1 . I started a Facebook page in July, and it’s steadily growing! The best part isn’t the number of its “followers” but its comments — I love reading about what people do, their ideas and views and get some feedback (反馈) on what I’m doing too.
In April of this year, I was invited by a friend to join her Social Change group. We were eight women from all walks of life, but we had one thing in common — we live in a fantastic country and yet we can see homeless people on the streets asking for money. We have a generous welfare system and a social housing scheme — but it’s a problem that is getting worse. We asked ourselves: What happens to homeless women?
Therefore, we volunteered at shelters. We met with social housing providers, shelter managers and social workers, and began to think what else we could do. We researched on which programs were having success. We had guest speakers at our meetings and began to get a clear picture about what we needed to do.
As luck would have it, we have been gifted a building in the city center. It’s old and needs a lot of work to bring it up to the standard. We want to provide more than just shelter to women in need. We aim to have six self-contained apartments providing full social services for women to stay in for up to two years. Thanks to the building provider, we have got our project off the ground.
I’m an ordinary person. If I can do this, anyone can. You can change the world. Look for the opportunity and just do it.
1. What can we learn about the Facebook page?| A．Its followers increase steadily. | B．It helps the author get feedback. |
| C．It was set up to advertise their service. | D．Its main content is people’s comments. |
| A．Its people are suffering. | B．Its system is getting worse. |
| C．It still has a long way to go. | D．It is a place full of inequality. |
| A．acquired a few communication skills |
| B．discovered their ability to change the world |
| C．had a better understanding of social problems |
| D．were inspired to start a project to help the homeless women |
| A．To share her story. | B．To introduce her job. |
| C．To thank housing providers for their help. | D．To encourage people to improve the world. |
2 . Our culture has caused most Americans to assume not only that our language is universal, but that the gestures we use are understood by everyone. We do not realize that waving good-bye is the way to ask a person from the Philippines to one’s side, or that in Italy and some Latin-American countries, curling the finger to oneself is a sign of farewell.
Those private citizens who sent packages to our troops occupying Germany after World War II and marked them GIFT to escape duty payments did not bother to find out that “Gift” means poison in German. Moreover, we like to think of ourselves as friendly, yet we prefer to be at least 3 feet or an arm’s length away from others. Latins and Middle Easterners like to come closer and touch, which makes Americans uncomfortable.
Our linguistic and cultural blindness and the informality with which we take notice of the developed tastes, gestures, customs and languages of other countries, are losing us friends, business and respect in the world.
Even here in the United States, we make few compromises to the needs of foreign visitors. There are no information signs in four languages on our public buildings or monuments; we do not have multilingual guided tours. Very few restaurant menus have translations, and multilingual waiters, bank clerks and policemen are rare. Our transportation systems have maps in English only and often we ourselves have difficulty understanding them.
When we go abroad, we tend to cluster in hotels and restaurants where English is spoken. The attitudes and information we pick up are conditioned by those natives—usually the richer—who speak English. Our business dealings, as well as the nation’s diplomacy, are conducted through interpreters.
For many years, America and Americans could get by with cultural blindness and linguistic ignorance. After all, America was the most powerful country of the free world, the distributor of needed funds and goods.
But all that is past. American dollars no longer buy all good things, and we are slowly beginning to realize that our proper role in the world is changing. A l979 Harris poll reported that 55 percent of Americans want this country to play a more significant role in world affairs; we want to have a hand in the important decisions of the next century, even though it may not always be the upper hand.
1. It can be inferred that Americans being approached too closely by Middle Easterners would most probably________.| A．stand still | B．scream out | C．step forward | D．draw back |
| A．cultural self-centeredness | B．casual manners |
| C．indifference towards foreign visitors | D．blindness to native culture |
| A．are isolated by the local people |
| B．are not well informed due to the language barrier |
| C．tend to get along well with the natives |
| D．need interpreters in hotels and restaurants |
| A．it is dangerous to ignore their foreign friends |
| B．it is important to maintain their leading role in world affairs |
| C．it is necessary to use several languages in public places |
| D．it is time to get acquainted with other cultures |
3 . A growing number of Chinese young generations are looking for new methods to relieve (缓解) stress, which include raising unusual “pets”, hugging (拥抱) trees, watching stress relief videos and playing other stress-relieving toys.
A new toy called “mango dog” recently is becoming popular among young people.
At the same time, a young media worker finds the joy in watching fun videos before sleeping. “I especially enjoy watching stress relief videos, like washing blankets and cutting soap.
The popularity of these stress relief methods reflects young people’s need to relieve emotional pressure. According to public data, there are more than 800 companies in China with names, businesses, products, or services with the term “stress relief”.
| A．Tree hugging is another choice |
| B．Other toys have also become popular |
| C．Playing with Chinese puzzles is comfortable |
| D．For the youth, the “mango dog” has special meaning |
| E．They also feel a connection with nature by hugging trees |
| F．After watching them, I feel the stress of the day is relieved |
| G．And the number is expected to grow even higher in the future |
4 . The family unit of parents and children is the most important in our life. However, a common complaint (抱怨) nowadays is “my parents have no time for me” or “my children prefer to spend time with their friends”. So what is the reason for such complaints?
One of the basic parenting rules is that parents should spend time with their children. This is the time when parents can show their love and care for their children, physically and emotionally. Similarly, the children can show that they appreciate their parents’ love and this brings about a strong parent-child relationship. Both parties get advantage.
Busy work is one reason why parents don’t spend time with their children. They are the bread winners, wanting their children to have the best. Often both parents had to work to support the family. So, the children turn to their friends who are there to offer a helping hand and a shoulder to cry on. They open up to their friends more than their parents. Another choice for parents is the maid (女佣) who is always there.
When parents get home from the office and the children from school, they are on their own-one parent prepares a meal, the other and children either in front of the computer or their iPhones. They spend time together at a meal but each is more buried in his own thoughts rather than what the others are thinking about.
What can be done to correct the situation? Both parents and children can reschedule their activities with the purpose of spending more time together. Have common interests like watching a football game. This will help develop a close and healthy relationship. Having quality time together takes effort, but it’s worthwhile.
1. What’s the author’s purpose of raising a question in the first paragraph?| A．To make a fact clear. | B．To offer an opinion. |
| C．To lead in the topic. | D．To start a conversation. |
| A．Political organizations. | B．Social activities. |
| C．Groups of people. | D．Rules of family. |
| A．Parents are busy with work. |
| B．Parents ask them to join friends. |
| C．Parents want them to have the best. |
| D．Parents need to make bread to support family. |
| A．Require maids to step in. |
| B．Turn to iphones for help. |
| C．Develop different interests. |
| D．Have quality time together. |
5 . The days of the bedroom fitting room are numbered. Online retail giant (零售巨头) Boohoo has become the latest in a string of retailers to start charging shoppers for returns.
By offering free returns in the first place, companies, such as Boohoo, created entirely new behaviour around shopping. A 2018 study found that 9% of UK consumers buy clothes to post on social media, only to return them straight after. Almost one in five 35-to 44-year-olds admit to doing it, and men, apparently, do it more than women.
However, when clothes are returned, they’re likely to be thrown away rather than resold. This is because processing returns is time-consuming and costly. Buttons need to be rebuttoned, labels need to be reattached, products need refolding and rebagging, and then they must be put back into the system for sale. So it is clearly a cheaper and easier solution for businesses to send the whole lot to landfills (垃圾填埋场). It’s really a great waste of resources, not to mention an insult (冒 犯) to the skilled people who put their time into making each product, but it’s the reality of modern fashion.
When clothes don’t become rubbish, there’s still the impact of the extra shipping to consider, as well as the packaging waste. About 180bn plastic bags are produced every year to store, protect and transport clothes, and less than 15% of them are collected for recycling.
The impact of returns is a fairly well-kept secret, likely to keep people shopping guilt-free (没有负罪感地). But even if it was widely known, it wouldn’t guarantee people would stop treating returns thoughtlessly. After all, other environmental and human impacts of fast fashion are out there for all to see and yet the industry continues to thrive.
Hopefully, charging for returns is expected to change people’s behavior. Without free returns on the table, shoppers may think twice about buying 10 items when they know they’ll only keep five or buying clothes purely for social media content. And with the arrival of return charges, the clothes we already have might also start to look a little more appealing.
1. Why do retailers tend to throw away returned clothes?| A．To keep up with the latest fashion. | B．To avoid a huge waste of resources. |
| C．To let the skilled people feel honored. | D．To save the trouble of processing returns. |
| A．They will feel guilty about shopping. | B．They will continue their shopping behavior. |
| C．They will consider their shopping carefully. | D．They will keep their shopping behavior secret. |
| A．It puts great pressure on customers. | B．It can influence social media content. |
| C．It can do little to help reduce returns. | D．It will turn out to be an effective measure. |
| A．It is necessary to charge shoppers for returns. | B．It is difficult to control the number of returns. |
| C．Many retailers are struggling to process returns. | D．People have different opinions on the end of free returns. |
6 . In a world where fire threatens more and more homes, scientists have developed a surprising type of material that might keep some buildings safer: thin sheets of fungi (真菌).
Underneath every mushroom is a branching network of root like structures called a mycelium (菌丝体). Now researchers have successfully grown these networks into pizza-size sheets that could act as a fire retardant in building materials, according to a new study in Polymer Degradation and Stability.
“Using a biological material like mycelium has enormous benefits”, says senior author Everson Kandare. Unlike asbestos, which is still sometimes added to building materials as a fire retardant, mycelium does not release poisonous compounds when exposed to fire. “When there is a building fire, it often isn’t the flame intensity or the heat that kills or injures people,” says Kandare, an engineer at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. “It is the smoke and the poisonous metal that comes out of building materials.”
The new mycelium sheets, grown into protective carpets up to a few millimeters thick, could prevent such building materials from burning in the first place. Mycelium contains a lot of carbon. When exposed to fire, the sheet briefly burns, releasing water and carbon dioxide into the air, leaving behind a black layer of carbon.
This study is the first to integrate these properties into a useful building material. Kandare suggests mycelium could replace the fire retardant foam (泡沫剂), which can produce CO and other poisonous products when it burns.
The RMIT team has been reaching out to mushroom farmers to see whether they could promote the technology for commercial use. Kandare says, “Mycelium can grow in the dark, which means its energy needs are relatively minimal. Even better, mycelium is a biological material, and any waste it leaves behind can be used as fertilizer.”
1. Which of the following can replace the underlined phrase?
| A．Fire block. | B．Fire signal. | C．Fire alarm. | D．Fire detection. |
| A．Components of protective carpets. |
| B．Process of growing mycelium sheets. |
| C．Environmental impact of the material. |
| D．Working principle of mycelium sheets. |
| A．It is widely used. |
| B．It contains enormous foam. |
| C．It’s resistant to high temperature. |
| D．It’s a safer option for construction. |
| A．Contradictory. | B．Doubtful. | C．Optimistic. | D．Cautious. |
7 . On the second floor of Minke van Wingerden’s floating farm in Rotterdam, the cows sometimes wander over to a machine that automatically milks them, or shy out of the way of a robot removing their waste that will be turned into organic fertilizer for the vegetables grown on the first floor.
“We call our farm recycling lady,” says Minke van Wingerden, who has recently opened a small shop on dry land next to the floating farm to sell the vegetables, milk, cheese and butter produced there.
Floating farming isn’t an entirely new idea. Efforts to put agriculture on or in the water are as old as the Aztecs, who built artificial islands to grow food long ago in what’s now Mexico.
But it’s a concept that is getting new attention as a way of dealing with both food security and the challenges of climate change. And it doesn’t have to be as well-equipped as Wingerden’s floating farm, which came about after she witnessed the food shortages in New York after Hurricane Sandy hit the city in 2012.
“When you have floating farms, you are climate adaptive,” said Wingerden. “It is also sensible for you to take fresher, healthier food close to cities.”
Daniel Petrovics, a researcher at the University of Amsterdam, said the success of floating farms will vary by region.
“Contributing to the sustainability of urban food systems is a challenge floating farms have in common with vertical (垂直的) farms. I don’t think this project is cost-effective enough to be popularized, either,” he said. “As a method to adapt to climate change, it is much cheaper to invest in floating housing rather than floating farms since much of the world’s population lives in coastal areas, while only a small percentage of these communities farm in areas that might be threatened by sea level rise caused by climate change.”
1. Why are the Aztecs mentioned in the text?| A．To add some background information. | B．To sum up the above paragraphs. |
| C．To introduce the topic for discussion. | D．To provide advice for the farmers. |
| A．To recycle the waste in cities. | B．To increase urban food security. |
| C．To compete with vertical farming. | D．To find a low-cost farming method. |
| A．They are very likely to be widely adopted in cities. |
| B．They are a practical solution to urban food shortage. |
| C．They are too costly to be popularized in the near future. |
| D．They can be helpful in the fight against climate change. |
| A．Are Floating Farms the Future? | B．Are Organic Products Healthier? |
| C．How Can We Produce Enough Food? | D．What Are Floating Farms’ Advantages? |
8 . Many often find themselves considering jobs below their skill level in worsening employment markets. But it turns out that working in a job below your skill level harms your later chances of getting hired for a better-paying job more appropriate to your qualifications.
Sociologist David Pedulla at the University of Texas conducted a study to examine how jobs below a person’s skill level affect future employability. He tailored 2,420 applications and submitted them to 1,210 job listings posted in five major cities across the U.S. He varied the applications by gender, and also by employment status for the previous year. Then he used computer models to analyze and compare the results. The results show that applicants who were positioned as working below their skill level, regardless of gender had the lowest chances of getting called for a job interview.
These results should serve as a warning to anyone considering taking a job below their skill level. While it might pay the bills in the short term, it can significantly hammer one’s ability to return to the relevant skill level and pay grade at a later date.
Why might this be the case? Pedulla conducted a follow-up study with 903 employers. He asked them about their ideas of applicants with each kind of employment history, and how likely they would be to recommend each kind of candidate to an interview. The results show that employers believe that men who are employed in positions below their skill level are less committed and less competent than men in other employment situations. Those surveyed also believed that women working below their skill level were less competent than others, but did not believe them to be less committed.
The results of studies suggest that work below skill level signals to employers men’s incompetence and a lack of commitment. This is a disturbing reminder that the sword of gender bias (偏见) does in fact cut both ways.
1. Why do many people choose jobs below their skill level?| A．They fear bearing duties. | B．They lack-self-confidence. |
| C．They face a tough economy. | D．They pursue better-paying jobs. |
| A．By conducting interviews. | B．By researching examples. |
| C．By making comparisons. | D．By doing surveys. |
| A．Ensure. | B．Weaken. | C．Test. | D．Exercise. |
| A．Men are more likely to get promoted. |
| B．Women are more devoted and capable. |
| C．Women behave better in jobs below skill level. |
| D．Men show talents in work of the relevant level. |
9 . Attention! We need to put a stop to parents doing harm to youth sports. It has gotten out of hand.
A recent study showed 26 million American children took part in non-school sports. By the age of 13, about 18.2 million quit.
No wonder kids are quitting. Many parents show no sportsmanship. They often shout happily at an injury if the injured player is on the other team. My brother Mario Widdowson got hit in the face during a soccer game. The parents from the other team were shouting gladly at his pain. All of the players were down on one knee waiting for Mario to get up, out of respect and it was the right thing to do. The kids did much better than these parents.
There are different types of parents. In the book “Parenting with Love and Logic” the authors describe two different types of parents. The first is helicopter parents, who don’t allow their kid to succeed or fail on their own. The other type is lawnmower parents, who clear anything in their child’s path to make life as easy as possible.
I have observed helicopter parents. When my brother was playing club soccer, one of his teammate’s parents shouted at their son. “Shoot the ball”. It was from about half field. He did it and the coach stopped him from playing and asked him to leave the field.
The parents are trying to coach their kids. The players on the field follow blindly and many mistakes happen. It’s not good for kids’ confidence. What is the purpose of youth sports anyway?
Problems happen in youth sports all over the United States. Parents need to behave themselves. Then the number of students who quit at the age of 13 will drop greatly.
1. What does the author want to show by using numbers in Paragraph 2?| A．American kids are sports lovers. |
| B．Parents can’t behave themselves. |
| C．Most kids give up sports half-way. |
| D．Non-school sports are popular among teens. |
| A．They lent a helping hand. | B．They cheered at his injury. |
| C．They waited for him to get up. | D．They kept shouting at their kids. |
| A．He made a mistake. |
| B．He missed his goal. |
| C．He turned to the coach again. |
| D．He didn’t want to go on with the sport. |
| A．Parents Should Respect Sports. | B．Non-school Sports Is Popular. |
| C．Encouragement Is Important for Kids. | D．Kids Need to Love Sports. |
| |||||
| 69% of the travelers try to put down their smartphones on vacation. | 1/3 of Americans always spend their time on the phone on holiday. | 16% of UK travelers always check their phones on vacation. | Most important objects USA: Mobile phone AUS: Camera UK: Sunscreen | ||
Holidays booking (预订) | |||||
| 3/4 of the travelers prefer to book trips online. | 84% of Americans say they are most likely to book online. | 3% of Australians book travel by phone. | |||
根据材料内容选择最佳答案。
1. What do one third of Americans always do during trips?
| A．They always try to put down their phones. |
| B．They always use a lot of sunscreens. |
| C．They always take cameras with them. |
| D．They always spend time on the phone. |
| A．two | B．three | C．four | D．five |
A． | B． | C． | D． |
①From social media users.
②From other travelers’ reviews.
③From family and friends.
④From travel companies.
⑤From travel guides.
| A．①④ | B．②⑤ | C．②③ | D．④⑤ |
| A．The text is written to change travelers’ habits. |
| B．UK travelers use mobile apps the least during trips. |
| C．Sunscreen is the most important object for a US traveler. |
| D．Most travelers like to communicate with their friends on vacation. |
