1 . A middle-aged woman playing by herself in the snow is an undeniably odd sight, but maybe it shouldn’t be. New research suggests that modern adults are suffering from overmuch depression, so play may be as essential to our health as sleep. We’ve been in our nature to play, which is causing all kinds of problems—for ourselves, our children, and our planet.
It’s believed that adult play can lead to useful discoveries, which is supported by a study on Bali’s long-tailed monkeys. For her doctoral paper at the University of Lethbridge, animal researcher Camilla Cenni left two types of puzzle boxes for the monkeys to solve. To get the food inside, they had to drop a rock into the container or use it to hit the box. She found the monkeys that previously had been observed dropping rocks for fun were more likely to solve the rock-dropping puzzle, while those that had discovered the joy of tapping rocks together think of the answer to the tapping puzzle.
This finding also suggests that somewhere, deep in our evolutionary history, a playful proto-human(原始人) came up with the concept of stone tools. Even today, the urge to play underlies most of humanity’s greatest inventions, artworks, and scientific breakthroughs, Brown says. “When I interviewed Nobel winners, I was struck by how most of them didn’t separate work and play. Their labs were their playgrounds”.
“The opposite of play isn’t work; it’s depression,” says play researcher Stuart Brown, “Play is all about looking at a tough world with creativity and optimism. It gives us the ability to cooperate and get along with people who differ from us,” He goes so far as to declare that “adult play is necessary for our survival as a species.”
The next time I’m caught playing, I know exactly what I’ll say: “I am not wasting time, or acting immature. I’m doing nothing for the benefit of all humanity. You’re welcome.”
1. What is the phenomenon the author describes at the beginning of the text?| A．Playing with snow is strange. | B．Wild nature is difficult to find. |
| C．Many people are stressed out. | D．People enjoy living close to nature. |
| A．The necessity of the study. | B．The importance of adult play. |
| C．Main activities of monkeys. | D．Various functions of a rock. |
| A．To explain the concept of play. | B．To compare two research findings. |
| C．To highlight scientific breakthroughs. | D．To offer some background information. |
| A．Humorous. | B．Optimistic. | C．Caring. | D．Active. |
2 . You see a shopper trip over in a busy street. Someone else can help. That’s what you tell yourself. This is the bystander effect in action — the dilution (淡化) of responsibility in the presence of others — and it has been demonstrated in many past studies.
But life is complicated and psychologists have seen exceptional circumstances. Two experiments were conducted by Marco van Bommel and his team using an online chat room for people with extreme emotional problems. Eighty-six students were logged into the forum (论坛) and shown five messages from troubled users. They were told to write a reply if they wanted, but it was entirely up to them.
Basically, participants could see their names on the screen alongside others’ names. A counter also told them if the forum was quiet, with just one other person logged in, or busy, with 30 others online. This arrangement reproduced the classic Bystander Effect-participants were less likely to post replies with more people logged in. However, when the researchers cued (提示) self-awareness by highlighting participants’ names in red on the screen, they posted more replies on a busy forum.
A second study was built on these findings, but this time self-awareness was raised by the presence, or not, of a computer web-camera. Over 100 participants took part. Although told the camera wouldn’t be used until later, those with cameras were asked to check the camera’s indicator-light during the study. The Bystander Effect was reproduced when web-cameras were absent-on busy forums participants posted fewer replies to needy users. By contrast, those cued to be self-aware by the web-cam actually wrote more replies.
Nearly any online community can benefit from the research. The ability to turn hesitant bystanders into eager helpers is a recipe for engagement and collective benefit. As in the research, simple design cues could be integrated to help online users remember they are visible to the community. For example, the size of profile images and specific on-site reminders can be used to highlight how users see themselves within the community.
1. What does the underlined word “it” in paragraph 1 refer to?| A．The hidden danger of a busy street. |
| B．The bystander effect in action. |
| C．The dilution of responsibility. |
| D．The presence of other people. |
| A．there were more emotional problems |
| B．the counter indicated the forum was quiet |
| C．their presence was reminded on the screen |
| D．more individuals were logged in the forum |
| A．To encourage more replies. |
| B．To reproduce the bystander effect. |
| C．To further test participants’ mindset. |
| D．To better record participants’ actions. |
| A．Working together to attract more users. |
| B．Combining designs to boost users’ memory. |
| C．Building more platforms for public promotion. |
| D．Exploring ways to change bystanders into upstanders. |
3 . Who cares if people think wrongly that the Internet has had more important influences than the washing machine? Why does it matter that people are more impressed by the most recent changes?
It would not matter if these misjudgments were just a matter of people’s opinions. However, they have real impacts, as they result in misguided use of scarce resources.
The fascination with the ICT(Information and Communication Technology) revolution, represented by the Internet, has made some rich countries wrongly conclude that making things is so “yesterday” that they should try to live on ideas. This belief in “post-industrial society” has led those countries to neglect their manufacturing sector (制造业) with negative consequences for their economies.
Even more worryingly, the fascination with the Internet by people in rich countries has moved the international community to worry about the “digital divide” between the rich countries and the poor countries. This has led companies and individuals to donate money to developing countries to buy computer equipment and Internet facilities. The question, however, is whether this is what the developing countries need the most. Perhaps giving money for those less fashionable things such as digging wells, extending electricity networks and making more affordable washing machines would have improved people’s lives more than giving every child a laptop computer or setting up Internet centres in rural villages, I am not saying that those things are necessarily more important, but many donators have rushed into fancy programmes without carefully assessing the relative long-term costs and benefits of alternative uses of their money.
In yet another example, a fascination with the new has led people to believe that the recent changes in the technologies of communications and transportation are so revolutionary that now we live in a “borderless world”. As a result, in the last twenty years or so, many people have come to believe that whatever change is happening today is the result of great technological progress, going against which will be like trying to turn the clock back. Believing in such a world, many governments have put an end to some of the very necessary regulations on cross-border flows of capital, labour and goods, with poor results.
Understanding technological trends is very important for correctly designing economic policies, both at the national and the international levels, and for making the right career choices at the individual level. However, our fascination with the latest, and our under valuation of what has already become common, can, and has, led us in all sorts of wrong directions.
1. What are the effects of people’ misjudgments on the influences of new technology?| A．It stimulates innovation. | B．It affects their personal opinions. |
| C．It influences their use of resources. | D．It leads to improved technology. |
| A．It leads to competition between rich and poor countries. |
| B．It results in a lack of access to technology in developing countries. |
| C．It increases the cost of computer equipment in rich countries. |
| D．It promotes global digital cooperation. |
| A．donating for technology is always the better option |
| B．the author does not provide opinions on this matter |
| C．donating for technology and basic needs should be balanced |
| D．donating for basic needs should be prioritized over technology |
| A．Significance of information and communication technology. |
| B．Serious consequences of over-emphasizing high technology. |
| C．Technological trends guiding economic policy making. |
| D．How to use donation money in the new age. |
4 . Most of us are familiar with the concept of six degrees of separation — the idea is that anyone in the planet can be connected to anyone else in just six steps. But is there actually any science to back up this commonly cited theory?
If you just take a look at the following numbers, the six degrees of separation idea seems pretty plausible. Assuming everyone knows at least 44 people, and that each of those people knows an entirely new 44 people, and so on, the math shows that in just six steps everyone could be connected to 446, or 7.26 billion people — more than are alive on Earth today.
But this idea wasn’t scientifically tested until the 1960s, when a psychologist sent 300 packages out to people in Nebraska and Boston, and asked them to use their networks to get them back to one specific target — a stockbroker (股票经纪人) living in Boston. They weren’t asked to forward it to him directly, but to send it to someone they knew on a first name basis, with instructions for that person to forward it on to someone in their network that they thought might know the stockbroker.
Only 64 of those packages actually reached the target, with an average path length of just 5.2 intermediary (中间人) connections, and this experiment was used as evidence for six degrees of separation, or the “small world phenomenon”, as the researcher called it.
But Derek Muller, a researcher, dug a little deeper, and found that, of the original 300 packages, 100 were sent to people already living in Boston (where the target also lives) and 100 were sent to stockbrokers who shared a profession with the target, so there were really only 100 purely random packages sent out. And of those 100, only 18 made it back to the target. “So we’re talking about a sample size of 18 — that’s all the evidence there was for six degrees of separation,” Derek explains.
1. What does the underlined word “plausible” in paragraph 2 mean?| A．Reasonable. | B．Absurd. | C．Unbelievable. | D．Original. |
| A．By entrusting the delivery to 5.2 intermediaries. |
| B．By delivering it in person as quickly as possible. |
| C．By passing it on to the target in the shortest time. |
| D．By forwarding it in the shortest intermediary-chain. |
| A．The concept didn’t exist at all. |
| B．The experiment provided solid evidence. |
| C．The sample size was too small to be useful. |
| D．The experiment was carried out scientifically. |
| A．How to Play Six Degrees of Separation in Our Real Life? |
| B．Six Degrees of Separation: An Theory Founded by Derek |
| C．Are We Really All Connected by Six Degrees of Separation? |
| D．Six Degrees of Separation: Scientists Find a Smaller Number |
5 . “Reduce, reuse, and recycle”, this familiar environmentalist slogan tells us how to reduce the amount of rubbish that ends up in landfills and waterways. The concept is being used to deal with one possibly dangerous form of waste — electronic junk (电子垃圾), such as old computers, cell phones, and televisions. But this process for managing e-waste may be used in an unscrupulous (肆无忌惮的) way more often than not used, a recent report suggests.
“A lot of these materials are being sent to developing nations under the excuse of reuse — to bridge the digital divide (消除数字鸿沟),” said Richard Gutierrez, a policy researcher.
One of the problems is that no one proves whether these old machines work before they hit the seaways. Because of this, the report says, e-waste is a growing problem in Lagos, Nigeria, and elsewhere in the developing world. Much of the waste ends up being thrown away along rivers and roads. Often it’s picked apart by poor people, who may face dangerous exposure to poisonous chemicals in the equipment.
Businessmen also pay workers a little money to get back materials such as gold and copper. This low-tech recovery process could expose workers and the local environment to many dangerous materials used to build electronics. According to Gutierrez, this shadow economy exists because the excuse of recycling and reusing electronics gives businessmen “a green passport” to ship waste around the globe. “Developing nations must take upon some of the responsibility themselves,” Gutierrez said. But, he added, “A greater portion of this responsibility should fall on the exporting state (出口国).”
China, for example, has become a dumping place for large amounts of e-waste. The nation is beginning to take action to stop the flow of dangerous materials across its borders. The Chinese government, after many years of denial (拒绝) is finally beginning to take the lead.
1. The passage mainly tells us that .| A．developing countries are making full use of e-waste |
| B．e-waste is a growing problem in developed countries |
| C．developing countries are facing serious environmental problems |
| D．e-waste is sent to developing countries under the excuse of reuse |
| A．A lot of e-waste is dumped in developing countries. |
| B．Old computers and TVs still work before sent abroad. |
| C．The problem of e-waste is growing in developing countries. |
| D．Poor people break up e-waste to collect some valuable materials. |
| A．poor countries should be blamed for this problem |
| B．developing countries should be responsible for this problem |
| C．neither rich nor poor countries should be blamed for this problem |
| D．exporting countries should be mainly responsible for this problem |
| A．China has hidden a large amount of e-waste in many secret places |
| B．China has greatly changed her idea about the problem of e-waste |
| C．China is falling behind other countries in dealing with e-waste |
| D．China has prevented poisonous materials entering China for a long time |
6 . Pupils are receiving laughter therapy (疗法) to fight against post-COVID gloom (疫后忧郁). The £15,000-a-year Brighton Girls school hopes that the hour-long classes will ease anxiety and other effects of lockdown son children.
A report from the Royal College of Psychiatrists has said that almost 200, 000 young people have been referred to mental (精神的) health services in the past three months, almost double the level before the pandemic(大流行病). The government is to give £517 million to strengthen mental health support to help pupils.
Emma Jennings, a laughter therapist, who runs the classes, said: “Children have been separated and no amount of online contact makes up for that.” Her lessons begin with children talking about feeling any nerves or anxiety before they are instructed to laugh “in the style of a James Bond villain (剧中反面人物)”.
Jennings then leads the girls through deep breathing exercises before “playful and silly games” where they are told to point at themselves and laugh while making eye contact. “Eye contact is really important as it has some effect on the brain so you smile because others are smiling and you laugh because others are,” Jennings said. “That is why tiny babies are able to smile at you when you smile at them.” She added: “We end the class by laughing for no reason while sitting in a circle. You just-listen to the sounds of other people’s laughter, which brings more laughter.”
Rosie McColl, the head teacher of Brighton Girls, said: “We thought it would be great to introduce a fun class, which young girls can walk away from having physically felt a drop in stress levels. Children laugh on average 400 times a day while adults manage just 15, which explains why adults are a lot more stressed generally.”
“I’d like to make sure our pupils are laughing as much as possible. We are also introducing the classes for our teachers and parents too.”
1. What problem did the report find?| A．More youth can’t afford their education. |
| B．More youth laugh for no reason in class. |
| C．More youth have felt down since the pandemic. |
| D．More youth haven’t received a health check this year. |
| A．Have an online contact. | B．Talk about their worries. |
| C．Tell an interesting story. | D．See a James Bond movie. |
| A．To show the effects of eye contact. |
| B．To call on pupils to learn from them. |
| C．To explain the role of smiling in their growth. |
| D．To stress the importance of smiling to the brain. |
| A．She arranges fun classes each week. |
| B．She thinks adults really need laughter. |
| C．She encourages girls to take the class. |
| D．She suggests more schools try the class. |
7 . In the pre-COVID-19 era, children’s personalised books used to be a niche market (小众市 场). Far from their early version that merely had the child’s name stuck on the book cover today’s personalised books feature entire families — including pets. Instead of meeting unknowr characters and new story worlds, the readers meet themselves. With the persuasive power of personalisation, publishers find their way into children’s inner worlds quicker than with non- personalised books
Well-designed personalised books can enhance children’s vocabulary learning. However, it’s also been found that in their talk about the story of a personalised book, they talk about “me, me, me”. Part of this self-centredness is natural at a young age, but part of it is caused by the personalised character of the book. In a recent study, personalised books, as opposed to thei non-personalised versions, do not help children understand the moral of a story or apply it to thei own lives
In most popular personalised books, children are pictured as the heroes and stars of their own stories. What is certain is that in addition to personalised hero books, we need personalised books where the child is a minor character or a character who experiences depression. The problem is that such books are unlikely to be popular and are therefore unlikely to be written. We are thus heading towards a situation where children see themselves in a positive light in their own personalised books and where they see others as failures in non-personalised books. It introduces children to a culture of“me vs you” where shared humanity is replaced by a false narrative of “I am the best!”
The most powerful children’s books are those that hit the sweet spot of personalisation and diversity. Such books teach children out-group empathy (同感) that occurs with story characters whose,experiences are different from their own. Authors can convey such out-group empathy by constructing strong plots that immerse (使沉浸) children in the story, but also challenge them to think beyond their comfort zone. The current personalised books take us from this ideal. They represent an economic interest in individualisation, and might ill prepare young minds for an uncertain future.
1. What makes current children’s personalised books different from their earlier versions?| A．Children can see their own name on the cover. |
| B．More family members are included in the books. |
| C．More new story worlds are introduced to children. |
| D．Publishers give up supplying them to the niche market. |
| A．They tend to focus on themselves. |
| B．They relate it to their own lives. |
| C．They can understand its morals better. |
| D．They tend to use new words they’ve learnt. |
| A．They fail to show common humanity. |
| B．They are characterised by happy endings. |
| C．They make children give in to defeat easily. |
| D．They fail to impress children with depression. |
| A．The reasons for reading personalised books. |
| B．The reasons for standardising the publishing market. |
| C．The necessity of raising the quality of children’s books. |
| D．The necessity of developing empathy among young readers. |
8 . The American Academy of Pediatrics has warned about the potential negative effects of social media on young kids and teens. But the same risks may be true for adults, across generations. A review study suggests addiction symptoms, such as failure to pay proper attention to personal life, mental preoccupation, escapism, tolerance and trying to hide the addictive behavior, appear to be present in some people who use Facebook excessively.
A study also shows when people stop using the Internet, they also go through small but measurable physical effects. Rather than improving well-being, as frequent interactions with supportive offline social networks powerfully do, the current findings show that interacting with Facebook may predict the opposite result for young adults — it may undermine it.
In fact, another study found that social media use is linked to greater feelings of social isolation, mentally and physically. Facebook can be a jealousy generator. We fall into the trap of comparing ourselves to others as we check our Facebook pages, and make judgments about how we measure up. The study looked at how we make comparisons with others’ posts, in “upward” or “downward” directions — that is, feeling that we are either worse or better off than our friends. It turned out that both types of comparisons made people feel worse, which is surprising, since in real life, only upward comparisons make people feel bad. But in the social network world, it seems that any kind of comparison is linked to depressive symptoms.
All of this is not to say that there is no benefit of social media — obviously it keeps us connected across great distances, and helps us find people we had lost touch with years ago. But visiting social networks when you have some time to kill, or, worse, need an emotional lift, is very likely a bad idea. If you are feeling brave, try taking a little break, and see how it goes. And if you are going to keep “using” it, then at least try to use it in moderation.
1. What might researchers think about “using Facebook excessively” according to the text?| A．It’s problem behavior. | B．It’s costly and time-consuming. |
| C．It’s leading people to become imaginative. | D．It’s sometimes a solution to social isolation. |
| A．Present. | B．Check. | C．Destroy. | D．Ensure. |
| A．Social media are being given too much importance. |
| B．Young Facebook users feel more isolated than their elders. |
| C．All kinds of comparisons on social media upset people. |
| D．Downward comparisons link closer to depression than upward ones. |
| A．Social media affect people’s mental health. |
| B．Comparing ourselves with others may lead to depression. |
| C．Social networks have more advantages than disadvantages. |
| D．Nowadays people tend to turn to the Internet for an emotional lift. |
9 . Every minute, every hour, every day, we are losing precious time to our devices (设备).Technology has taken over much of our lives,especially over the last two years as school and work went online during the COVID-19 pandemic.
If you feel an urge to jump on social media or scroll websites when you have a few spare minutes, don’t feel bad. This is normal.
Another great way to help reduce the desire to check your device is to turn off notifications (通 知).In the 1890s, Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov conducted experiments to measure the build-up of saliva (唾液) in the mouths of dogs under a variety of conditions. Like the dogs in the experiments, people are conditioned to respond each time they hear a ping.
As the saying goes, out of sight, out of mind.
| A．Is it possible to get back the time you have lost? |
| B．Today many people spend much time on electronic devices. |
| C．One way to manage your time is to control how you spend it. |
| D．Here are some ways to reduce the desire to check your device. |
| E．This is also a helpful reminder to keep you away from your device. |
| F．You can avoid this trap by listing things you can do when you are free. |
| G．By removing the notifications, you remove the reminder to check your device. |
10 . Programs that drive the digital experiences today seem to turn to contents that are popular, and they are unable to tell facts from fictions. And due to the fact that anyone can post anything they want online, unconfirmed reports and irresponsible and unchecked contents are common in the online world.
The problem is so common that the British newspaper The Independent has a whole page contributed to news about fake news, along with Mashable’s social media and a growing number of others.
During the past days when most kids used textbooks that had been edited and reviewed responsibly before they were used, the need for students to check their sources was not great. Today, it’s different. Students use the Internet for research, and teachers and parents can’t keep them away from bad contents all the time. And they’re on their own as they get older. They have to master information literacy, the skills of recognizing bad information, identifying good information, and understanding the difference between the two.
There are people and organizations dealing with the problem and developing information for Internet searchers, both adults and children. The website of Encyclopedia Britannica, for example, has provided Internet searchers with extra information at the top right of their results page. The move was intended to make people slow down and think twice before accepting search results as facts.
Fake news is here to stay. We all need to fight. We can start with awareness and a few rules: don’t make the web full of bad information: don’t spread or share information if you aren’t sure about it. And be mindful of how we use information: practice information literacy. And human curiosity is of great importance in this fight against misinformation. Curiosity drives learning and makes people question information. We need everyone to join in researching and questioning for the truth.
1. What problem is described about the online world?| A．We are given too much information. |
| B．Useless results often show up first online. |
| C．The Internet includes much fake information. |
| D．Fake news is spread purposely to attract searchers. |
| A．The need for information literacy. | B．Different generations’ learning style. |
| C．How networks affect today’s students. | D．Why fake contents exist on the Internet. |
| A．It marks the facts. | B．It provides more details. |
| C．It corrects the search results. | D．It alarms searchers if necessary. |
| A．It is hard to clean up all fake news. | B．We can’t speak freely in cyberspace. |
| C．People should be forced to follow the rules. | D．We should keep curious to discover the truth. |
