1 . “One of the reasons I find this topic very interesting is because my mom was a smoker when I was younger.” says Lindson-Hawley, who studies tobacco and health at the University of Oxford.

By studying about 700 adult smokers, she found out that her mom quit the right way—by stopping abruptly and completely.

In her study, participants were randomly assigned to two groups. One had to quit abruptly on a given day, going from about a pack a day to zero. The other cut down gradually over the course of two weeks. People in both groups used nicotine(尼古丁) patches before they quit, in addition to a second form of nicotine replacement, like gum or spray. They also had talk therapy with a nurse before and after quit day.

Six months out, more people who had quit abruptly had stuck with it—more than one-fifth of them, compared to about one-seventh in the other group. Although these numbers appear low, it is much higher than if people try without support.

And the quit rates were particularly convincing given that before the study started, most of the people had said they’d rather cut down gradually before quitting. “If you’re training for a marathon, you wouldn’t expect to turn up and just be able to run it. And I think people see that for smoking as well. They think, “Well, if I gradually reduce, it’s like practice.” “says Lindson-Hawley. But that wasn’t the case. Instead of giving people practice, the gradual reduction likely gave them cravings(瘾) and withdrawal symptoms before they even reached quit day, which could be why fewer people in that group actually made it to that point. “Regardless of your stated preference, if you’re ready to quit, quitting abruptly is more effective.” says Dr. Gabriela Ferreira.“When you can quote a specific number like a fifth of the patients were able to quit, that’s convincing. It gives them the encouragement, I think, to really go for it.”Ferreira says.

People rarely manage to quit the first time they try. But at least, she says, they can maximize the odds of success.

1. What does Lindson-Hawley say about her mother?

A．She quit smoking with her daughter’s help.

B．She studied the smoking patterns of adult smokers.

C．She was also a researcher of tobacco and health.

D．She succeeded in quitting smoking abruptly.

2. What kind of support did smokers receive to quit smoking in Lindson-Hawley’s study?

A．They were offered nicotine replacements.

B．They were looked after by physicians.

C．They were encouraged by psychologists.

D．They were given physical training.

3. How does Dr. Gabriela Ferreira view the result of Lindson-Hawley’s experiment?

A．It is unexpected.	B．It is idealized.
C．It is encouraging.	D．It is misleading.

4. The idea of “a marathon” (Para.5) illustrates the popular belief that quitting smoking

A．is a challenge at the beginning	B．needs some practice first
C．requires a lot of patience	D．is something few can accomplish

5. What happens when people try to quit smoking gradually?

A．They feel much less pain in the process.	B．They are simply unable to make it.
C．They show fewer withdrawal symptoms.	D．They find it even more difficult.

2 . Conservationists go to war over whether humans are the measure of nature’s value. New Conservationists argue such trade-offs are necessary in this human dominated epoch. And they support “re-wilding”, a concept originally proposed by Soule where people curtail economic growth and withdraw from landscapes, which then return to nature.

New Conservationists believe the withdrawal could happen together with economic growth. The California-based Breakthrough Institute believes in a future where most people live in cities and rely less on natural resources for economic growth.

They would get food from industrial agriculture, including genetically modified foods, desalination intensified meat production and aquaculture, all of which have a smaller land footprint. And they would get their energy from renewables and natural gas.

Driving these profound shifts would be greater efficiency of production, where more products could be manufactured from fewer inputs. And some unsustainable commodities would be replaced in the market by other, greener ones — natural gas for coal, for instance, explained Michael Heisenberg, president of the Breakthrough Institute. Nature would, in essence, be decoupled from the economy.

And then he added a caveat: We are not suggesting decoupling as the paradigm to save the world, or that it solves all the problems or eliminates all the trade-offs.

Cynics (悲观者) may say all this sounds too utopian, but Breakthrough maintains the world is already on this path toward decoupling. Nowhere is this more evident than in the United Sates, according to Iddo Wernick, a research scholar at the Rockefeller University, who has examined the nation’s use of 100 main commodities.

Wenick and his colleagues looked at data carefully from the U.S. Geological Survey National Minerals Information Center, which keeps a record of commodities used from 1900 through the present day. They found that the use of 36 commodities (sand, iron ore, cotton etc.) in the U. S. Economy had peaked.

Another 53 commodities (nitrogen, timber, beef, etc.) are being used more efficiently per dollar value of gross domestic product than in the pre-1970s era. Their use would peak soon, Wernick said.

Only 11 commodities (industrial diamond, indium, chicken, etc.) are increasing in use (Greenwire, Nov.6), and most of these are employed by industries in small quantities to improve systems processes. Chicken use is rising because people are eating less beef, a desirable development since poultry cultivation has a smaller environmental footprint.

The numbers show the United States has not intensified resource consumption since the 1970s even while increasing its GDP and population, said Jesse Ausubel of the Rockefeller University.

“It seems like the 20th-century expectation we had, we were always assuming the future entailed greater consumption of resources,” Ausubel said. “But what we are seeing in the developed countries is, of course, peaks.”

1. What does the underlined word “trade-offs” refer to in the first paragraph?

A．The balance between human development and natural ecology.

B．The profitability of import and export trade.

C．The consumption of natural resources by industrial development.

D．The difficult plight of economies growth.

2. Which of the following is true of the views of the new environmentalists?

A．They believe that mankind should live in forests with rich vegetation.

B．They believe that mankind will need more natural resources in the future.

C．They believe that mankind is the master of the whole universe.

D．They believe that mankind should limit economic growth.

3. What can we infer from the last paragraph of the passage?

A．Natural resources cannot support economic development.

B．More resource consumption will not occur in a certain period of time.

C．Excessive resource consumption will not affect the ecological environment.

D．All resource consumption in developed countries has reached a peak.

4. What is the passage mainly about?

A．Urbanization and re-wildness.

B．Human existence and industrial development.

C．Socioeconomic development and resource consumption.

D．Commodity trading and raw material development.

3 . We say that technology is a double-edged sword—while it brings convenience, it also brings new problems. The sword of “social media” even has a gender preference in its damage. It cuts deeper into girls than boys.

Earlier studies have shown that spending too much time on social media is bad for teenagers’mental health. Constantly watching their friends show off “perfect” lives can hurt their own self-esteem. That’s not to mention the problems caused by online shaming and bullying.

Jean Twenge, a professor at San Diego State University in the US, recently discovered an alarming trend: Since 2010, the number of teenage girls who suffer from major depression—showing signs like self-harm and suicide—has increased much faster than that of boys. In an article she wrote at The Conversation, Twenge said social media, again, was to blame.

For starters, girls use social media more than boys. Boys tend to spend their screen time on games, where they talk to their teammates through headphones. This counts as real human contact. Girls, however, simply type and browse through posts, which is a much isolated experience. “They’re not having a real-time conversation with someone,” Mary Fristad, psychologist at The Ohio State University, told NPR.

And when it comes to online shaming, girls are also more vulnerable than boys. “Girls face more pressure about their appearance, which could be exacerbated (加重) by social media,” wrote Twenge.

Shannon McLaughlin, for example, is an 18-year-old from Blackburn College in the US. She shared with the Guardian how social media made her feel depressed. “I was constantly confronted by women with skinny bodies who were praised for the way they looked. This was only made worse by the diet fixes and skinny culture,” she said. But McLaughlin found a solution. She started volunteering with the National Citizen Service, where she made face-to-face contact with people. “It's so easy to forget the importance of real connections when we have hundreds of people that we’re trying to impress at our fingertips,” she told the Guardian. And she hopes that others “look up from their phones and focus more on the world around them”.

1. What did Twenge find in her recent study?

A．Overuse of social media harms teenagers’ mental health.

B．Social media does more harm to girls than boys.

C．Girls suffered more t rom bullving than boys.

D．Online shaming and bullving are to blame for teenagers’ depression.

2. Why do girls tend to feel more isolated than boys online, according to Mary Fristad?

A．Girls have less real-time interaction with people.

B．Playing games allows boys to have more fun than girls.

C．Girls suffer more pressure on social media.

D．Girls usually desire more contact with others.

3. The underlined word “vulnerable” in Paragraph 5 is closet in meaning to “_________”.

A．adjusting oneself well	B．fighting back bravely
C．being unconcerned about something	D．being likely to be at risk of something

4. What does McLaughlin advise teenage girls to do?

A．Ignore social media and stop following a diet.	B．Connect more with the real world.
C．Constantly take part in volunteer work.	D．Make better use of phones for socializing.

5. Which one is the best title?

A．A gender preference	B．Skinny culture
C．Social media anxiety	D．A double-edged sword

4 . Give the Senate (参议院) some credit in shaping the current immigration reform bill, it has come up with one idea that almost everyone hates. That’s the plan to create a new class of “guest workers”— immigrants who would be allowed to work in the U.S. for three two-year stretches, at most, provided that they return home to say for a year after each visit. Conservatives dislike the plan because they believe that the guest workers won’t return home after their visas expire. Liberals dislike it because they believe the program will depress American wages and trap guest workers. The only supporters of the bill are businesses that rely heavily on immigrant labor, and they’re probably just looking out for themselves.

With the broader concern about the effect of illegal immigration, the hostility to the new plan is understandable. However imperfect, the guest-worker program is better than any politically feasible alternative. Opponents of immigration sometimes imply that adding workers to a work-force automatically brings wages down. But immigrants tend to work in different industries than native workers, and have different skills, and so they often end up complementing (补充) native workers rather than competing with them. That can make native workers more productive and therefore better off.

According to a recent study by the economists Gianmarco I. P. Ottaviano and Giovanni Peri, immigration actually boosted the wages of most American workers; its only negative effect was a small one, on the wages of workers without a high-school diploma And if by increasing the number of legal guest workers we reduced the number of undocumented workers, the economy would benefit even more.

Guest workers are also, paradoxically, less likely than illegal immigrants to become permanent residents. The U.S. already has a number of smaller and less plans routinely overstay their visas. One remarkable study found that after border enforcement was stepped up in 1993, the chance of an illegal immigrant returning to his homeland to stay fell by a third.

In fact, whatever benefits the guest-worker program brought to the U.S. economy or to particular businesses, the biggest winners would be the workers themselves. There are fear, if any, foreign-aid programs that do as much for people in developing countries as simply allowing them to work in U.S. legally. This program’s costs to American workers are insignificant, the gains for the guest workers are enormous, and the U.S. economy will benefit. This is that rare option which is both sensible and politically possible.

1. According to the passage the guest-worker program________.

A．allows immigrants to work in the U.S. for six continuous years

B．has aroused criticism from conservatives, liberals and the business world

C．will make local workers more productive as it brings fierce competition

D．is a sensible approach to resolving the illegal immigration problems

2. Gianmarco I.P. Ottaviano & Giovanni Peri point out that immigration________.

A．is immune from negative effects

B．will root out undocumented laborers

C．has led to economic prosperity and social stability

D．has enhanced wages of most American workers

3. Which of the following is TRUE according to Paragraph 4?

A．Illegal immigrants are more likely to stay permanently in the U.S. than guest worker

B．With stepped-up border control, illegal immigrants were more likely to stay in their homeland.

C．Workers in temporary-worker programs usually paid no attention to their visa direction.

D．Guest workers will not stay too long because of the enhanced border enforcement.

4. From the author’s analysis, who will probably NOT benefit from the guest workers’ bill?

A．The guest workers.	B．The native workers.
C．The illegal immigrants.	D．The businesses.

5. What is the author’s attitude towards guest workers’ plan?

A．Indifferent

B．Neutral

C．Favorable

D．Negative

8 . One of our biggest fears nowadays is that our kids might someday get lost in a “sea of technology” rather than experiencing the natural world. Fear-producing TV and computer games are leading to a serious disconnect between kids and the great outdoors, which will change the wild places of the world, its creatures and human health for the worse, unless adults get working on child’s play.

Each of us has a place in nature we go sometimes, even if it was torn down. We cannot be the last generation to have that place. At this rate, kids who miss the sense of wonder outdoors will not grow up to be protectors of natural landscapes. “If the decline in parks use continues across North America, who will defend parks against encroachment (蚕食)?” asks Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods.

Without having a nature experience, kids, can turn out just fine, but they are missing out a huge enrichment of their lives. That applies to everything from their physical health and mental health, to stress levels, creativity and cognitive (认知的) skills. Experts predict modern kids will have poorer health than their parents — and they say a lack of outside play is surely part of it; research suggests that kids do better academically in schools with a nature component and that play in nature fosters (培养) leadership by the smartest, not by the toughest. Even a tiny outdoor experience can create wonder in a child. The three-year-old turning over his first rock realizes he is not alone in the world. A clump of trees on the roadside can be the whole universe in his eyes. We really need to value that more.

Kids are not responsible. They are over-protected and frightened. It is dangerous out there from time to time, but repetitive stress from computers is replacing breaking an arm as a childhood rite (仪式) of passage.

Everyone, from developers, to schools and outdoor citizens, should help regain for our kids some of the freedom and joy of exploring, taking friendship in fields and woods that cement love, respect and need for landscape. As parents, we should devote some of our energies to taking our kids into nature. This could yet be our greatest cause.

1. The main idea of Paragraph 2 is that ________.

A．kids miss the sense of wonder outdoors

B．parks are in danger of being gradually encroached

C．Richard Louv is the author of Last Child in the Woods

D．children are expected to develop into protectors of nature

2. According to the passage, children without experiencing nature will ________.

A．be less healthy both physically and mentally

B．be over-protected by their parents

C．keep a high sense of wonder

D．change wild places and creatures for the better

3. According to the author, children’s breaking an arm is ________.

A．the fault on the part of their parents

B．the natural experience in their growing up

C．the result of their own carelessness in play

D．the effect of their repetitive stress from computers

4. What does the underlined word “cement” in the last paragraph mean?

A．Weaken.

B．Strengthen.

C．Lower.

D．Decease.

5. In writing this passage, the author mainly intends to ________.

A．blame children for getting lost in computer games

B．encourage children to protect parks from encroachment

C．show his concern about children’s lack of experience in nature

D．inspire children to keep the sense of wonder about things around

9 . When people get old and have difficulty working full time, they retire and begin a new, more relaxing lifestyle. But what about old industrial buildings? Can they start anew?

China seems to find a good solution for them. In recent years, many abandoned factories, railway yards, warehouses and mills( 磨 坊 )have been transformed into cultural and tourist sites. According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, there are now 194 items on the country’s national industrial heritage list.

The 798 Art Zone in Beijing is an iconic example. Built in the 1950s as No. 718 Joint Factory, it was gradually abandoned in the 1990s as production slowed down. In 2006, Beijing’s municipal government invested over 120 million yuan and improved its infrastructure( 基础设施)condition, turning the factory complex into a cultural and creative industrial base. Now the art zone holds about 200 galleries, art centers as well as fashionable boutiques( 精品店), cafes, and restaurants, which also earns it a place on the bucket list of many tourists, noted The Paper.

Jack Liu is a frequenter of the art zone who visits it every weekend. “In the art zone, you can refresh memories of the development of Chinese manufacturing through its old buildings,” said the 28-year-old to Teens. “However, in art galleries here you will feel pulled into a fashionable, modern world. It’s amazing.”

Industrial heritage sites, which used to be filled with the rumbling of machines, are now precious pages of the book on the industrial culture of China, noted People’s Daily.

Since these heritage sites are rich and diverse in content, cities in China also spare no effort to explore new ways and models to protect and utilize them.

For example, a beer museum has been set up inside a century-old plant of the Tsingtao Brewery in Qingdao, Shandong province, bringing people closer to the long history of the brewery. Some abandoned plants in Beijing have also been remade for city explorers to take adventures in.

Just as the elderly need our care and love, these industrial heritages are also expected to be injected with vitality through protection and development. “It is not only an inevitable trend of the innovation-driven development of cities, but a necessity for promoting new drivers of development,” noted People’s Daily.

1. What is China’s solution for old industrial buildings?

A．Expanding their space and uses.

B．Upgrading them to become attractions.

C．Integrating them with new buildings.

D．Returning them to their original condition.

2. What do we know about the 798 Art Zone?

A．It was established in the 1990s.

B．It mainly provides venues for fashion shows.

C．It’s China’s first cultural and creative industrial base.

D．It’s a successful example of transforming old industrial sites.

3. Why does the author mention the beer museum?

A．To show the popularity of industrial heritage sites.

B．To explain the importance of remaking old plants.

C．To introduce the features of industrial heritage sites.

D．To illustrate how industrial heritage sites can be used effectively.

4. What does the author think of industrial heritage sites?

A．They deserve to be brought back to life.

B．They can be drivers for city development.

C．They should give way to modern buildings.

D．They are reminders of a city’s development.

5. According to People’s Daily, which of the statements is not included?

A．Used to be filled with the rumbling of machines, industrial heritage sites are valuable pages of the book on the industrial culture of China.

B．The transformed old industrial buildings are an inevitable trend of the innovation-driven development of cities.

C．The transformed old industrial buildings really bring back memories of the development of Chinese manufacturing through its old buildings.

D．The transformed old industrial buildings are highly required for promoting new development.