1 . As a young girl growing up in France, Sarah Toumi dreamed of becoming a leader who could make the world a better place. Her passion to help others was awakened when, from the age of nine, she accompanied her Tunisian father to his birthplace in the east of the country during holidays. There she organized homework clubs and activities for children.
Toumi witnessed first-hand the destructive effect of desertification (沙漠化). “Within 10 years rich farmers became worse off, and in 10 years from now they will be poor. I wanted to stop the Sahara Desert in its tracks.” A decrease in average rainfall and an increase in the severity of droughts have led to an estimated 75 percent of Tunisia’s agricultural lands being threatened by desertification.
Toumi recognized that farming practices needed to change. She is confident that small land areas can bring large returns if farmers are able to adapt by planting sustainable crops, using new technologies for water treatment and focusing on natural products and fertilizers rather than chemicals.
In 2012, Toumi consolidated (巩固) her dream of fighting the desert. She moved to Tunisia, and set up a programme named Acacias for All to put her sustainable farming philosophy (理念) into action. “I want to show young people in rural areas that they can create opportunities where they are. Nobody is better able to understand the impact of desertification and climate change than somebody who is living with no access to water.”
By September 2016, more than 130, 000 acacia trees had been planted on 20 pilot farms, with farmers recording a 60 percent survival rate. Toumi estimates that some 3 million acacia trees are needed to protect Tunisia’s farmland. She expects to plant 1 million trees by 2018. In the next couple of years, Toumi hopes to extend the programme to Algeria and Morocco.
1. How did Toumi’s holiday trips to Tunisia influence her?| A．They made her decide to leave the country. |
| B．They helped her better understand her father. |
| C．They aroused her enthusiasm for helping others. |
| D．They destroyed her dream of being a teacher. |
| A．Low rainfall. | B．Soil pollution. | C．Cold weather. | D．Forest damage. |
| A．To create job opportunities for young people. |
| B．To help the children obtain a basic education. |
| C．To persuade the farmers not to use fertilizers. |
| D．To promote the protection of their farmland. |
| A．Saving Water in Tunisia | B．Holding back the Sahara |
| C．Planting Trees of Native Species | D．Fighting Poverty in North Africa |
2 . Nearly two years ago, Lauren Kornacki, a recent college graduate, walked outside her family’s home in Virginia to ask her dad if she could borrow his car. As she rounded the corner from the front yard into the garage, Lauren, saw her father, Ale, lying unconscious, pinned on his back beneath his car. The car had fallen off the jack while he was changing the brake pads on the right rear tire.
Lauren yelled inside at her mother to call emergency services, and then ran to the car. “I thought, I’m going to lose my dad,” she says. Unsure of what to do, she stuck both hands under the wheel hub where Alec had removed the tire and pulled up with all her strength. To her surprise, she lifted the car. Then she held it up with one arm and, with the other, pulled her father out from under the car by his pants leg.
Alec wasn’t breathing, so Lauren, a lifeguard certified in CPR, began performing chest compressions. Within seconds, Alec took a breath and opened his eyes. “Stay with me,” Lauren whispered as they waited for the ambulance. “Just keep breathing.”
Doctors treated Alec for five fractured ribs, a fractured sternum, and fractured vertebrae, but he was able to return to his job as an IT professional two months later. Lauren, now a computer engineer, says she didn’t stop to think. “Everyone has a basic instinct to help the ones they love,” she say.
1. What had happened about her father when Lauren arrived at the garage?| A．He was replacing a part of his car. |
| B．He was lying at the right side of his car. |
| C．He was pressed under his car out of consciousness. |
| D．He was repairing the right rear tire of his car on the jack. |
| A．Her father could escape the death. | B．She hadn’t expected her effort so effective. |
| C．She was very anxious to save her father. | D．The car was not that heavy as she thought. |
| A．Professional emergency service. | B．Unconditional love from a daughter. |
| C．A strong and tough body. | D．A timely professional first aid. |
| A．The Girl Lifted a Car off Her Dad | B．The Gil Breathed Life into Her Dad |
| C．Dad Got Pinned Beneath a Car | D．A Loving Daughter and a Lucky Dad |
3 . Several weeks ago, I pulled an old road map out of the glove box and passed it to my children. They had never seen the province of Ontario laid out like that before. They stared at the map, asking about all the towns, parks, and other landmarks we’d visited, and I pointed them out on the map.
Digital maps and GPS are modern wonders that have gotten me out of many confusing places, but paper maps still have a role to play in our lives. Most of us adults learned to read them out of necessity, but it’s up to us to pass on that skill to children whose need may not be so obvious, but who still will benefit from it.
As Trevor Muir wrote in an article on this topic, “When kids learn how to create and use paper maps, they are doing more than just learning how to get around. They are actually developing a fundamental skill that they will use for the rest of their lives. Map skill still belong in today’s classroom.”
As a child, I had National Geographic Maps taped to my bedroom walls. This aroused my curiosity and imagination about those places and thus made me eager to remember my geography and history lessons because they were tied to places I’d “seen”. Even now as a mother of four, I’ve also spared time to travel to many of the countries whose maps I studied as a child.
Additionally, in this fast-changing world, unexpected events can rapidly influence one’s usual way of life. When GPS satellites or Internet connections are affected, this old-fashioned skill can get you out of a mess without requiring a smartphone. Last but not least, paper maps arouse big picture thinking, showing kids that there’s a much bigger world out there and helping to direct them within it.
So, now is a good time to pull out those dusty old maps and lay them on the kitchen table.
1. How did the children react when they were given the paper map?| A．They showed great curiosity. |
| B．They seemed totally confused. |
| C．They found it less convenient than GPS. |
| D．They refused to read it without hesitation. |
| A．Neutral. | B．Negative. | C．Supportive. | D．Doubtful. |
| A．Paper maps are already out of date. |
| B．Internet connections are always reliable. |
| C．Paper maps provide kids with a grand vision. |
| D．GPS will sooner or later replace paper maps. |
| A．Time to Encourage Kids to Explore a Real World |
| B．How to Teach Kids to Survive in the Wild |
| C．How to Teach Kids to Recognize Strange Places |
| D．Time to Teach Kids to Read Paper Maps |
4 . In the social media age, teenagers are sharing more information about themselves on social media sites than ever before.
According to a Common Sense Media research study, more than eight in ten teenagers have visited a social networking site like Facebook, and three out four teenagers now have an account on a social networking site.
However, while social media sites can improve teenagers’ communication abilities, experts say that social networking could be harmful to healthy teenage self-esteem. Health educator and motivational speaker Scott Fried began working with teenagers 22 years ago. He recently developed a new lecture, “Broken-Heartedness and Intimacy in the Age of Social Media,” to discuss with teenagers the differences between their personalities online and their true selves.
“The definition of growing up is bringing together many different parts of your personality,” Fried said. “As you grow, they turn into one whole personality. Now, you have a personality at school, at home, and online. The goal of being a teenager is to bring together all these different parts that are shown online in a complete way.”
Fried uses the phrase “compare and despair” to describe the bad effect of social media / on teenage self-esteem. you compare yourself to someone else, you’re usually going to end up despairing.”
Fried said, “One of the problems with social media is that we throw our best selves out there, or what we like to think of as our best self.”
Psychologist Nadine De Ciordany says that teenagers who already have low self-esteem can get easily depressed and give others their low self-esteem. She thinks social media is causing more and more depression. She adds that parents should educate their children early on social media.
“Teenagers can use a whole lot of resources that affect the way they deal with peer pressure,” De Giordaiiy said, “As the child is growing up, supervise(监督) what it is that they have access to. There is an age that social media is appropriate for and there is an age that isn’t appropriate for.”
1. What does the research find?| A．About 75% of teenagers have a Facebook account. |
| B．Teenagers like to share opinions with others on social media. |
| C．Social media users generally have better communication skills. |
| D．Over 80% of teenagers have access to a social networking site. |
| A．Teenagers like to compete with others on social media. |
| B．Teenagers often get rid of their true selves on social media. |
| C．Teenagers present the same personality in different situations. |
| D．Teenagers like to show the greatest parts of themselves on social media. |
| A．Social media should set a minimum age limit. |
| B．Teenagers should have right to any social networking sites. |
| C．Parents should monitor what is accessible to their children. |
| D．Teenagers should be free to use social media for their problems. |
| A．Social media have bad effects on teenagers. |
| B．More and more teenagers use social media. |
| C．Social media promote teenagers’ communication skills. |
| D．Teenagers have better developed their personalities online. |
5 . In the past 60 or so years. American parents’ approach to naming their kids has undergone a profound shift. Today, many parents seek out less popular names to help their kids stand out. But in the past, parents typically picked common names, consciously or not, so that their kids would fit in.
“We are deep in an era of naming individuality where parents assume that having a name which sounds distinctive and unique is a virtue,” Laura Wattenberg, the founder of the naming-trends site Namerology, said, “how parents are thinking about naming kids is more like how companies think about naming products, which is a kind of competitive marketplace where you need to be able to get attention to succeed.”
There were signs that people were tired of names that were too popular. Cleveland Evans, a professor emeritus of psychology at Bellevue University and an expert on names, said that there was a 1953 song titled John, John, John, which included the lines “Every Tom, Dick, and Harry’s called John. Can’t we give this little guy a break and call him something new?”
This tune signaled the coming turn toward novelty and distinctiveness that took hold in the 1960s. It was driven by a number of broader shifts in daily life. As family sizes shrunk and kids stopped doing labor, Americans “started to fixate on the uniqueness of each child,” as the sociologist Philip Cohen has written, and “individuality emerged as a project—starting with naming -of creating an identity.”
Another crucial change is that in the 1960s parents started gaining access to data on baby-naming trends, according to Evans. Books informed parents which names were popular—and, by extension, which overexposed names they might want to avoid of this has brought us to an era of exceptionally varied names, which, in a way, represents its own kind of conformity: trying not to be like everyone else makes you just like everyone else.
1. What does the underlined word “virtue” in Paragraph 2 probably mean?| A．A good quality. | B．A moral standard. |
| C．An attractive habit. | D．An obvious advantage. |
| A．To show that the song was widely spread. |
| B．To show that John was a child everyone liked. |
| C．To show that the name John was too overexposed. |
| D．To show that the name John was something quite new. |
| A．The larger family sizes and less labor for children. |
| B．Parents’ concerns about the novelty and distinctiveness. |
| C．Some books showing which names are appropriate for children. |
| D．The changes in daily life and the access to the naming trend. |
| A．Doubtful. | B．Optimistic. | C．Ambiguous. | D．Indifferent. |
6 . “If you’re so smart, how come you aren’t happy?”That’s Naval Ravikant’s challenge to everyone bathing in the suffering of-their own intelligence.
Smart people always overthink. Some 50%-75% of adults overthink, and it affects our productivity, creativity, energy, sleep, and even our eating habits.
Smart people tend to stay away from others. Humans are social beings. No one wants to always be alone forever, and while studies show that intelligent people usually enjoy less social interaction than others, it does not mean they don’t require connections with people at all.
For many people, highly intellectual (深奥的) topics are too exciting most of the time, but that doesn’t mean they don’t know what it’s like to be an outsider. Everyone experiences that at some point in their life. Therefore, smart people’s case of lone wolf syndrome (独狼综合症)is overblown usually．
| A．Smart people usually expect too much. |
| B．People consider intelligent ones as aliens. |
| C．It also prevents our learning and makes us age faster. |
| D．That is often the case for many of those smart people. |
| E．Smart people sometimes have higher expectations for others. |
| F．They often feel misunderstood looking for fewer connections. |
| G．They make themselves more of an outsider than they actually are. |
