1 . Last weekend I made a journey from New York to London, with my daughter to see my mother. To my relief, the travel was far easier than I expected: the airports were empty, the plane was half-full and the airline staff kindly provided food and wine, which I drank greedily with a straw while wearing the required face mask. What I did not expect was to be hit with a culture shock on arrival in London.
In New York, face masks are now an inseparable part of life. Street signs declare “OUTSIDE WITH NO MASK? FORGET ABOUT IT!” Buildings carry more polite notices warning that anyone without a mask is banned. And even without them, almost everyone I see on the streets in my corner of Manhattan has their face covered. Strangers sometimes shout angrily at people who do not.
Indeed, there is such a strong sense of social pressure that in recent months I have worn a mask even when cycling alone, along Manhattan’s East river. And my daughter has taken to shopping online for “fashion masks”.
But not so in London. A new report issued by the Royal Society and the British Academy shows that, at the end of April, just 25 percent of Brits wore face masks in public places compared with 66 percent of Americans. We saw this for ourselves: in London, we appeared to be almost the only people wearing masks on the streets or in shops; even on public transport some seem to reject them.
Simon Roberts explains powerfully in a timely new book the Power of not Thinking. Habits matter deeply, but we rarely notice them — unless we travel. After a few days in London, I have started to “forget” my mask when I go outside. When I return to New York, I will have to relearn my habits all over again.
1. What does the underlined phrase “culture shock” in Paragraph 1 probably refer to?| A．The loss of culture. | B．Confusion and unfamiliarity. |
| C．The face mask. | D．A huge welcome. |
| A．Serious. | B．Disapproving. |
| C．Annoyed. | D．Ambitious |
| A．Londoners think mask wearing is only necessary on public transport. |
| B．None of the Londoners likes the idea of mask wearing. |
| C．New Yorkers should wear masks even if alone. |
| D．New Yorkers would react strongly to people without masks. |
| A．To stress the importance of realizing one’s habits with environmental changes. |
| B．To help people understand that each country has its own unique culture. |
| C．To encourage people to travel and explore the world. |
| D．To explain why there’s a culture shock. |
2 . There’s been a frightening increase in the number of people feeling lonely, brought on or made worse by COVID-19. In fact there’s been an epidemic (流行病)of loneliness.
Loneliness is awful and dangerous. For one thing it weakens self-control and that, University of Bristol researchers have found, makes quitting smoking very difficult. Moreover, data from hundreds of thousands of people led Dr. Robyn Wootton, senior research associate at Bristol University and colleagues to conclude that loneliness appears to increase the need to smoke.
According to the Office for National Statistics, the equivalent of 7.4 million people said their wellbeing was affected through feeling lonely in the first month of lockdown. Lonely people were also more likely to be struggling to find things that would help them cope and were also less likely to feel they had support networks to fall back on.
Dr. Robyn Wootton said, “We found evidence to suggest that loneliness leads to increased smoking, with people more likely to start smoking, to smoke more cigarettes and to be less likely to quit.” Senior author Dr. Jorien Treur from Amsterdam UMC added, “Our finding that smoking may also lead to more loneliness is tentative(不确定的), but it is in agreement with other recent studies that identified smoking as a risk factor for poor mental health. A potential explanation for this relationship is that nicotine from cigarette smoke has a great impact on neurotransmitters(神经传导物质)such as dopamine(多巴胺)in the brain.”
Dr. Wootton said with millions of people now being more socially separated, incidences of loneliness will climb. “We were really interested to find that loneliness decreases the likelihood of stopping smoking and we think this is a really important consideration for those trying to stop smoking during COVID-19,” she said. To ease your loneliness and improve your chances of succeeding in quitting, I think one of the best things you can do is to find a “buddy” who’ll try to give up smoking with you. Together you can compare notes, share progress, talk through difficulties, and encourage each other to keep on going when all you want is to give in.
1. What can we infer from paragraph 3?| A．Lonely people tend to seek something to deal with loneliness. |
| B．Lockdown do more damage to physical than mental health. |
| C．People suffering from loneliness often turn to others for help. |
| D．Self-control is the most important thing to overcome loneliness. |
| A．Evidence. | B．Smoking. |
| C．Loneliness. | D．Finding. |
| A．Millions of people failed the attempt to stop smoking. |
| B．A good way to stop smoking is to get a like-minded person. |
| C．Smoking is not advocated officially during COVID-19. |
| D．Those who want to quit smoking need to find good habits. |
| A．Health Problems Caused by COVID-19 |
| B．Opinions on How to Give Up Smoking |
| C．Some Ways in Which Loneliness Harm You |
| D．Loneliness Makes it Hard to Quit Smoking |
3 . While children are dogs-loyal and affectionate (情深的)— teenagers are cats. It’s so easy to be a dog owner. You feed it, train it, and boss it around. It puts its head on your knee and gazes at you as if you were a Rembrandt painting. It jumps indoors with enthusiasm when you call it.
Then around age 13, your adoring little puppy turns into a big old cat. When you tell it to come inside, it looks amazed, as if wondering who is so boring. Instead of following your doorsteps, it disappears. You won’t see it again until it gets hungry — then it hunts through the kitchen long enough to turn its nose up at whatever you’re serving. When you reach out to touch its head, in that old affectionate gesture, it turns away from you, then gives you an indifferent (冷漠的) look, as if trying to remember where it has seen you before.
Since you are the one who raised it, taught it to fetch and stay and sit on command, you think that you did something wrong. Filled with guilt (内疚) and fear, you redouble your efforts to make your pet to do things in a right way.
Only now you’re dealing with a cat, so everything that worked before now has the other side of the wanted result. Call it, and it runs away. Tell it to sit, and it jumps on the counter. The more you go toward it, waving your hands, the more it moves away.
Put a dish of food near the door, and let it come to you. But remember that a cat needs your help and you love too. Sit still, and it will come, seeking that warm and comforting lap. It has not entirely forgotten. Be there to open the door for it.
One day your grown-up child will walk into the kitchen, give you a big kiss and say, “You’ve been on your feet all day. Let me get those dishes for you.”
Then you will realize your cat is a dog again.
1. When you call a dog, how will it probably react to you?| A．Excitedly. | B．Curiously. | C．Angrily. | D．Calmly. |
| A．A dog. | B．A parent. | C．A situation. | D．A teenager. |
| A．Children like cats can easily obey parents’ orders. |
| B．Parents should try their best to leave their children alone. |
| C．You can’t expect children to care about their parents’ feelings. |
| D．Parents should consider what they do wrong to educate their kids. |
| A．To tell us how a dog changes into a cat. |
| B．To tell us how to deal with teenagers aged 13 or so. |
| C．To tell us the similarities between pets and children. |
| D．To tell us how to keep pets like cats and dogs. |
4 . High school biology teacher Kelly Chavis knew smartphones were a problem in her class. But she did not realize how serious the problem was until she did an in-class experiment. For one class period, she used a blackboard on her student’s phones to count (数) every text, call, Snapchat that appeared to their phones. She was shocked by the results. “One girl, just during the one hour, got close to 150 text messages or call 150!” she said.
Tests, after-school activities and problems at home can increase pressure for students. But Chavis is among a growing number of teachers and parents who believe that smartphone is the number one reason for the growing anxiety levels.
Emily Mogavero is a 17-year-old student in Buffal, New York. She said, “It worries me that I’m on my phone so much. I sometimes put my phone out of reach or power it down so I don’t hear.”
Schools are starting to take actions to deal with the problem. Some schools have organized No Smartphone Days (NSD) in which teachers and students do not use their telephone on certain days. Some parents are not letting their children get smartphones until they grow up. Erin Schifferli, a parent in Western New York, says her 12-year-old daughter, Aeva, won’t get a phone until she is 16 years old.
Another parent, Deirdre Birmingham of New Jersey, signed onto a campaign (活动) called “Wait until Eighth Grade (WUEG)” because she didn’t think her video game-loving son was ready for a smartphone. The campaign joins groups of parents who have children in the same class. These parents agree to not let their children get phones until they are old enough, or in the 8th grade.
Birmingham said she had feeling that the phone “would be difficult for my child to manage. As an adult, I find it difficult sometimes to manage.”
1. Which is the leading cause for the increasing anxiety levels according to some teachers?| A．Tests. | B．Homework | C．Smartphones. | D．Family problems. |
| A．encourages students from the same school to join in. |
| B．forbids teachers from using smartphones in schools. |
| C．asks parents who have children in the same class to join in. |
| D．sets age limits for children from different neighborhoods. |
| A．She is willing to support the WUEG campaign. |
| B．It is easier for grown-ups to put away their telephones. |
| C．Students should stop using telephones on certain days. |
| D．Her child is suffering from the anxiety caused by smartphones. |
| A．By reasoning. | B．By giving examples. | C．by listing numbers. | D．by comparing. |
5 . Have you ever heard someone say, “you totally look like you’re a Jessica” or something similar? People seem to think that they know what kind of person a “Jessica” or a “Michael” looks like. Why is this?
According to a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, humans tend to associate (联系) people’s names with their appearance, and can even guess someone’s name based on how they look.
Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, collected thousands of photos of people’s faces. They labeled each photo with four names and then asked volunteers to guess which of the four names was correct.
The volunteers were able to guess the right name 38 percent of the time. It seems that certain features of faces give them clues about someone’s name, Reader’s Digest reported.
However, this only worked when the volunteers looked at names from their own culture. In addition, the volunteers were not as good at guessing the real names of people who used nicknames (绰号) more often than their real names. This may show that a person’s appearance is affected by their name only if they use it often.
This kind of face-name matching happens “because of a process of self-realization, as we become what other people expect us to become,” Ruth Mayo from the university told science news website Eurek Alert.
Earlier studies have shown that gender and race stereotypes can affect a person’s appearance. The researchers believe there are also similar stereotypes about names. For example, people tend to think that men named Bob should have rounder faces because the word itself looks round. People may think that women named Rose are beautiful. They expect them to be “lovely” and “feminine (女性的)”, just like the flower they are named for.
1. What’s the purpose of the study?| A．To learn how names influence personality. |
| B．To figure out whether names relate to their looks. |
| C．To find out today’s most popular English names. |
| D．To show how men’s names are different from women’s. |
| A．Names have different associations in different cultures. |
| B．A less used name has a greater effect on the appearance. |
| C．Volunteers found it easier to guess nicknames correctly. |
| D．Volunteers rarely got wrong answers at face-name matching. |
| A．They want to please everyone around them. |
| B．They don’t want to be different from others. |
| C．They grow into what others expect them to be. |
| D．They are influenced by people with the same name. |
| A．Positive opinions. | B．Wrong beliefs. |
| C．Unreal images. | D．Fixed ideas. |
6 . Instagram is containing so many photos of food — now a pop-up diner in London is taking advantage of this new trend by letting people settle the bill for their meals simply by uploading photos of their dishes to social networks.
I always thought people’s taking pictures of their food was kind of silly, but at this new pop-up restaurant in the UK, I’d probably do it too. “The Picture House” is the world’s first pay-by-photo restaurant — you order, click a photo of the food, share on Instagram and eat for free!
The restaurant belongs to frozen food giant Birds Eye, who came up with the idea to take advantage of people’s obsession (迷恋) with photographing food and sharing the pictures online. They conducted a survey and found out that more than half of the British population regularly took pictures of their meals. So they realized it was a better way to advertise their new dining range.
The pop-up diner was open in Soho, London for three days in May, and is now moving to other major UK cities. They serve two-course meals that customers don’t have to pay for, if they photo and Instagram it.
The restaurant is a part of Birds Eye’s “Food for Life” campaign, a new marketing project that aims at changing the way people look at frozen food. “Taking photos of food enables people to show off and to share their mealtime moments — from the everyday to the special,” said marketing director Margaret Jobling.
The reaction to “The Picture House” has been great so far. And the pay-by-picture concept has proven to be an effective way. Alternative payment methods are actually gaining popularity among a lot of businesses. Last year, in a cafe in Germany customers pay by how much time they spend there, not by what they eat.
1. What is Instagram?| A．A restaurant free of charge. | B．A frozen food giant. |
| C．A program used to share photos. | D．A new marketing project. |
| A．Negative. | B．Interested. | C．Confused. | D．Unconcerned. |
| A．To reward the regular customers. |
| B．To raise the price of frozen food. |
| C．To create a new social media trend. |
| D．To change people’s opinions on frozen food. |
| A．Pay by Picture | B．Food for Life |
| C．A New Dining Trend | D．A Pop-up Diner |
7 . The holidays are officially over, and while the vacation time could mean different things to people — catching up on competitive sports, eating amounts of food, or finally visiting your uncle — one thing is almost universal: the sentiment of “oh no, I have to go to work again.”
It’s easy to understand why we get a little depressed at the thought of coming back to everyday life. The post-vacation blues, the depression after the holiday, can have actual health effects. A journalist and travel writer Nneka Okona says, “For me, the dejection (沮丧) starts around the last 24 hours of a trip. I feel really down and sometimes even teary.”
But if vacations are supposed to be a significant boon to our happiness and well-being, why do we break down afterwards?
Jeroen Nawijn, a psychologist at the Breda University, says that though people generally become happier on their days off, those benefits weaken quickly after returning home. “They most likely feel best during vacation because they have more freedom to do what they want.” he explains.
Suzanne Degges-White, a therapist, echoes this sentiment. “Once we get back into the work world, the majority of us have to deal with piles of work,” she says. She also indicates the difficulty of rejoining the work life lies in the fact that duties don’t disappear when we go on vacation. “They know that problems may have stacked up in their absence. ” Degges-White adds.
Thankfully, there are ways to ease the sentimental blues. “Thinking ahead could also include making a to-do list for your first week back, keeping your work and living spaces clean and organized for your return.” Degges-White says.
One more tip: start planning your next vacation right away. “The only thing that has continually worked for me is booking another trip as quickly as possible.” Okona says, “My blues are disappearing if I know I have something else to look forward to.” She also recommends grabbing a useful rather than decorative souvenir(纪念品) so that you have something to tie your new experiences with your life back home.
Prepare you better for the reality that awaits post-vacation. And if all else fails, you can always try working your memories to trick yourself into happiness ever after.
1. Thinking of returning to work, most people will ________.| A．do sports and eat delicious food |
| B．use the remaining time to visits their relatives |
| C．feel down especially when their vacation is about to be over |
| D．deal with the harmful effects on health caused by depression |
| A．Something helpful. | B．Something beautiful. |
| C．Something memorable. | D．Something unforgettable. |
| A．Jeroen Nawijn and Degges-White differ about post-vacation blues. |
| B．Degges-White thinks post-vacation blues result from piles of work. |
| C．Jeroen Nawijn suggests giving people more freedom when they work. |
| D．Okona would choose a painting rather than local snacks as a souvenir. |
| A．Happiness can’t be achieved. |
| B．Another vacation is the best way. |
| C．People should focus on their work. |
| D．If you will, some way can be found. |
8 . The moon had gone behind a cloud and there weren't many stars in the sky. As I took a glance (一瞥) at my neighbour's house, I saw a flame (火焰) in his
Soon, there was a burning smell in the air and I guessed something was wrong.
I
I tried to throw water through the kitchen window
When my neighbour came back, he was
Weeks later, my neighbour repaired and restored his kitchen. He
| A．sitting room | B．bathroom | C．kitchen | D．bedroom |
| A．chair | B．table | C．bed | D．sofa |
| A．After a while | B．All the time | C．Once in a while | D．At once |
| A．examine | B．search | C．listen | D．smell |
| A．said | B．shouted | C．received | D．smiled |
| A．walked | B．rushed | C．jumped | D．stepped |
| A．answer | B．light | C．sound | D．fire |
| A．take out | B．take up | C．break down | D．break into |
| A．and | B．but | C．because | D．so |
| A．Luckily | B．Sadly | C．Unfortunately | D．Suddenly |
| A．run | B．spread | C．flow | D．return |
| A．glad | B．sad | C．sick | D．angry |
| A．children | B．parents | C．life | D．pets |
| A．ordered | B．begged | C．advised | D．invited |
| A．mainly | B．particularly | C．specially | D．naturally |
9 . When the COVID-19 hit and supermarket shelves were empty, Chris Hall and Stefanny Lowey decided they no longer wanted to depend on others for food. They, who live on Pender Island（片打岛） in British Columbia（不列颠哥伦比亚）, Canada, decided to start a year-long challenge where they wouldn't buy a single thing to eat. Instead they would grow, raise or catch everything—right down to sugar, salt and flour（面粉）. Now, five months in, they say the challenge has changed their lives.
Chris, 38, said, “It has always been something that we have wanted to do. We have had a garden and grown vegetables for a long time already. When the COVID-19 hit, it gave us that extra push that we needed to do it. We were both out of work when we started, and with the reality check of grocery stores running out of items, it gave us even more energy to see if we could look after ourselves.”
The pair spent the months before building a house for chickens, ducks and turkey as well as studying as much as possible to figure out where they would get all the things they needed. Chris adds, “We had to learn so many new things like how to grow mushrooms（蘑菇）, process our Stevia plants, and harvest salt from the ocean. We spent a lot of time reading and studying online to find out all the things we were going to need to do.”
Now after five months, they both feel it’s been going well but Chris admits the first few weeks were difficult. “The first three weeks were very challenging as our bodies adjusted to cutting out coffee, wine and sugar all on the same day,” he says. “After three weeks our energy levels balanced out and our wishes reduced and now we feel great.” Now February has ended. As they come through winter, they feel positive about continuing with this way of living, with their challenge officially（正式地） ending in August.
1. Why did the pair decide to produce foods on their own?| A．They were isolated（隔绝的） by Pender Island. |
| B．They couldn't afford to buy them because they lost their jobs. |
| C．They wanted to be independent. |
| D．They could hardly buy them in shops. |
| A．Positive and self-supporting. | B．Helpful and positive. |
| C．Motivated（有动力的） and brave. | D．Rich and generous. |
| A．They had difficulty because they wanted to continue. |
| B．They couldn't get used to the special way of living at first. |
| C．Their challenge may last about six months in total. |
| D．They were discouraged by the difficulty at first. |
| A．It’s in Britain. | B．It’s in America. |
| C．It’s in Canada. | D．It’s near Britain. |
10 . Positive Ways the World May Change After Coronavirus
More flexibility in workplaces
Many businesses can in fact thrive with a remote workforce.
Healthier lifestyle habits
More flexibility and reduced commuting mean people can find more time to exercise as well—even if it’s at home rather than at the gym.
More likely to improve the environment
Shortly after the lockdown began in Wuhan, carbon emissions dropped around 25 percent and the result was visible from space.
Stronger family connections
During lockdown, families created bonds that are likely to remain strong. Since you’re home anyway, there’s no excuse not to have dinner together. Families are also returning to classic activities like movie nights and outdoor nature adventures. They give you opportunities to create a lot of openings for connection on a deeper and more meaningful level.
This time of suffering and death brought a recognition that life is something to be cherished and not taken for granted. COVID has created a loss on so many levels that it has forced us to look deeply at what we have been doing daily and why it matters. This active seeking of insight and answers has caused many individuals to be grateful for what they have.
| A．More planning for future life. |
| B．More appreciation and gratitude for life. |
| C．This has been missing in many homes since smartphones entered the picture. |
| D．This will forever change the workplace, with offices taking a much smaller role. |
| E．The improvement in air quality was obvious, but it was also, sadly, not lasting. |
| F．The crisis has led people to focus on exercise and spend more time with family members. |
| G．One survey showed the number of people who never work out decreased since the pandemic began. |
