1 . The rate of childhood obesity in the U. S. has tripled over the past 50 years. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) made waves this year by recommending that doctors put obese kids as young as two years old on intensive, family-oriented lifestyle and behavior plans. It also suggested prescribing weight-loss drugs to children l2 and older and surgery to teens 13 and older. This advice reflects the organization’s adoption of a more active position on childhood obesity.
Yet the lifestyle programs the AAP recommends are expensive, inaccessible to most children and hard to maintain. Few weight-loss drugs have been approved for children. And surgery has potential risks and few long-term safety data. Furthermore, it’s not clear whether interventions in youngsters help to improve health or merely add to the psychological burden overweight kids face from the society.
Rather than paying close attention to numbers on a scale, the U. S. and countries with similar trends should focus on an underlying truth: we need to invest in more and safer places for children to play where they can move and run around, climb and jump, ride and skate.
Why is it so hard to get kids moving? Experts blame the problem on the privatization of sports — as public investment in school-based athletics dwindles, expensive private leagues have grown, leaving many kids out. In addition to fewer opportunities at school, researchers cite increased screen time and a lack of safe places for them to play outside the home. New York City, for example, had 2,067 public playgrounds as of 2019 — a very small amount for its large population. In Los Angeles in 2015, only 33 percent of youths lived within walking distance of a park.
Kids everywhere need more places to play. Public funding to build and keep up these areas is crucial, but other options such as shared-use agreements can make unused spaces available to the public. These opportunities aren’t primarily about changing children’s waistlines — they’re how we keep childhood healthy and fun.
1. What can we learn from the first two paragraphs?A.Childhood obesity is well under control in recent years. |
B.Weight-loss surgery are recommended to children 12 and older. |
C.AAP plays a more active role in fighting against childhood obesity. |
D.Expensive as it is, lifestyle programs are practical for most children. |
A.decline | B.quit | C.increase | D.develop |
A.Prepare fitness equipment at home. |
B.Live within walking distance of a park. |
C.Promote investment in private athletics. |
D.Open up playgrounds when school’s out. |
A.Sports play an important role in children’s growth. |
B.More safe areas for outdoor fun are in urgent need. |
C.Family-oriented lifestyles are crucial to children’s health. |
D.Medical intervention is important to ease psychological burden. |
2 . Americans no longer expect public figures, whether in speech or in writing, to command the English language with skill and gift. Nor do they aspire to such command themselves. In his latest book, Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care, John McWhorter, a linguist and controversialist (善辩者) of mixed liberal and conservative views, sees the triumph of 1960s counter-culture as responsible for the decline of formal English.
Blaming the permissive 1960s is nothing new, but this is not yet another criticism against the decline in education. Mr. McWhorter’s academic specialty is language history and change, and he sees the gradual disappearance of “whom,” for example, to be natural and no more regrettable than the loss of the case-endings of Old English.
But the cult of the authentic and the personal, “doing our own thing”, has spelt the death of formal speech, writing, poetry and music. While even the modestly educated sought an elevated tone when they put pen to paper before the 1960s, even the most well regarded writing since then has sought to capture spoken English on the page. Equally, in poetry, the highly personal, performative genre is the only form that could claim real liveliness. In both oral and written English, talking is triumphing over speaking, spontaneity over craft.
Illustrated with an entertaining array of examples from both high and low culture, the trend that Mr. McWhorter documents is unmistakable. But it is less clear, to take the question of his subtitle, why we should, like, care. As a linguist, he acknowledges that all varieties of human language, including non-standard ones like Black English, can be powerfully expressive — there exists no language or dialect in the world that cannot convey complex ideas. He is not arguing, as many do, that we can no longer think straight because we do not talk proper.
Russians have a deep love for their own language and carry large chunks of memorized poetry in their heads, while Italian politicians tend to elaborate speech that would seem old-fashioned to most English-speakers. Mr. McWhorter acknowledges that formal language is not strictly necessary, and proposes no radical education reforms — he is really grieving over the loss of something beautiful more than useful. We now take our English “on paper plates instead of china”. A shame, perhaps, but probably an inevitable one.
1. What do we know about the decline of formal English according to McWhorter?A.It is inevitable in radical education reforms. |
B.It is but all too natural in language development. |
C.It has caused the controversy over the counter-culture. |
D.It brought about changes in public attitudes in the 1960s. |
A.Modesty. | B.Personality. | C.Liveliness. | D.Informality. |
A.Logical thinking is not necessarily related to the way we talk. |
B.Black English can be more expressive than standard English. |
C.Non-standard varieties of human language are just as entertaining. |
D.Of all the varieties, standard English can best convey complex ideas. |
A.Their interest in their language. | B.Their appreciation of their efforts. |
C.Their admiration for their memory. | D.Their contempt for their old-fashionedness. |
3 . Obese people experience discrimination (歧视) in many parts of their lives, and the workplace is no exception. Studies have long shown that obese workers, defined as those with a body-mass index (BMI) of 30 or more, earn significantly less than their slimmer co-workers.
Yet the costs of weight discrimination may be even greater than previously thought. “The overwhelming evidence,” wrote the Institute for employment Studies, “is that it is only women living with obesity who experience the obesity wage penalty (薪资损失).” They were expressing a view that is widely aired in academic papers. To test it, The Economist has analyzed data concerning 23,000 workers from the American Time Use Survey, conducted by the Bureau of Labour Statistics. Our number-processing suggests that, in fact, being obese hurts the earnings of both women and men.
The data we analyzed cover men and women aged between 25 and 54 and in full-time employment. At a general level, it is true that men’s BMIs are unrelated to their wages. But that changes for men with university degrees. For them, obesity is associated with a wage penalty of nearly 8%, even after accounting for the separate effects of age, race, graduate education and marital status.
The conclusion — that well-educated workers in particular are penalized for their weight — holds for both sexes. Moreover, the higher your level of education, the greater the penalty. We found that obese men with a Bachelor’s degree (学士学位) earn 5% less than their thinner colleagues, while those with a Master’s degree earn 14% less. Obese women, it is true, still have it worse: for them, the equivalent figures are 12% and 19%, respectively (分别地).
Your line of work makes a difference, too. When we dealt with the numbers for individual occupations and industries, we found the greatest differences in high-skilled jobs. Obese workers in health care, for example, make 11% less than their slimmer colleagues; those in management roles make roughly 9% less, on average. In sectors such as construction and agriculture, meanwhile, obesity is actually associated with higher wages.
These results suggest that the total costs of wage discrimination borne by overweight workers in America are greater than expected. Now, it’s time for our governments to take it seriously.
1. What does the underlined word “it” refer to in paragraph 2?A.Obese men earn less salary. |
B.Only obese women earn less salary. |
C.Both obese men and women earn less salary. |
D.Weight discrimination may be greater than previously thought. |
A.A fat woman office director. |
B.An obese construction worker. |
C.An obese man with a bachelor’s degree. |
D.A heavier female doctor with a Doctor’s degree. |
A.Supportive | B.Objective | C.Subjective | D.indifferent |
A.Overweight discrimination in other countries. |
B.The reason of discriminating obese people in their lives. |
C.American people’s attitude towards overweight discrimination. |
D.Actions taken against overweight discrimination in workplaces. |
4 . In recent years American society has become increasingly dependent on its universities to find solutions to its major problems. It is the universities that have been to blame for developing the expertise to place men on the moon; for dealing with our urban problems and with our worsening environment; for developing the means to feed the world’s rapidly increasing population. The effort involved in meeting these demands presents its own problems. In addition, however, this concentration on the creation of new knowledge significantly impinges on the universities’ efforts to perform their other principal functions, the transmission and interpretation of knowledge-the imparting of the heritage of the past and the preparing of the next generation to carry it forward.
With regard to this, perhaps their most traditionally acknowledged task, college and universities today find themselves in a serious situation. On one hand, there is the American commitment, especially since World War Ⅱ, to provide higher education for all young people who can profit from it. The result of the commitment has been a dramatic rise in enrollments(登记入学) in our universities, coupled with a striking shift from the private to the public sector of higher education.
On the other hand, there are serious and continuing limitations on the resources available for higher education. While higher education has become a great ”growth industry“, it is also at the same time a tremendous drain(耗竭) on the resources of the nation. With the vast increase in enrollment and the shift in priorities away from education in state and federal(联邦的) budgets, there is in most of our public institutions a significant decrease in expenses for their students. One crucial aspect of this drain on resources lies in the persistent shortage of trained faculty(全体教师), which has led, in turn, to a declining standard of competence in instruction.
Intensifying these difficulties is, as indicated above, the concern with research, with its increasing claims on resources and the attention of the faculty. In addition, there is a strong tendency for the institutions’ organization and functioning to fulfill the demands of research rather than those of teaching.
1. According to Paragraph 1, what should be the most important function of American universities?A.Sparing no effort to create new knowledge for students. |
B.Enhancing students’ competence of tackling social problems. |
C.Making experts on advanced industries out of their students. |
D.Preparing their students to transmit the knowledge of the past. |
A.more students and less investment | B.education quality and economic profit |
C.low enrollment rate and high education demand | D.private ownership and American commitment |
A.many public institutions have to cut down enrollments of students |
B.teachers are not competent enough to perform satisfactorily in class |
C.some institutions are forced to reduce the total expenses on research |
D.there is keen competition for resources between public and private institutions |
A.The improper distribution of American universities’ resources. |
B.The increasing argument over American universities’ primary task. |
C.The inability of American universities’ organization and fulfillment. |
D.The growing focus on American universities’ function of research. |
5 . Falling birth rates are a major concern for some of Asia’s biggest economies. Government s in the region are spending hundreds of billions of dollars trying to reverse the trend. Will it work?
Japan began introducing policies to encourage couples to have more children in the 1990s. South Korea started doing the same in the 2000s, while Singapore’s first fertility (生育) policy dates back to 1987. China, which has seen its population fall for the first time in 60 years, recently joined the growing club.
While it is difficult to quantify exactly how much these policies have cost, South Korean President YoonSuk-yeol recently said his country had spent more than $200bn (£160bn) over the past 16 years on trying to boost the population. Yet last year South Korea broke its own record for the world’s lowest fertility rate, with the average number of babies expected per woman falling to 0.78. In neighbouring Japan, which had record low births of fewer than 800,000 last year, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has promised to double the budget for child-related policies from 10tn yen ($74.7bn; £59.2bn).
Having a bigger population who can work and produce more goods and services leads to higher economic growth. And while a larger population can mean higher costs for governments, it can also result in bigger tax revenues (税收). Also, many Asian countries are ageing rapidly. Japan leads the pack with nearly 30% of its population now over the age of 65 and some other nations in the region are not far behind. Compare that with India, which has just overtaken China as the world’s most populous nation. More than a quarter of its people are between the age of 10 and 20, which gives its economy huge potential for growth. And when the share of the working age population gets smaller, the cost and burden of looking after the non-working population grow. “Negative population growth has an impact on the economy, and together with an ageing population, they won’t be able to afford to support the elderly,” said Xiujian Peng of Victoria University.
1. Which Asian country first took measures to increase population in this passage?A.Japan. | B.South Korea. | C.Singapore. | D.China. |
A.Japan hit the lowest record of new-born babies last year. |
B.India has the largest and youngest population in the world. |
C.China’s population has been decreasing in the recent 60 years. |
D.South Korea had the lowest population record last year in the world. |
A.The economy of India will overtake that of Japan. |
B.Negative population growth leads to an ageing population. |
C.The larger the population is, the better the economy will be. |
D.A bigger share of working age population helps support the elderly. |
A.Low birth rate is a negative factor for economy. |
B.China is joining the countries of low birth rate. |
C.Many Asian countries came to negative population growth. |
D.Many Asian countries are trying all out to battle low birth rate. |
6 . Cruise through many neighborhoods or parks around the world, and you will find no shortage of well-mowed expanses of grass. Lawns (草坪) do look attractive.
Why did lawns become so popular?
What environmental problems are lawns causing?
Lawns are homogenizing the environment, not only in terms of biodiversity but also visually. You compare countries’ and cities’ urban landscapes around the world, and they look exactly the same.
You have to find your own local solution. We can take inspiration from the natural plant communities around us. In suburban and rural areas, that might mean having a meadow or prairie. In other places, it might be a savanna like environment or mountain plants. You can have a “grass-free” lawn; with only low-growing plants that create the same effect as a lawn, and you can walk on it.
How can we persuade people to adopt these alternatives?
When people see them, they appreciate them and like them.
A.So it is all about education. |
B.What are these alternatives? |
C.And it is understandable fondness. |
D.What are the inspirations of lawns? |
E.However, they choke out biodiversity. |
F.Lawns came to be seen as a symbol of civilization and a way of life. |
G.Lawn upkeep takes resources, fertilizer and pesticide that enter groundwater and runoff water. |
7 . Leadership is a quality that is hard to define. Everyone can think of inspiring leaders from history but managers who think they can base their style on Nelson Mandela or Elizabeth I are suffering from misunderstandings of greatness.
The biggest mistake is to consider leadership entirely equal to charisma(魅力). Billy McFarland was just 25 when he set up the Fyre festival which promised attendees a luxury experience on a deserted island in the Bahamas. As shown by the Netflix documentary, “Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened”, Mr McFarland was an unusual salesman. He convinced investors that he was a visionary businessman and persuaded talented young people to work for him.
But he lacked the skills to put his vision into practice. Festival guests arrived to find their food consisted of cheese sandwiches, rather than first-class cuisine. They were housed not in luxury villas, but in tents left over from a hurricane-relief program. The whole event ended with Mr McFarland being sentenced to six years in prison.
His example could have been a case study for the book by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic— “Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?(and how to fix it)”. As an organisational psychologist, he points out that people tend to assume that confident individuals are competent, when there is no actual relationship between the two qualities. Those confident people are promoted and then their abilities turn out to be over-estimated.
Mr Chamorro-Premuzic argues that competence is more important than charisma or confidence. Managers need enough presence to persuade their teams to follow the business plan, but they should think in terms of coaching rather than inspiration. Employees are more likely to be engaged with their work if they get frequent feedback from their bosses, and if they are involved in setting their own goals. Another key factor in leadership is the ability to set a good example. Subordinates(下属)notice what behaviour gets rewarded and which standards are set by the person at the top.
1. What can we infer from paragraph 1?A.Leadership is a quality impossible to evaluate. |
B.Nelson Mandela and Elizabeth I are both overrated. |
C.You can’t become leaders by simply imitating others. |
D.Charismatic people are more likely to be great leaders. |
A.Unconfident. | B.Visionary. | C.Incomparable. | D.Incompetent. |
A.The assumption that confidence equals competence. |
B.The phenomenon that competent people can’t lead well. |
C.The connection between competence and career success. |
D.The reason why confident people are popular in workplaces. |
A.Respecting the privacy of employees. | B.Giving employees frequent feedback. |
C.Inspiring employees with big visions. | D.Following the examples of good employees. |
8 . Do you remember all those years when scientists argued that smoking would kill us but the doubters insisted that we didn’t know for sure? That the evidence was inconclusive, the science uncertain? That the antismoking lobby was out to destroy our way of life and the government should stay out of the way? Lots of Americans bought that nonsense, and over three decades, some 10 million smokers went to early graves.
There are upsetting parallels today, as scientists in one wave after another try to awaken us to the growing threat of global warming. The latest was a panel from the National Academy of Sciences, enlisted by the White House, to tell us that the Earth’s atmosphere is definitely warming and that the problem is largely man-made. The clear message is that we should get moving to protect ourselves. The president of the National Academy, Bruce Alberts, added this key point in the preface to the panel’s report: “Science never has all the answers. But science does provide us with the best available guide to the future, and it is critical that our nation and the world base important policies on the best judgments that science can provide concerning the future consequences of present actions.”
Just as on smoking, voices now come from many quarters insisting that the science about global warming is incomplete, that it’s OK to keep pouring fumes into the air until we know for sure. This is a dangerous game: by the time 100 percent of the evidence is in, it may be too late. With the risks obvious and growing, a prudent people would take out an insurance policy now.
Fortunately, the White House is starting to pay attention. But it’s obvious that a majority of the president’s advisers still don’t take global warming seriously. Instead of a plan of action, they continue to press for more research — a classic case of “paralysis by analysis.”
To serve as responsible stewards of the planet, we must press forward on deeper atmospheric and oceanic research. But research alone is inadequate. If the Administration won’t take the legislative initiative, Congress should help to begin fashioning conservation measures. A bill by Democratic Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, which would offer financial incentives for private industry, is a promising start. Many see that the country is getting ready to build lots of new power plants to meet our energy needs. If we are ever going to protect the atmosphere, it is crucial that those new plants be environmentally sound.
1. What was an argument made by supporters of smoking?A.There was no scientific evidence of the correlation between smoking and death. |
B.The number of early deaths of smokers in the past decades was insignificant. |
C.People had the freedom to choose their own way of life. |
D.Antismoking people were usually talking nonsense. |
A.A protector. | B.A judge. | C.A critic. | D.A guide. |
A.Cautious. | B.Arbitrary. | C.Responsible. | D.Expericed. |
A.They both suffered from the government’s negligence. |
B.A lesson from the latter is applicable to the former. |
C.The outcome of the latter aggravates the former. |
D.Both of them have turned from bad to worse. |
9 . Even though we may believe that it’s important to say thank you, sometimes expressing gratitude is easier said than done. We might find ourselves getting confused about the details of what to say or the best way to deliver the message. As a result, many times, we do not express our gratitude.
According to new research, however, it’s possible we might be making our thanks more complicated than it needs to be. In a paper published in The Journal of Positive Psychology, researchers compared the effects of expressing thanks in person, over a video call, and by text. And, while people generally expect an in-person thank-you to be most impactful, what happened in reality was quite different: sending a thank-you by text was almost as impactful as delivering the message in person. Additionally, texting maybe especially well-suited for situations where we feel embarrassed about expressing our appreciation.
In one study, 219 college students from the United States and China participated in a gratitude activity in which they wrote about three things they were grateful for over a two-week period. After writing, the students were asked to actually thank the person involved. Some connected with the gratitude recipient (接受者) in person, others via video call, and others via text. At the beginning and end of the two weeks, participants completed surveys measuring their feelings of well-being, connections with others, depression, loneliness, and happiness.
The researchers found that people who expressed gratitude increased their well-being, with only a few differences between the different methods of gratitude expression. Overall, video calls were just as beneficial as meeting in person. Texting was slightly less effective than video calling -- it didn’t make people feel more connected and happy. However, participants who sent their thanks by text still experienced benefits: texting boosted their well-being and reduced their loneliness.
Overall, the message is that we shouldn’t worry about finding just the “right” way to express our gratitude. In fact, you’re probably better off sending a quick thank-you today than waiting for the right time to schedule an in-person visit. You can be sure that many of gratitude’s benefits can be attained regardless of how you send the message.
1. How do people make expressing gratitude complex?A.They think it is useless to express gratitude. |
B.They feel ashamed to express gratitude. |
C.They think too much about the best way to do it. |
D.They waste too much time before saying it. |
A.Video chats. | B.Face to face visits. |
C.Sending messages. | D.Making phone calls. |
A.Learning to be grateful can give us a lot of benefits. |
B.We need to put saying thank-you into our daily routine. |
C.We should learn how to express appreciation to others. |
D.We shouldn’t be bothered by how to express our gratitude. |
10 . Twenty-two years ago, I won a Nobel Prize, together with Tim and Leland Hartwell, for our work on how cells control their division.
The prize changed our lives. Suddenly you become a public figure being asked to do all sorts of things: to give lectures, quite often on topics you know little about; to sit on committees and reviews you are not always well qualified to be on; to visit countries you have barely heard of. It is like having a whole new extra job, with upwards of 500 requests a year.
A recent study suggests that in general the extra commitments that Nobel winners take on result in fewer papers after their awards. There may be some truth to this given the extra demands on one’s time, but of course prestigious awards also allow new projects and research to be undertaken.
What effects did the Nobel Prize have on my subsequent career and work? It has certainly helped me to get scientific leadership positions. Within a year of getting the prize I was offered and accepted the presidency of Rockefeller University in New York. Having the prize also helps to get things done. For example, I have been involved in the merging of two separate cancer research charities to form Cancer Research UK. And it has helped me support causes I care deeply about. I became an ambassador for Ukraine education and science to help raise money for schools in that shattered country. Moreover, having a Nobel does help attract high-quality research colleagues. I have just started three excellent new PhD students. It is a privilege for me to be able to pursue curiosity-driven research at this late stage of my career.
However, one thing I am glad to say that the Nobel Prize did not influence was peer review from my fellow scientists, assessing the suitability of my own research for publication, and my grant applications for funding. My rejection rates have remained essentially the same before and after the prize. And that, of course, is exactly how it should be.
1. What is the author’s purpose in writing paragraph 2?A.To share his pride in winning a Nobel. |
B.To express his regret at the changing of life. |
C.To show his self confidence in handling the extra jobs. |
D.To display his overburdened tasks after winning a Nobel. |
A.Competition. | B.Comparison. | C.Combination. | D.Construction. |
A.The special privileges the Nobel winner has. |
B.The positive impacts the Nobel Prize generates. |
C.The great contributions the Nobel winner makes. |
D.The scientific leadership the Nobel Prize provides. |
A.The spirit of science lies in seeking facts and truth. |
B.Winning a Nobel Prize has an impact on peer review. |
C.Extra commitments make Nobel winners less productive. |
D.The approval a Nobel winner receives is equal to rejection. |