1 . Martha Stewart was charged, tried and convicted of a crime in 2014. As she neared the end of her prison sentence, a well-known columnist wrote that she was “paying her dues,” and that “there is simply no reason for anyone to attempt to deny her right to start anew. ”
At least 65 million people in the United States have a criminal record. This can result in severe penalties (惩罚) that continue long after punishment is completed.
Many of these penalties are imposed regardless of the seriousness of the offense or the person’s individual circumstances.
In all, more than 45,000 laws and rules serve to exclude vast numbers of people from fully participating in American life. Some laws make senses. No one advocates letting someone convicted of pedophilia (恋童癖) work in a school.
These laws are also counterproductive (适得其反), since they make it harder for people with criminal records to find housing or a job, two key factors that reduce backsliding. A recent report makes several recommendations, including the abolition of most post-conviction penalties, except for those specifically needed to protect public safety.
The point isn’t to excuse or forget the crime. Rather, it is to recognize that in America’s vast criminal justice system, and second chances are crucial. It is in no one's interest to keep a large segment of the population on the margins of society.
| A．Criminals should pay the price of finding housing or a job and getting qualifications for benefits. |
| B．Surely, the American ideal of second chances shouldn’t be reserved only for the rich and powerful. |
| C．But too often collateral (附随的) consequences bear no relation to public safety. |
| D．Where the penalties are not a must, they should be imposed only if the facts of a case support it. |
| E．American’s vast criminal justice system provides criminals with necessary support for living. |
| F．Laws can restrict or ban voting, access to public housing, and professional and business licensing. |
2 . THE GLOBAL WASTE TRADE IS ESSENTIALLY BROKEN
Cut into hillside in northern Malaysia stands a large, open-air warehouse. This is a recycling factory, which opened last November. On a very hot afternoon in January, Shahid Ali was working his very first week on the job. He stood knee-deep in soggy, white bits of plastic. Around him, more bits floated of the conveyor belt and fell to the ground like snowflakes.
Hour after hour, Ali sorts through the plastic jumble moving down the belt, picking out pieces that look off-color or soiled-rejects (废品) in the recycling process. Though it looks like backbreaking work, Ali says it is a great improvement over his previous job, folding bed-sheets in a nearby textile factory, for much lower pay. Now, if he eats simply, he can save money from his wages of just over $l an hour and send $250 a month to his parents and six brothers and sisters in Peshawar, Pakistan, 2,700 miles away, “As soon as I heard about this work, I asked for a job,” says Ali, 24, a bearded man with glasses and an easy smile. Still, he’s working 12 hours a day, seven days a week. “If I take a day off, I lose a day’s wages,” he says.
In the warehouse, hundreds of bags are stacked more than 60 feet high-each stuffed with plastic wrappers and bags thrown away weeks earlier by their original users in California. The fact that the waste has traveled to this distant corner of the planet in the first place shows how badly the global recycling economy has failed to keep pace with humanity’s plastics addiction. This is an ecosystem that is deeply dysfunctional, if not on the point of collapse: About 90% of the millions of tons of plastic the world produces every year will eventually end up not recycled, but burned, buried, or dumped.
Plastic recycling enjoys ever-wider support among consumers: Putting yogurt containers and juice bottles in a blue bin is an eco-friendly act of faith in millions of households. But faith goes only so far. The tidal wave of plastic items that enters the recycling stream each year is increasingly likely to fall right back out again, casualties of a broken market. Many products that consumers believe (and industries claim) are “recyclable" are in reality not, because of hard economics. With oil and gas prices near 20-year lows, so-called virgin plastic, a product of petroleum feed-stocks, is now far cheaper and easier to obtain than recycled material. That unforeseen shift has yanked the financial rug out from under what was until recently a practical recycling industry. “The global waste trade is essentially broken,” says the head of the global plastics campaign at Greenpeace. “We are sitting on vast amounts of plastic with nowhere to send it and nothing to do with it.”
1. What is the author’s attitude towards Shahid Ali?| A．Critical. | B．Merciless. | C．Indifferent. | D．Sympathetic. |
| A．The prices of oil and gas have been increasing. |
| B．Tons of wastes travel so far before being recycled. |
| C．Recyclable products are not really recycled. |
| D．Governments don’t support the recycling industry. |
| A．Out of stock. | B．Far from pleased. | C．Full of energy. | D．Out of order. |
| A．To illustrate how plastic waste has been recycled in the world. |
| B．To warn people that the global waste trade is essentially broken. |
| C．To analyze the relationship between consumers and factories. |
| D．To solve the conflict between the recycling industry and governments. |
3 . Hello, everyone!
Are you worried about crime? I am. We read it every day in the newspapers. A terrible crime has been committed, and the police have arrested someone. He has appeared in court and claimed his innocence but has been found guilty of his crime and he has been sentenced to ten years in prison.
But what happens next? We all hope the prisoner will benefit from society’s retribution. A spell (一阵子) in prison will reform him and make him a better person. We all hope he’ll reform and become like us. We all hope that when he is eventually released, he will be a good character.
So what can we do to make sure the offender doesn’t commit another crime? Of course, there are alternatives to prison, such as community service or he can pay a large fine. Alternatively, we could establish a more severe system of punishment.
The answer is far simpler. We need to be tough not on the criminal, but on the cause of the crime. We should spend less of the taxpayer’s money in funding the judges and all the other people who are working for the legal system.
Vote for us now!
| A．It will not be long before he’s back in prison again. |
| B．We’re all relieved that the criminal is being punished for his misdeeds. |
| C．Community service is likely to turn prisoners into better persons. |
| D．Offenders are tried and sentenced according to the legal system. |
| E．The threat of another spell in jail will stop him from breaking the law again. |
| F．Put the money into supporting deprived areas which are the grounds for crime. |
4 . Research into language learning and motivation has changed direction over the past two decades, shifting from what are now considered overly-simplistic models of motivation, such as “integrativeness” (where students are motivated to learn an L2 because they wish to join a community that speaks this language) and “instrumentalism” (where motivation comes from a desire for financial or some other sort of return). Motivation to learn has now been linked to a second-language identity, which is not conceptualised as static, but dynamic, shifting and open to change. Some research studies have focused on investment in ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) settings in English-speaking countries: how students invest in the target language in order to get certain returns, not only financial but also related to status, an idea which Bonny Norton Peirce notes as having been borrowed from the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. There is also growing research in the area of “future selves” and language learning, such as that by Zoltán Dörnyei and Ema Ushioda and by Jill Hadfield.
Studies into second language identity have revealed the investment committed to building up an identity in English in the lives of economic migrants (移民) and those choosing to settle long-term in English-speaking countries. David Block conducted research into economic migrants living in London, revealing how they invest through study opportunities, seeking out locals to speak to, or using English in work. Each of his case studies reveals different features and patterns in these subjects’ lives.
Yet it is also true that second-language identity formation is alive in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) contexts, if I may draw a distinction from the ESOL further-education context (in the UK and the US). In an age of globalisation and internationalisation, the role of English has come into much sharper focus, and such a changed global reality poses new questions about motivation to learn. Dörnyei argues that we are now dealing with “global English”, and that its acquisition is related to building up “a global identity”. I put the case that international English language examinations, such as those offered by Cambridge English, are a powerful symbol of cultural capital, offering returns full of imagery and entry to imagined communities. Imagined communities, it has been argued, are imagined personal networks of the future, whether social, professional or even international. Investment and the motivation to learn can spring from the desire to belong to these imagined communities. How this imagery and investment relates to their own students should be something that teachers become familiar with.
1. The word “static” (in paragraph 1) is the closest in meaning to ______.| A．unchanging | B．movable | C．identified | D．focused |
| A．To plan for a brighter future abroad. |
| B．To contribute to increasing globalization. |
| C．To establish a second-language identity. |
| D．To expect substantial investment returns. |
| A．teachers may have no idea about their students’ needs |
| B．the motivation to learn English changes with the times |
| C．imagined communities are most likely to be exclusive |
| D．English competence testing is a gateway into new contexts |
| A．An investment in language studies |
| B．A question of second-language identity |
| C．An access to ESOL and EFL |
| D．A debate about motivation to learn |
5 . The Rise of Fake News
In December 2016 Edgar M. Welch drove six hours from his home to Washington DC, where he opened fire in a pizzeria with a gun. He had formerly read an online news story about the restaurant being the headquarters of a group of child abusers (虐童者).
The story above is one of the most famous examples of the growing phenomenon called ‘fake news’. The conspiracy theory (阴谋论) about the pizzeria began to appear on websites and social networks in late October. This was quickly claimed to be false news by publications such as The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Fake news stories can be hard to control for several reasons. Many people mistrust established news sources and others just don’t read them, so the exposing of a fake story by a serious newspaper or TV channel has limited effect. In addition, the internet is very hard to police.
Reasons why people create fake news are various. Some have political motives, to belittle their opponents. Other websites, like The Onion, deliberately publish fake news as satire — humorous comment on society and current affairs. Another group is in it for the profit: many people clicking on entertaining fake news stories can bring in a lot of advertising income. One man running fake news sites from Los Angeles made up to US $ 30,000 a month in this way.
| A．A New York Times article on this got 250,000 hits. |
| B．He decided to investigate for himself; fortunately, no one was hurt. |
| C．There are also those who seem to be motivated partly by money and partly by boredom. |
| D．Those amazing stories about famous people will be covered by the mainstream media if true. |
| E．When caught misusing one media platform, users simply go to another one or start up a website themselves. |
| F．However, many people thought these papers were themselves lying for political ends and instead of disappearing, the fake story snowballed. |
6 . 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 |
| 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. |
| 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 |
| 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 |
7 . Imagine ordering something online. Then, imagine that item being delivered in just a few minutes by a drone. Believe it or not, this may be probable in the near future. Drones have been used by militaries since the 1970s. They refer to them as unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs. However, over the last two decades, drone technology has advanced rapidly and is increasingly available to the public. In fact, drones have already started doing work in many different industries. But is this going to be a good thing or a bad thing?
On the plus side, drones can do many things faster and more efficiently than people. For example, during an emergency, drones can quickly locate injured people by using special cameras. They can also distribute food, water, and medical supplies to people in hard-to-reach or dangerous places.
Drones are not just flying vehicles. Some travel on land and sea, and some even work on farms! Selfdriving tractors are being developed to help out farmers, and flying drones may soon be used to spread seeds. As for the sea, an autonomous sailboat was recently launched to collect data about the ocean and atmosphere.
Drones can truly help people in many ways. They are starting to be used in a wide variety of applications, from healthcare to mining. Even though drones can be very useful, some people believe drones also have some major problems that should be taken into consideration.
One of the biggest concerns about drones is privacy. What if a drone enters your house and takes a look around? Depending on local regulations, there may not be laws preventing drones from doing this. Drone technology is changing so quickly that it’s hard for governments to keep up!
Drones are often used to fly around and collect data. This data is then uploaded to the cloud. Unfortunately, hackers are sometimes able to steal the data when it is being uploaded. Flying drones can also pose a danger to aircraft. Many airports have reported close calls with drones.
Drones are not perfect. In the wrong hands, they can be used for criminal purposes, and even as weapons! However, most people think the positives of drone technology outweigh the negatives. Thus, it is likely that you will be seeing more and more drones in the near future. What is your opinion on drones? Do you think they are worth having around?
1. According to the passage, drones can be applied in many areas EXCEPT that______.| A．drones can quickly deliver the items you order online to your home. |
| B．drones, equipped with special cameras, can detect the location of the injured. |
| C．flying drones can be developed to help farmers spread seeds on a farm. |
| D．drones can unlock the keys to doors and enter the house in case of emergency. |
| A．They may help hackers collect confidential data and upload the information to them. |
| B．Airplanes on course may narrowly escaped being crashed into flying drones. |
| C．They may destroy the food supplies before sending them to people in inaccessible areas. |
| D．Drones can be granted permission from the local government to access private homes. |
| A．Drones to the rescue | B．Drones in fashion |
| C．Drones: the flying delivery | D．Drones on the road to ruin |
8 . Trading Ages
It took five hours every morning to make Karoline and Nick look like elderly people in their seventies. They were given a synthetic wrinkled skin, false teeth and false hair. They also wore body suits to make them look fatter and contact lenses to make their eyes look older. The discomfort of the makeup, the heavy suits, and the contact lenses (which made their eyesight worse)gave them a small taste of the physical problems of old age. They were also coached to walk and speak like people in their seventies.
There is a point in the documentary when Karoline breaks down and cries. It comes at the end of a day out with her two new senior citizen friends, Betty and Sylvia. It is partly because she feels guilty that she is tricking them, but mainly because she realizes that they are individuals, and not just members of what she had previously thought of as “the elderly.” “They were talking about real things and I felt unqualified. They had been through so much.
| A．It made me realize how ignorant I was. |
| B．Though she loved her 86-year- old grandmother she had found it hard to visit her. |
| C．Both Karoline and Nick found making the program life changing. |
| D．Afterward, both of them described the “invisibility” of being old. |
| E．Then they had to live each day, for a month, as an old person. |
| F．Nick was also nearly robbed when he was taking money out of an ATM. |
