1 . Ask most people which day of the week they fear the most and the answer is likely to be Monday. The first day of the working week can make us experience a sense of tiredness or fatigue.
Some consider the term, pseudo-science, saying that there is no such thing as a 24-hour depression.
Fortunately, we don’t have to suffer that on Monday, not if we remember: we all have our good days and our bad days, and those aren’t for the calendar (日历) to decide.
| A．The most depressing day of the year is the third Monday in January. |
| B．Actually it’s common to feel a bit depressed for several times in a year. |
| C．But most people know that the Monday blues can be very real. |
| D．That’s why the feeling is described as the Monday blues. |
| E．The term is not even scientifically true, with basically no evidence. |
| F．These can have a negative impact on our performance, productivity and the people around. |
| G．In fact, it’s actually a good opportunity to check in on our mental health. |
2 . The clock rules our lives. The more we try to save time, the less time we seem to have. In every area of our lives we are doing things faster. And many of us live in towns and cities which are getting noisier and more stressful as each day passes. But now a worldwide movement, whose aim is to slow life down, has started. Its supporters are people who believe that a happier and healthier way of life is possible.
The Slow Food movement was founded the day that an Italian journalist, Carlo Petrini, saw that McDonald’s had opened a restaurant in a beautiful square in Rome. He thought it was sad that many people today live too quickly to sit down for a proper meal and only eat much fast food. He decided that he had to try to do something about it and so he started the Slow Food movement. Slow Food has become a global organization ever since and now has more than 80,000 members in 100 countries.
Slow Food also encourages people to eat local and regional food, to use local shops and markets, to eat out in small family restaurants, and to cook with traditional recipes.
The idea of Slow Cities was inspired by the Slow Food movement. The aim of Slow Cities is to improve people’s quality of life. Towns which want to become a Slow City have to reduce traffic and noise, increase the number of green areas, plant trees, build pedestrian zones, and promote local businesses and traditions. Now it has spread to other countries all over the world, from the UK to Japan and Australia. There are now 135 Slow Cities in 24 countries across the world that have been named since founding of the organization in 1999. Gao Chun County, in east China’s Jiangsu Province, is expected to be named the first “Slow City” in China next year.
“Slow Cities are about having a community life in the town,” said a local resident. “It is not ‘slow’ as in ‘stupid’. It is ‘slow’ as in the opposite of ‘worried’ and ‘stressful’.”
But not everybody is happy. For teenagers, who have to go 25km to Norwich, the nearest city, to buy CDs, living in a Slow City is not very attractive. “It’s all right here for adults,” says Lewis Cook, 16. “But if you want excitement, you have to go to Norwich. We need more things here for young people.”
1. What’s the aim of the Slow Food movement?| A．To call on people to eat out. | B．To make people enjoy cooking. |
| C．To drive McDonald’s out of Rome | D．To encourage people to slow down. |
| A．reducing traffic and noise | B．increasing the number of green areas |
| C．building more department stores | D．promoting local businesses and traditions |
| A．Slow Food was founded in 1999 | B．there is no Slow City in China now |
| C．Slow Cities are mainly in the UK | D．there are about 24 Slow Cities in the world |
| A．Satisfied. | B．Excited. | C．Happy. | D．Dissatisfied. |
| A．Slow down and you’ll move fast. | B．Time flies never to be recalled. |
| C．Eat slowly and you’ll be healthy. | D．Pay attention to the quality of life. |
3 . When Lenore Skenazy let her 9-year-old son take the New York subway home by himself 10 years ago, you would have thought that she’d carried out a crime. Now Skenazy started the movement Free Range (放养的) Kids to bring up safe and independent children. Just this month, Utah became a free range state, changing its law to protect parents from being charged with neglect (疏忽)for letting their kids walk alone, or wait in a car for an adult.
Skenazy argues that the risks of giving children some freedom are exaggerated (夸大). Skenazy’s mother used to send her outside at 5 to walk to school. That was just normal back then. And suddenly we hear stories about parents getting punished for letting their 10-year-old son play outside.
We get so used to not knowing our neighbors, not letting our kids walk to school, or play outside, that nowadays, the kids are either in a car or in the backyard, and they don’t get to know the neighborhood. In fact, the world has become safer. We have the technologies to keep track of almost everything our kids do. And so you think you must control them, and you think your child is something that has to be tracked like a package.
The famous case for many parents was the Etan Patz case in New York in 1979. Patz’s parents gave him permission for the first time to walk to the bus stop nearby. He was killed. The story is so terrible that we remember it two generations later. And we don’t allow our kids to walk alone because of one terrible thing that happened 39 years ago. But we don’t say, “I want to drive you to the dentist, but what if we get in a car accident? Think of those people who died in a car accident 39 years ago. I don’t want to be like them. No, we’re not going.” And we recognize that it would be funny to think that way.
1. What do we know about Lenore Skenazy?| A．She used to have full control of her son. |
| B．She was in favor of Utah’s previous law. |
| C．She suggests kids be allowed more freedom. |
| D．She was once punished for neglecting her son. |
| A．People remain distant. |
| B．Kids dislike outdoor activities. |
| C．Parents know little about accidents. |
| D．The crime rate is slightly increasing. |
| A．Unclear | B．Supportive. | C．Indifferent. | D．Unfavorable. |
| A．To prove accidents are like crimes. |
| B．To warn parents of a terrible crime. |
| C．To argue against some parents’ worry. |
| D．To point out the real danger to children. |
4 . One of Twitter’s main characters recently was a man who chose to keep his middle seat between a couple on a flight instead of moving to the side. The situation raised some questions: Who are these middle-seat lovers? What do they want?
Many of the thousands of replies suggested that the majority of the flying public cannot understand why someone would ever choose the middle over a window or an aisle (走廊). But among the majority appeared a few people who endorse middle seats. “In the middle seat I don’t feel I should lean one way or another and generally sit pretty comfortably,” one person wrote. Another added: “I’m not getting hit by someone walking down the aisle or luggage either.”
Kyle Burke, in Florida, said on Twitter that he usually exchanged seats when asked. “I didn’t want to sit between a couple that were upset with me,” he told The Washington Post. At 6-foot-7, Burke, 41, said he didn’t fit well in plane seats, anyway. So, he preferred the middle, which gives him double chance of having a chatty neighbor.
Frederick resident Samantha Jones told The Post by email that she usually chose the middle seat when traveling alone. As a mother of three, “Having personal space is a far-off memory.” she said. “Middle seats have the least amount of responsibility,” she wrote. “I don’t control the window shade and only have to get by one person to get out or to go to the bathroom.”
Despite the few fans, middle seats are still not likely to get much respect. “There’s nothing good in the middle seat,” Scott McCartney, the writer of the journal Middle Seat said. “The position’s infamy (臭名昭著) was part of the reason for the journal’s name.” He added: “People really care about the ‘middle seat’, so they are more likely to pick up this magazine on seeing it.”
1. How does the author start the text?| A．By challenging a common belief. | B．By raising a couple’s questions. |
| C．By comparing travelers’ preferences. | D．By presenting an unusual seat choice. |
| A．Exchange. | B．Resist. | C．Support. | D．Indicate. |
| A．It provides larger space. | B．It reduces unnecessary trouble. |
| C．It avoids family responsibilities. | D．It offers networking opportunities. |
| A．To catch readers’ eyes. | B．To voice his own taste. |
| C．To make people think. | D．To urge airlines to change. |
5 . Ryan is a good kid. He gets great grades, he plays lacrosse (长曲棍球), and he is well-liked. So Jennifer and her husband didn’t see any reason why their sixth-grade son couldn’t have an Instagram account, until Ryan posted a photo of himself holding an empty beer bottle that his father had just finished. “My husband saw the photo pop up on Ryan’s account and went up the stairs in seconds, demanding that he should take it down,” Jennifer says. “I don’t think my son realized how bad his picture looked. He was trying to be funny, but he’s in sixth grade! Even if he was simply posing, that picture was inappropriate.”
With the popularity of photo-sharing site Instagram, it’s easy for parents to have a false sense of security. Unlike Facebook or Twitter, Instagram is only for posting pictures and with the 13+ age requirement and privacy feature, so it seems like an almost harmless site for children. How much trouble could they stir up? But that’s not the fact.
Shockingly, some kids are paying for attention on social media. When Paula Pryor found a mysterious $700 charge on her credit card, the last thing she suspected it to be was payment to a company that helped acquire “likes” on Instagram pictures. “My son Hayden thought it was only ten dollars, but it was ten dollars per ‘like’,” says Pryor.
Often, it’s not your own teen that’s cause for concern — it’s someone else’s kid. Megan Koster couldn’t figure out why her daughter Delaney suddenly became so anxious about whether her panty line could be seen through her jeans. Finally, Delaney said that she was worried someone would take a photo and post it on Instagram. “I don’t think I would have survived middle school if sites like this had existed back then,” Koster says.
1. What made Jennifer think her son Ryan could have an Instagram account?| A．He gained popularity in school. | B．He was skilled at using Instagram. |
| C．He showed interest in taking photos. | D．He was old enough and behaved well. |
| A．Instagram accounts. | B．Social media. | C．Pictures. | D．Children. |
| A．To obtain the picture he liked. | B．To pay attention to social media. |
| C．To get his photos noticed and liked. | D．To pay the charge on his credit card. |
| A．Teen’s problems with Instagram. | B．Inappropriate pictures from children. |
| C．The influence of the Internet on young users. | D．Concerns for the Internet security for children. |
6 . Saodat Sadikova is an English teacher in Jizzakh, Uzbekistan. As a young girl, she dreamed of becoming a flight attendant (空乘人员) and traveling the world, so she learned at least three languages. Although she was not able to become a flight attendant, Sadikova could speak Uzbek, Russian, English and Turkish. Sadikova has never traveled abroad but reports feeling connected to people around the world.
American Trina Bright worked in education for nearly 25 years and she traveled to many countries, including China and South Africa. Bright used stories from her travels to help her students in the U. S. understand their place in the world and see value in their own cultures. But Bright, unlike Sadikova, does not report feeling connected to people around the world.
Bright is not alone. Pew Research Center recently asked people in 24 countries a series of questions about how connected they feel to the world to see how travel experience relates to feelings of connectedness.
The study found that respondents (调查对象) who had traveled to at least one other country feel more connected to people around the world. 99 percent of respondents in the Netherlands reported having visited at least one other country and 77 percent of respondents from the Netherlands said they feel at least somewhat close to people all over the world. But international travel does not always mean a person feels a closeness to people around the world. 99 percent of Swedish respondents said they had visited at least one other country. Yet a much smaller number of Swedish respondents—47 percent—report feeling close to people all over the world.
Sadikova said she felt connected to the world because of media, which makes it quite easy to get to know events and news.
1. Why did Saodat Sadikova learn several languages?| A．To move abroad. | B．To broaden her view. |
| C．To connect to the world. | D．To achieve her flying dream. |
| A．She improved her education. | B．She applied them to her teaching. |
| C．She understood the value of culture. | D．She could speak a foreign language. |
| A．How people get to know the world. | B．How people feel connected to the world. |
| C．Why people enjoy international travel. | D．Why travel influences the connection of people. |
| A．The aim of the research. | B．The process of the research. |
| C．The result of the research. | D．The method of the research. |
7 . New research from the University of Portsmouth has shown a marked increase in shipping in the North East Atlantic. Scientists now warn that more monitoring is required to help protect sea life.
Researchers at the University of Ponsmouth have discovered that rates (率) of shipping in the North East Atlantic area rose by 34 per cent in a five-year period. The research is the first detailed survey of shipping activity in the North East Atlantic. Researchers used data from over 530 million vessel (船) positions recorded by Automatic Identification System(AIS). They looked at the change in shipping between 2013 and 2017 across ten different vessel types. In total the study area covered 1.1 million km², including waters off Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany,Iceland, Ireland, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal. Spain, and the UK.
Lead author, James Robbins said: “This change is likely to put more pressure on the marine (海洋的) environment, and may influence the protection of at-risk species. Renewed monitoring effort is needed to make sure that protective measures are enough to save species under threat in a changing environment.”
Some of the greatest shipping increases were found in areas close to the Spanish coast. The Espacio Marino de la Costa da Morte saw a rise of 413 percent in vessel activity. It is an area used to protect seabirds.
Dr. Sarah Marley, Visiting Researcher at the University of Portsmouth, said: “Shipping is the most widespread human activity in our oceans, carrying a set of threats-from unnoticeable effects like underwater noise pollution to serious results when ships hit whales.”
Professor Alex Ford. from the University’s Institute of Marine Sciences, said: “Given the well-documented effects that shipping can have on the marine environment, it is necessary that this situation continues to be monitored-particularly in areas used to protect vulnerable (脆弱的) species which may already be under pressure.”
1. What can we say about the new research?| A．It started in 2013. | B．It is the first of its kind. |
| C．It was carried out by AIS. | D．It covers the whole Atlantic. |
| A．Rapid population growth. |
| B．Rising global temperatures. |
| C．The huge increase in shipping. |
| D．The disappearance of marine life. |
| A．Shipping plays an important role in the local economy. |
| B．Shipping can be a danger to the marine environment. |
| C．Noise pollution is closely related to human activity. |
| D．Marine areas should be monitored more carefully. |
| A．New waterways across the Atlantic |
| B．The shipping industry in the North East Atlantic |
| C．New research opens windows into life under the water |
| D．Sea life needs better protection from an increase in shipping |
8 . How to deal with decision paralysis (瘫痪)
If you’ve ever gone online to order something during a work break-let’s say a new electric toothbrush-expecting it to be fairly easy, but instead you found yourself overwhelmed by the huge number of choices available, you’ve experienced decision paralysis.
You’re shocked that there are so many factors to consider; not only the basics, such as price and delivery time, but there are many other factors like battery duration, warning lights for too much pressure and even fancy apps.
This is just one example of decision paralysis-when the huge number of choices and the difficulty of weighing the supermarket up-leads you to freeze. It used to be thought that increased choice could only be a good thing for consumers and they would welcome it, but actually it can bring the opposite effect and cause people to walk away.
If you’re willing to put in the effort, a practical approach is to reduce the mental complexity involved in a decision by doing a little research.
| A．You could always make a random choice. |
| B．Make some brief notes about the prior factors to you. |
| C．There are various ways to overcome decision paralysis. |
| D．You’ll end up with a score showing you the most favourable decision. |
| E．The clock is ticking on your break and it’s impossible to make a decision. |
| F．This is all that you’ll miss out on once you choose to go down a particular path. |
| G．In other life situations, it might be the weight of the decision that bears down on you. |
9 . China’s generation-Z is not “lying flat”, a phrase for giving up on hard work, as is often claimed, and making constant efforts to do everything is still the mainstream of a group who believes success should be achieved by constant efforts, Chinese officials said at a press briefing on Thursday, in response to a question on how younger generations should achieve balance between a lifestyle of “lying flat” in face of high pressure and involution.
“Most Chinese youth hold an optimistic view on the future, and the saying ‘lying flat’ is more of a joke to release pressure and express their feelings,” He Junke, the First Secretary of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of Communist Youth League of China (CYLC), said at a press briefing of the State Council Information Office on Thursday.
At the press briefing, China released the first nationwide white paper on youth development titled “Youth of China in the New Era,” which showed achievements linked to the country’s youth development in the new era and reflected the spirit of younger generation. The white paper was also released ahead of the 100th anniversary of the founding of CYLC.
He said China has attached great importance to deeper issues reflected in the talk of “lying flat” among young generation, a result of increasing pressure from work, study and life caused by China’s unique demographic structure and highly competitive labor market.
“Some in the younger generation feel confused or lost. In response, authorities have scaled up (扩大) the amount of support available to help solve their issues in education, employment, marriage and child raising,” He noted, while urging the whole society to support the mental development and psychology of generation-Z.
He Junke pointed out that it is also important for certain young people to realize that it is unrealistic to build a career without taking responsibility and making efforts. “All happiness is achieved through devoted efforts, and making constant efforts is also a kind of happiness,” He stressed.
1. What does the underlined word “involution” in paragraph 1 mean?| A．The cruel external competition. |
| B．The healthy external competition. |
| C．A great change in conditions. |
| D．A complete circular movement. |
| A．He thinks that “lying flat” is useful to release pressure. |
| B．He laughs at most Chinese youth who give up hard work. |
| C．He thinks that “lying flat” is fun to express their feelings. |
| D．He disagrees that most Chinese youth is giving up working hard. |
| A．Problem of “lying flat” reflected deeper issues. |
| B．More and more young people choose to lie flat in China. |
| C．Young people face great pressure in their study and work. |
| D．China’s population structure affects the supply of labor market. |
| A．To encourage them to “lie flat” and avoid hard work. |
| B．To create a highly competitive labor market for the younger generation. |
| C．To push them to take on more responsibility and make concrete efforts. |
| D．To help them solve their issues in education, employment, marriage, and child raising. |
10 . Greece has criticized the United Kingdom for canceling (取消) a planned meeting between Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, apparently so that Sunak could avoid talking about ancient artefacts (历史文物) that Greece says were taken illegally. Mitsotakis and Sunak were set to meet on Tuesday, but Sunak canceled it on Monday, reportedly after learning that Mitsotakis planned to talk about the Parthenon sculptures.
The UK government initially believed Mitsotakis would not talk about the sculptures, which are now in the British Museum. The sculptures were once part of the Parthenon in the Greek capital Athens. The row (纠纷) became more serious after Mitsotakis told the BBC on Sunday the UK’s offer to store some of the sculptures in London and some in Athens was akin to cutting the Mona Lisa in two. He also said the sculptures had been essentially stolen.
Mitsotakis said he was deeply disappointed by the abrupt cancellation of the meeting. “Those who firmly believe in the correctness and justice of their positions are never hesitant to engage in constructive argument and debate,” he was quoted by The Associated Press as saying. The BBC reported that sources in the Greek government were puzzled and annoyed by the meeting cancellation.
Greece has long criticized the way in which the Parthenon sculptures ended up in London, after they were bought by British diplomat Lord Elgin and shipped to the UK between 1801 and 1804. Because the two nations disagree on the legality of the deal and have firm positions, they have tended to avoid talking about the issue during high-level diplomatic meetings.
The UK’s Transport Secretary Mark Harper said on the BBC’s Breakfast program on Tuesday that it was regretful that the prime ministers would not meet during Mitsotakis’UK visit. He said Mitsotakis had been offered the chance to meet instead the UK’s deputy prime minister, Oliver Dowden, but he had refused the meeting. “The views of Greece on the Parthenon sculptures are well known,” Mitsotakis was quoted by The Guardian as saying. “I had hoped to have the opportunity to discuss them with UK Prime Minister along with other international challenges. ” The UK’s opposition Labour Party criticized Sunak for canceling the meeting and said his behavior appeared disrespectful.
1. Which can replace the underlined phrase “akin to” in paragraph 2?| A．Contrary to. | B．Similar to. | C．Relevant to. | D．Adapted to |
| A．An Englishman purchased them and sent them there. |
| B．Some stole them and sold them to a British diplomat. |
| C．The then Greek government presented them to the UK as a gift. |
| D．The then British army took them by force and transported them there. |
| A．He was too occupied with other affairs. |
| B．He was supposed to meet UK Prime Minister. |
| C．He didn’t approve of his words and behaviors. |
| D．He had arranged for another official to meet him. |
| A．Sunak and Mitsotakis set to meet on Tuesday |
| B．Mitsotakis thinks highly of Greece artefacts stored in UK |
| C．Mitsotakis plans to take back Parthenon sculptures from UK |
| D．Greece’s arguing with UK about artefacts sparks diplomatic row |
