists.
A project in San Diego is aiming to produce nearly half of the city’s water through recycling wastewater by 2035. And the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California aims to produce up to nearly 570 million liters(升)a day for its 19 million people. Adel Hagekhalil is with Metropolitan Water. He said the new rules will permit new projects that have not yet been considered.
California’s new rules require the wastewater be treated for all bacteria and viruses, even if they are not present in the wastewater. In fact, the treatment is so intense that it removes all of the minerals that make fresh drinking water taste good. That means the minerals need to be added back at the end of the process. Polhemus is a director of the drinking water group for the California Water Resources Control Board. “It’s at the same drinking water quality, and probably better in many instances,” he said, adding that it takes time and money to build these treatment centers. So, they will only be available for bigger cities at first.
1. What does paragraph 1 mainly tell us about the recycled wastewater?A.Its qualities. | B.Its functions. |
C.Its target users. | D.Its disadvantages. |
A.They made some new rules on pollution. |
B.They spent ten years recycling wastewater. |
C.They tried to make wastewater safe to drink. |
D.They requested water agencies to speed up treating water. |
A.Doubtful. | B.Favorable. | C.Pessimistic. | D.Indifferent. |
A.The Process of Recycling Wastewater Is Complicated |
B.California Tries to Reduce the Wastewater Generation |
C.California Permits Turning Wastewater to Drinking Water |
D.New Wastewater Treatment Projects Have Been Approved |
10 . Everywhere I look, there are new buildings under construction. The neighborhoods that I knew as a boy, filled with beautiful old buildings, have mostly disappeared, and in their place, modern, high-rise buildings have appeared. There is good reason for this. Residents want all the conveniences of modern living. However, how can our children understand and maintain their cultural identity if we erase so much of the physical evidence of it?
The arguments for preserving historic buildings are not simply about an emotional attachment to the past. There are also good economic arguments in favour of preservation. The renovation (修缮) and preservation of historic districts can become an economic engine, drawing tourists and small businesses to the area. For example, in Dubai, the historic Al Bastikiya district draws thousands of tourists every year from all over the world. It also attracts local residents, eager to learn about their city's past.
Some have argued that historic preservation is too expensive, but many recent projects have demonstrated that this is not necessarily the case. In fact, renovation of an existing structure for adaptive reuse can cost about £40 per square metre less than even the most basic new construction, while preserving the beauty of the original building. And, although it is often claimed that old buildings have a more significant environmental footprint than new construction because they aren’t very energy efficient, architects and environmental experts maintain that the greenest building is the one that is already built. New construction almost always has a more serious environmental impact (影响) because it requires the use of all-new materials that must be transported, often over long distances, instead of recycled materials that are already on site. We recycle so many other things. We can and should recycle buildings, too.
Historic preservation is an option that opens many possibilities; demolition (拆毁), in contrast, is irreversible. Once these treasures are lost, they are lost forever, an important link in our heritage that can never be recovered.
1. What drives people to replace old buildings with new ones?A.Their dislike of old buildings. | B.Their pride in cultural identity. |
C.Their concern about young generations. | D.Their desire for modern comforts. |
A.Historic renovation costs much money. |
B.Local governments support small businesses. |
C.Historic preservation brings economic benefits. |
D.International tourism promises economic recovery. |
A.It uses green materials. | B.It damages architectural beauty. |
C.It reduces enviromental impact. | D.It worries environmental experts. |
A.Positive. | B.Doubtful. | C.Disapproving. | D.Objective. |