1 . It’s no secret that reading good news feels a lot better than reading bad news. Like, would you rather bite into a lemon, or sip on a fresh glass of lemonade?
In fact, good news, known as solutions journalism, is becoming more popular, as publishers and news stations discover the benefits of sharing positive stories. Good Good Good is one of them.
“If it bleeds, it leads.” has long been a saying used in the media to describe how news stories about violence, death and destruction draw readers’ attention.
A.Share good news with people around you. |
B.It’s just that we don’t hear as much about them. |
C.But the “bad news” has its place in the world. |
D.It provides a more balanced view of the world. |
E.And so, negative news stories are everywhere on news media. |
F.Heartwarming stories make you cry and feel good. |
G.The news media company is devoted to providing good news intentionally. |
2 . Genetic testing companies have a long history of creative attempts to reach the mainstream. An early example was the sequencing of rock star Ozzy Osbourne’s genes in 2010, with accompanying guess about how they might have influenced his drug habits.
Lately, such projects have taken on a new, highly commercialized tendency. In 2017, we got the “Marmite (马麦酱) gene project,” run by London-based genetic testing start-up DNAfit. It claims to show that love or hate for Marmite was in our genes. The project turned into a full-blown marketing campaign, and even sold Marmite-branded DNA testing tools.
DNAfit is now working with Mercedes-Benz to find out whether specific genetic traits are associated with business wisdom. AncestryDNA, the world’s largest consumer genetic testing company, last year teamed up with Spotify to promote “music tailored to your DNA.” Just a few weeks ago, 23andMe, the second largest, announced a partnership with Airbnb to provide genetically tailored travel experiences, also inspired by ancestral DNA.
I have skin in this game. I run a genetic-testing start-up that connects people who want their genome sequenced with researchers who want data to improve their understanding of genetic disease. I believe that broadening access to DNA testing can be a powerful force for good, providing safer, more effective medicines and giving people more power over their healthcare. But these campaigns risk discrediting the industry, by giving a misleading impression of what genetics can and can't say and its role in determining behaviours and personal preferences.
Take the Marmite study. It covered 261 people — tiny, by the standards of the field. It was published not in a journal, but online on bioRxiv, a server where scientists typically put results before peer-review. Shortly after, researchers looked at the genetic data of more than 500 times as many people in the UK Biobank and found no such correlation. A large peer-reviewed study in 2013 found no significant link between genes and business common sense.
We need to inform the public about what this is all about: that is, the gathering of large amounts of genetic data. We need better regulation to ensure that consumers are clear that this may happen with this sensitive personal information. A checkbox on a 20-page web document full of legal terms should not be enough.
Scientists too, need to start asking hard questions about whether the information they are using has been sourced ethically. DNA testing has a great future, but we can't build this future with data acquired by any means.
1. The author mentions DNAfit, AncestryDNA and 23andMe in order to __________.A.highlight the problems facing genetic testing |
B.illustrate the commercial applications of DNA |
C.compare what progress the companies have made |
D.reveal the link between DNA and a person's character |
A.is challenging the available treatment for skin disease |
B.has a personal investment in the genetic-testing business |
C.hopes to remove people's misunderstanding of the game rules |
D.believes that every individual should have access to DNA testing |
A.The disadvantages of genetic testing. | B.The scientific value of genetic testing. |
C.The legal system genetic testing needs. | D.The essentials for proper genetic testing. |
A.DNA Is Anything but a Marketing Tool | B.Genetic Testing Campaigns Aren't Legal |
C.Creative Marketing Is Key to Genetic Testing | D.DNA Testing Has Become a Booming Industry |
3 . The summer holidays have just begun, but it is a busy morning at Cadoxton Primary School, in Barry, an industrial town in Wales. It runs a summer programme for hard-up (拮据的) children, providing meals and activities over the holidays with the aim of helping kids to spend the time more meaningfully. As young people run laughing and screaming into the school cafeteria for breakfast, their parents hung out, some visibly relieved. Just three days into the six-week school holidays one mother says her nine-year-old daughter has already asked five times to go bowling. “Without the school’s help,” she says, “it would be a long and expensive six weeks.”
In the popular imagination, school summer holidays conjure up (使……呈现于脑际) a picture of carefree youthful exploration. But many parents rely on the term-time services that schools give their kids, such as tutors and meals. If the holidays approach, they can suddenly find their schedules and budgets stretched. Researchers also say that the long break often sets back children’s learning, and that children from poorer backgrounds are desperately affected due to their shortage of money.
Many poor children fall behind their wealthier peers over the holidays. “Summer is the most unequal time of the year,” says Matthew Boulay of the National Summer Learning Association. “Well-off parents can fill the gap left by school and consolidate (使巩固) their children’s unfamiliar knowledge well, keeping their children stimulated with summer camps, trips abroad or private tutors. Poorer families, apparently, find this harder, since their income is relatively low and demand for sponsored activities offered by governments,” he adds.
Holidays can be a financial stress, which is absolutely true. In countries where some children receive free school meals, summer means bigger grocery bills for hard-up families. Households where both parents work have to pay for extra childcare, too. The Family and Childcare Trust, a charity, says that in Britain, where childcare costs are the highest in the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries. Parents will spend an average of 33 per child per week on childcare this summer, mainly because of the sharp shortage of governmental funding sponsor.
1. What is the purpose of the summer programme?A.To lengthen students’ school life. | B.To keep students busy all the time. |
C.To provide students with free meals. | D.To enrich students’ summer holidays. |
A.Rich. | B.Tight. | C.Reasonable. | D.Affordable. |
A.Badly-off parents are likely to give up sponsoring their kids. |
B.Well-off parents are unwilling to offer their kids extra tutors. |
C.Students from poor family can well deal with the peer pressure. |
D.Students from rich family can strengthen their learned knowledge. |
A.Because of insufficiency of free tutors. | B.Because of shortage of social sponsor. |
C.Because of shortage of free school meals. | D.Because of lack of governmental support. |
4 . Authors are upset after tech companies started using their books to train artificial intelligence without letting them know or seeking their permission. They worry about copyright and loss of income, among other issues.
According to CNN, the system is called Books3, and according to an investigation by The Atlantic, the system is based on a collection of pirated (盗版的) e-books including all genres, from fiction to poetry. Books help generative AI systems with learning how to communicate information.
The Atlantic article notes that some of the text that’s training AI on how to use language is taken from Wikipedia and other websites. But high-quality generative AI requires higher-quality input than what is usually found on the internet — that is, it requires the kind found in books.
Many authors apparently don’t view the use of their books to train artificial intelligence as an honor. Rather, it’s a shortcut that robs them of their due, they say. CNN reported that Nora Roberts, who writes romantic novels, has 206 books in the database — “second only to William Shakespeare.” “The database is all kinds of wrong. We are human beings, we are writers and we are being exploited by people who want to use our work, without permission or compensation (赔偿金), to ‘write’ books, scripts, essays because it’s cheap and easy, ” she said in a statement to CNN.
Not everyone is upset, however, by use of their work to train AI. Ian Bogost, author of some popular books, wrote a column for The Atlantic. Bogost claims that successful art is beyond its creator’s plans, noting that an author cannot accurately predict a book’s audience. “To complain this unexpected use for my writing is to decline all of the other unpredictable uses for it. Speaking as a writer, that makes me feel bad.”
1. What contributes to some authors’ dissatisfaction with Books3?A.It is unable to train AI. |
B.It uses their works illegally. |
C.It fails to improve their income. |
D.It sells books without permission. |
A.The reason it was created. |
B.The high quality it possesses. |
C.The benefit it has brought. |
D.The bond it has with Wikipedia. |
A.Made fun of. | B.Caught up with. |
C.Taken advantage of. | D.Looked down upon. |
A.It’s necessary to predict a book’s audience. |
B.Being involved in Books3 is hardly an honor. |
C.Good art should be limited to creators’ plans. |
D.It’s acceptable for books to be used to train AI. |
5 . Two and a half millennia ago, Socrates complained that writing would harm students. With a way to store ideas permanently and externally, they would no longer need to memorize. However, studies today have found that writing on paper can improve everything from recalling a random series of words to better understanding complex concepts.
For learning material by repetition, the benefits of using a pen or pencil lie in how the motor and sensory memory of putting words on paper reinforces that material. The scribbling (涂鸦) on a page feeds into visual memory: people might remember a word they wrote down in French class as being at the bottom-left on a page.
One of the best-demonstrated advantages of writing by hand seems to be in note-taking. Students typing on computers wrote down almost twice as many words directly from lectures, suggesting they were not understanding so much as rapidly copying the material. However, handwriting forces note-takers to process and organize ideas into their own words. This aids conceptual understanding at the moment of writing, resulting in better performance on tests.
Many studies have confirmed handwriting’s benefits, and policymakers have taken note. Though America’s curriculum from 2010 does not require handwriting instruction past first grade (roughly age six), about half the states since then have required more teaching of it. In Sweden there is a push for more handwriting and printed books and fewer devices. England’s national curriculum already includes the teaching of basic cursive writing (连写体) skills by age seven.
However, several school systems in America have gone so far as to ban most laptops. This is too extreme. Some students have disabilities that make handwriting especially hard. Nearly all will eventually need typing skills. Virginia Berninger, professor of psychology at the University of Washington, is a longtime advocate of handwriting. But she is not a purist; she says there are research tested benefits for “manuscript” print-style writing but also for typing.
Socrates may or may not have had a point about the downsides of writing. But no one would remember, much less care, if his student Plato had not noted it down for the benefit of future generations.
1. According to the text, why does writing on paper have benefits for learning?A.It provides visual enjoyment in class. |
B.It improves the effect of memorization. |
C.It promotes the motor and sensory ability. |
D.It helps to remember the information forever. |
A.By giving examples. | B.By providing statistics. |
C.By making comparisons. | D.By making classification. |
A.Difficulties faced by the disabled. |
B.Unreasonableness of forbidding typing. |
C.The research-tested benefits of typing. |
D.The longtime advocacy for handwriting. |
A.To thank Plato for his efforts. |
B.To defend Socrates’ point of view. |
C.To show people’s indifference to typing. |
D.To confirm the importance of handwriting. |
Chinese coffee giant Luckin Coffee hit 10,000 stores in China in June, surpassing (超过) Starbucks
Founded in 2017, Luckin Coffee burst onto the Chinese coffee scene to challenge Starbucks through
In the quarter ended June 30, Luckin Coffee opened 1,485 new stores,
The Chinese coffee chain expanded to Singapore in its first international attempt and has opened 14 stores in the city-state so far.
1. 使用时存在的问题;
2. 提出建议。
注意:1. 写作词数应为80个左右;
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
How to use a scanning translation pen properly?
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
8 . If you feel lonely, you’re actually in good company: Nearly 1 in 4 adults across the world have reported feeling very or fairly lonely. A new survey, taken across 142 countries, found 24% of people age 15 and older self-reported feeling very or fairly lonely in response to the question, “How lonely do you feel?” Loneliness has emerged as a silent epidemic, affecting individuals of all ages and backgrounds.
The survey also found that the rates of loneliness were highest in young adults, with 27% of young adults age 19 to 29 reporting feeling very or fairly lonely. The lowest rates were found in older adults. Only 17% of people age 65 and older reported feeling lonely. Over half of adults age 45 and older reported not feeling lonely at all, while the majority of those younger than 45 answered that they felt at least a little lonely, if not very or fairly lonely. While there was little or no difference in the reported loneliness between men and women, some countries had substantial gaps in both directions, depending on the country’s cultural context. Overall, 79 out of the 142 countries had a higher self-reported rate of loneliness in women than men.
Rokach, who also teaches in the department of psychology at York University in Toronto, said that younger people who are in a transitional stage of becoming an adult experience more uncertainty in many areas of life, including “a tumultuous love life, uncertainty about a professional path, and in the process of separating from their parents.” Young adults are therefore more likely to experience more loneliness than older adults who have already accumulated “wisdom, friends, a family which may be supportive, and a community which cares for them,” he said.
While being alone could be refreshing and energizing, social media could defend against loneliness or help people not feel lonely anymore. “Social media is often a tool young adults use to connect with one another, but it can be more harmful if users are participating in passive scrolling,” said Dr. Olivia Remes, a mental health researcher at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. She described the behavior as only taking in the rosy posts of others and comparing it with one’s reality.
1. What can we learn from the first two paragraphs?A.Nearly 40% of adults across the world reported feeling lonely. |
B.The rate of loneliness in women is higher than men. |
C.The rates of loneliness were the lowest in people aged 45 and older. |
D.People older than 65 were less likely to feel lonely. |
A.By providing data. | B.By comparison. | C.By listing examples. | D.By making experiments. |
A.They are addicted to social media. | B.They are not understood by their parents. |
C.They are at a loss for the future. | D.They have difficulty dealing with relationships. |
A.Browse contents with certain purposes. | B.Make negative comments. |
C.Measure oneself against others. | D.Argue with people online. |
9 . As night falls on the streets of Shanghai, Mikiko Chen can often be found pacing up and down through the winding narrow streets of the city hunting for discarded items.
“I pick up all sorts of things, chairs, wine boxes, bowls and cups. . . it’s like treasure hunting for me, “she says. The 27-year-old digital marketer is among the first adopters of “stooping” in China, a practice that refers to picking up discarded furniture and other goods on the streets for re-use. She says the concept “stooping” was inspired by New Yorkers who often leave unwanted things on the “stoops” —or doorsteps—leading up to the entrances of buildings.
“The core concept of stooping for me is to make the best use of things,” Ms. Chen says. “It can help you to save money, but it’s not just about lowering consumption.” “It’s wasteful to throw away something that’s still usable; it’s better to share it with others who need it.”
Ms. Chen says she was among the first to use the hashtag (话题标签) #stooping on Xiaohongshu. “I initially started with posting items that people no longer used and wanted to throw away or exchange . . gradually I’m receiving hundreds of messages each day,” she says. Since then, the trend has become increasingly popular.
Ms. Chen says she is “very surprised” the concept has become a hit on social media, as older generations often stigmatize picking up things from the street or using second-hand goods. “People like my mum consider stooping as ‘rubbish picking’ and ‘scavenging’ (拾荒),” she says. “She thinks that people will look down on you for doing this.”
For Nan Zheng, an environmentalist and advocate, stooping is more than the physical act of picking up things from the streets. He created an app called “Grecycle” where people can give away or take unwanted items for free. “I think we can let more people know about the concept of stooping as an interesting and fun thing to do,” Mr. Nan says. “But then, gradually we can let people know this can also be about charity and helping others.”
1. What can we learn about Mikiko Chen from paragraph 2 and 3?A.She is hunting for costly treasures. |
B.She just wants to reduce consumption. |
C.She got inspiration from New Yorkers. |
D.She intends to make the most of throwaway items. |
A.To collect varieties of messages. |
B.To go viral on social media. |
C.To share something still usable with others. |
D.To throw away unwanted things on the “stoops”. |
A.The older are ashamed of stooping. | B.The older are skilled at stooping. |
C.The older are exposed to stooping. | D.The older are addicted to stooping |
A.Recycling discarded things from the streets. |
B.Getting unwanted items for free on “Grecycle”. |
C.Exchanging items through “Grecycle”. |
D.Enhancing people’s awareness of charity. |
10 . In agricultural, pre-industrial Europe, “you’d want to wake up early, start working with the sunrise, have a break to have the largest meal, and then you’d go back to work,” says Ken Albala, a professor of history at the University of the Pacific. “Later, at 5 or 6, you’d have a smaller supper.”
This comfortable cycle, in which the rhythms of the day helped shape the rhythms of the meals, gave rise to the custom of the large midday meal, eaten with the extended family. “Meals are the foundation of the family,” says Carole Counihan, a professor at Millersville University in Pennsylvania, “so there was a very important interconnection between eating together and strengthening family ties.”
Since industrialization, maintaining such a slow cultural metabolism has been much harder, with the long midday meal shrinking to whatever could be stuffed into a lunch bucket or bought at a food stand. Certainly, there were benefits. Modern techniques for producing and shipping food led to greater variety and quantity, including a dramatic increase in the amount of animal protein and dairy products available, making us stronger than our ancestors.
Yet plenty has been lost too, even in cultures that still live to eat. Take Italy for example. It’s no secret that the Mediterranean diet is healthy, but it was also a joy to prepare and eat. Italians, says Counihan, traditionally began the day with a small meal. The big meal came at around 1 p.m. In between the midday meal and a late, smaller dinner came a small snack. Today, when time zones have less and less meaning, there is little tolerance for offices’ closing for lunch, and worsening traffic in cities means workers can’t make it home and back fast enough anyway. So the formerly small supper after sundown becomes the big meal of the day, the only one at which the family has a chance to get together. “The evening meal carries the full burden that used to be spread over two meals,” says Counihan.
1. What do we learn about people in pre-industrial Europe?A.They had to work from early morning till late at night. |
B.Their life was much more comfortable than that of today. |
C.They were so busy working that they only ate simple meals. |
D.Their daily routine followed the rhythm of the natural cycle. |
A.It enabled families to save a lot of money. |
B.It was characteristic of the agrarian culture. |
C.It brought family members closer to each other. |
D.It was helpful to maintaining a nation’s tradition. |
A.Pace of life. | B.Changes in lifestyle. |
C.Social progress. | D.Evolutionary adaptation. |
A.They were expert at cooking meals. | B.They enjoyed cooking as well as eating. |
C.They ate a big dinner late in the evening. | D.They ate three meals regularly every day. |