1 . China has set new rules limiting the amount of time children can play online games. The rules limit children to just three hours of online game playing a week. That is one hour between 8 p. m. and 9 p. m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday most weeks.
Li Zhanguo has two children aged 4 and 8. Even though they do not have smartphones, they enjoy playing online games. Like many other parents. Li is happy with new government rules. But experts say it is unclear if such policies can help prevent addiction to online games. Children might just get addicted to social media instead. In the end, experts say, parents should be the ones to set limits and support good practice.
There has been a growing concern in China about gaming addiction among children. Government reports in 2018 found that about one in ten Chinese children were addicted to the Internet. The new rules are part of an effort to prevent young people from spending too much time on unhealthy entertainment. That includes what officials call the “irrational fan culture”
Under the new rules, the responsibility for making sure children play only three hours a day as largely on Chinese gaming companies like Net Ease and Ten cent. Companies have set up real-name registration systems to prevent young users from going past game time limits. They have used facial recognition technology to check their identities. And they have also set up a program that permits people to report what is against the law. It is unclear what punishments gaming companies may face if they do not carry out the policies. And even if such policies are performed, it is also unclear whether they can prevent online addiction.
A specialist treating Internet addiction expects about 20 percent of children will find ways to break the rules by borrowing accounts of their older relatives and find a way around facial recognition. In his opinion, short-video alps such as Douyin and Kuaishou are also very popular in China. They are not under the same restrictions as games.
1. When can children play games according to the new rules?A.Between 8 p. m. and 9 p. m. On Friday. | B.Between 8 p. m. and 9 p. m. On Tuesday. |
C.Between 10 p. m. and 11 p. m. On Saturday. | D.Between 10 p. m. and all p. m. On Thursday. |
A.the new rules can stop children’s addiction to social media |
B.companies are more responsible for kids ‘ obeying the rules |
C.the new rules will help prevent children playing online games |
D.parents play a greater part in limiting the time of online games |
A.Design an advanced program. | B.Use facial recognition systems. |
C.Set up real-name registration systems. | D.Borrow accounts of their older relatives. |
A.Rules Limiting Short-video alps | B.Rules Limiting Video Game Time |
C.Rules Banning Irrational Fan Culture | D.Rules Breaking Addition to Social Media |
1. How does the woman feel now?
A.Shocked. | B.Afraid. | C.Angry. |
A.A doctor. | B.A policeman. | C.The woman’s friend. |
A.A locker. | B.A letter. | C.Some money. |
1. What did the man use last weekend?
A.A shared bike. | B.A shared charger. | C.A shared umbrella. |
A.The proper ways to use the sharing product. |
B.Her attitude towards the sharing economy. |
C.The advantages of the sharing economy. |
A.A lawyer and his client. |
B.A policeman and a crime victim. |
C.A passenger and a pedestrian. |
5 . Virtual reality is quickly becoming the new technological frontier. Tech companies everywhere seem to be racing to get their foot in the VR door. However, virtual reality has a set of challenges and hurdles that it must overcome in order to work well. It should be noted that VR is heavily dependent on being very fast, very accurate and very good-looking. If it isn’t, the viewer will feel motion sick or disconnected from the world that VR is trying to create.
Now that we can actually build VR headsets that begin to meet these requirements, we are seeing a rising interest in VR. As it rises, so does the interest in creating new media to be experienced in using virtual reality. Journalism is a medium built on relevance. Journalists should always be finding new ways to tell stories and deliver content. It is a goldmine for storytelling. What better ways to tell a story to someone than to put them right in the center of it?
Virtual reality is a powerful tool for journalists. The consumer isn’t just reading or watching something play out; they’re experiencing it. The immersive nature of VR allows for people to connect with the subject matter on a much deeper level than just reading about it. The experience is emotional, speaking more to our instinct than our intellect. The possibilities for storytelling here are legion, and any storyteller wanting to do something more interesting than their peers should surely be considering the sheer power of VR.
The question of virtual reality, though, is not how powerful it is. That is immediately apparent. The question of VR is one of viability and availability. Telling stories must be easy to do, and access to those stories must be readily available. This is the biggest challenge that VR faces. If the tools to tell a story with VR aren’t easy to pick up and learn, VR will fail. If VR technology isn’t both top-of-the-line and affordable, VR will fail.
Accessibility was one concern for Thomas Hallaq, assistant professor of journalism and mass communications, who said that current VR technology, is pretty exclusive right now. Despite that, he said he doesn’t think the exclusivity of this technology will be a problem in the long run.
“I think it’s very promising,” Hallaq said. “We’re seeing more technology become accessible, and more people having access to that technology. Just look at smartphones.” Like radio, TV and the Internet before it, virtual reality will change the way we tell stories.
1. Why is VR considered a powerful tool for journalism?A.Because it is an exclusively new tool. |
B.Because it is very powerful and popular. |
C.Because people can experience the story in person. |
D.Because it is very fast, accurate and good-looking. |
A.How powerful and interesting it can be. |
B.Whether people will have easy access to it. |
C.Whether qualified VR headsets can be built. |
D.What new ways people will find to deliver content. |
A.Optimistic. | B.Neutral. | C.Pessimistic. | D.Concerned. |
A.The Wide Popularity of Virtual Reality |
B.The Future Development of Virtual Reality |
C.Challenges and Hurdles of Virtual Reality |
D.Virtual Reality is the Future of Storytelling |
6 . One by one, prejudices are disappearing in the West. People may harbor private suspicions that other people’s race or sex makes them inferior—but to say so openly is totally taboo. One old prejudice remains respectable, though. Just ask a childless person.
They are not charged to special taxes, as they were in Soviet Russia; nor are they driven from their homes, as they still are in some poor countries. The childless nonetheless come in for a lot of criticism. Some point out that non-parents are failing to produce the future workers who will pay for their pensions. Childless politicians are charged with not having a proper stake in society. “He talks to us about the future, but he doesn’t have children!” complained Jean-Marie Le Pen, co-founder of the National Front party, of Emmanuel Macron, who went on to win the French presidency. Similar attacks on Theresa May and Angela Merkel also failed but researchers find that many voters quietly agree.
The charges against the childless should be thrown out, along with other social prejudice. In many rich countries, between 15% and 20% of women, and a slightly higher proportion of men, will not have children. The share is rising. Some have medical problems; others do not meet the right person in time; still others decide they do not want them. Whatever the cause, the attacks on the childless are baseless.
If non-breeders are selfish, they have a strange way of showing it. They are more likely to set up charitable foundations than people with children, and much more likely to donate money to good causes. According to one American estimate, the mere fact of not having children raises the amount a person leaves to charity by a little over $10,000. The childless are thus a small but useful counterweight to the world’s parents, who stop social immobility by passing on their social and economic advantages to their children.
The fact that so many senior politicians lack offspring ought to put to rest the idea that they do not care for society. Five of the G7 countries are led by childless men and women. Mr. Macron, Mrs. May, Mrs. Merkel, Shinzo Abe and Paolo Gentiloni have their faults, but they are not notably less able than Justin Trudeau (who has three children) let alone Donald Trump (who has five). Their opportunities for nepotism are limited. And they spare their countries dynastic politics.
The charge that childless people fail to pull their weight in population is correct, but is less serious than it appears. Those who do not have children do put pressure on public pension systems. Governments have to do unpopular things like making pensions less generous, as Japan has done, or accepting more immigrants, as some Western countries have done. But to sustain public pensions in the long term, countries do not actually need more parents. What they need instead is more babies. It is possible to combine a high rate of childlessness with a high birth rate, provided people who become parents have more than one or two children. That was the pattern in many Western countries a century ago. Ireland, yet another country with a childless leader, still manages it today.
The childless also do everyone else a favour by creating wonderful works of art. British novelists have been especially likely to have no offspring: think of Hilary Mantel, P.G Wodehouse and the Bronte sisters. In September last year Britain put Jane Austen on its ten-pound note. That decision was controversial, though it was hard to see why. Few people have written as shrewdly about money or about families even though Austen did not marry, and had no children.
1. What is the main idea of Paragraph 2?A.The childless often get punished in society. | B.The childless often come under sharp criticism. |
C.Most successful politicians have no children | D.Childlessness affects the result of an election. |
A.have a strange way to show selfishness | B.set a bad example for young people |
C.are not as able as those with children | D.are the government’s financial burden |
A.Accepting more immigrants. | B.Reducing the pensions for the aged. |
C.Encouraging parents to have more children. | D.Supporting the political leaders with no children. |
A.Understanding | B.Skeptical | C.Disappointed | D.Reserved |
A.In defence of the childless. | B.In hope of having a child or not. |
C.Reasons for not having children. | D.Measures to address aging problems. |
7 . Housing officials say that lately they are noticing something different: students seem to lack the will, and the skill, to deal with ordinary conflicts. “We have students who are mad at each other and they text each other in the same room,” says a teacher. “So many of our conflicts are because kids don’t know how to solve a problem by formal discussion.”
And as any pop psychologist will tell you, bottled emotions lead to silent discontent (不满) that can boil over into frustration and anger. At the University of Florida, emotional conflicts occur about once a week, the university’s director of housing education says, “Over the past five years, roommate conflicts have increased. The students don’t have the person-to-person discussions and they don’t know how to handle them.” The problem is most dramatic among freshmen; housing professionals say they see improvement as students move toward graduation, but some never seem to improve, and they worry about how such students will deal with conflicts after college.
Administrators guess that reliance on cell phones and the Internet may have made it easier for young people to avoid uncomfortable encounters. Why express anger in person when you can vent (发泄) in a text? “Things are posted on someone’s wall on Facebook like: Oh, my roommate kept me up all night studying,” says Dana Pysz, an assistant director at the University of California, Los Angeles. “It’s a different way to express their conflict to each other, consequently creating even more conflicts as complaints go public.” In recent focus groups at North Carolina State University, dorm residents said they would not even deal with noisy neighbors on their floor.
Administrators point to parents who have fixed their children’s problems in their entire lives. Now in college, the children lack the skills to attend to even modest conflicts. Some parents continue to interfere (干涉) on campus.
1. What is the main reason for many roommate conflicts?A.Students are not good at reaching an agreement about the problems. |
B.Students are not satisfied with each other. |
C.Housing directors are not responsible for them. |
D.Students are not strong-willed. |
A.Students, especially freshmen, should bottle up their dissatisfaction. |
B.Students in Florida sit down and have a person-to-person talk once a week. |
C.Not all students are able to handle conflicts by the time they graduate. |
D.The number of conflicts among roommates has decreased in the past five years. |
A.Disapproving. | B.Indifferent. | C.Supportive. | D.Unclear. |
A.They should be involved in their children’s life on campus. |
B.They should deal with their children’s problems in their whole lives. |
C.They should constantly contact the administrators of the college. |
D.They should teach their children the skills to tackle the conflicts. |
8 . On July 20, Yu Yifei, a medical student, made his way home in a subway train after his first day’s training. When a downpour struck the city, he
Flood
As water continued to flow into the carriages, passengers’
As more passengers were pulled from the
A.asked | B.prevented | C.thought | D.saved |
A.record | B.number | C.point | D.depth |
A.worked | B.watered | C.crashed | D.pulled |
A.rising | B.waving | C.building | D.disappearing |
A.uncertain | B.unfortunate | C.unusual | D.unable |
A.alarming | B.unique | C.considerate | D.desperate |
A.disappointment | B.fears | C.feelings | D.thrills |
A.managed | B.failed | C.intended | D.hesitated |
A.tried on | B.took on | C.put on | D.carried on |
A.later | B.further | C.earlier | D.former |
A.gained | B.lifted | C.sank | D.lowered |
A.seats | B.hospital | C.boat | D.water |
A.introduced | B.performed | C.explained | D.taught |
A.recovering | B.refreshing | C.repeating | D.reporting |
A.bored | B.heartbroken | C.worried | D.exhausted |
9 . After Alexander Pushkin was shot in a duel (决斗) in 1837, crowds of mourners formed in Saint Petersburg. When the wagon carrying the much loved poet’s body reached Pskov province, where he was to be buried, admirers tried to pull the vehicle themselves.
Today’s celebrity funerals tend to involve the public largely digitally rather than in person. But people are passionate all the same. In the past few months, grief has coursed around the Internet for Milan Kundera, and most recently, Michael Gambon. If you stop to think about it, such expressions of strong feelings for writers and actors are odd, even irrational.
Unlike other kinds of grief, this one is not rooted in personal intimacy (亲密关系). If you ever interacted with a cherished author, it was probably during a book tour when she signed your copy of her novel. Maybe you once locked eyes with a musician during a live concert and he smiled at you, but actually he did not even know you.
Objectively, sorrow makes sense when a star dies young or violently. Had she not died at 27, who knows what music Amy Winehouse would have added to her already impressive collections of work? The death of a long-lived and fulfilled artist, however, is far from the saddest item in an average day’s headlines. And while most ordinary people sink into oblivion, these celebrities live on in their output. Why, then, are these losses felt so widely and keenly?
One interpretation is that departed celebrities are merely the messengers. Part of your past —the years in which the musician was the soundtrack, the writer your ally (盟友) — can seem to fade away with them. The grief can be seen as a form of gratitude for the harmony and joy they supplied.
More importantly, the passing of an artist is an occasion for exchanges of ideas. In an atomized age, in which the default (默认) tone is critical, a beloved figure’s death is a chance to share positive feelings and memories with fellow admirers. These sad occasions are the parting gifts of these artists.
1. Why does the author mention Milan Kundera and Michael Gambon in paragraph 2?A.To prove that celebrities’ funerals tend to attract wider public attention. |
B.To illustrate why people express their sadness at the loss of those celebrities. |
C.To demonstrate that people’s mourning for celebrities seems strange and unreasonable. |
D.To show that people’s grief over celebrities’ death is ridiculous and impractical. |
A.are upset | B.are desperate | C.are helpless | D.are forgotten |
A.People won’t mourn for celebrities unless they have intimate relationships with celebrities. |
B.It’s natural that people mourn for celebrities dying young but not for those long-lived ones. |
C.People feel sad for the passing of celebrities because of the mental nourishment received. |
D.People attend celebrities’ funerals, either in person or on the Internet, to express their loyalty. |
A.Supportive. | B.Disapproving. | C.Skeptical. | D.Concerned. |
In the coming era of budget cuts to education, distance learning could become the norm.
The temptation for those in charge of education budgets to trade teachers
Those policy-makers are often fascinated by the latest technology in education and its potential to transform education overnight.