Round table
The most affectionate memory of my childhood is about
When I was still little, my entire family would reunite on almost every traditional festival to have dinner. While the grown-ups were discussing about something
When I got a bit older, my aunt brought back her boyfriend, a tall and shy man, and my grandma joyfully added another seat to the round table. It seemed a little bit
When I was 12, my grandpa passed away because of cancer, but when the entire family reunite once again, his chair, his bowl and his chopsticks remain the same.
We all have a table like this in our homes, which is a symbol of the reunion of our families,
The food on the table may change with time; the people sitting beside it may come and go; the reasons why we come together may be various, but the sensation behind it remains, year after year, the same.
Every year, an annual epic migration takes place in China. Hundreds of people, men and women, young and old, the rich and the poor, the dead and the alive, will find a way to go back home and go to the round table
The power that drives him to do so has been a power that has been sustaining Chinese civilization for thousands of years. And the lives of us, or even the history of our nation have been the stories of looking for a running to the round table
A. referring B. refresh C. pin D. occurred E. acknowledging F. identify G. drain H. discouraged I. specific J. negative K. specifically |
Make a Wish List
Most of us know of New Year’s Resolutions, where one sets intentions for the year ahead. But too often, people make their resolutions
So instead, try a wish list. This involves writing down 100 things you would like to do in the year ahead. The items can be enormous or tiny, ranging from “Climb Everest” to “buy a new pencil sharper”. The main thing is that at some point it has
The key here is — write it down.
Do you feel any resistance to the ideas? If so, ask yourself why. What is wrong with
It helps to be
Finally, you have your list. And what a work of beauty it is. Here are all the things that you would like to do. Remember to
3 . For nearly ten years, I have spent my Monday evenings attending rehearsals for my amateur choir (合唱队). Mondays are not my favourite day, and I often arrive in a bad mood but by the end of the rehearsal, I usually feel
There is no choir practice now, and won’t be for a long time. I miss it. In lockdown, I do not feel
In 1973, Mark Granovetter, a sociology professor at Stanford University, published a paper entitled “The Strength of Weak Ties.” Until then, scholars had assumed that an individual’s well-being depended mainly on the
This was the idea behind the Pixer building, the design of which was
Encounters with weak ties can be good for our
A.amazed | B.tired | C.frustrated | D.energized |
A.honest | B.brief | C.impressive | D.unforgettable |
A.short of | B.tired of | C.satisfied with | D.interested in |
A.In short | B.In other words | C.On the contrary | D.After all |
A.quality | B.impact | C.variety | D.source |
A.inner | B.ideal | C.social | D.material |
A.pool | B.exchange | C.analysis | D.organization |
A.typically | B.constantly | C.specially | D.infrequently |
A.funded | B.proven | C.overseen | D.preferred |
A.learn from | B.come across | C.rely on | D.look after |
A.kill | B.reflect | C.fuel | D.convert |
A.mentality | B.intelligence | C.career | D.interactions |
A.superiority | B.responsibility | C.accomplishment | D.belonging |
A.However | B.Therefore | C.Somehow | D.Besides |
A.engage in | B.believe in | C.reflect on | D.set aside |
The first time I invited a good friend not just over to but into my house, post-vaccination, without masks, I couldn’t even wait until she walked up to my door —I ran outside to greet her, and we hugged each other in the driveway. We both held on tight, as we took turns exclaiming how good it was to see each other. We
I’ve been a huger since middle school, when my friends and I
“It’s more important to keep your old friends than it is to make new friends.”
对这个观点,你是同意还是不同意?请结合实际,写一篇短文阐述你的看法。
内容可包括:
•你在这个问题上的立场;
•你选择这个立场的原因;
•通过具体事例或实际生活经历分析或证明你的观点。
6 . When I was four, I lost my sight by falling off a box car and landing on my head. Now I’m thirty-two. I can vaguely remember the brightness of sunshine and what color red is. It’d be wonderful to see again, but a disaster can do strange things to people.
It took me years to discover and strengthen this belief. It had to start with the most trivial things. Once a man gave me an indoor baseball. “I can’t use this,” I was hurt, thinking he was teasing me. “Take it with you,” he insisted, “and roll it around.” The words stuck in my head. By rolling the ball I could feel where it went.
The hardest lesson I had to learn was to believe in myself. Had I not done that, I’d have broken down and become a chair rocker for the rest of my life. And the path to the belief is never smooth.
A.I’d fail sometimes, but on average, I made progress |
B.This gave me an idea on something I had thought impossible to achieve |
C.As people always say, it takes steel and temper to make a difference |
D.It came into my mind all of a sudden |
E.It occurred to me the other day that I might not have come to love life as I do now if I hadn’t been blind |
F.Life asks a continuous series of adjustments to reality |
How Setting a Schedule Can Make You Less Productive
It can seem like there’s never enough time - not enough for sleep and not enough for play, and not enough for exercise.
There’s a relatively new term to describe this feeling: time famine, or the sensation of having too much to do without enough time to do it.
To structure what little time we feel we have, one strategy is scheduling. The idea is that scheduling will make us more efficient. But scheduling can sometimes backfire and actually make us less productive. In one study, attendees of an academic conference were asked whether they would go to the presidential address taking place about an hour later. Some said they would, and others said they wouldn’t. Those who planned to attend the address reported the hour leading up to it felt shorter. So the presence of an upcoming activity seems to have shrunk how much time people felt they had.
Why might this happen? It’s believed that when there’s an appointment coming, we direct our attention to it, whether it’s mentally preparing for it or simply dreading it. This makes the future appointment feel more substantial (重大的); as a result, the time interval leading up to the scheduled activity feels limited and insufficient. Time famine may partly lies in our own perception of what we feel can be done with the time we have.
But you still have the same amount of time leading up to a scheduled event, so time famine shouldn’t really matter, right? But it does. This feeling by itself can influence what people decide to do. When something is scarce, people consider it more valuable and are less willing to part with it. The same is true for time. If time feels limited, people are less likely to use it - even when it’s in their best interest.
If you love scheduling and planning out your days, a trick could be to schedule events or tasks back-to-back (连续地), which leaves you with larger amounts of unscheduled time. Several uninterrupted hours of unscheduled time will feel longer, especially if there’s nothing scheduled coming.
8 . I’ve worked in the factories surrounding my hometown every summer since I graduated from high school, but making the transition between school and full-time blue-collar work during the break never gets any easier. For a student like me who considers any class before noon to be uncivilized, getting to a factory by 6 o'clock each morning is torture. My friends never seem to understand why I’m so relieved to be back at school or that my summer vacation has been anything but a vacation.
There’re few people as self-confident as a college student who had never been out in the real world. People my age always seem to overestimate the value of their time and knowledge. In fact, all the classes did not prepare me for my battles with the machine I ran in the plant, which would jam whenever I absent-mindedly put in a part backward or upside down.
The most stressful thing about blue-collar life is knowing your job could disappear overnight. Issues like downsizing and overseas relocation had always seemed distant to me until my co-workers told me that the unit I was working in would shut down within six months and move to Mexico, where people would work for 60 cents an hour.
After working 12-hour shifts in a factory, the other opinions have become only too clear. When I’m back at the university, skipping classes and turning in lazy rewrites seems too irresponsible after seeing what I would be doing without school. All the advice and public-service announcements about the value of an education that used to sound stale now ring true.
These lessons I’m learning, however valuable, are always tinged with a sense of guilt. Many people pass their lives in the places I briefly work, spending 30 years where I spend only two months at a time. “This job pays well, but it’s hell on the body,” said one co-worker. “Study hard and keep reading,” she added.
My experiences in the factories has inspired me to make the most of my college years before I enter the real world for good.
1. What does the author think of his summer days while at college?A.They brought him nothing but torture. |
B.They were no holiday for him at all. |
C.They were a relief from his hard work at school. |
D.They offered him a chance to know more people. |
A.They expect too much from the real world. | B.They have little interest in blue-collar life. |
C.They have a feeling of trust in themselves. | D.They are not confident of their future. |
A.He learned to be more practical. | B.He acquired a sense of urgency. |
C.He came to respect blue-collar workers. | D.He came to appreciate his college education. |
A.He realizes there is a great divide between his life and that of blue-collar workers. |
B.He looks down upon the mechanical work at the assembly line. |
C.He has not done much to help his co-workers at the factory. |
D.He has stayed at school just for the purpose of escaping from the real world. |
A.definitely;B.suffering;C.acceptance;D.discouraged;E. supposedly F.terms;G.optimism;H.sustained;I. punishing;J.favored;K.obstacle |
Happiness is not natural.It is a here human construct. A state of contentment(let alone happiness) is
Chasing happiness is like chasing an elusive ghost, but the positive thinking industry claims to know its secrets.Self-help was popularized by Norman Vincent Peale, a colorful American pastor,
Popular films and books are full of
The self-help genre is not a homegeneous beast, however. It is,in fact, ironie how self-help books on happiness and those on how to make it big in life are lumped together in the same bookshop shelves, given that many of the former tell us that caring too much about the latter is the main
The inevitable clash between mandatory
I believe that coming to
Why Mindset Mastery Is Vital to Your Success
The single most important factor influencing a person's success, whether personal or professional, is mindset. What you think about has a direct impact on your behavior, and not the other way around. A seemingly small thing that makes a huge difference, mindset accounts for the primary distinction between those who succeed and those who do not. And, if you are serious about achieving success in any area of your life, you must learn to master yours.
To successfully accomplish any worthwhile feat, a person must first feel capable of achieving it. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. Mindset is essential to developing healthy self-esteem. It is an important tool that affects our daily self-dialogue and strengthen our beliefs, attitudes and feelings about ourselves. So, become the gatekeeper of your mind and plant seeds of positivity rather than criticism and doubt.
Besides, mindset is critical to drive. Drive is the constant determination to achieve an important objective. It includes the process of developing a vision for success and engaging in sustained effort over time. Without drive, achieving most goals would be difficult at best. With the power to direct focus and encourage commitment to higher purpose, mindset can easily urge someone to push past comfort zones. People with drive are self-motivated and strive to accomplish more.
No matter what goal you seek to achieve, the path to your success is sure to include some challenges. When facing an extreme hardship, a person may feel justified in bowing to defeat. For them, it can feel like an easy road. If you want to get through them, however, you will need to develop thick skin and learn to lace each challenge head on. Yet, this is where mindset plays a critical role. The capacity to move through the fire, to get knocked down and not knocked out, is the proof to the power of a strong mindset.
Are you ready to command your results? If so, make a conscious decision to master your mindset and reach for greater success in the new year and beyond.
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