1 . More than a billion people around the world have smart phones,almost all of which come with navigation(导航)apps such as Google or Apple Maps.This raises the questions we meet with any technology:What skills are we losing?What abilities are we gaining?

Talking with people who’re good at finding their way around or using paper maps,I often hear lots of frustration with digital maps.North/South direction gets messed up,and you can see only a small section at a time.

But consider what digital navigation aids have meant for someone like me.Despite being a frequent traveler,I’m so terrible at finding my way that I still use Google Maps every day in the small town where I have lived for many years.What looks like an imperfect product to some has been a significant expansion of my own abilities.

Part of the problem is that reading paper maps requires specific skills.There is nothing natural about them.In many developed nations,including the U.S.,one expects street names and house numbers to be meaningful references,and instructions such as“go north for three blocks and then west”make sense.In Istanbul,in contrast,where I grew up,none of those hold true.For one thing,the locals rarely use street names.Why bother when a government or a military group might change them again?Besides,the city is full of winding,ancient alleys that meet newer avenues at many angles.Instructions as simple as“go north”would require a helicopter or a bulldozer(推土机).

Let’s come back to my original questions.While we often lose some skills after leaving the work to technology,it may also allow us to expand our abilities.Consider the calculator:I don’t doubt that our arithmetic skills might have dropped a bit as the little machines became common,but calculations that were once boring and tricky are now much more straightforward and one can certainly do more complex calculations more confidently.

1. What is the drawback of digital maps?

A．They aren’t connected to smart phones.	B．They cost too much to download.
C．They leave some users frustrated.	D．They mix up the south and the north.

2. What’s the author’s attitude toward digital maps?

A．Doubtful

B．ambiguous

C．Supportive

D．Uncaring.

3. What does the author suggest in the last paragraph?

A．No calculators,no digital maps.

B．Technology is not developed in a day.

C．Two paper maps are better than a digital one.

D．When technology closes a door,it opens one as well.

2 . To have the once-in-a-lifetime chance to see rare Black Sea dolphins(海豚),people in the landlocked Russian town of Kaluga don't have to leave their city.In the parking lot of a large shopping mall is a white aquarium(水族馆):the Moscow Traveling Dolphinarium.

Russia's dozen or so traveling aquariums are seen as a way to bring native wild animals to people who might never see the ocean.Owners and operators of wildlife tourism attractions say their animals live longer than wild animals,and the animals under their care are with them for life.They’re family.

Alla Azovtseva,a longtime dolphin trainer in Russia,shakes her head.

“I don't see any sense in this work.My conscience bites me.I look at my animals and want to cry,”says Azovtseva.She has spent 20 years training dolphins to do tricks.But along the way she’s grown heartsick from the forcing highly intelligent, social creatures to live a lonely life in small tanks.“Dolphins have evolved to swim great distances and live in complex social groups-conditions that can't be reproduced in a pool,”she says.

“I would compare the dolphin situation with making a physicist sweep the street,”she says.“When they’re not engaged in performance or training,they just hang in the water facing down.It's the deepest depression.”

What people don't know about aquarium shows in Russia,Azovtseva says,is that the animals often die soon after being put in captivity(囚养),especially those in traveling shows.And Azovtseva,making clear she’s referring to the industry at large in Russia,says she knows many aquariums quietly and illegally replace their animals with new ones.

It's illegal to catch Black Sea dolphins in the wild for entertainment purposes,but aquarium owners who want to increase their dolphin numbers quickly and cheaply buy dolphins caught there.Because these dolphins are acquired illegally,they're missing the microchips that captive dolphins in Russia are usually tagged with as a form of required identification.

Some aquariums get around that,Azovtseva says,by cutting out dead dolphins’microchips and putting them into replacement dolphins.

1. What can be inferred about the town of Kaluga?

A．It is a seaside town.

B．It is a long way from the ocean.

C．It is full of traveling aquariums.

D．It is well known for dolphins.

2. What does Azovtseva really mean by shaking her head?

A．Dolphins in aquariums are actually treated badly.

B．Her work as a dolphin trainer is really boring.

C．Dolphins are more intelligent than people think.

D．People know little about how dolphins live.

3. What is the use of the microchips?

A．To show the dolphins are used legally.

B．To show the dolphins can be replaced.

C．To prove the dolphins are still alive.

D．To prove the dolphins are from the Black Sea.

4. What is the purpose of the text?

A．To give an account of how an aquarium works.

B．To draw people's attention to dolphin society.

C．To uncover the dark truth behind aquarium shows.

D．To report the dolphin situation in the world.

3 . For many parents, raising a teenager is like fighting a long war, but years go by without any clear winner. Like a border conflict between neighboring countries, the parent-teen war is about boundaries: Where is the line between what I control and what you do?

Both sides want peace, but neither feels it has any power to stop the conflict. In part, this is because neither is willing to admit any responsibility for starting it. From the parents’ point of view, the only cause of their fight is their adolescents’ complete unreasonableness. And of course, the teens see it in exactly the same way, except oppositely. Both feel trapped.

In this article, I’ll describe three no-win situations that commonly arise between teens and parents and then suggest some ways out of the trap. The first no-win situation is quarrels over unimportant things. Examples include the color of the teen’s hair, the cleanliness of the bedroom, the preferred style of clothing, the child’s failure to eat a good breakfast before school, or his tendency to sleep until noon on the weekends. Second, blaming. The goal of a blaming battle is to make the other admit that his bad attitude is the reason why everything goes wrong. Third, needing to be right. It doesn’t matter what the topic is—politics, the laws of physics, or the proper way to break an egg—the point of these arguments is to prove that you are right and the other person is wrong, for both wish to be considered an authority—someone who actually knows something—and therefore to command respect. Unfortunately, as long as parents and teens continue to assume that they know more than the other, they’ll continue to fight these battles forever and never make any real progress.

1. Why does the author compare the parent-teen war to a border conflict?

A．Both are about where to draw the line.

B．Both can continue for generations.

C．Neither has any clear winner.

D．Neither can be put to an end.

2. What does the underlined part in Paragraph 2 mean?

A．The teens tend to have a full understanding of their parents.

B．The teens agree with their parents on the cause of the conflict.

C．The teens cause their parents of misleading them.

D．The teens blame their parents for starting the conflict.

3. Parents and teens want to be right because they want to ______.

A．give orders to the other

B．know more than the other

C．gain respect from the other

D．get the other to behave properly

4. What will the author most probably discuss in the paragraph that follows?

A．Solutions for the parent-teen problems.

B．Examples of the parent-teen war.

C．Causes for the parent-teen conflicts.

D．Future of the parent-teen relationship.

4 . The average American child spends three to five hours a day watching TV. In 1961, the average child began to watch television at age three; however, today it is nine months. Yet, most parents think that television has bad influence on their children. For example, in the early 1970s, my parents believed that my bad eyesight was the result of sitting too close to the screen, and they therefore made my stay at least six feet from it. Today, most people have no such worry, but many new ridiculous (荒谬的) sayings have appeared:

TV makes kids stupid. The opposite is true. Many children watch more educational programs when they are pre-schoolers. When they grow up, they can read more books and have much better ideas to solve difficult problems than other children.

TV makes kids violent. The real story is not so simple. Hundreds of studies show that watching violence on TV makes children more aggressive (好斗的). But a study of over 5,000 children also finds that some positive programs make children kinder. The problem is that kids are increasingly watching shows with violence instead of those suitable for their age.

Sitting around watching TV makes kids overweight. An experiment finds that when children watch less television, they do lose extra weight; however, reducing their television time does not make them more active. The real problem lies in snacking (吃零食), a widespread habit for kids.

TV helps kids get to sleep. The opposite is true. The more television children watch, the more likely they are to have irregular sleep and nap(小睡) patterns. Allowing kids to watch television is part of the problem, not the solution.

1. Which one is the advantage of educational TV programs?

A．They will improve children’s ability to get along with others.

B．They will make children solve difficult problems better than others.

C．They are likely to make children more aggressive.

D．They will make sure of children’s success in the future.

2. Why are children spending much time watching TV likely to be fat?

A．Watching TV makes children lazy and inactive.

B．Watching TV makes children sleepy.

C．Watching TV doesn’t burn up as much fat as doing sports.

D．Children like to snack while watching TV.

3. What influence does watching TV have on a child’s sleep?

A．It will make children form a bad habit of sleeping.

B．Children’s sleep time will be greatly reduced.

C．Children are likely to sleep deeper after watching TV.

D．It will make children sleep easier.

4. What is the purpose of this text?

A．To increase people’s knowledge of watching TV.

B．To warn parents of the disadvantages of watching TV.

C．To explain the bad influences that watching TV has on children.

D．To correct parents’ wrong ideas of television’s effect on children.

5 . Clothing rental is a hot new industry and retailers (零售商) are demanding to get on board in hopes of attracting green shopper.

But is renting fashion actually more environmentally-friendly than buying it, and if so, how much more? Journalist and author Elizabeth Cline investigated (调查) this question and concluded that it's not as sustainable as it seems.

Take shipping, for example, which has to go two ways if an item is rented — receiving and returning. Cline writes that consumer transportation has the second largest carbon footprint of our collective fashion habit after manufacturing.

She writes, ''An item ordered online and then returned can send out 20 kilograms of carbon each way, and increases up to 50 kilograms for rush shipping. By comparison, the carbon impact of a pair of jeans purchased from a physical store and washed and worn at home is 33.4 kilograms, according to a 2015 study by Levi's.''

Then there's the burden of washing, which has to happen for every item when it's returned, regardless of whether or not it was worn. For most rental services, this usually means dry cleaning, a high impact and polluting process. All the rental services that Cline looked into have replaced perchloroethylene (氯乙烯), a carcinogenic (致癌的) air pollutant, still used by 70 percent of US dry cleaners, with alternatives, although these aren't great either.

Lastly, Cline fears that rental services will increase our appetite for fast fashion, simply because it's so easily accessible. There's something called ''share washing'' that makes people waste more precisely because a product or service is shared and thus is regarded as more eco-friendly. Uber is one example of this, advertised as ''a way to share rides and limit ear ownership.'' and yet ''it has been proven to discourage walking,bicycling, and public transportation use.''

Renting clothes is still preferable to buying them cheap and throwing them in the dustbin after a few wears, but we shouldn't let the availability of these services make us too satisfied. There's an even better step — that's wearing what is already in the closet.

1. What is Elizabeth Cline's attitude toward clothing rental?

A．Approving.	B．Unfavorable.
C．Objective.	D．Enthusiastic.

2. The Uber example in Paragraph 6 indicates that      .

A．rental services are on the rise

B．clothing rental will be as successful as Uber

C．renting clothes might waste more than expected

D．renting clothes might make people lose interest in fast fashion

3. The author suggests that we should      .

A．give up renting any clothing

B．purchase inexpensive clothes

C．rent clothes rather than buy them

D．make full use of clothes we've possessed

4. What is the passage mainly about?

A．Clothing rental is a new fashion.

B．Clothing rental is retailers' preference.

C．Renting clothes is not that eco-friendly.

D．Renting-clothes business is in a dilemma.

6 . Like many of the protesters (抗议者) at Occupy Wall Street in New York, Amanda Vodola is young, underemployed and loaded with student debt. She spends her days _________, helping _________ the movement, and her evenings waiting tables at a restaurant in Brooklyn. Last spring, she graduated from Fordham University with a degree in English. “I grew up with this narrative that to get a good job I need to go to school,” she says. But the job she has “is not enough to pay the bills”. And the bills she has _________ most about are the ones tied to that narrative: the $30,000 she _________ in college loans.

In November, when their six-month grace period run _________, Vodola and millions of other students who graduated in May have to start _________ their loans. Repayment requirements for private loans kick in (开始生效) _________ whether _________ have found jobs. Since employment rates for recent college graduates have _________ in the past two years, as have starting salaries, the __________ of a sharp rise in student-loan delinquencies (到期未付) has led some economists to __________ that this could be the next __________ crisis, rippling (波及) into the wider economy. Total US student-loan debt, which __________ credit-card debt for the first time last year, is on track to __________ $1,000 billion this year. That’s a nearly 8% __________ over last year.

But neither these __________ nor the voices of students, __________ by debt, at protests in cities and on campuses throughout the nation are likely to keep the families of high school seniors from seeing a brand-name education as a __________ to a better life. They’ve long been told that higher education is an __________ in the future—even as the costs of college has __________ 538% over the past thirty years.

1.

A．running around

B．keeping fit

C．warming up

D．checking out

2.

A．establish

B．resemble

C．found

D．organize

3.

A．puzzled

B．interrupted

C．worried

D．carried

4.

A．collects

B．owes

C．costs

D．accounts

5.

A．down

B．up

C．off

D．out

6.

A．raising

B．repaying

C．rearranging

D．rating

7.

A．although

B．in contrast with

C．regardless of

D．because of

8.

A．borrowers

B．owners

C．lenders

D．holders

9.

A．dropped

B．changed

C．collapsed

D．slimmed

10.

A．stability

B．possibility

C．promotion

D．security

11.

A．command

B．instruct

C．appreciate

D．predict

12.

A．political

B．religious

C．financial

D．legal

13.

A．decreased

B．topped

C．compared

D．lowered

14.

A．hit

B．knock

C．blow

D．strike

15.

A．advance

B．progress

C．transfer

D．increase

16.

A．conclusions

B．graphs

C．statistics

D．abstracts

17.

A．rejected

B．burdened

C．admitted

D．boycotted

18.

A．sign

B．label

C．fame

D．ticket

19.

A．investment

B．instrument

C．indication

D．inspiration

20.

A．strengthened

B．flown

C．zoomed

D．broken

7 . High school biology teacher Kelly Chavis knew smartphones were a problem in her class. But not even the students realized how much of a problem the devices were until Chavis did an in-class experiment.

For one class period, students used a whiteboard to count every Snapchat, Instagram, text, call that appeared on their phones. Chavis is among a growing number of teachers, parents and health experts who believe that smartphones are now partly to blame for increasing the levels of student anxiety. “One girl, just during the one hour, got close to 150 Snapchat notifications. 150!” she said.

Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University in California, said it is not a coincidence that youth mental health issues have risen with the number of phones. “This use of phones has led to a loss of sleep and face-to-face interactions necessary for their growth,” she said.

Researchers are still not sure whether phones cause student depression or depression causes phone use. But nearly 60 percent of parents said they worry about the influence of social media on their child’s physical and mental health.

Both schools and parents are starting to take steps to deal with the problem. Many public schools pay outside companies to watch students’ social media activity for signs of anxiety. Other schools invite in yoga teachers and comfort dogs to help calm students.

1. What’s the purpose of Chavis’s experiment?

A．To see how many students have smartphones.

B．To find out how popular her students are.

C．To show smartphones influence teenagers greatly.

D．To tell her students how to use smartphones wisely.

2. How did Kelly Chavis feel about the result?

A．Shocked.

B．Excited.

C．Satisfied.

D．Frightened.

3. Which of the following is true according to Jean Twenge?

A．Students are now under great stress.

B．Students spend too much money on smartphones.

C．Over-using phones cause drops in students’ grades.

D．Over-using phones may harm students’ body and mind.

4. What might be talked about if the passage is continued?

A．How other schools deal with students’ phones.

B．Whether the ways to handle phones are effective.

C．How some parents deal with their children’s phones.

D．Whether students are willing to give up using phones.