1 . 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. |
2 . The teenage years are probably the most unsettled and stressful years in a person’s life. Teens experience significant physical, emotional, social and cognitive changes. And teens of today face more challenges as they go through more uncertain times of the 21st century.
As teens experience massive physical, social and emotional changes, the challenges are managing social expectations of ideal body images, developing their identity and finding their place in the world. In the past, a teen who was criticized for his or her larger figure or pimpled (有粉刺的) face, might feel embarrassed and dejected in school.
There have been many discussions about new technologies and ways of working, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and automation, which will impact future jobs.
| A．They can also be spread quickly by sharing with others. |
| B．Furthermore, social media has taken bullying to a new level. |
| C．The future has always been a dreamland for teens to anticipate. |
| D．Today, these same sufferings can be expanded by social media. |
| E．Social media, and technological advances are posing new challenges. |
| F．Additionally, social media is a strong tool for a teen to defend himself. |
| G．The challenge for a teen today is preparing for a largely unknown future. |
3 . Have you ever made your life look a little more attractive on social media than it actually is? If so, you may be damaging your mental health.
The posts we make on social media platforms allow us to look back and see what we did on a given day. But what happens when, in an effort to impress our online friends, photos and videos we post become beautiful versions of the things we did?
A young girl named Sophia went out to a romantic anniversary dinner with her boyfriend, had a near relationship-ending fight during dessert, then came home and posted, “Had the best time out with the love of my life!”—even with a photo of the meal. No surprise, but according to a new study, Sophia was by no means unique. Two-thirds of users admit lying about their lives on social media with 20 percent of young people between the ages of 18 and 24 stating that they edit their own stories by frequently lying about relationships and promotions.
By beautifying our online stories, we are harming our memories. We start believing the stories we tell rather than remembering what really has happened. Soon, the real experience is lost and all that remains is the beautified version of history.
Scientists fear that these edited stories will end up changing our memories. It’s well confirmed through research that our own memories are often unreliable and can be easily controlled. Writing down one’s life in the form of a journal, or even on social media can help us keep our memories undamaged, but only if we tell the truth. And recording our experiences through whatever medium, to later recall lessons we have learned, is not only acceptable but desirable. In fact, looking back on our own past—however embarrassing or uncomfortable—is not just healthy but can be enjoyable.
1. Why did Sophia post her story with a photo of the meal?| A．To make herself attractive. | B．To show her photography skill. |
| C．To convince others of her story. | D．To show how amazing the meal was. |
| A．Encouraging. | B．Critical. | C．Humorous. | D．Enthusiastic. |
| A．recalling the unpleasant past can also be enjoyable |
| B．writing down our life on social media does no good to us |
| C．recording our experiences through media is unacceptable |
| D．editing our own stories will make us unreliable |
| A．Leaving others a good impression is desirable. |
| B．Editing our online stories weakens our memory. |
| C．Posting our experiences on social media is risky. |
| D．Beautifying our history ends up hurting ourselves. |
4 . Forty-five minutes was considered an appropriate amount of time to supply 12-year-old me — and 20 other teenagers — with enough information about eating disorders to last us through high school. A documentary shown on a dusty VHS tape that had obviously been in use since the early 2000s, about two girls suffering from anorexia and bulimia, had been my only source for eating disorder awareness for five years. No reflection time followed, no discussion was started, and no questions were asked.
Flash forward five years I still know nothing. It wasn’t until I was 16 that I learned, via TikTok, that my daily diet of 1,000 calories is barely enough for a two-year-old, let alone a developing teenager. Despite being educated in America’s sixth best county in education, I only had a single image of what an eating disorder looked like: a skin-and-bones teenage girl with sunken eyes. Schools are clearly ill-equipped to educate students on eating disorders and how they can prevent them.
Teenagers have failed to learn about the most common eating disorder in the country because it isn’t taught in many school curriculum: binge eating disorder (暴食症). It is more common than anorexia, affecting 2.8 million Americans, including 1.2 percent of all adolescents. Additionally, it’s reported that males make up 40 percent of those with binge eating disorder, which contradicts the existing opinion that only women are affected by eating disorders.
Instead of learning about eating disorders, my junior health class taught me how to count my calories. According to registered dietitian Christy Harrison, “disordered eating patterns began with calorie counting.” Despite this, health classes across the country continue to require students to track their daily calorie intake.
We need a developed and well-informed eating disorder curriculum. After all, the damage of a seemingly harmless 45-minute video may last someone a lifetime.
1. Why is TikTok mentioned in paragraph 2?| A．To prove the author’s limited calorie intake. |
| B．To imply the author’s rich supply of information. |
| C．To stress the lack of education on eating disorders. |
| D．To highlight the influence of social media on kids. |
| A．Anorexia. | B．Bulimia. | C．Dieting. | D．Binge eating disorder. |
| A．Negative. | B．Positive. | C．Neutral. | D．Ambiguous. |
| A．A science report. | B．A documentary review. |
| C．An argumentative essay. | D．An autobiography excerpt. |
5 . Today it is common to see people who walk about with colored wires hanging from their ears wherever they go. They move about in their personal bubbles，sometimes unaware of what’s happening around them.
For me, walking around in my own personal bubble is perfect.
Suppose you’re at work and about to make an incredible breakthrough，but a colleague suddenly turns up. At this precise moment，the slightest disturbance would break your concentration.
Pretty soon，not only will we have pretty colored wires hanging from our ears，but also our brains will be directly plugged into some new high-tech instrument. We’ll be in a virtual world，communicating with everyone else，as we like. In this world，we will all be permanently plugged in.
In the end, there is a thin line between using technology as a tool for making life better and being a slave to it! It’s so strange—suddenly. I don’t feel like wearing my earphones anymore.
| A．Our instruments are changing quickly. |
| B．I also have wires hanging from my ears. |
| C．In the home situation，teenagers love these wires. |
| D．I don’t have to deal with the noise from the environment. |
| E．After all，I am listening to my favourite music and would rather not be disturbed. |
| F．They walk around in their own spaces, with their personal “digital noise reduction systems”. |
| G．Listening to music through earphones is one of the perfect ways to ignore such interruptions. |
6 . Who is a genius? This question has greatly interested humankind for centuries.
Let’s state clearly: Einstein was a genius. His face is almost the international symbol for genius. But we want to go beyond one man and explore the nature of genius itself. Why is it that some people are so much more intelligent or creative than the rest of us? And who are they?
In the sciences and arts, those praised as geniuses were most often white men, of European origin. Perhaps this is not a surprise. It’s said that history is written by the victors, and those victors set the standards for admission to the genius club. When contributions were made by geniuses outside the club—women, or people of a different color or belief—they were unacknowledged and rejected by others.
A study recently published by Science found that as young as age six, girls are less likely than boys to say that members of their gender(性别)are “really, really smart.” Even worse, the study found that girls act on that belief: Around age six they start to avoid activities said to be for children who are “really, really smart.” Can our planet afford to have any great thinkers become discouraged and give up? It doesn’t take a genius to know the answer: absolutely not.
Here’s the good news. In a wired world with constant global communication, we’re all positioned to see flashes of genius wherever they appear. And the more we look, the more we will see that social factors(因素)like gender, race, and class do not determine the appearance of genius. As a writer says, future geniuses come from those with “intelligence, creativity, perseverance(毅力), and simple good fortune, who are able to change the world.”
1. What does the author think of victors’ standards for joining the genius club?| A．They’re unfair. | B．They’re conservative. |
| C．They’re objective. | D．They’re strict. |
| A．They think themselves smart. |
| B．They look up to great thinkers. |
| C．They see gender differences earlier than boys. |
| D．They are likely to be influenced by social beliefs |
| A．Improved global communication. |
| B．Less discrimination against women. |
| C．Acceptance of victors’ concepts. |
| D．Changes in people’s social positions. |
| A．Geniuses Think Alike | B．Genius Takes Many Forms |
| C．Genius and Intelligence | D．Genius and Luck |
7 . You’ve heard that plastic is polluting the oceans — between 4.8 and 12.7 million tonnes enter ocean ecosystems every year. But does one plastic straw or cup really make a difference? Artist Benjamin Von Wong wants you to know that it does. He builds massive sculptures out of plastic garbage, forcing viewers to re-examine their relationship to single-use plastic products.
At the beginning of the year, the artist built a piece called “Strawpocalypse,” a pair of 10-foot-tall plastic waves, frozen mid-crash. Made of 168,000 plastic straws collected from several volunteer beach cleanups, the sculpture made its first appearance at the Estella Place shopping center in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Just 9% of global plastic waste is recycled. Plastic straws are by no means the biggest source (来源) of plastic pollution, but they’ve recently come under fire because most people don’t need them to drink with and, because of their small size and weight, they cannot be recycled. Every straw that’s part of Von Wong’s artwork likely came from a drink that someone used for only a few minutes. Once the drink is gone, the straw will take centuries to disappear.
In a piece from 2018, Von Wong wanted to illustrate (说明) a specific statistic: Every 60 seconds, a truckload’s worth of plastic enters the ocean. For this work, titled “Truckload of Plastic,” Von Wong and a group of volunteers collected more than 10,000 pieces of plastic, which were then tied together to look like they’d been dumped (倾倒) from a truck all at once.
Von Wong hopes that his work will also help pressure big companies to reduce their plastic footprint.
1. What are Von Wong’s artworks intended for?| A．Beautifying the city he lives in. | B．Introducing eco-friendly products. |
| C．Drawing public attention to plastic waste. | D．Reducing garbage on the beach. |
| A．To show the difficulty of their recycling. |
| B．To explain why they are useful. |
| C．To voice his views on modern art. |
| D．To find a substitute for them. |
| A．Calming. | B．Disturbing. |
| C．Refreshing. | D．Challenging. |
| A．Artists’ Opinions on Plastic Safety |
| B．Media Interest in Contemporary Art |
| C．Responsibility Demanded of Big Companies |
| D．Ocean Plastics Transformed into Sculptures |
8 . People think children should play sports. Sports are fun, and children keep healthy while playing with others. However，playing sports can have
Many researchers believe adults, especially parents and coaches, are the main
We really need to
| A．restrictive(限制的) | B．negative | C．active | D．instructive |
| A．knocked | B．glanced | C．smiled | D．shouted |
| A．impression | B．concept | C．taste | D．expectation |
| A．resource | B．cause | C．course | D．consequence |
| A．question | B．understand | C．copy | D．neglect |
| A．winning | B．practising | C．fun | D．sport |
| A．praises | B．orders | C．remarks (言论、评论) | D．insults(侮辱) |
| A．proudly | B．ambitiously | C．aggressively | D．bravely |
| A．acceptable | B．impolite | C．possible | D．accessible |
| A．By contrast | B．In addition | C．As a result | D．After all |
| A．look up to | B．face up to | C．make up for | D．come up with |
| A．in particular | B．in all | C．in return | D．in advance |
| A．techniques | B．means | C．values | D．directions |
| A．respect | B．relax | C．forgive | D．enjoy |
| A．body | B．fame | C．health | D．spirit |
9 . 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. |
| 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. |
| 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 |
| 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. |
10 . Roughly the size of a soda can, sitting on a bookshelf, a relatively harmless device may be turning friends away from your home. The elephant in your living room is your Internet-connected camera, a device people are increasingly using for peace of mind in their homes. But few stop to think about the effect these devices may have on house guests. Should you tell your friends, for instance, that they’re being recorded while you all watch the big game together?
“It’s certainly new territory (领地), especially as home security cameras become easier to fix,” says Lizzie Post, president of the Emily Post Institute, America’s distinguished manners advisors. “I think it will be very interesting to see what manners appear in terms of whether you tell people you have a camera or not, and whether guests have a right to ask that it be turned off, if it’s not a security issue.” Post wants to make clear that she’s not talking about legal rights, but rather personal preference.
When it comes to security cameras, Post says it’s a host’s responsibility to make sure guests feel comfortable within their home. If the host casually acknowledges that there is a camera in the room by telling a story about, it that may be enough to provide an opening for a guest to say if they are uncomfortable.
However, if a contractor (合约工) is working in your home, you don’t need to tell them that there are cameras watching. Then again, the camera can also work in contractors’ favor. “If anything does go wrong while they’re in the house, they don’t want to be blamed for it,” she says. “In fact, the camera could be the thing that proves that they didn’t steal the $20, or knock the vase off the table.”
1. What is Lizzie Post mainly discussing about the use of home security cameras?| A．Legal rights. |
| B．Moral issues. |
| C．The possible impact on health. |
| D．Likes and dislikes of individuals. |
| A．Indicating its position. |
| B．Turning it on all the time. |
| C．Making their guests feel at ease. |
| D．Having a casual talk with guests. |
| A．It can prove their innocence. |
| B．It can record their working progress. |
| C．It can prevent the accidents happening. |
| D．It can make their work more enjoyable. |
| A．Negative. | B．Pessimistic. |
| C．Favorable. | D．Objective. |
