1 . Saying farewell to someone you love, even for a night, can be difficult, much less saying goodbye for a lifetime or forever in death. Juliet bid Romeo adieu (再见) for the evening with the words, “Parting is such sweet sorrow.” Sweet sorrow is an oxymoron. But this seeming contradiction is true in the context of relationships.
Relationships are based on feelings, emotions, and passion. Deep friendships and loving relationships are measured by the level of emotional attachment. Emotions intensify over time. People spend time with the people they like. The more one person likes another person, the closer the relationship becomes. Each person in the relationship receives an emotional benefit from knowing the other person.
Saying goodbye means separating from the people who make up a significant part of your emotional identity. Separation, even a temporary absence, from the people you have a deep emotional connection with can cause sorrow because you will no longer be able to enjoy their company.
The sweet side of saying goodbye is the emotional fulfillment of being in a close relationship. The time spent together is emotionally rewarding, especially if that person is seen as a soulmate. Humans are social beings. We seek the love and comfort of other people. Loneliness devastates the human condition and leads to sadness. Sad people will do anything they can to find fulfilling relationships. Likewise, happy people will do anything they can to maintain or enhance relationships. Herein lies the essential point of the emotional problem.
The more intense relationships become, the more devastating the emotional loss that is felt upon separation. The exhilaration of relationships cannot be truly measured without experiencing the overwhelming loss of a deep emotional connection.
Enjoy the company of the person you are with as long as you can; knowing the pain you will feel at the end of the relationship is the true measure of the relationship. If it doesn’t hurt to say goodbye, perhaps it wasn’t worth saying hello.
1. Which of the word group can create the same effect as “sweet sorrow”?| A．icy cold | B．clicking sound | C．deafening silence | D．endless speech |
| A．Saying goodbye is unavoidable in our daily life. |
| B．The companion of close friends can lessen sorrow. |
| C．A person’s identity is connected with relationship. |
| D．Separation is the sorrowful part of saying goodbye. |
| A．Making more communication with others. |
| B．Building deep emotional connections with others. |
| C．Comforting friends with love and intense feelings. |
| D．Being a thoughtful person by standing in others’ shoes. |
| A．Sweet sorrow is very common in close relationships. |
| B．The pain of separation is the measure of relationships. |
| C．Human beings are eager to get emotional fulfillment. |
| D．Happiness is meaningless without sadness to compare it. |
2 . Many people have secrets or things about themselves they don’t want others to know. Those secrets can be something as simple as they have a new job or serious matters such as a divorce.
Have conversations with others that cover a range of meaningful topics. Talking about meaningful things to others can help them consciously connect positive feelings about you and make them more likely to open up to you.
Listen carefully
Talk about yourself
Make sure to talk about yourself during your conversations.
Be reliable
Make sure to be there and fulfil promises with your friends. This shows them that they can rely on you, including telling and keeping secrets. Follow up on any commitment you make to the best of your ability.
| A．Chat online |
| B．Have meaningful conversations |
| C．You can’t share your friend’s secret with anyone |
| D．Getting someone to tell you their secrets can be difficult |
| E．Listen closely to what they are saying during your conversations |
| F．Give little bits of information about yourself as you feel comfortable |
| G．If you cannot keep your promise, explain the circumstances and then apologize |
3 . Praise is like sunlight to the human spirit: we cannot flower and grow without it. And yet, while most of us are only too ready to apply to others the cold wind of criticism, we are somehow reluctant to give our fellows the warm sunshine of praise.
It’s especially rewarding to give praise in areas in which effort generally goes unnoticed or unmentioned.
Praise is particularly appreciated by those doing routine jobs: gas station attendants, waitresses-even housewives.
So, let’s be alert to the small excellences around us and comment on them. We will not only bring joy into other people’s lives, but also, very often, add happiness into our own.
| A．We are accustomed to accepting praise. |
| B．A student is ignored despite his good work. |
| C．To give praise costs the giver almost nothing. |
| D．It’s strange how cautious we are about praising |
| E．Shakespeare said, “Our praises are our wages.” |
| F．An artist gets complimented for a glorious picture. |
| G．“I can live for two months on a good compliment,” said Mark Twain. |
| A．Customer and clerk. | B．Boss and employee. | C．Reporter and interviewee. |
It is easy to get carried away in
In her blog, Chance explains
Chance first took this challenge herself before asking her students to try. As she couldn’t understand why many people preferred
Through asking questions, Chance was able to understand them and realize they had similar feelings. One man, an Orthodox Jew,
Although Chance and those people had different political
6 . It seems that friends often have similar body odor. Dogs greet other dogs using their noses first, as they are sniffing each other. People are not quite so open about the process of sniffing each other out.
They have also shown that this is probably the case from the get-go, with people picking friends at least partly on the basis of body odor, rather than the body odor of people who become friends subsequently converging.
As they report in Science Advances, these scientists started their research by testing the odors of 20 pairs of established, non-romantic, same-sex friends.
The e-nose results and the opinions of the second group of smellers were then subjected to a bit of multidimensional mathematical analysis, emerging as simple, comparable numbers.
All three approaches yielded the same result. The T-shirts of friends smelt more similar to each other than did the T-shirts of strangers.
| A．Participants were paired up at random. |
| B．Friends, in other words, do indeed smell alike. |
| C．Now, some scientists in Israel have gone a step further. |
| D．But the size of the perfume industry suggests the scent is important in human relations, too. |
| E．To do this they employed an electronic nose (e-nose) and two groups of human “smellers”. |
| F．One group of human smellers were given pairs of these shirts and rated how similar they smelt. |
| G．To cast light on whether friendship causes the similarity of scents, or the similarity of scents causes friendship. |
1. Why does the speaker suggest making a list of ideas in advance?
| A．Because it can help you in case you don’t know what to say to others. |
| B．Because many parties ask people to do this. |
| C．Because you can show it to others at the party. |
| A．Keep silent. |
| B．Look for the people who are also nervous. |
| C．Take a deep breath and try to forget your nervousness. |
| A．They also feel shy sometimes. |
| B．They can overcome shyness completely. |
| C．They can not face the cameras and the public. |
1. What are the speakers discussing?
| A．A lecture. | B．A product. | C．A university. |
| A．He founded a start-up firm. |
| B．He is well known for his lectures. |
| C．He has contributed a lot to the field of electronics. |
| A．Contact a department of the university. |
| B．Conduct an interview with Mr Cobb. |
| C．Buy tickets for employees. |
9 . A soldier returned to his castle at dawn. He was in a mess. His face was bloody; his horse was lame. His
“You have been what?” cried the
“Oh!” said the soldier. And then, after a(n)
What about you? Do you have enemies to the west? Or in some other directions? None of us will calmly sail through our lives in perfect
One person said, “I don’t have a personal enemy
So-called “enemies” can
If enemies cannot become friends, they can become
| A．wife | B．father | C．king | D．friend |
| A．Tightening | B．Straightening | C．Pulling | D．Standing |
| A．fighting | B．training | C．competing | D．learning |
| A．disappointed | B．frightened | C．surprised | D．excited |
| A．sigh | B．apology | C．rest | D．pause |
| A．harmony | B．common | C．touch | D．company |
| A．pains | B．wounds | C．relationships | D．bodies |
| A．visible | B．short | C．temporary | D．permanent |
| A．escaped | B．spared | C．left | D．stayed |
| A．achieve | B．serve | C．act | D．express |
| A．holding | B．moving | C．choosing | D．giving |
| A．reflect | B．remember | C．prove | D．see |
| A．sharpen | B．change | C．share | D．support |
| A．quickly | B．immediately | C．unconsciously | D．publicly |
| A．drivers | B．teachers | C．doctors | D．lawyers |
10 . When you set a foot outside of your door to drop trash, go to a social event or go for a walk, thoughts like “I hope I don’t see anyone I know” or “please don’t talk to me” may run through your mind. I’ve also said such things to myself. Sometimes the last thing you want to do is to talk with someone, especially someone new.
Why do we go out of our ways to avoid people? Do we think meeting new people is a waste of time? Or are we just lazy, thinking that meeting someone new really is a trouble?
Communication is the key to life. We have been told that many times. Take the past generations, like our parents, for example. They seem to take full advantage of that whole “communication” idea because they grew up talking face to face while Generation-Y grew up staring at screens. We spend hours of our days sitting on Facebook. We send messages to our friends and think about all of the things we want to say to certain people that we don’t have the courage to do in reality.
Nowadays, we are so caught up in our little circle of friends—our comfort zone. We love it that they laugh at our jokes, understand our feelings and can read our minds. Most importantly, they know when we want to be alone. They just get us.
Holding a conversation with someone new means agreeing with things that you don’t really believe and being someone you think they want you to be—it is, as I said before, a trouble. It takes up so much energy, and at some point or another, it is too tiring.
But meeting new people is important. Life is too short, so meet all the people you can meet, make the effort to go out and laugh. Remember, every “hello” leads to a smile—and a smile is worth a lot.
1. What do we learn about the author?| A．He likes to meet someone new. | B．He feels stressed out lately. |
| C．He’s active in attending social events. | D．He used to be afraid of talking to others. |
| A．They rely on the Internet to socialize. | B．They are less confident in themselves. |
| C．They have difficulty in communicating. | D．They are unwilling to make new friends. |
| A．They think it troublesome. | B．They are busy with their study. |
| C．They fear to disappoint their friends. | D．They want to do meaningful work. |
| A．To stress the importance of friends. |
| B．To give tips on how to meet new people. |
| C．To encourage people to meet new people. |
| D．To display the disadvantages of Generation-Y. |
