1 . Are you happy with your appearance?
“Almost all the girls with single-fold eyelids (单眼皮) in our class have had double eyelid operations,” Zeng, a Senior 2 student from Chengdu, told Xinhua. Zeng had the same surgery done this summer.
From popular photo-editing apps to plastic surgery (整形手术), it seems that large eyes, pale skin and a skinny body are the only standard for beauty these days. But can following this standard really make us feel good about ourselves?
“Many teenagers are upset about their appearance because they believe in unrealistic standards of beauty,” experts say.
However, trying to live up to strict standards can make us feel anxious. What troubles us is not just our “imperfect” looks, but the fact that we criticize ourselves too much.
| A．Beauty comes in all shapes and sizes. |
| B．Body image anxiety is common among teenagers. |
| C．Guys care just as much as girls do about their body image. |
| D．Some teenagers might feel negative about their appearance. |
| E．It’s common for teenagers to feel confident about their appearance. |
| F．She and many of her classmates believe bigger eyes look more beautiful. |
| G．Perfect faces and bodies are everywhere in advertising, TV shows and social media. |
2 . In China, if you are not married by the time you are 30, you are in for trouble: social blame and pressure from family and friends can get you down. And if you are a woman, it’s even worse.
Many young people get married simply to get other people off their backs (免受别人的指责) . This is a serious compromise (妥协). One ends up not marrying the ideal partner.
There are, however, a few young people who refuse to compromise: if they can’t find a good marriage partner, they say, they would rather not marry at all.
34-year-old Kate is a university lecturer in English. She said she would not describe herself as celibatarian (独身主义者) but simply a woman who hasn’t come across the right man yet. She has sharp comments for the way in which the old generation looks at marriage.
“Many people think marriage is a duty--to your parents, family and society. Nobody cares if your marriage is happy or not, she said, I think this is very wrong and I intend to live and act according to my own will.”
Happily for her, her parents are open-minded and not put pressure on her. But the same does not apply to her friends. They are constantly trying to get her together with some young man or another. She always refuses politely.
1. The main idea of this passage is that _______ .| A．marriage is a duty to society |
| B．people should get married before 30 years old |
| C．women should get married earlier than men |
| D．late marriage should be respected |
| A．she doesn’t think he is the right man she wants |
| B．he is either too old or too young |
| C．he is either important or little learned |
| D．he doesn’t have good manners |
| A．In China, one may face social blame and family pressure if one hasn’t got married by the age of 30. |
| B．Miss Kate won’t compromise if she can’t have her ideal marriage. |
| C．Miss Kate’s parents are always worried about her marriage. |
| D．Miss Kate wants to many a worthy young man. |
| A．nobody will pay attention to whether you are happy or not in your family life |
| B．everybody will be happy and satisfied |
| C．you can easily find an ideal partner |
| D．young people will have nothing to worry about in marriage |
3 . Many young Chinese people suffer from image anxiety.
“How unfriendly is the world to unattractive girls?” became a popular hashtag on Sina Weiboin March. The hashtag resonated (引起共鸣) with many girls who shared their personal experiences.
“My nose is not high enough, my chin is short and flat, and my eyes are small,” Tang Yuqi, acollege student, told China Youth Daily. She doesn’t even answer the door without putting on makeup first. “I just can’t accept myself if I’m not wearing it,” Tang added.
But beauty doesn’t come from a makeup brush or a thinner waist. Growing taller and having perfect skin isn’t the solution to insecurity. The fact that every person is different is something to be celebrated.
A line from an episode of China’s first female monologue drama called Hear Her Says it perfectly: “I am not perfect. Perfection is mundane.
| A．I am perfect when I fully realize myself. |
| B．The fact that every person is different is something to be celebrated. |
| C．Some people even go through surgery just to achieve what they believe society considers “beautiful”. |
| D．When I was a teenager, I was always doubting whether my face was too big, whether my nose was too wide. |
| E．If you’re someone who looks in the mirror every day and concentrates only on any minor flaw, you’re not alone. |
| F．What promotes this anxiety among young people? |
| G．One internet user talked about how her friends would often cut her image out of group pictures because they thought she was too fat. |
According to a new study, the world population
The world population is currently estimated at 7.8 billion. The
Lead study Professor Stein, told the press, “The last time that world population declined was in the mid-14th century,
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5 . The year 2114 will be an eventful one for art. In May of that year in Berlin, the philosopher-artist Jonathon Keats’ “century cameras” — cameras with a 100-year-long exposure (曝光) time — will be brought back from hiding places around the city to have their results developed and exhibited. Six months after that, the Future Library in Oslo, Norway, will start to welcome its guests, presenting 100 books printed on the wood of trees planted in the distant past of 2014. As Katie Paterson, the creator of the Future Library, puts it: “Future Library is an artwork for future generations.”
These projects, more than a century in the making, are part of a new wave of “slow art” intended to push viewers and participants to think beyond their own lifetimes. They aim to challenge today’s short-term thinking and the brief attention spans of modern consumers, forcing people into considering works more deliberately. In their way, too, they are fighting against modern culture — not just regarding money, but also the way in which artistic worth is measured by attention.
In a similar fashion, every April on Slow Art Day, visitors are encouraged to stare at five works of art for 10 minutes at a time — a tough task for the average museum visitor, who typically spends less than 30 seconds on each piece of art.
Like the Future Library, the century cameras are very much a project for cities, since it’s in cities that time runs fastest and the pace of life is fastest. “Since I started living in a city, I’ve somehow been quite disconnected,” Anne Beate Hovind, the Future Library project manager, who described how working on the library drew her back to the pace of life she knew when she was growing up on a farm in her youth, told The Atlantic magazine.
1. According to the first paragraph, what will happen in 2114?| A．The wood of trees planted in 2014 will be made into books. |
| B．The Future Library will be open to the public for the first time. |
| C．A camera which was produced 100 years ago will be exhibited. |
| D．A book about photos with a 100-year exposure time will come out. |
| A．They ignore works of modern culture deliberately. |
| B．They spend only a little time in admiring artworks. |
| C．They seldom pay attention to the price of artworks. |
| D．They focus too much on artistic worth of artworks. |
| A．To preserve works of art for a longer time. |
| B．To promote works of art for modern culture. |
| C．To advocate creating works of art more slowly. |
| D．To encourage people to consider works of art more deliberately. |
| A．Convenient. | B．Competitive. |
| C．Efficient. | D．Busy. |
6 . Student loan (贷款) debt has become a worldwide problem. In America, the country’s overall student debt reached a record of $1.6 trillion in 2019. The average person with student loan debt owed between $20, 000 and $25, 000, A recent Japanese government report says it has been lending over $9 billion yearly to students since 2010. Similar conditions exist in Africa and South America.
Several factors account for high student loan debt. One is that employers everywhere have increased their demands for skilled workers, making higher education a requirement for many jobs. The students, however, after graduation, often find that their country’s economy is not strong enough to support their financial needs, so their ability to pay back the loan becomes a problem.
To solve the problem, many countries are seeking their ways. Australia has developed a system where students do not have to pay anything back until they are earning at least $40, 000 a year. In America, several candidates (候选人) running for president in the 2020 election have offered more extreme solutions that all or at least some of these loans will be forgiven (免除).
Some professors in several universities recently studied what the effects of debt forgiveness might be. They found that, on the whole, sudden debt relief greatly improved the borrowers’ lives. Not only did they have more money, but they were more likely to move to a new area and seek better paying work.
Yet the professors’ research doesn’t include what might happen to financial institutions or the overall economy if debt were totally forgiven. It only looks at how debt forgiveness would help the borrowers. They warn of some other possible negative effects. If a borrower knew that if he ran into any trouble he would be saved because he could get the debt relief, then he might actually become more reckless (轻率的) with his borrowing in the future.
No matter what, the professors agree that if countries do decide to approve some student debt relief the neediest students should be helped first.
1. How does the author introduce the problem of student loan?| A．By making a comparison. | B．By making classifications. |
| C．By setting down general rules. | D．By presenting some data. |
| A．It will surely provide some benefits to borrowers. |
| B．It aims to encourage more students to borrow money. |
| C．It has already been carried out in South America. |
| D．It will prevent a person from landing a well-paving job. |
| A．Uncaring. | B．Positive. | C．Cautious. | D．Disapproving. |
| A．Student loan debt is the most serious problem worldwide. |
| B．Growing global student debt encourages search for solutions. |
| C．Student loan debt tends to pull the needy out of trouble. |
| D．People hold different opinions on debt forgiveness. |
7 . Every festival has its own meaning. Labor Day, for example, celebrates the value of hard work. Thanksgiving is about showing thanks to people around you. And Valentines’ Day is a time when you express love to your loved ones. But somehow it now seems that all festivals we just care about one thing — shopping. And that can be a big problem.
“In a way, over-consumption (过度消费) is the mother of all our environmental problems,” Kalle Lasn once told CNN. Lasn is the organizer of Buy Nothing Day, a day set up in Canada in 1992 to fight against unhealthy spending habits, and has now become an international event. It’s held on the day, which is known as Black Friday — a famous shopping day in the US and Canada.
You can see the irony (讽刺) here.
Even though the idea of Buy Nothing Day was brought up 26 years ago, we seem to need it now more than ever. It’s just as Lasn said, all the different kinds of pollution in our lives today — bad air quality, the reduction of forest area, endangered animal species, and plastic bags found in the ocean — seem to be the same cause: over-consumption.
The latest example is the Singles’ Day shopping craze of Nov 11, which saw a new sales record. But as Nie Li, a campaigner at Greenpeace, told Reuters, “Record-setting over-consumption means record-setting waste.” And it was reported that last year the Singles’ Day packages left more than 160,000 tons of waste, including plastic and cardboard. The Collins Dictionary has also just named “single-use” its Word of the Year, pointing out the problem that there’re too many things we tow out after only using them once.
So, Buy Nothing Day might only be here for one day a year, but it’s not just to remind us to the a break from shopping on that day, but to change our lifestyle completely, focusing on fun “with people we care about” rather than wasting money on useless things.
1. What’s the authors purpose of writing the first paragraph?| A．To express the people’s love for all festivals. |
| B．To talk about the meaning of the festivals. |
| C．To appreciate the value of the festivals. |
| D．To bring out the topic of the passage. |
| A．To help people save money. | B．To cut the cost for daily life. |
| C．To prevent over-consumption. | D．To set up a new sales record. |
| A．Opposed (反对的). | B．Supportive. |
| C．Unknown. | D．Neutral (中立的). |
| A．Creating a New Lifestyle | B．Buy Nothing Day |
| C．Festivals Around the World | D．A Change in People’s Life |
8 . A man recently helped a woman, who had been knocked down by a car in Taizhou, Jiangu province, reach a hospital. But before doing so, he took a photograph of the scene with the woman to avoid being charged with knocking her down. Several similar cases were reported across the country during the Spring Festival, leaving people with mixed feelings, says Cao Pengcheng in an article in People's Daily.
Altruism(利他主义) is part of Chinese culture, and there is no lack of good Samaritans(乐善好施者) in the country. But recently, says Cao, some good Samaritans were blackmailed by the people who they helped. It made altruism a tough issue.
Cao says that it is a good thing for people to become more business-minded.but it is one thing to do as cost-benefit analysis (分析) in business, and quite another to measure whether a person in need is worth helping. I people always make such materialistic calculation(物质计算),they will further lower social and moral (道德) standards.
Fortunately,says Cao,there are still people like the man in Taizhou who deepen our belief in altruism and kindheartedness by continuing to help others, despite knowing that the existing system and rules in the county do not offer enough protection for good Samaritans.
1. What did the man do in Taizhou?| A．He charged the woman with knocking him down. |
| B．He helped the woman knocked down by a bicycle. |
| C．He sent the woman knocked down by him to a hospital. |
| D．He took a photo of the scene before helping the woman. |
| A．Appreciated. | B．Threatened. | C．Killed. | D．Helped. |
| A．will lower social and moral standards |
| B．is bad for doing business with others |
| C．is good for helping a person in need |
| D．will slow down people's business mind |
| A．To Help or Not to Help | B．Traditional Chinese Culture |
| C．A Bad Traffic Accident | D．How to Do Good Business |
9 . In the past decade, the use of social media has grown in a way that no one could have guessed. It has turned some teenagers into celebrities (名人) and turned the famous into the infamous, overnight.
A key feature of social media, however, is its volatility. Trends come and go, disappearing almost as quickly as they appeared. So, what were the key social media trends of 2019?
Short video apps such as TikTok and its Chinese equivalent Douyin, took the world by storm. The Telegraph reported that TikTok was ranked 8th on Apple’s App Store in April. And Douyin had more than 300 million domestic monthly active users in June, CNBC said.
Why are these short videos — which are rarely longer than a few minutes — so popular? Jiang Yige, Singapore-based analyst at FengHe Fund Management, has a theory. Short videos are “just right to fill in the little gaps in our busy schedules”, he told CNBC.
These videos — apart from being very convenient — are important to teenagers because they allow them to express themselves, according to Teen Vogue.
The sense of community that users of short video apps get is another appealing feature. Liza Koshy, a user of the US app Musically who has over 2 million followers, said that she was thrilled when anyone said that her video had “inspired” him. “It’s really cool...because I think that as short video creators that’s what we all expect,” she added.
Live streaming is another feature of our social media life that now seems as natural as sunrise. It’s a pretty neat idea: You can watch anyone, anywhere, live.
However, China has taken live streaming to a whole new level. In China, more than 100 million viewers monthly watch a live streaming video. Forbes thought that a number of factors had led to the popularity of live streams. Among them is viewers’ ability to interact while remaining anonymous.
However, the boom in social media may be having side effects too. Fake news is one serious problem it arguably causes. Material shared on these platforms is often not checked for accuracy. The most basic content can be false and can sway users one way or another. We use social media all the time; that doesn’t mean that we understand the influence it is having on us. We should be mindful of both the time we spend on it and its impact on our minds.
1. The underlined word “volatility” in Paragraph 2 possibly means “being ”.| A．changeable | B．steady |
| C．promising | D．violent |
| A．they are very convenient |
| B．they help people kill time |
| C．they provide a sense of community |
| D．they allow people to express themselves |
| A．The information from social media is highly reliable. |
| B．When it comes to social media, people know short videos the best. |
| C．People can’t communicate with each other without social media. |
| D．There is still much room for social media to make improvement. |
| A．Rapid Development of Social Media |
| B．Key Social Media Trends of 2019 |
| C．Short Videos Taking the World by Storm |
| D．Live Streaming — A New Feature of Social Media |
10 . From a very early age, some children exhibit better selfcontrol than others. Now, a new study that began with about 1,000 children in New Zealand has tracked how a child’s low self-control can predict poor health, money troubles and even a criminal record in their adult years.
Researchers have been studying this group of children for decades now. They observed the level of self-control the youngsters displayed. Parents, teachers, even the kids themselves, scored the youngsters on measures like “acting before thinking” and “Persistence in reaching goals.” The study led by Moffitt of Duke University and colleagues followed 1,000 children from birth to age 32 in Dunedin, New Zealand.
“The children who had the lowest self-control when they were age three to ten, later on had the most health problems in their 30s,” Moffitt said, “and they had the worst financial situation. They were more likely to have a criminal record and to be raising a child as a single parent on a very low income.” Moffitt explained that self-control problems were widely observed, and weren’t just a feature of a small group of misbehaving kids.
Moffitt said it’s still unclear why some children have better self-control than others, though she said other researchers have found that it’s mostly a learned behavior, with relatively little genetic influence. But good self-control can be set to run in families because children with good self-control are more likely to grow up to be healthy and prosperous parents. But the good news, Moffitt said, is that self-control can be taught by parents, and through school curricula that have been shown to be effective.
1. Children with low self-control are more likely to ________．| A．become wealthy in later life |
| B．get good school performance |
| C．have better financial planning |
| D．adopt negative behaviors |
| A．Self-control cannot be taught in schools. |
| B．The study is restricted within few participants. |
| C．It’s never too late to deal with self-control problems. |
| D．Good parenting can improve self-control and life success. |
| A．Child’s Selfcontrol Predicts Future Health, success |
| B．Kids are Encouraged to Take Risks at an Early Age |
| C．Children’s Development Cannot be Changed by Teachers |
| D．How to Teach the Kids a Bit of Self-control in schools |
| A．the research has been carried out for five years |
| B．self-control in kids tends to determine their future |
| C．self-control was assessed by children’s intelligence |
| D．children’s self-control is almost the same at early age |
