1 . On January 1st, 2018, “gaming disorder” — in which games are played uncontrollably, despite causing harm — gained recognition from the World Health Organization (WHO). Last year, China, the world’s biggest gaming market, announced new rules limiting children to just a single hour of play a day. Clinics are appearing around the world, promising to cure patients of their habit.
Are games really addictive? Psychologists have different opinions. The case for the defence is that this is just another moral panic. Similar warnings have been given about television, rock’ n’ roll, jazz, comic books, and even novels. As the newest form of mass media, gaming is merely enduring (忍受) its own time before it finally stops being controversial.
However, some argue that unlike rock bands or novelists, games developers have both the motive and the means to engineer their products to make them addictive. For one thing, the business-model has changed. In the old days games were bought once and for all. But these days, games are free and money is earned from purchases of in-game goods, which ties playtime directly to developers’ income. For another, games makers combine psychological theory and data, which helps them maximize the playtime. Smartphones and modern video game machines use their permanent Internet connections to send gameplay data back to developers. That allows products to be constantly adjusted to increase spending on games.
The gaming industry should realize that, in the real world, it has a problem, and that problem is growing. Now that gaming addiction comes with an official WHO recognition, diagnoses (诊断) become more common. Clinics are already reporting booming business, as lockdowns have given gamers more time to spend with their hobby. And being put together in the public mind, fairly or not, with gambling will not do the industry any favours.
1. What is the function of Paragraph 1?| A．To arouse the readers’ interest about the topic. |
| B．To inform the readers of the harmful effects of games. |
| C．To discuss whether it is necessary to panic about games. |
| D．To show growing public concern about the problem of games. |
| A．To prove that the panic over games will fade away. |
| B．To show that they are as highly addictive as games. |
| C．To compare the differences among these media forms. |
| D．To argue that these media forms are not harmful at all. |
| A．They don’t charge players for in-game goods. |
| B．They adjust products based on received data. |
| C．They reward top players with more playtime. |
| D．They keep players’ video game machines updated. |
| A．offer a suggestion | B．make a prediction |
| C．give a warning | D．put forward a solution |
2 . Monopoly (大富翁) is a very popular board game around the world today, but little is known about its American inventor, Elizabeth Magie, and the philosophy behind her invention.
Born in 1866, Magie was a rebel against the norms and politics of her times. Inspired by Henry George who believed that all men should have an equal right to use the land as they have to breathe air, she challenged the capitalist system of property ownership —in the form of a board game. In 1904, she patented her Landlord’s Game, which consisted of a circuit of streets and landmarks for sale.
Magie’s game contained two sets of rules: The Prosperity rules and the Monopolist rules. The Prosperity rules stated that every player should gain each time someone acquired a new property. The game was won (by all!) when the player starting with the least money doubled his or her fortune. Under Monopolist rules, on the other hand, each player advanced by acquiring properties and collecting rent from all who landed there later. Whoever managed to bankrupt the other players won the game. The purpose of the dual sets of rules, said Magie, was for players to understand how these different approaches to property can lead to different social outcomes: “all win” or “win all.”
The game soon became a hit on college campuses and among Quaker communities, and some people modified the game board. An unemployed player named Charles Darrow sold this modified version to the manufacturer Parker Brothers as his own. However, when the game’s true origin came to light, Parker Brothers bought the patent from Magie for only $500. They then re-launched the game as Monopoly, including only the rules leading to the triumph of one over all. Darrow was publicized as the inventor who had become a millionaire from selling the game. Thus a rags-to-riches myth was created, ironically exemplifying Monopoly’s implicit (含蓄的) values: Chase wealth and crush your opponents if you want to come out on top.
1. What is this passage mainly about?| A．The creation and modification of a board game. |
| B．A fight between patent owners of a popular game. |
| C．A socio-economic victory behind a landlord game. |
| D．The person who became a millionaire from a fun game. |
| A．To emphasize the value of the capitalist system. |
| B．To introduce different approaches to obtaining new land. |
| C．To advocate that all should be rewarded when one acquires wealth. |
| D．To challenge George’s idea that men should have an equal right to the land. |
| A．A modified version of Monopoly. |
| B．Darrow’s success after selling the game. |
| C．Parker Brothers’ purchase of Magie’s patent. |
| D．The popularity of the game on college campuses. |
| A．Excited. | B．Relieved. | C．Doubtful. | D．Displeased. |
3 . Back in January, my partner and I resolved to take exercise seriously. This would mean spending hours every week grunting, stretching and sweating our way to better health, which is something that is particularly difficult when you glance at the (weather outside and see dark clouds on the horizon. “Looks like it is about to rain, I guess I’ll go for a run tomorrow instead.” But then just as we were on the verge of giving up again, we discovered a brilliant new way to make exercise better: by turning it into a video-game.
SWIFT is a cycling game that you control by pedaling your real bike, which is fixed onto a device called a turbo-trainer. As you pedal, the trainer sends signals back to your computer or tablet to control the character on screen. And smartly, the game sends back instructions to the trainer to apply different levels of resistance, so that as you’re cycling up a hill in the game, you can actually feel it on the bike.
So one small garage renovation later and after signing up for a $12 per month subscription, we had our TV, bike and all-important cooling fan ready to go.
Once you’re set up, you can participate in virtual cycle rides in 3D-recreations of real places, like London and New York, or fictional locations. And importantly, other real human cyclists appear alongside you, sharing your journey.
The genius of the design is that it has used lots of the tricks of traditional video-games to keep pushing you a little bit further and harder: go a little faster, and you’ll be rewarded with a little achievement marker, and if you pedal harder, you might win a race against another real player. It’s essentially generating for same sort of dopamine hits that riding along on a traditional exercise bike simply can’t match.
I’m not the only person Who has noticed this. Today many other companies in the tech industry are chasing the same audience, and they all offer their own unique twists on the formula.
1. Why does the author mention the weather in paragraph 1?| A．To show the lack of his own willpower. |
| B．To complain about the unstable weather. |
| C．To reveal the limitation of traditional exercise. |
| D．To illustrate the difficulties in fulfilling his resolution. |
| A．Monthly payment. | B．3D Glasses. | C．A real bike. | D．A turbo-trainer. |
| A．How SWIFT motivates its users. | B．Who are the target users of SWIFT. |
| C．What physical benefits SWIFT users gel. | D．Why traditional bikes are replaced by SWIFT. |
| A．Unclear. | B．Favorable. | C．Doubtful. | D．Intolerant. |
4 . How Minecraft is Helping Children with Autism (自闭症)
Like many constructions, it started small. But now thousands of children with autism are making friends and learning social skills by playing a version of online building game Minecraft.
Stuart Duncan got the idea through a popular blog he ran about his own experiences with autism as well as bringing up a son with autism. Other parents with autistic children started telling him that their kids were crazy about a game that let them explore a randomly generated wilderness.
So, in 2013, Duncan, a web developer in Timmins, Canada, set up a server to run a version of Minecraft exclusively for children with autism and their families.
The server caught the eye of Kate Ringland at the University of California, Irvine.
| A．Now, almost three years later, running “Autcraft” is his full-time job. |
| B．This is a great way for them to play a game they love, but also have a social experience. |
| C．Everyday social situations can be challenging for autistic children. |
| D．She has spent 60 hours inside this virtual world, watching how the kids play and chat to one another. |
| E．“Autcraft” builds from the interests and passions of people with autism rather than trying to redirect or surprise them. |
| F．However, despite loving the game, many of the children were being bullied by other players. |
5 . Months earlier, my wife Lisa had just woken up at 4:45 when she heard voices coming from the upstairs room. And then she decided to
We were tired of the
The first couple of days didn’t go very
Five months later, Hunter was
Running teaches him to invest time that needs to be spent in
| A．answer | B．know | C．see | D．respond |
| A．discovered | B．reminded | C．founded | D．admitted |
| A．thrilled | B．scared | C．annoyed | D．delighted |
| A．style | B．amount | C．fact | D．number |
| A．woke up | B．applied for | C．stayed up | D．showed off |
| A．Impressive | B．Positive | C．Attractive | D．Effective |
| A．lent | B．received | C．borrowed | D．earned |
| A．interest | B．exchange | C．calculation | D．assessment |
| A．swim | B．jump | C．run | D．walk |
| A．smoothly | B．obviously | C．naturally | D．badly |
| A．begin | B．refuse | C．accept | D．change |
| A．give it a shot | B．make it a rule | C．keep it a secret | D．make it a point |
| A．relaxed | B．disappointed | C．embarrassed | D．excited |
| A．work | B．skill | C．goal | D．trust |
| A．fit | B．fast | C．perfect | D．worthwhile |
6 . While video games used to be considered harmful to young people, various studies have also proved the positive effects of computer games, especially action video games.
Angela Pasqualotto from the University of Trento and her team have now tested whether such video games can help primary school children learn to read. They’ve developed such a computer game called Skies of Manawak.
“Reading involves many important skills, including knowing how to move our eyes on the page or how to use our working memory to connect words into a meaningful sentence,” explains Pasqualotto. “It’s known that action video games improve these still, such as vision, general attention, working memory and cognitive (认知的) flexibility.”
For their study, the researchers tested 150 school children between the ages of eight and twelve. Half of them played the game Skies of Manawak two hours a week for six weeks. The other half, the control group, received the educational game Scratch, which is intended to teach children the basics of programming. Both games are basically to train the executive (执行的) functions of the brain.
“We started by examining the children’s ability to read words, non-words and paragraphs and their attention control,” explains Pasqualotto. “After six weeks, these skills were tested again.”
“We found a seven-fold improvement in attention control in the children who played our action video game compared to the control group,” said Pasqualotto. The team also saw significant improvements in reading speed and accuracy among Skies of Manawak players—there were no improvements in the kids who played Scratch. It’s also worth mentioning that the children’s reading skills have improved, although the game itself doesn’t contain any reading exercises.
“For the study, we also carried out three further evaluation tests six, twelve and eighteen months after the training. Each time, the trained children performed better than the control group,” adds Pasqualotto.
Of course, while the study suggests some benefit in action video games, it does not mean that one must do nothing else.
1. What did the 150 school children do in the study?| A．They received training on programming. | B．They finished some reading ability tests. |
| C．They created video games on their own. | D．They played games with reading exercises. |
| A．Its influence on reading skills is not temporary. | B．The study results about it seem to be untrustworthy. |
| C．Reading ability can’t be improved with its assistance. | D．Kids need consistent reading training after playing it. |
| A．They have nothing to do with reading. | B．People shouldn’t get addicted to them. |
| C．School kids are supposed to avoid them. | D．They should be replaced with Scratch. |
| A．Video Games Prove Harmless to Young People at School |
| B．Time for Children to Play Video Games Should Be Limited |
| C．Children Easily Fall in Love With Reading in a Video Game |
| D．Playing Action Video Games Improves Kids’ Reading Skills |
| A．Neither of them can find a suitable game. |
| B．They are both enthusiastic about games. |
| C．Good games cost a large amount of money. |
| D．They often go Dutch when buying gifts. |
| A．It includes fantasy role-playing. |
| B．It doesn’t have an actual ending. |
| C．It is an expensive online game. |
| D．It is something like a racing game. |
| A．Players have opportunities to make new friends. |
| B．Players can have face-to-face communication. |
| C．Players may be rewarded with delicious food. |
| D．Players can start the game at anytime they want. |
| A．Add variety to the recommended game. |
| B．Look around to find a cheaper online game. |
| C．Persuade the woman to change her mind. |
| D．Try to find an extraordinary online game. |
You might have heard of the word game Wordle.
Wordle can be played once per day. It is very simple and that may be
Players get six chances to guess a five-letter word that has been chosen by the game
Originally, the game
9 . Like many of history’s greatest ideas, Tetris (俄罗斯方块)came about quite unintentionally. Alexey Pajitnov was a software engineer at the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow, tasked with testing a new type of computer. To do so, he wrote a simple game based on a puzzle from his childhood. It would help assess how powerful the computer was--and provide a bit of fun. Little did he know that the resulting game would go on to become one of the greatest, most addictive and most successful of all time.
Tetris is a puzzle game in which geometric shapes fall down onto a playing field, and the player has to arrange them to form gapless lines. Pajitnov took inspiration from pentomino, a classic puzzle game consisting of all the different shapes that can be made by combining five squares--12 in total--with the goal of arranging them in a wooden box like a jigsaw puzzle.
To simplify things, he knocked that down to four squares, thus reducing the number of shapes from 12 to seven. He called the game Tetris, combining the Greek numeral “tetra”(meaning four) and tennis, his favorite sport. Pajitnov himself was immediately hooked. “I couldn’t stop myself from playing this prototype version, because it was very addictive to put the shapes together,” he said on the phone from Seattle, where he now lives.
Tetris has been the subject of several scientific studies. One found that playing the game can be effective in fighting off cravings for food and, while another noted an increase in the thickness of some parts of the brain in people who had played regularly. Playing Tetris for prolonged periods of time can lead to players dreaming about the falling pieces or interpreting real-world objects as shapes in the game and mentally re-arranging them--a phenomenon known as “the Tetris Effect”.
“With time going by, it hasn’t lost any of its play value and nothing has come to replace Tetris,” said Henk Rogers, a computer scientist, explaining the game’s enduring popularity. “It’s like Happy Birthday. There have been lots of songs that come and go, but Happy Birthday is always sung in the same way. Tetris has become the Happy Birthday of computer games.”
1. Why did Alexey Pajitnov create Tetris?| A．To bring back childhood memory. |
| B．To provide more fun for the public. |
| C．To update the computer system. |
| D．To assess a new kind of computer. |
| A．Pleased | B．Determined | C．Obsessed | D．Moved |
| A．It can cause players to dream about the falling pieces. |
| B．It can stimulate people’s appetite for food. |
| C．It can lead to “the Tetris Effect” instantly. |
| D．It can increase the overall thickness of the brain. |
| A．To describe the concept of Tetris. |
| B．To indicate the popularity of Tetris. |
| C．To provide the example of popular songs. |
| D．To introduce the topic of Happy Birthday. |
10 . Six-year-old Alice is building a magical kingdom brick by brick, imagining fairy-tale castles and fire-breathing dragons, bad witches and brave heroes. This fantasy is helping her take her first steps towards her capacity for creativity. Minutes later, Alice has abandoned the kingdom in favour of playing schools with her younger brother. When she bosses him around as his “teacher”, she’s practising how to regulate her emotions through pretense. Later on, when they tire of this and settle down with a board game, she’s learning about the need to follow rules and take turns with a partner. Although she isn’t aware of it, this will play an important role in her adult life.
“Play in all its rich variety is one of the highest achievements of the human species,” says Dr. David Whitebread from the University of Cambridge. It underpins how we develop as intellectual, problem-solving adults and is crucial to our success as a highly adaptable species. Recognising the importance of play is not new: over two millennia ago, the Greek philosopher Plato extolled its virtues as a means of developing skills for adult life, and ideas about play-based learning have been developing since the 19th century.
But we live in changing times, and Whitebread is mindful of a worldwide decline in play, pointing out that over half the people in the world now live in cities. Whitebread, Baker, Gibson and a team of researchers hope to provide evidence on the role played by play in how a child develops.
“A strong possibility is that play supports the early development of children’s self-control. This is our ability to develop awareness of our own thinking processes. It influences how effectively we go about undertaking challenging activities,” explains Baker. In a study carried out by Baker with toddlers and young preschoolers, she found that children with greater self-control solved problems more quickly when exploring an unfamiliar set-up requiring scientific reasoning.
Gibson said, “Playful behaviour is also an important indicator of healthy social and emotional development. In my previous research, I investigated how observing children at play can give us important clues about their well-being and can even be useful in the diagnosis of neurodevelopmental disorders like autism.”
Whitebread’s recent research has involved developing a play-based approach to supporting children’s writing. “Many primary school children find writing difficult, but we showed in a previous study that a playful stimulus was far more effective than an instructional one. Children wrote longer and better-structured stories when they first played with dolls representing characters in the story.
Somehow the importance of play has been lost in recent decades. It’s regarded as something trivial, or even as something negative that contrasts with “work”. Let’s not lose sight of its benefits, and the fundamental contributions it makes to human achievements in the arts, sciences and technology. Let’s make sure children have a rich diet of play experiences.
1. What is the purpose of the first paragraph?| A．To illustrate the benefits of too much spare time. |
| B．To describe a kid’s peaceful and happy childhood. |
| C．To present the importance of a rich variety of play. |
| D．To introduce the distinctive functions of different toys. |
| A．Weakens. | B．Reinforces. | C．Investigates. | D．Influences. |
| A．Children with greater self-control solve problems faster. |
| B．Children at play often show hints about their well-being. |
| C．Students write better when they integrate work with play. |
| D．Play promotes healthy social and emotional development. |
| A．Curious. | B．Satisfied. | C．Cheerful. | D．Concerned. |
