1 . There are about fifteen hundred languages in the world.
But only a few of them are very
Is it easy or difficult to learn English? Different people may have different
“Learn English in six month, or your
The only language that seems easy to learn is the mother tongue. We should remember that we all learned our own language well when we were
So it is hard to say that learning English is easy, because a good command of English
A.difficult | B.important | C.necessary | D.easy |
A.native | B.foreign | C.useful | D.mother |
A.questions | B.problems | C.ideas | D.answers |
A.found | B.watched | C.noticed | D.known |
A.knowledge | B.time | C.money | D.English |
A.make | B.help | C.let | D.allow |
A.spelling | B.grammar | C.English | D.pronunciation |
A.happens | B.knows | C.seems | D.feel |
A.students | B.children | C.babies | D.grown-ups |
A.Imagine | B.Mind | C.Do | D.Think of |
A.using | B.thinking | C.trying | D.practicing |
A.time | B.money | C.language | D.practice |
A.depends | B.tries | C.has | D.takes |
A.uses | B.takes | C.gets | D.costs |
A.do | B.work | C.help | D.master |
2 . “I think therefore I am”— mind over matter. What you expect from yourself and the world makes a big impact on the results of your efforts.
From a neuroscience perspective, the brain will believe anything you tell it, right and wrong. Research has shown that this phenomenon can have huge benefits when we approach a significant or difficult task. “We do know there’s the mind-body connection, which isn’t kind of mysterious or magical, and that this is in itself changing our physiology,” said David Robson, a science writer. “Think that you could catch up in a race or that your public speaking anxiety could help you perform better.”
Expectations, even negative ones, are meant to help our brains navigate (理解) a complicated world by simplifying our predictions of the wide range of outcomes to any situation. Those negative expectations can help us anticipate and avoid danger, but they aren’t always up to date with the context that surrounds us. And when you’re in the face of a challenge, inaccurate information can create obstacles of its own. Pessimistic thoughts really just put you in a position where you’re more vulnerable to actually experiencing that unpleasant or negative outcome.
Setting more positive expectations and hopefully acquiring the rewards starts with how you talk to yourself. When baseball players step up to the plate, they tell themselves they will knock it out of the park. Being aware of your thoughts and how you talk to yourself about a challenge can make a big impact.
We tend to see ourselves and our obstacles in two ways. Either our abilities are fixed or can grow, and our obstacles are a threat or a challenge. Shifting focus to believe that we can see difficulties as a challenge to be met rather than a threat to be avoided has been shown to result in more success. If you interpret that situation as a challenge, your physiological response will empower and equip you to be more creative and effective.
Having realistically optimistic expectations does better equip each of us to take up a challenge with our best resources, experts said.
1. What does the third paragraph mainly talk about?A.The outcome of pessimistic thoughts. |
B.The connection between the mind and body. |
C.The advantages of positive expectations. |
D.The pros and cons of negative expectations. |
A.Thinking out loud. |
B.Stepping up to the plate. |
C.Challenging themselves. |
D.Improving their abilities. |
A.Avoiding threats and troubles. |
B.Removing our obstacles in the way. |
C.Shifting our focus to something else. |
D.Regarding difficulties as challenges. |
A.A history book. |
B.A fantasy novel. |
C.A science & wellness paper. |
D.A sports & health report. |
Home alone: Are you ready?
Do you know that in the US almost half of all kids aged 6 to 13 are home alone for part of the day? The boys in the Home Alone movies certainly have fun, but the whole experience can be freaky sometimes. These days, even a lot of adults are scared to be alone in the house! It’s totally understandable if you or someone you know are nervous about being home alone.
Take Jessi and her brother Joey as an example. For over five years now, they’ve been taking care of themselves until their mum comes home from work. Jessi says that the worst thing about it is when she or her brother is locked out. Then they have to wait on the porch until the other gets home! Sometimes, both of them get locked out! Fortunately, they each have a cellphone so they can call their mum when that happens.
Your parents think you’re ready, but do you?
At first it sounds cool to be home alone, right? Think of the freedom you’d have around the house! There’s nobody to stop you from playing video games or watching your favourite TV show!
Joey admits that he likes being able to watch TV shows or listen to music he likes. “ It’s more freedom, ” he says, “ but it’s also more responsibility. ”
So there you are listening to that CD your parents hate. Then what’s that? You hear a noise outside. It sounds like it could be a person on the front doorstep, and there’s been a string of robberies in the area lately. Suddenly, your unsupervised (没人监管的) freedom doesn’t feel so safe anymore.
It’s a normal feeling and it doesn’t mean you’re a “baby”. There’s always stuff going on in the world to shake our feelings of security. You might feel totally fine about being alone when you’re 10. Then, two years later, something happens that makes you feel different about it. Every person and every home environment is unique.
If you have worries about being home alone, it’s really important to speak out about them, even though it may cost money to get a sitter or your parent has to rearrange his or her schedule.
1. What will Jessi and Joey do if both of them get locked out? ( no more than 6 words )2. What’s the main idea of Paragraph 4? ( no more than 6 words )
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
It is always cool to be home alone — freedom you’d have around the house! There’s nobody to stop you from playing games or watching your favourite TV show.
4. What will you do when you are alone at home? ( About 40 words. )
4 . “A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for,” said John A. Shedd, an early 20th century author. Throughout the Covid-19, we’ve all become used to assessing risk in new ways. We’ve come to understand, though we can never get rid of risk altogether, we have great power to make choices both large and small to protect ourselves.
Developmental psychologists talk about “positive risks” — socially acceptable risks that our lives can benefit from.
One guide to positive risk management lists ways that people can make sure their risks are on the “safe" side of risk range. For example, to ensure a successful bike ride, you should in advance equip yourself with a fully-charged cell phone and a full water bottle.
Nobody wants to be needlessly risky. But using our newly-acquired risk assessment tools, we can once again learn and grow in our lives.
A.Take risks in a positive way. |
B.But the self-protective mind state carries its own risk. |
C.Overall happiness is one benefit of positive risk-taking. |
D.Remember to tell one of your friends or family your destination. |
E.Besides taking preventive steps, flexible thinking is also encouraged. |
F.Like a ship sailing away from its harbor, that is what we were built to do. |
G.For teenagers, this means risks like running for monitor or trying out for a team. |
5 . More people are travelling than ever before, and lower harriers to entry and falling costs means they are doing so for
The rise of “city breaks” --48-hour bursts of foreign cultures, easier on the pocket and annual leave balance has increased tourist numbers, but not their
This starts with marketing, says Font, who notes that Amsterdam has started advising visitors to seek
But it also
A greater variety of
Similarly, repeat visitors have a better sense of the
Local governments can foster this sustainable activity by giving preference to responsible operator and even high-paying consumers. Font says cities could stand to be more selective about the tourists they try to attract when the current metric for marketing success is how many there are, and how far they’ve come. “You’re thinking, ‘yeah but at what cost...’.”
He points to unpublished data from the Barcelona Tourist Board that prioritizes Japanese tourists for spending an average of €40 more per day than French tourist as a(n)
A.longer | B.shorter | C.wider | D.clearer |
A.environmental | B.national | C.economic | D.geographic |
A.locals | B.tourists | C.visitors | D.cleaners |
A.transports | B.accommodation | C.restaurants | D.service |
A.addresses | B.paves | C.proposes | D.receives |
A.separate | B.individual | C.alternative | D.objective |
A.reform | B.guidance | C.invitation | D.support |
A.convincing | B.discouraging | C.preventing | D.resisting |
A.pace | B.escape | C.withstand | D.ease |
A.culture | B.knowledge | C.entertainment | D.ability |
A.take over | B.bring up | C.come back | D.lay off |
A.distinction | B.harmony | C.association | D.comparison |
A.French | B.Italian | C.Spanish | D.German |
A.carry out | B.give into | C.spread out | D.impact on |
A.slight | B.complex | C.temporary | D.sustainable |
6 . A decreasing birthrate depends to a large extent on the availability and use of birth control and on high living levels that make the production of additional children to provide necessary and inexpensive labor unnecessary. Family planning is a national policy in many industrial countries, such as Japan and most of European countries. As a result, in most cases the birthrate has decreased. Many developing countries have followed the lead of India (which has since 1952 conducted an extensive, but not totally successful,birth control program) in trying to promote family planning as a national policy. These countries include China, Kenya, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, and Chile.
In the United States, facts of the population question, such as birth control and abortion,_are among the most bitterly debated subjects. The United States has disagreed strongly at times with the use of foreign aid appropriations (拨款) for family planning overseas and doing that is thought against human rights; family planning in the country is mainly run by private groups such as Planned Parenthood.
A number of nongovernmental organizations concerned with population growth have also appeared. Zero Population Growth, an educational group founded in 1970, aims to stop population growth, first in the United States and then in other countries. On the international level, besides the International Planned Parenthood Federation, the United Nations Economic and Social Council provides birth control aid to underdeveloped nations.
1. All the following countries try to take family planning as a national policy EXCEPT ________.A.Kenya | B.Pakistan |
C.Chile | D.Russia |
A.they take measures in family planning |
B.they don't want to provide necessary and cheap labor |
C.they want to live a life of high living standards |
D.they don't want to bear more additional children |
A.Food supplies. |
B.An operation to end a pregnancy. |
C.Foreign aid. |
D.High growth of population birthrate. |
A.Americans think there is no need to keep birth control |
B.the government would rather not copy ways of other countries |
C.Americans think that is against human rights |
D.the government is rich enough to keep more children |
A.prevent birthrate from growing |
B.provide birth control aid |
C.advise people to notice the population question |
D.call on the UN to give help to undeveloped countries |
1. Which place will have the strictest ban on smoking according to the text?
A.Britain. | B.Finland. | C.Hong Kong. |
A.It can’t ban smoking forever. |
B.It wants to ban smoking now. |
C.It wants to ban smoking thoroughly. |
A.Restaurants. | B.Cars. | C.Shopping malls. |
A.Smoking and Cancer. |
B.Smoking in Hong Kong. |
C.Anti-smoking Laws. |
Behind each lovely picture of a cloned cat or dog lie hundreds of animals that were kept in lab cages, receiving bad treatment to produce just that one cloned animal. For all that, you end up with a cloned animal who is unlikely to appear like the original physically or behaviorally and may experience serious health problems. Also, while pet cloning companies are charging customers up to $150,000 for a cloned pet, millions of homeless animals of the same species are available in US animal shelters for around $100. Unfortunately, most of these animals are killed for lack of adopting homes.
With No Pet Cloning campaign, the American Anti-Vivisection Society (AAVS) tries to protect both animals and people from harm. They campaigned until the US companies that sold cloned animals closed their doors. First it was Genetic Savings & Clone Inc. and then it was BioArts International.
When BioArts was closed, its owner, Lou Hawthorne, finally had to acknowledge the problems of pet cloning. According to Hawthorne, he has seen numerous failures during his pet cloning attempts, “One clone—which was supposed to be black and white—was born greenish-yellow where it should have been white (we still have no good explanation for how that happened).”
The AAVS is educating the public about the animal suffering and is seeking regulation of cloning activities. They will continue to take the lead in protecting animals from the threats of pet cloning.
1. From the passage, we know that ____.
A.pets are often deserted by their owners |
B.more and more people have joined the AAVS |
C.most American are against cloning pet animals |
D.the American Anti-Vivisection Society is supported by the government |
A.carry on scientific studies |
B.get economic interests |
C.protect pet animals |
D.comfort animal lovers |
A.To tell the truth behind pet cloning. |
B.To show the method of pet cloning. |
C.To compare pet animals with homeless ones. |
D.To save the animals kept in labs and shelters. |
A.accept | B.study | C.admit | D.manage |
A.getting most countries to fight against pet cloning |
B.improving the technology of pet cloning |
C.saving lots of animals from bad situations |
D.stopping US companies’ selling cloned animals |
A.Everyone is different, and levels of empathy differ from person to person. |
B.That could be because so many people have replaced face time with screen time, the researchers said. |
C.“One doesn’t develop empathy by having a lot of opinions and doing a lot of talking,” Freed says. |
D.Humans learn by example—and most of the examples on it are anything but empathetic. |
E.Empathy is a matter of learning how to understand someone else—both what they think and how they feel. |
F.Good social skills—including empathy—are a kind of “emotional intelligence” that will help you succeed in many areas of life. |
G.Having relationships with other people is an important part of being human—and having empathy is decisive to those relationships. |