1 . How many friends do you have? Not counting the hundreds on Facebook or the names gathering dust in your address book. But real friends, the ones cast in stone. The kind who would lend you $100 without asking why, or put you up if you were kicked out of your house.
Anthropologist Prof Robin Dunbar feels he can put a number on it: five. No matter how much of a social butterfly you are, you can count your real pals on one hand, he says. To that he says you can add an ideal number of 15 “good friends”, the kind of people you would see in a group and would join for a drink if you bumped into them in the pub, and up to 150 “meaningful contacts”.
Prof Dunbar’s latest research is an exact formula(公式) for friendship: new friendships take 34 hours of one-on-one time to form, in which you’d spend an ideal duration of three hours and four minutes per interaction together over the course of six months. Note that this is to turn an acquaintance into a friend, not one of the close friends that makes up your inner circle of five—to do that, you’d have to devote 90 hours, according to a 2018 University of Kansas study.
According to the experts, the pandemic years have changed the number and nature of our friendship. It gave people more grounds for disagreement: over adherence(遵守) to social-distancing rules, for example. Plenty of people lost relationships in the cracks. “We are always on the outlook for new and better friends, but lockdown has had a big effect in making people reevaluate,” says Dunbar. “Perhaps they’ve decided the time has come to part with some and therefore there’s an empty space to fill.”
The forecast for British friendship was already gloomy before the pandemic. Three million people said they feel lonely “often or always”, according to the Government’s 2019 community life survey. But the average British adult lost four friends over the course of the pandemic, according to the poll.
1. What does the underlined expression “cast in stone” probably mean?| A．Firmly connected. | B．Interested in stones. |
| C．Living nearby. | D．Extremely generous. |
| A．34 hours of one-on-one time. |
| B．90 hours of interaction. |
| C．Six months of one-on-one time. |
| D．Three hours and four minutes of interaction. |
| A．The more sociable you are, the more real friends you can make. |
| B．It’s much easier for people to make friends online. |
| C．The more friends you make, the happier your life will be. |
| D．There is a limit to the number of real friends in your life. |
| A．Whether to part with some old friends. |
| B．How to make better friends. |
| C．Whether to obey social distancing. |
| D．How to limit the number of friends. |
2 . Symbol of friendship
Friendship is a wonderful thing to have no matter how old you are. However, it is important for teens and young adults to provide conversation, support and so much more as friends.
One of the symbols of a wonderful relationship between friends is easy conversation. When you can talk about almost anything, you are sure to be true friends. When the conversation flows easily from one topic to another, this can be a symbol of friendship as well.
Able to have fun
Support all the time
If your friends know they can call you anytime and you will be there for them, then this symbolizes friendship.
Attentive listening by both individuals
If you find that you listen closely to what your friend says and they do the same for you, this is another symbol of friendship.
Share laughter and tears
Another symbol of friendship is the ability to share both laughter and tears. A friend is someone with whom you can laugh and cry over anything.
| A．Get together |
| B．Easy conversation |
| C．Teenagers always have difficulty in making friends. |
| D．A true friend is someone you can have a great time with. |
| E．You feel comfortable with this person to share your special feelings. |
| F．If you are trying to make friends, you may be wondering what symbolizes friendship. |
| G．True friends listen closely to each other and understand what the other person is saying. |
