1 . The legal age to drive a car in the United States is 16. Getting a driver’s license on the day you turn 16 has long been a major life event for many young people in America.
But interest in driving among today’s teenagers has dropped sharply over the past 35 years. In 1983, 80 percent of 18-year-olds in America had a driver’s license — the document that permits a person to drive a motor vehicle. By 2018, that number had dropped to 61 percent. Among 16-year-olds, the number decreased from 46 percent in 1983 to 25 percent in 2018.
Young people say they have many reasons for delaying or avoiding getting a driver’s license. Some choose more environmentally friendly transportation choices. Others find driving to be stressful. And some simply do not care about cars at all.
Carmakers want to make their vehicles more attractive to young people. They seek to make cars more interesting to a generation raised on technology.
Mark Rushbrook is global director of Ford Performance Motorsports. “A big screen” is what today’s teen drivers want, he said. “I think what is important to them is staying connected in a safe way,” Rushbrook said. “The vehicle is an extension (延伸) of their iPhone or their screen device, they want to stay connected and bring their music and everything else with them into the car.”
Mark Reuss is president of General Motors. He said he believes there is still a market for young people who care about more than just their music and connectivity (连接功能). “You still have to deliver connectivity in something people love to look at and be seen in.” he said. “That generation has not been lost. They still want a great looking car...” He added, “There’s lots of different ways to make cars appealing and that doesn’t go away.”
1. How is paragraph 2 developed?| A．By giving examples. | B．By following the time line. |
| C．By giving reasons. | D．By making comparisons. |
| A．Feeling anxious when driving. | B．Lacking a sense of direction. |
| C．Not caring about the environment. | D．Hating public transportation. |
| A．Smarter cars will attract teens more. |
| B．Cars with iPhones are being expected. |
| C．Music connectivity is the most important for teens. |
| D．The car screen will be bigger and bigger. |
| A．They are not the biggest customers. | B．They prefer to drive in different ways. |
| C．They still want good-looking vehicles. | D．They will never change their driving taste. |
2 . It seems as if social media platforms have taken over our lives. According to a study, there were over 3.6 billion social media users in 2021. And that number is only expected to grow.
Although social media platforms have helped to keep friends and family connected, there is also a dark side to social media. To put it simply, it is a money making machine. This is partially because of social media influencers. A social media influencer is someone “who can shape audience’s attitudes through blogs, tweets, and the use of other social media”. You may be asking yourself, “Why would they want to do this, though?” The answer is simple: to make money. Social media influencers make money by promoting brands among their followers. In fact, influencer marketing is so profitable that the study reported that the industry is expected to reach $15 billion in value in 2022.
Social media influencers are now being called out because some of their actions have started to negatively impact the environment. One man in particular, who goes by Steve to remain anonymous (匿名的), noticed that some online influencers failed to follow rules when they went to national parks or public places. This included things like leaving garbage behind, or using drones (无人机) to take pictures from the sky.
Because of this, Steve made it his mission to stop social media influencers from hurting the environment with their bad behavior in order to get the “perfect shot”. In 2018, he made the account “Public Lands Hate You” to name and shame influencers who failed to follow the rules made to protect the environment. The account now has over 85 thousand followers.
He hoped that it could help some influencers find the light and right their wrongs. Steve said, “If everybody thought just a little bit more about their small actions and the impact those actions have on the environment and the people around them, I think that a lot of our bigger problems would be much more easily solved.”
1. What feature of social media influencers is mainly shown in paragraph 2?| A．Good communication. | B．Chasing profits. |
| C．Creative shows. | D．Volunteering service. |
| A．By giving examples. | B．By offering data. |
| C．By making comparisons. | D．By explaining reasons. |
| A．To win wide attention and attract more fans. |
| B．To get the influencers aware of their wrong deeds. |
| C．To make public places inaccessible to influencers. |
| D．To inform the influencers of the places for perfect shots. |
| A．Well begun is half done. | B．Practice makes perfect. |
| C．Every bit of effort counts. | D．Actions speak louder than words. |
3 . Salar de Uyuni is a world-famous area of Bolivia. The extremely dry land is flat and white and covered with salt from the earth, which makes many visitors go to the special place each year.
A young boy is having fun by taking unusual pictures of all the visitors, with a little help from a toy dinosaur. Eleven-year old Piter Condori takes photos of visitors standing on the salt flats and places the small dinosaur in a part of the frame. He does it in a way that makes it look as if the toy were running toward the people. Piter charges the tourists a little bit of money for each photo. At the end of each day, he takes home about $15 to help his family pay for food or to help his brothers and sisters buy toys. Food prices have shot up recently, making it harder for Piter’s family to buy everything it needs.
Piter’s father, Diego, works in the salt business. “We didn’t even have enough money to eat, so we have devoted ourselves to working in tourism as a family,” Diego said, stressing that it was hard for his business during the COVID-19 pandemic. He also said his family had a small amount of money saved which nearly ran out during the last two years. At the moment, Piter’s mother sells hand-made art to the salt flat’s visitors and his brothers and sisters help, too.
The Condori family is the same as many others in Bolivia. The South American nation depends strongly on tourism. One Bolivian tourism organization said visitors have decreased by 90 percent. The 2, 000 people who work in tourism have asked the government to remove some COVID-19 related restrictions.
The salt flats where Piter takes photos are one of the country’s top attractions. Actually the land also contains the material lithium (锂), which is used in electric vehicle batteries. But so far, that has not helped the local economy.
1. What best describes Piter according to paragraph 2?| A．Creative and considerate. | B．Enthusiastic and naughty. |
| C．Diligent and generous. | D．Independent and reliable. |
| A．He wants to find inspiration from photoing. |
| B．He takes the responsibility to raise family. |
| C．He volunteers to offer service to tourists. |
| D．He is forced by his parents to earn money. |
| A．The high expenses for their life. |
| B．The low income from salt business. |
| C．The serious influence of the pandemic. |
| D．The limited charges of taking photos. |
| A．A plan to make people work in tourism. |
| B．A solution to protecting natural resources. |
| C．An opportunity to develop local economy. |
| D．A suggestion on taking attractive photos. |
4 . An increasing number of the youth have become more worried about the climate change than ever before. Katie Cielinski and Aaron Regunberg are millennials (千禧一代). Before marrying in 2017, the couple struggled for nearly a decade on whether to have a baby on an already crowded planet. Katie argued for raising a climate guard to fight for a healthy planet, but Aaron feared for the future climate changes their child would face.
They are hardly alone in that struggle. About 60 percent of Americans between 27 and 45 worry about the carbon footprint of bringing a child into the world, according to a 2020 survey published in the journal Climatic Change. It also found that more than 96 percent said they are concerned about the well-being (幸福) of a child in a climate-changed world.
There is a piece of good news in all the anxiety. In the United States, the young who have the most anxiety are also the most confident that they could do something about it. They have built a widespread protest movement in an effort to prompt governments to act. In 2019, millions of youths took part in the same-day protests that went throughout the globe, from Sydney to New York to Mumbai, India’s largest city.
Jennifer Atkinson is a professor of the University of Washington, Bothell. “My students feel a mix of ‘sadness, fear and anger’ at the climate changes they’ve seen in their 20-odd years of life.” she says, “I don’t tell them to avoid these ‘negative (负面的) emotions’ —which are not actually negative at all, but a healthy response to loss. Sadness makes us clear what we love and do not want to lose, and anger drives us to fight against unfairness. I encourage my students to see these strong feelings as a kind of superpower to help make a better world.”
1. What causes the disagreement on whether to have a baby for the couple?| A．Climate change. | B．The crowded planet. |
| C．The way to raise it. | D．The cost to feed it. |
| A．To list figures. | B．To offer an evidence. |
| C．To explain reasons. | D．To make comparison |
| A．prevent. | B．drive. |
| C．advise. | D．allow. |
| A．Anger will lead to fairness. |
| B．Fear is a strong negative emotion. |
| C．We should deal well with negative feelings. |
| D．her students feel sad at the climate change. |
5 . Picture the scene: you’ve spent years working towards a very specific goal. You’ve put in countless hours of work and made many efforts along the way, but now that you’ve got there it doesn’t feel quite like you imagined. Instead of celebration, you feel emptiness, confusion and doubt.
Welcome to the anti-climax. The often-experienced but seldom-discussed downside of achieving life’s biggest milestones. Many of us work tirelessly towards our goals. We may spend our lives dreaming of the day we get married, publish our first hook or buy our first home. However, oftentimes, when we achieve these things it doesn’t feel quite as expected. In fact, the achievement of these goals feels a bit of a letdown.
So why do we often experience an anti-climax with big goals, even though we’re happy to achieve them? “An anti-climax can be an unexpected by-product of a milestone achievement. Usually, the more significant the milestone, the greater the anti-climax may be. The intensity（强度）of an anti-climax often relies on what we expect of this achievement.” says Rachel Vora. a psychotherapist（心理治疗师）.“The journey to achieving a milestone can he exciting and tiring in addition to giving us a sense of purpose and focus. Therefore, when this disappears overnight. we can often feel lost and confused, in spite of feeling proud of our achievement.
When this happens it can contribute to a mixture of emotions. We often falsely believe that we’ll feel completely different afterwards or that our feelings of low self-worth will disappear, but this is rarely the case. “Clients（客户）often present to me with an extremely great sense of ‘is this it?’ and ‘what now?’.” says Vora. “These feelings of confusion and disappointment, if let ignored, have the potential to cause clients to be in low spirits, or even worse.”
1. Why does the author mention the examples in paragraph 2?| A．To present a fact. | B．To prove a rule. |
| C．To explain a term. | D．To make a prediction. |
| A．Low self-worth. | B．High expectations. |
| C．Sense of purpose. | D．Unexpected achievements. |
| A．Amy felt empty before giving a speech. |
| B．Jack felt lost after his first novel came out. |
| C．Mary felt proud when she joined a ballet club. |
| D．Tom felt doubtful about taking further education. |
| A．How to hold back feelings. |
| B．How to improve self-worth. |
| C．Hon to identify the anti-climax. |
| D．How to deal with the anti-climax. |
Rising sea levels are threatening coastlines in China, for example in
The good news is
The development of electric vehicles is particularly
Ecological civilization has become the cornerstone (基石) of China’s long-term development strategy, much like climate action is
7 . If you picnic in a Texas park, chances are you’ll encounter fire ants — a kind of pest that can deliver painful bites. This invasive (入侵的) species, like many others, is not only annoying but also destructive.
An invasive species is any kind of living thing that isn’t native to an ecosystem and causes harm. Sometimes non-native species are imported by accident, like in the 1930s when ships from South America inadvertently took fire ants to North America. Other times non-native species are imported deliberately. Some types of Asian fish that were originally imported to the U.S. from China to clean fish farms escaped and entered rivers. Green iguanas were brought to China, as pets, but irresponsible owners released them.
Non-native species have even been imported for emotional reasons. A man once released dozens of European starlings (八哥) in New York in an effort to bring all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare’s writings to America. Today, millions of starlings cause over $800 million in damage to U.S. agriculture every year. Invasive species’ global economic influence is also enormous. The U.S. government assesses that invasive species cost the American economy over $120 billion every year.
Invasive species can damage their host habitats by unbalancing local ecosystems. They often lack natural enemies in their new environment and out-compete native species for food and other resources. They also might feed on local species. Invasive species can also carry diseases for which local species have no immunity (免疫力). This can result in the loss of an entire native species.
Invasive species are among the leading threats to native wildlife. About 42% of threatened or endangered species are at risk due to invasive species. Unless people take serious action, the economic and environmental costs of invasive species will become disastrous.
1. What does the underlined word “inadvertently” mean in paragraph 2?| A．Separately. | B．Regularly. |
| C．Temporarily. | D．Unexpectedly. |
| A．To satisfy his wish. |
| B．To raise them as pets. |
| C．To copy Shakespeare’s behavior. |
| D．To do agricultural experiments. |
| A．Food shortage for native people. |
| B．Serious economic imbalance. |
| C．Economic and environmental problems. |
| D．Dangerous diseases for humans. |
| A．Wildlife Conservation |
| B．Protecting Native Species |
| C．Environmental Protection Measures |
| D．Our Unwelcome Guests |
8 . Like most of us, I try to be mindful of food that goes to waste. The arugula (芝麻菜)was to make a nice green salad, rounding out a roast chicken dinner. But I ended up working late. Then friends called with a dinner invitation. I stuck the chicken in the freezer. But as days passed, the arugula went bad. Even worse, I had unthinkingly bought way too much; I could have made six salads with what I threw out.
In a world where nearly 800 million people a year go hungry, “food waste goes against the moral grain,” as Elizabeth Royte writes in this month’s cover story. It’s jaw-dropping how much perfectly good food is thrown away — from “ugly” (but quite eatable) vegetables rejected by grocers to large amounts of uneaten dishes thrown into restaurant garbage cans.
Producing food that no one eats wastes the water, fuel, and other resources used to grow it. That makes food waste an environmental problem. In fact, Royte writes, “if food waste were a country, it would be the third largest producer of greenhouse gases in the world.”
If that’s hard to understand, let’s keep it as simple as the arugula at the back of my refrigerator. Mike Curtin sees my arugula story all the time — but for him, it's more like 12 bones of donated strawberries nearing their last days. Curtin is CEO of DC Central Kitchen in Washington, D.C., which recovers food and turns it into healthy meals. Last year it recovered more than 807,500 pounds of food by taking donations and collecting blemished (有瑕疵的) produce that otherwise would have rotted in fields. And the strawberries? Volunteers will wash, cut, and freeze or dry them for use in meals down the road.
Such methods seem obvious, yet so often we just don’t think. “Everyone can play a part in reducing waste, whether by not purchasing more food than necessary in your weekly shopping or by asking restaurants to not include the side dish you won’t eat,” Curtin says.
1. What does the author want to show by telling the arugula story?| A．We pay little attention to food waste. | B．We waste food unintentionally at times. |
| C．We waste more vegetables than meat. | D．We have good reasons for wasting food. |
| A．Moral decline. | B．Environmental harm. |
| C．Energy shortage. | D．Worldwide starvation. |
| A．It produces kitchen equipment. | B．It turns rotten arugula into clean fuel. |
| C．It helps local farmers grow fruits. | D．It makes meals out of unwanted food. |
| A．Buy only what is needed. | B．Reduce food consumption. |
| C．Go shopping once a week. | D．Eat in restaurants less often. |
9 . It was a cold Saturday night in February. Some 200 New Yorkers carefully made their way to the reservoir (水库) in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the magical snowy owl, who had touched down in the park the week before in what was reported as the first visit there by the species in more than 130 years.
Except for a few excited screams from children, people were quiet — patiently awaiting the owl’s arrival at the reservoir’s north gatehouse. The snowy owl did not disappoint. She flew down from the darkness and surveyed the water and the people holding phones and cameras before taking off into the night to the applause of her many fans. They simply wanted to see this lovely creature whose improbable appearance seemed to signify hope after the lockdown.
New Yorkers who had long taken Central Park for granted felt a renewed love for this rectangle of green in the heart of the big city and, of course, its amazing wildlife. That the park is a beautiful and essential refuge is something that humans have only come to fully appreciate during these recent times of uncertainty.
Central Park was originally planned and constructed during another difficult time in the nation’s history — in the years before and during the American Civil War. Unlike many European parks that had originally been built for the aristocracy (贵族), Central Park was designed as a public space. In its chief architect Frederick Law Olmsted’s words, the poor and rich alike could “easily go there after their day’s work is done” and “stroll for an hour, seeing, hearing, and feeling nothing of the noise of the streets.”
As spring turns into summer, we see people sitting on the grass or benches — catching some sun, having family picnics, or tapping away on their laptops and iPads. Just being in proximity to other people in Central Park gave us a sense of community — the sense that we would somehow persevere.
1. What did people do in Central Park on that Saturday night?| A．They cheered for each other. | B．They paid their first visit. |
| C．They came for a rare sight. | D．They appreciated a water event. |
| A．Give some examples. | B．Make a comparison. |
| C．Introduce a new opinion. | D．Add background information. |
| A．close to | B．free from |
| C．at a distance from | D．in comparison with |
| A．Find Refuge in Central Park |
| B．Take Your Breath by Snow Owl |
| C．Trace Central Park to difficult times |
| D．Meet an improbable “visitor” in person |
10 . If you have a chance to talk with a historical figure, who would you like it to be? What would you like to know about the past or share from today? China in the Classics, a new TV show based on Chinese classics started by China Central Television (CCTV) in February, is exploring such possibilities.
In the first episode, the host of the show, Sa Beining, meets ancient Confucian scholar Fu Sheng, who interpreted Shangshu — The Book of Documents. Regarded as one of the five classics of ancient Chinese Confucianism masterpieces, the book records many firsts in the country. Even the expression zhongguo (China) is used there first.
The episode ends with the host bringing Fu to today’s modern society, where the scholar is happy to find children learning the same things he had learned in his childhood. It increased the rating of the series with viewers giving it 9 out of 10 on Douban, a film and TV show reviewing website popular among young people.
The success of China in the Classics doesn’t surprise Shen Haixiong, head of the China Media Group. Shen said in an article in the journal Qiushi, “We are happy to see the program is popular among the public, but we are prouder to find that innovative interpretation of Chinese classics is arousing young people’s interest in Chinese culture.”
Therefore, TV channels have been making bold attempts in recent years to attract today’s younger generations. The Nation’s Greatest Treasures, CCTV’s cultural show in 2017, showcased China’s history and culture through antiques in the top-class museums, and fired up the audience. The treasures include the 3,300-year-old Yinxu Ruins in Henan Province and the 1,300-year-old Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet Autonomous Region.
CCTV should make a variety of programs showcasing classics and cultural traditions to appeal to the young generation’s aesthetics, said Zhou, a professor at the School of Arts and Communication, Beijing Normal University.
1. Why is The Book of Documents mentioned in paragraph 2?| A．To introduce a historical figure. | B．To inform us of the host. |
| C．To show the popularity of the show. | D．To describe a new TV show. |
| A．Surprised. | B．Confused. | C．Satisfied. | D．Neutral. |
| A．Chinese treasures. | B．Another TV programme. |
| C．Yinxu Ruins in Henan. | D．Young Chinese audience. |
| A．CCTV Produces Some Famous TV shows | B．TV Shows on Chinese Classics Grow Popular |
| C．Scholars Focus Attention on Chinese Classics | D．China in the Classics Fires up the Audience |
