Do you often talk with your parents? A recently survey shows that nearly half of the high school students doesn’t like to talk with their parents. 43. 3% of them have trouble communicate with their parents. What was worse, 82. 8% of them don’t want to share their secrets their parents. Actually, it is important for us to communicate with our parents though they are the dearest people in our life, whom care for us all the time. By letting them know that what we think, we can get practical advice from them, which can help us to deal with many problem in life.

In this way, we can feel more confident about us and live happily.

2 . A new study from the Netherlands has found that an important factor in a child’s ultimate level of education, even more important than their own family’s economic situation, is whether they grow up with rich neighbors nearby.

Researcher Agata Troost and her colleagues at Delft University of Technology used a national database to track the address of every Dutch baby born in 1995, a total of 140,338 people, from birth to age 23. Using geolocating software, they drew up a socioeconomic profile (概况) for each child's immediate neighborhood, figuring the percentage of neighbors who were rich, middle class or disadvantaged.

After controlling a number of other factors, including parents’ earnings and levels of education, the researchers found that a child's own experience of wealth or poverty mattered less to their ultimate level of schooling than exposure to well-off neighbors. The data suggest that growing up in a rich area, with well-maintained parks, libraries and soccer fields, as well as interactions with educated neighbors, could boost a poor child's ability to see beyond their immediate horizons (眼界).

“Rich families create neighborhoods and activities that create opportunities,” said Ms. Troost, and these advantages are shared with other children who happen to live nearby. The finding echoes an earlier study by Mr. Chetty and his colleagues, which showed that having even one inspiring teacher in middle school can improve a student’s career prospects. Whether in the classroom or on the street, it seems that social interactions outside the family can start a young person's motivation and ambition.

At the same time, the study also stressed the importance of the home environment. When parents are well educated, children are likely to be, too. And that's the moral of the story: Neighborhoods can have different effects on different children, depending on how educated their parents are, whether they are male or female, and how much casual contact they have with people who are different from their own families. “Location, location, location” may be a old saying for buying a house, but we're learning that it also holds true for children's development.

Two graduates, from Central China Normal University in Wuhan, Hubei Province, using the names Wanwan and Chaochao,     1     (upload) a 17-minute video online late last year about their lives over the past five years.

In the video, Wanwan,     2     has taken up a dozen jobs since graduating five years ago, said she now only has 5,000 yuan. Her roommate Chaochao got a master’s degree in scriptwriting (编剧) from Communication University of China. But     3     consequence of a tough job market, she had great difficulty     4     (obtain) a job in the film industry. Last year, she started to learn painting but she said she had to work part-time as a cleaner at a hotpot restaurant to support     5     (she).

“When you can accept your failure, you will feel that it is not that bad. When working at the hotpot restaurant, my biggest     6     (comfortable) is that I won’t starve to death no matter what is next,” Chaochao said. “There are many roads in our lives, and no matter which direction you go, you will     7     (eventual) find your own road.”

The video was one of the trending videos of last year, gaining more than 5.44 million views and more than 26,000 comments since it     8     (release), with many netizens sharing their own failures in the comments section.

Netizens said they were warmed by their courage to share failures with the public, strong determination     9     (achieve) their goals, optimism in the face of hardships     10     spirit of never giving up.

5 . One recent report found that adults in the US check their phones, on average, 344 times a day — once every four minutes — and spend almost three hours a day on their devices in total. The problem for many of us is that one quick phone-related task leads to a quick check of our email or social media feeds, and suddenly we’ve been sucked into endless scrolling (滚屏).

It’s a vicious circle. The more useful our phones become, the more we use them. The more we use them, the more we lay neural pathways in our brains that lead to picking up our phones for whatever task is at hand — and the more we feel an urge to check our phone even when we don’t have to.

What we do know is that the simple distraction of checking a phone or seeing a notification can have negative consequences. This isn’t very surprising; we know that, in general, multitasking harms memory and performance. One of the most dangerous examples is phone use while driving.

In another recent study, researchers asked participants to either put their phones next to them so they were visible (like on a desk), nearby and out of sight (like in a bag or pocket), or in another room. Participants then completed a series of tasks to test their abilities to process and remember information, their problem-solving, and their focus. They were found to perform far better when their phones were in another room instead of nearby — whether visible, powered on or not. That held true even though most of the participants claimed not to be consciously (有意识地) thinking about their devices.

The mere proximity (靠近) of a phone, it seems, contributes to “brain drain”. Our brains may be subconsciously hard at work in controlling the desire to check our phones, or constantly monitoring the environment to see if we should check our phone (eg, waiting for a notification). Either way, this diverted attention can make doing anything else more difficult. The only “fix”, the researchers found, was putting the device in a different room entirely.

A recently released     1    (nation) survey on reading among Chinese people,     2     was conducted by the Chinese Academy of Press and Publication (CAPP), has shown     3     steady rise in reading as a habit in the country.

Over 1.48 million     4    (sample) were collected for the survey from 165 cities nationwide, carried out via the forms of online and telephone surveys.

An average adult would spend 23.13 minutes on average per day     5    (read) printed books in 2022 the survey showed.

Moreover, listening to audiobooks was another rising habit among Chinese readers,     6     35.5 percent of adults saying they were used to listening     7    (main) to audiobooks.

Public reading services continued to meet the needs of Chinese readers, as 78.2 percent of the people     8    (survey) were satisfied with the services of public libraries, and 72.5 percent were pleased with their experience at community or self-service libraries.

“In Hangzhou, for instance, reading venues, including public libraries, self-service libraries and rural reading rooms,     9    (cover) the whole city in the past several years,” said Mayor of Hangzhou Yao Gaoyuan on Sunday.

Reading on mobile phones also remained a habit among Chinese readers. According to the survey, 77.8 percent read on their phones last year, 0.4 percent     10    (high) than in 2021.

7 . It’s 9:30 A.M. in Los Angeles. Jamiah Hargins pulls a few short, green-leafed plants out of the ground in his West Adams backyard, revealing the peanuts (花生). He opens one and gives it a taste.

Hargins started growing food at home because he wanted more nutritious options for his family. He soon found that he grew more than they could eat, so he turned to social media to start a “crop swap (交换)” with neighbors who were dealing with a similar situation. Launched in 2018, Crop Swap LA has since moved towards a more expansive yard-sharing model.

Hargins’ attempt at urban farming was also driven by bigger concerns. A 2016 Deloitte study identified a shift in the priorities shoppers said helped determine their choices, with social impact values including local sourcing and sustainability (可持续性) now ranking alongside traditional drivers like “taste” and “price”.

Crop Swap LA has branched into farmer’s markets, workshops for kids, and other community-focused offerings. It encourages homeowners to “share” their yards with the Crop Swap LA team, which will plant crops. When the crops are harvested, they’ll be sold primarily in low-income areas. Ten percent will be donated back to the neighborhood where they were grown and then an additional percentage will be sold in higher-income areas. Some funds made are given back to the landowner, which Hargins expects will amount to about $5,000 annually.

This summer, Crop Swap LA received $50,000 from the LA 2050 Grant Challenge, which was used to change their first seven gardens, One homeowner, Mychal Creer, is a Los Angeles native who said he has always wanted to grow food but never real got the ball rolling. He’s excited to watch his land transform. And he’s excited to meet more neighbors.

“I’m glad that we are creating a community using crops as the means of connection,” Creer said.

8 . Nowadays, smartphones fill us with text messages. Social media attack us with endless notices. Many consumers are buying the latest digital devices, from tablets and fitness trackers to commercial drones. Simple living seems to be a thing of the past.

Thoreau would beg to differ. As a writer who claimed the value of simplicity almost two centuries ago, he went against his time. He lived during the height of the Industrial Age, distinguished by the rise of huge factories and powerful machines such as steam engines. Thoreau withdrew from city life to live alone in the woods. He brought with him only the necessities of life and wrote about this adventure in his book Walden.

In Walden, Thoreau is basically making a philosophical statement: We are not living deliberate or meaningful lives, thanks to modern technology. We created powerful machines to make life more convenient. Unfortunately, these machines have done the opposite. In his words, “Men have become the tools of their tools”.

When technology causes that much distraction and confusion, it may be healthy to simplify life by shortening these technological use. Personally, I’ve done so in two ways. First, I don’t use data on my cellphone. I only use it to call or text. Second, I quit most social media. As a result, my technology distracts me very little, which allows me to live in. less confusion and, therefore, more deliberation. Sure, that’s not as extreme as Thoreau-moving to the woods, but it’s a realistic move I can make toward a more meaningful life.

One final clarification: Thoreau’s message of simplicity isn’t about rejecting all technology. It is, however, rejecting technological consumerism, or compulsively buying more technology for the sake of having more technology. This is why Walden is such an important book for technology education. Simplicity means minimizing material distractions so as to maximize life’s meaning.

10 . Until recently in the developed world, most married couples adopted traditional roles, with the husband working outside the home and the wife taking care of the children and the house. Although many families still follow this_______ , those roles have become less _______ . A number of factors have contributed to this change. _______, perhaps as a consequence of feminism (女权运动), people have begun to _______ that one’s _______ should not determine one’s role. As a _______, people feel they have “_______” to decide what they want to do in life. It’s no longer _______ for men to want to be the primary caregiver or homemaker. Similarly, many women would _______ to enter the working world instead of staying at home. Moreover, a large number of women have ________ advanced academic professional training,________ them with a significant earning potential.

On the other hand, factors other than personal choice have ________ to the fluidity (不稳定性) of gender roles. Life has become more expensive and it’s ________ for a family to exist on only one income, requiring married women to leave the home to ________ money to help support the family. ________ , the number of two-income households has________ rapidly. And despite the fact that women on average still earn ________ than men for the same job, their incomes have become an ________ component of survival and prosperity in today’s world. In similar fashion, a man’s decision to ________ at home may not be voluntary. In the event he has lost his job, his decision to stay at home might be one of ________, not choice.