1. 描述你所观察到的现象。
2. 分析人们分享生活的原因。
3. 你个人对这种现象的看法。
注意:1. 词数80左右。
2. 可适当增加细节,以使行文连贯。
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2 . Many economists predict 2024 will be the time shoppers tighten their belts. That doesn’t mean people will stop spending, say retail (零售) analysts. But it will change what they choose to buy. With a slowing job market, global consumers are likely to move away from more high-priced purchases and focus instead on smaller, less expensive treats.
The economic uncertainty means that consumers are becoming more discriminating about their purchases, says Ethan Chermofsky, senior vice president of marketing at intelligence platform Placer. ai. “There are the things we decide are necessary, and then there’s another category of things that aren’t necessary but that we consider affordable luxuries, he says. This desire for these “affordable luxuries” is common in difficult economic times. Some economists refer to the phenomenon as the “lipstick index”: a small economic increase led by budget-minded consumers seeking out relatively affordable splurges (挥霍), like small cosmetics (化妆品).
Analysts at Deloitte say consumers will spend on little luxuries like specialty coffees and snacks as well. Additionally, stressed-out shoppers are prioritizing small splurge purchases for wellness and personal care.
As retailers see shoppers turning to little luxuries, they’re offering more and more of them. Target, for example, has staked a flag in what they refer to as “affordable joy”, which includes a selection of self-care and cosmetic products, along with wellness-centric beauty products. Beyond diversifying their offerings, stores are also bringing in luxury-feeling products at lower price points to appeal to more consumers.
Ethan says not every shopper will shift their spending to little luxuries-but even those who are still longing for the “must-haves” of social media will also look to get a deal. They want the feeling of purchasing lower-priced affordable treats. To get these goods, shoppers are likely to tap into the re-sale market for designer items at a more reasonable price. They want things that make them feel good about themselves-they just want to do it without breaking the bank.
1. What can affordable luxuries be?A.Inexpensive daily necessities. | B.High-end products. |
C.Reasonably-priced designer items. | D.High-priced purchases. |
A.The strategies retailers use. | B.The joy businesses offer. |
C.The competition stores face. | D.The products consumers buy. |
A.Social-media deals. | B.World-famous brands. |
C.Second-hand bargains. | D.Budget-friendly pleasures. |
A.Lipstick Index: Where Does It Lead Us? | B.Must-have Treats: A Future Spending Trend |
C.Affordable Joy: Will We Fall Into The Trap? | D.Little Luxuries: A Driving Force Behind Consumption |
Nowadays, we are used to opening an app to skim public review s for reference before going to a restaurant. If it has a score of 4.8 or above on a 5-point scale, the restaurant
In the past months, topics such as “Restaurants with low ratings may taste better”
For one thing, quite a few business runners rely so
4 . Studies have shown the mere exposure effect, also referred to as the familiarity principle, inspires our decisions. It is a helpful psychological mechanism that helps us sustain our energy and focus our attention on other things. Getting used to new things takes effort and it can be exhausting. So unless we have a terrible experience, we are likely to buy from companies we’ve got used to. That is why companies spend so much money on advertising and marketing and why insurance companies openly charge existing customers more than new ones.
It’s not the case that we only desire things we already know. Some studies suggest when invited to share our preferences, we sometimes see less familiar options as more desirable. But when acting on that preference, we fall back to what we know. This might explain why sometimes the things we want and the things we do don’t quite match up. We might even return to companies that treated us poorly in the past or stay in bad relationships.
It’s easy to paint the familiarity principle as an enemy or something to battle as if it is something that holds us back from living our dreams. But this attitude might be overwhelming because it tends to encourage us toward big-picture thinking. Where we imagine that change requires a substantial dramatic swing that we don’t feel ready for. Some articles suggest the solution to familiarity frustration is complete exposure to novelty. While this can appear effective in the short run, we may only end up replacing one problem with another. It also risks overwhelm and burnout.
So what if we can work with the familiarity principle instead? Familiarity is something we can learn to play with and enjoy. It is a setting for creativity and a pathway to expansion. We can broaden the zone of familiarity bit by bit. If we think of familiarity as something that can expand, we can consider changing the conditions in and around our lives to make more space for our preferences to take root and grow gently. From here, we will start to make decisions, drawing from an ever-deepening pool of valuable options.
1. What allows insurance companies to charge old customers more?A.The improved service. | B.The advertising cost. |
C.The familiarity principle. | D.The law of the market. |
A.Our preferences affect our decisions. |
B.Familiarity tends to generate disrespect. |
C.The familiarity principle is a double-edged sword. |
D.There can be a mismatch between desires and actions. |
A.Disapproving. | B.Tolerant. | C.Objective. | D.Reserved. |
A.Step Out Of Your Familiarity Zone | B.Spare A Thought For Your Preference |
C.Gently Expand Your Familiarity Zone | D.Give Priority To The Mere Exposure Effect |
5 . The road to a Nobel Prize, the most respected scientific award in the world, is growing ever longer, with almost half of winners now waiting more than 20 years from making a Nobel-worthy discovery to receiving the prize.
One analysis shows that the average time between publishing the work and receiving one of the science prizes has nearly doubled in the past 60 years. Across the three science prizes, chemistry now has the longest “Nobel lag”- an average of 30 years over the past decade- and physiology or medicine has the shortest, at 26 years.
Alfred Nobel’s will stated that the prizes should be awarded “to those who, during the previous year, shall have given the greatest benefit to mankind.” In reality this has only happened a few times. But in the first half of the twentieth century, it was common for Nobel prize winners to be in their 30s and that is unheard of now, says Santo Fortunato, now a computational social scientist at Indiana University.
There are a number of possible reasons for this, says Yian Yin, a computational social scientist at Cornell University. It could be that the overall number of breakthroughs is increasing each year, so awards cannot keep up with the number of people who deserve to be recognized, he says. It is also the case that the importance of some works, which Yin describes as “sleeping beauties” are only realized years or decades later. Besides, the lengthening gap could be a sign that there has been a decrease in “disruptive” science -important studies or discoveries that change the paradigm (范式) of their field. This could be causing the Nobel committees to focus more on the past.
Fortunato points out that, if the gap continues to grow, outstanding scientists could miss out on the award owing to the Nobel Committee’s rule banning posthumous prizes (追授奖项). “It has to stop at some point,” he says, adding that a rethink of the posthumous-awarding ban would allow more people’s work to get the recognition that it deserves.
1. Why does the writer mention the numbers in the first two paragraphs?A.To explain a rule. | B.To present a fact. |
C.To give an opinion. | D.To make a prediction. |
A.Experts who are in their thirties. |
B.Teachers who study computer science. |
C.Researchers whose name has not been heard of. |
D.Scientists whose discovery benefits humans most. |
A.The change in standards. | B.The requirement of the award. |
C.The increase in breakthroughs. | D.The tradition of the committees. |
A.Reconsidering the current rule. | B.Establishing a better committee. |
C.Stopping the award presentation. | D.Recognizing more people’s work. |
6 . The road to a Nobel Prize, the most respected scientific award in the world, is growing ever longer, with almost half of winners now waiting more than 20 years from making a Nobel-worthy discovery to receiving the prize.
One analysis shows that the average time between publishing the work and receiving one of the science prizes has nearly doubled in the past 60 years. Across the three science prizes, chemistry now has the longest “Nobel lag”—an average of 30 years over the past decade—and physiology or medicine has the shortest, at 26 years.
Alfred Nobel’s will stated that the prizes should be awarded “to those who, during the previous year, shall have given the greatest benefit to mankind.” In reality this has only happened a few times. But in the first half of the twentieth century, it was common for Nobel prize winners to be in their 30s -and that is unheard of now, says Santo Fortunato, now a computational social scientist at Indiana University.
There are a number of possible reasons for this, says Yian Yin, a computational social scientist at Cornell University. It could be that the overall number of breakthroughs is increasing each year, so awards cannot keep up with the number of people who deserve to be recognized, he says. It is also the case that the importance of some works, which Yin describes as “sleeping beauties” are only realized years or decades later. Besides, the lengthening gap could be a sign that there has been a decrease in “disruptive” science - important studies or discoveries that change the paradigm (范式) of their field. This could be causing the Nobel committees to focus more on the past.
Fortunato points out that, if the gap continues to grow, outstanding scientists could miss out on the award owing to the Nobel Committee’s rule banning posthumous prizes (追授奖项). “It has to stop at some point,” he says, adding that a rethink of the posthumous-awarding ban would allow more people’s work to get the recognition that it deserves.
1. Why does the writer mention the numbers in the first two paragraphs?A.To explain a rule. | B.To present a fact. |
C.To clarify a concept. | D.To make a prediction. |
A.None of them are in their 30s nowadays. | B.Their names are unheard of by the public. |
C.None of them receive the prizes several times. | D.They must make contributions the year before. |
A.The change in standards. | B.The requirement of the award. |
C.The increase in breakthroughs. | D.The tradition of the committees. |
A.Reconsidering the current rule. | B.Establishing a better committee. |
C.Stopping the award presentation. | D.Recognizing more people’s work. |
China’s top liquor maker Kweichow Moutai and domestic coffee chain Luckin Coffee have got a hit on their hands, with a new baijiu-flavored latte. The latte has become one of the most discussed topics on Chinese social media with people curious about
In Beijijng, the Moutai-flavored latte sold out in some Luckin Coffee
“It seems that people prefer
People have been sharing their reactions after trying the latte on social media, with most
In recent years, Moutai has been looking for ways to be more
8 . In 1970s, a psychologist named J. P. Guilford conducted a famous study of creativity known as the nine-dot puzzle (九点谜题). He challenged research subjects to connect all nine dots using just four straight lines without lifting their pencils from the page. All the participants limited the possible solutions to those within the imaginary square. Only 20 percent managed to break out of the confinement (束缚) and continue their lines in the white space surrounding the dots.
The fact that 80 percent of the participants were effectively blinded by the boundaries of the square led Guilford to jump to the sweeping conclusion that creativity requires you to go outside the box. The idea went viral. Overnight, it seemed that creativity experts everywhere were teaching managers how to think outside the box. The concept enjoyed such strong popularity that no one bothered to check the facts. No one, that is, before two different research teams-Clarke Burnham with Kenneth Davis, and Joseph Alba with Robert Weisberg-ran another experiment.
Both teams followed the same way of dividing participants into two groups. The first group was given the same instructions as the participants in Guilford’s experiment. The second group was told that the solution required the lines to be drawn outside the imaginary box. Guess what? Only 25 percent solved the puzzle. In statistical terms, this 5 percent improvement is insignificant as this could be called sampling error.
Let’s look a little more closely at the surprising result. Solving this problem requires people to literally think outside the box. Yet participants’ performance was not improved even when they were given specific instructions to do so. That is, direct and clear instructions to think outside the box did not help. That this advice is useless should effectively have killed off the much widely spread — and therefore, much more dangerous — metaphor (比喻) that out-of-the-box thinking boosts creativity. After all, with one simple yet brilliant experiment, researchers had proven that the conceptual link between thinking outside the box and creativity was a misunderstanding.
1. What did the nine-dot puzzle study focus on?A.Visual perception. |
B.Thinking patterns. |
C.Practical experience. |
D.Theoretical knowledge. |
A.To test the catchy concept. |
B.To contradict the initial idea. |
C.To collect supporting evidence |
D.To identify the underlying logic. |
A.Groundless. | B.Inspiring. | C.Fruitless. | D.Revealing. |
A.Puzzle Solving: A Key To Creativity |
B.Thinking Outside the Box: A Misguided Idea |
C.Nine-Dot Puzzle: A Magic Test |
D.Creative Thinking: We Fell For The Trap |
Gather together a couple of good friends and take a leisurely walk through the streets—this is
To them, Citywalk means roaming (漫步) around the city on foot. It can be a special
Citywalk not only offers a way for young people to interact with a city but also
Citywalk is offering a positive change to urban travelers as they can
10 . Earlier this month, TikTok announced that it will be introducing screen time limits for the accounts of users aged under 18. Children under 13 will require a parent or guardian to type in a password to continue scrolling (滚屏) through their feed, and those aged 13-17 will be asked to set their own passwords when the viewing time goes beyond the limit.
Studies suggest that 30 minutes may be the sweet spot for social media use, where users are able to stay connected with friends and family and view entertainment. However, many other studies show that overly-heavy social media use can lead to a lot of problems, such as physical issues and depression.
By suggesting 100 minutes as a hard line where a password is required to be created by the user, TikTok is gradually making the standards clear as to what may be regarded as problematic social media habit in young people. Although these passwords for older teenagers can obviously be bypassed, they are a step in the right direction in encouraging children to use social media responsibly.
Also, parents who own their own TikTok accounts will be able to link with their children’s accounts, gaining additional, such as muting notifications (消息免打扰) and customizing time limits for different days in the week.
Algorithms (算法) that could tell parents if the child has been viewing dangerous material could soon be put into use. However, the difficulty in this is the amount of content available on the internet.
Ultimately, apps such as TikTok and Instagram will need to continue introducing more measures to improve online safety for children.
Lawmakers around the world are paying close attention to the effect social media has on the young, meaning that the development of new tools to improve its use will no doubt take place soon if big tech wishes to avoid additional legal issues.
1. Why did TikTok introduce screen time limits for teenagers?A.To protect their privacy. |
B.To develop their self-control. |
C.To improve family relationship. |
D.To prevent overuse of social media. |
A.Favourable. | B.Objective. | C.Concerned. | D.Disapproving. |
A.Type in a password to stop the use. |
B.Send a link to the children’s account. |
C.Set time limits through their own account. |
D.Use algorithms to remove dangerous content. |
A.Its effects on the young. | B.Legal pressure on its improvement. |
C.Its application to lawmaking. | D.Solutions to its technological issues. |