1 . Jennifer and James Crumbley were found guilty of involuntary manslaughter (过失杀人罪) due to their failure to prevent their son Ethan from carrying out a deadly school shooting in Michigan, US. They were sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison on April 9, reported The New York Times. The sentence for them marks the first instance in the US where parents have been held legally accountable for their child’s involvement in a mass shooting.
Prosecutors (检察官) argued that the couple ignored clear signs of their son’s mental health issues and emphasized that they purchased the gun he used in the 2021 attack. Ethan, who was only 15 when he killed four students in the shooting, was sentenced to life. “Opportunity knocked over and over again, louder and louder, and it was ignored,” Judge Cheryl Matthews told the court.
Instances of extreme and violent crimes committed by minors consistently stir shock and controversy globally. Such issues urge widespread societal reflection, leading nations to consider revising laws to lower the age of criminal responsibility. While most countries and regions have maintained a standard minimum age of criminal responsibility at 12 or 14 years for an extended period, there are exceptions. For example, Japan lowered the age from 16 to 14 in 2000, according to Xinhua.
In 2010, Denmark lowered its minimum age of criminal responsibility from 15 to 14 years old. However, researchers found that this change did not reduce crime rates among 14-year-olds. Instead, the punitive measures (惩罚措施) had negative effects. These young individuals often fell behind their peers academically, especially on high school graduation exams, and the rate of reoffenders increased. Consequently, Denmark reversed this policy two years later, restoring the minimum age of criminal responsibility to 15 years old, The Paper reported.
Denmark’s experience showed that the law doesn’t always stop people from committing crimes again. Furthermore, preventing young people from committing crimes poses a complex challenge.
In Germany, imprisonment is considered a last resort, with a focus on educational, rehabilitative (善后的) and disciplinary measures, as noted in a 2018 paper published in the Justice Evaluation Journal. According to the paper, youth imprisonment is applied in only 2 percent of all cases. Additionally, some prisons offer vocational programs for young inmates, including woodworking, metalworking, and farming. Meanwhile, most of these teenage offenders are placed in community programs where social workers help educate and guide them toward a normal life.
1. Why were Jennifer and James sentenced ?A.They were the murders of involuntary manslaughter. |
B.They offered a gun to Ethan who carried out a school shooting. |
C.They didn’t take the parenting responsibility for their son’s problems in growth. |
D.They ignored their son’s mental health problems. |
A.Parents should be the key power to stop young people from committing crime. |
B.Solving the problems of minor’s crime needs joint efforts and diverse measures. |
C.Lowering the age of criminal responsibility can effectively prevent minors from crime. |
D.Increasing the rate of youth imprisonment can effectively prevent minors from crime. |
A.action to take | B.a place to visit |
C.an end to happen | D.a chance to take |
A.to show the severity of youth crime |
B.to show the efforts countries have made to stop youth crime |
C.to show the measures countries have made to stop youth crime |
D.to raise parents’ awareness of regulating and educating responsibility |
2 . Some of the most successful people have done their best work in coffee shops. Pablo Picasso, JK Rowling, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Bob Dylan ---whether they’re painters, writers, philosophers, or singer-songwriters, people across nations and centuries have tapped into their creativity working away at a table in a café.
There are many ways coffee shops stimulate our creativity in a way offices and homes don’t. Research shows that the stimuli in these places make them effective environments for work; the combination of noise, visual variety and casualness can give us just the right amount of distraction to help us be at our sharpest and most creative.
Some of us put on our noise-cancelling headphones as soon as we sit down to work in a public setting. But background noise can benefit our creative thinking. A 2012 study published in the Journal of Consumer Research showed that a low-to-moderate level of background noise in a place like a cafeteria can actually increase our creative output. Another study from 2019 had similar findings: the right amount of noise benefits our senses. And while that right level of noise is different for everyone, audio (听觉的) stimuli in the background also help us improve decision-making. So, the jazz music, light conversation and noises from coffee bar workers aren’t vexatious —they could help you come up with your next masterwork.
Also, one thing that can make working from home and the office dull is the unexciting visual environment. “Visual stimulation has an effect on peoples creative thinking process. Coffee shops generally have visual stimuli,” says Sunkee Lee, whose research suggests that visual variety “helps you to think outside the box”. Korydon Smith, who co-wrote a recent article on the benefits of working in coffee shops, says, “People come and go. The daylight changes. The colours of food vary. These activities inspire our brains to work a bit differently than at home”.
And while the typical coffee shop user might be a lone worker, experts say these café settings can also benefit work groups who are brainstorming. “There is an implied formality when gathering on office-based or digital meeting platforms. By contrast, there is an air of informality when meeting up at a bar or café. Agendas are not required to meet someone for coffee, but are inbuilt in a scheduled meeting, virtual or otherwise, which can kill creativity,” says Smith.
1. What does the author intend to do in paragraph 2?A.Add some background knowledge. | B.Summarize the following paragraphs. |
C.Support the first paragraph with examples. | D.Introduce a controversial topic for discussion. |
A.Unexpected. | B.Permanent. | C.Annoying. | D.Original. |
A.Visual variety there encourages creativity. |
B.Audio stimuli there help with decision-making. |
C.A lo ne worker can meet like-minded people there. |
D.Bar workers there always make people feel at home. |
A.Its air of excitement. | B.Its implied formality. |
C.Its casual atmosphere. | D.Its nice food and drink. |
3 . Pity the poor traffic policeman. He’s the last guy you want to see when you’re speeding down the highway. But according to a major research by scientists in Canada and California, that policeman just might be saving your life or the life of someone else.
The researchers have found that a traffic ticket reduces a driver’s chance of being involved in a disastrous accident greatly. The effect doesn’t last long, however. Within months, the lead foot is back on the pedal and the risk of killing yourself or someone else is back up to where it was before that policeman stared you in the eye and wrote out that expensive ticket. It is back to business as usual for most motorists.
Traffic tickets save thousands of lives every year. Yet traffic laws are applied infrequently, almost as if by whim (心血来潮), partly because people just don’t like traffic policemen, and there are lots of other things for the government to spend money on than applying highway safety laws.
Researches looked at the month prior to a disastrous accident, and the number of traffic convictions (定罪), and then the same month in the year before. They found there were fewer tickets in the month before a disastrous accident than there were a year before, which suggests there’s a protective effect of having a ticket.
The scientists also turned up some surprising results. “Most of the crashes did not involve alcohol,” they reported. “The relative risk reduction associated with traffic convictions was remarkably consistent among women and men, regardless of age, prior driving record, and other personal data. Men, however, were involved in far more disastrous accidents than women and the most accident-prone (有倾向的) age was between 30 and 50.”
They also pointed out that most crashes could have been prevented by a small difference in driver behavior. So the next time you see that policeman in your rear-view mirror, give him or her a broad smile.
1. How will the drivers probably behave months after having traffic tickets?A.Drive more attentively than before. | B.Return to where accidents happened. |
C.Escape a spot check for alcohol. | D.Drive as fast as they did before. |
A.They have saved thousands of lives so far. |
B.They are not favored by traffic policemen. |
C.They are carried out consistently and sufficiently. |
D.They are not the priority of the government’s budget. |
A.Traffic tickets can guarantee safe driving. |
B.It is necessary to reduce traffic convictions. |
C.Disastrous accidents will decline with more traffic tickets given. |
D.Tickets’ protective effect can be found before disastrous accidents. |
A.Its results applied to both men and women. |
B.None of the traffic crashes involved alcohol. |
C.Women aged 30 to 50 caused more disastrous accidents. |
D.Drivers were used to looking at the mirrors while driving. |
4 . Initial conversations can have a huge impact on how relationships develop over time. People are often stuck in the impressions they think they might have made the minute they finish speaking with someone for the first time: “Did they like me or were they just being polite?” “Were they deep in thought or deeply bored?”
To find out whether these worries are necessary, we have conducted nearly 10 years of research. In our studies, participants in the UK talked with someone they had never met before. Afterward, they were asked how much they liked their conversation partner and how much they believed that their conversation partner liked them. This allowed us to compare how much people believed they were liked to how much they were actually liked.
Time and time again, we found that people left their conversations with negative feelings about the impression they made. That is, people systematically underestimate how much their conversation partners like them and enjoy their company — a false belief we call the “liking gap”.
This bias (偏见) may seem like something that would occur only in initial interactions, but its effects extend far beyond a first impression. Surprisingly, the liking gap can constantly affect a variety of relationships, including interactions with coworkers, long after the initial conversations have taken place. Having a larger liking gap is associated with being less willing to ask workmates for help, less willing to provide workmates with open and honest feedback, and less willing to work on another project together.
There are numerous strategies to minimize your biased feelings. One place to start is shifting your focus of attention. Try to direct your attention to your conversation partner, be genuinely curious about them, ask them more questions, and really listen to their answers. The more you’re zeroed in on the other person, and the less you’re focused on yourself, the better your conversation will be and the less your mind will turn to all the things you think you didn’t do well.
1. Why did the author carry out 10 years of research?A.To dismiss national concerns. | B.To check out a potential bias. |
C.To enhance human communication. | D.To develop harmonious relationships. |
A.Fewer chances of new projects. | B.Underestimation of their ability. |
C.Bad relationships with people around. | D.Low willingness to interact with others. |
A.Restate opinions. | B.Deliver warnings. | C.Give suggestions. | D.Make a summary. |
A.Liking Gap May Influence Work Performances |
B.First Impressions Rely On Initial Conversations |
C.People Probably Like You More Than You Think |
D.How People Like You Matters Less Than You Assume |
5 . You might have heard of the expression “a guilty pleasure”—maybe it’s the chocolate bar you buy on the way home from work, or the new clothes that you don’t really need.
Perhaps not. Psychologists have suggested that buying things for yourself can make you feel better as it provides an opportunity to take control of your situation.
Of course, there are also examples of people turning to destructive behaviour when faced with stressful circumstances. People might spend money that they don’t have or turn to dangerous addictions. Psychologist Leon Seltzer considers the difference between self-indulgence and self-nurturing.
A.Exams are vital for students. |
B.Self-indulgence can have negative consequences |
C.The difference becomes evident when students manage exam pressure |
D.They also recommend embracing activities that could dampen your spirits |
E.Besides, you should avoid things that may make you feel worse afterwards |
F.It comes from the idea that when we treat ourselves, it can sometimes leave us feeling guilty |
G.It can give you social contact as well as a confidence boost from changes you make to your self-image |
6 . Search “toxic parents”, and you’ll find more than 38, 000 posts, largely urging young adults to cut ties with their families. The idea is to safeguard one’s mental health from offensive parents. However, as a psychoanalyst (精神分析学家), I’ve seen that trend in recent years become a way to manage conflicts in the family, and I have seen the severe impacts estrangement (疏远) has on both sides of the divide. This is a self-help trend that creates much harm.
“Canceling” your parent can be seen as an extension of a cultural trend aimed at correcting imbalances in power and systemic inequality. Today’s social justice values respond to this reality, calling on us to criticize oppressive and harmful figures and to gain power for those who have been powerless. But when adult children use the most effective tool they have—themselves—to gain a sense of security and ban their parents from their lives, the roles are simply switched, and the pain only deepens.
Often, what I see in my practice are cases of family conflict mismanaged, power dynamics turned upside down rather than negotiated. I see the terrible effect of that trend: situations with no winners, only isolated humans who long to be known and feel safe in the presence of the other.
The catch is that after estrangement, adult children are not suddenly less dependent. In fact, they feel abandoned and betrayed, because in the unconscious, it doesn’t matter who is doing the leaving; the feeling that remains is “being left”. They carry the ghosts of their childhood, tackling the emotional reality that those who raised us can never truly be left behind, no matter how hard we try.
What I have found is that most of these families need repair, not permanent break-up. How can one learn how to negotiate needs, to create boundaries and to trust? How can we love others, and ourselves, if not through accepting the limitations that come with being human? Good relationships are not the result of a perfect level of harmony but rather of successful adjustments.
To pursue dialogue instead of estrangement will be hard and painful work. It can’t be a single project of “self-help”, because at the end of the day, real intimacy (亲密关系) is achieved by working through the injuries of the past together. In most cases of family conflict, repair is possible and preferable to estrangement—and it’s worth the work.
1. Why do young people cut ties with the family?A.To gain an independent life. | B.To follow a tendency towards social justice. |
C.To restore harmony in the family. | D.To protect their psychological well-being. |
A.Response. | B.Problem. | C.Bond. | D.Division. |
A.Break down boundaries. | B.Accept imperfection of family members. |
C.Live up to their parents’ expectations. | D.Repair a family item that has broken up. |
A.To advocate a self-help trend. | B.To justify a common social value. |
C.To argue against a current practice. | D.To discuss a means of communication. |
1. 零用钱花费情况;
2. 指出问题所在;
3. 给予适当建议。
注意:1. 写作词数应为80左右;
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
How senior high school students use their pocket money
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________8 . Living car-free in the US
Culdesac admitted its first thirty-six residents in Tempe, Arizona, US, earlier this year.
In a country as car-dependent as the US, Culdesac is nothing short of visionary (有远见的).
A.Still, there is hope |
B.Cars are allowed, but parking is limited |
C.This can effectively avoid traffic accidents on a road |
D.This reliance on cars doesn’t come cheap, unfortunately |
E.For some, cars equal freedom, but for me, it’s a restriction |
F.It describes itself as the first car-free neighbourhood built in the US |
G.The vast majority of Americans are entirely dependant on cars to get around |
9 . Poverty has forced most Europeans to skip (跳过) meals during the past three years, according to a survey conducted by Ipsos on behalf of the charity French Secours Populaire, which supports people on low incomes. The survey of 10,000 Europeans in 10 nations asked whether money worries had worsened or improved during the past three years. More than half said their situation had worsened, with 29 percent saying they were so short of money that a single unexpected expense would put them into difficulty. The results, published on Monday in the charity’s European Barometer on Poverty and Precariousness, found 38 percent of Europeans were no longer able to eat three meals a day on a regular basis. And 21 percent of parents had skipped meals so they could feed their children.
The survey quizzed people living in France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Moldova, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, and the United Kingdom. The pollsters found the main reason for the poor financial situation in many European families was the fast-rising cost of goods and services, with price inflation (通货膨胀) increasing by three times during 2022 and the cost of housing, water, and fuel rising by 18 percent during the course of a year. At the same time wages remained relatively unchanged.
The survey followed other recent worrying assessments of increasing levels of poverty throughout Europe, with Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics agency reporting 17 percent of the population of the 27-nation group was “at risk of poverty” and that only 15percent of Europeans had enough money not to have financial worries. Another survey, conducted by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in June, found the UK had 5.7 million low-income households that were so lacking in money that they had no adequate access to food.
And another survey, by the Equality Trust, found the great difference between rich and poor in the UK was actually being worsened by the government, which, it concluded, was spending more money than any other European nation on subsidizing (补贴) the rich through structural inequality. Priya Sahni-Nicholas, the co-executive director of the Equality Trust, told The Guardian newspaper the growing chasm between rich and poor was “causing huge damage” to the economy. As a result, she said, “We have shorter healthy working lives, poorer education systems, more crime, and less happy societies.” The survey released this week for French Secours Populaire found money worries among Europe’s population now mean a significant number of people have turned off heaters, avoided treatment for medical problems, and borrowed money or other things as a result. The survey found one person in 12in Italy is in “absolute poverty” and relies on discounted food and food banks. And the situation was even worse in Greece and Moldova, which had more people at risk from poverty than any other European nation.
1. Why is there a poor financial situation in many European families?A.On account of increasing taxes. | B.Because of their pay’s being cut. |
C.Owing to many people’s losing jobs. | D.Due to rising prices of goods and services. |
A.15%. | B.17%. | C.18%. | D.21%. |
A.Misunderstanding. | B.Difference. | C.Conflict. | D.Concern. |
A.Study shows rising poverty in Europe |
B.Wages remain relatively unchanged in Europe |
C.Poor people in Europe rely on discounted food |
D.Survey quizzes people living in rich European countries |
In a refreshing shift from conventional methods, some post-90 teachers in China are using memes (表情包), cute comments, and personalized feedback in their grading practices,
Gone are the days of impersonal and serious
The use of memes and hand-drawn images in marking papers
As these innovative practices gain