1 . Dressed in long robes, a crowd of young people wanders around royal gardens, with their flowing sleeves and heavily embroidered (绣花的) skirts gently swaying in the breeze. They are not actors on a movie set, but hanfu enthusiasts at a themed event in Beijing.
Benefiting from the growing popularity of social media and a craze for traditional culture, hanfu, a traditional style of clothing once worn by the Han people, has enjoyed a new life thanks to a new wave of young Chinese fans.
A 1980s-born rocket scientist Liu is also a cofounder of a hanfu community in Beijing called Hua Yan Hui. The community was founded in 2011 following a hanfu revival(复兴)movement that emerged from the desire to express national identity and growing cultural confidence. Since then, Liu has been volunteering to support the group.
At first, people who wore hanfu in public were occasionally greeted with mockery, while more passersby asked about their clothing style. “More young people are taking to wearing adapted hanfu as they believe the best way to preserve tradition is to adapt it to modern life,” says Liu.
Yang Kunning was born in the 1990s and works in public relations. She is fond of sharing her love for hanfu online. She opened an account on the video-sharing platform Bilibili and posted videos featuring herself wearing the traditional attire. Thousands of comments and likes pour into her channel as viewers find her videos attractive and creative — blending traditional culture with modern dance movements. “Social media has made hanfu culture popular in China and abroad,” says Yang. “Traditional culture has no national or ethnic boundaries.”
Companies and factories also smell the massive potential in hanfu-related industries. Caoxian County, Heze City, East China’s Shandong Province, is one of the major hanfu manufacturing centers, gathering over 2,000 enterprises and promoting the increase of employment. Over 600 clothes-processing companies have their own designs with intellectual property rights. In addition to domestic clients, a number of companies in Caoxian reported arise in foreign orders this year.
1. What contributes to a new life of hanfu?| A．Hanfu-themed events. |
| B．Youth’s love for traditions, |
| C．Hanfu-related industries. |
| D．Revolution of social media. |
| A．By launching hanfu revival movements. |
| B．By making hanfu suitable for the present day. |
| C．By combining hanfu with dance movements. |
| D．By posting videos about hanfu on social media. |
| A．Productive. | B．Academic. | C．Controversial. | D．Conservative. |
| A．Improving traditional designs. | B．Protecting intellectual property rights. |
| C．Creating more job opportunities. | D．Attracting foreign investment in China. |
2 . While English is getting more important in our schools, Chinese has become popular among foreign kids. But Chinese can be more difficult to learn. At least 16-year-old Piao Chenglong thinks so. “English is easier for me. Chinese characters (汉字) have too many strokes (笔画),” said Piao. “But I want to learn it. I want to study at Beijing University when I grow up.” Piao is from Korea. He came to China in 2008.
In Korea, there are more than 300, 000 Chinese learners like Piao. Some Korean students begin to learn to write the language on their first day at school. To help students learn Chinese, Korea holds speaking competitions for high school students every year.
Chinese isn’t just popular in Korea. People from all the world want to learn it. The Ministry of Education of China says that nearly 130 million people from 85 countries are learning Chinese. This number will be increasing to 800 million in the coming years.
In America, Chinese is the second most popular foreign language after Spanish. Some American middle schools have Chinese classes. Students learn to make jiaozi and tie Chinese knots (中国结). Some even try to write and draw in the Chinese way!
People want to learn Chinese because China is becoming such an important country. Foreign countries want to understand China better to help them with business. The Chinese government is also helping the world learn Chinese. It has sent more than 200 Chinese teachers to more than 60 countries in the world. Many more Confucius Institutes (孔子学院) will be set up in the world. These institutes will teach Chinese to foreign students.
1. Which of the following is the topic sentence for the text?| A．Chinese has become popular among foreign kids. |
| B．Chinese can be more difficult to learn. |
| C．In America, Chinese is the second most popular foreign language after Spanish. |
| D．Students learn to make jiaozi and tie Chinese knots. |
| A．China. | B．America. | C．Korea. | D．Spain. |
| A．making jiaozi |
| B．writing and drawing in the Chinese way |
| C．tying Chinese knots |
| D．singing Chinese songs |
| A．Because Chinese is getting more important in their schools. |
| B．Because Chinese characters have too many strokes. |
| C．Because the number of people learning Chinese will be 800 million. |
| D．Because China is becoming more and more important in the world. |
3 . Goldfish have pretty boring lives, so maybe it’s a good thing that they can only concentrate for nine seconds! But according to a new research, humans are becoming like goldfish. Our attention span (时长) is getting shorter and it’s all because of technology.
“We move quickly from one site to another on the web,” says Doctor Ted Selker, a computer scientist from Massachusetts, “and we are losing the ability to concentrate.” With millions of websites to choose from, the attention span of the average Internet user is just seconds. There are other digital distractions (分心) too: e-mail, instant messaging and quickie movies on websites.
Some people are worried about the effect on young people. “You need time to understand and think about what you read”, says Julia Wood, from London. “Young people search the net all the time and their brains become full of useless information but there is no time to make sense of it. I am trying to persuade my pupils to read more books, so that they concentrate on one subject for longer.”
Other teachers are trying more unusual methods to improve students’ concentration. Anne Savan, from Wales, was so worried about her students that she started playing Mozart during her science lessons. She says that it had an amazing effect, “The music made them calmer, and their concentration was much better.”
But not everyone believes that there is a problem. Ray Cole, an educational psychologist says, “On the web, young people learn to make quick decisions about what is and isn’t worth reading. They might look at five unhelpful websites very quickly, before stopping and reading a sixth useful website more carefully. In a world with so much information available, this is an important skill.”
1. Why are humans becoming like goldfish?| A．They have a wealthy life. | B．They like to go fishing. |
| C．They are influenced by digital distractions. | D．They feed more goldfish in their life. |
| A．There are too many Internet users. | B．They have to skip around the Internet. |
| C．They can move very quickly. | D．They are too young to concentrate. |
| A．Receiving emails. | B．Texting messages. |
| C．Watching quickie movies. | D．Reading more books. |
| A．Supportive. | B．Unfavorable. | C．Skeptical. | D．Cautious. |
4 . A worldwide problem has long caught people’s attention: student loan (贷款) debt. In America, the country’s overall student debt reached a record of $1.6 trillion in 2019. The average person with student loan debt owed between $20,000 and $25,000. A recent Japanese government report says it has been lending over $9 billion yearly to students since 2010. Similar conditions exist in Africa and South America.
Several factors account for high student loan debt. One is that employers everywhere have increased their demands for skilled workers, making higher education a requirement for many jobs. The students, however, after graduation, often find that their country’s economy is not strong enough to support their financial needs, so their ability to pay back the loan becomes a problem.
To solve the problem, many countries are seeking their ways. Australia has developed a system where students do not have to pay anything back until they are earning at least $40,000 a year. In America, several candidates running for president in the 2020 election have offered more extreme solutions that all or at least some of these loans will be forgiven.
Some professors in several universities recently studied what the effects of debt forgiveness might be. They found that, overall, sudden debt relief greatly improved the borrowers’ lives. Not only did they have more money, but they were more likely to move to a new area and seek better paying work.
Yet the professors’ research doesn’t include what might happen to financial institutions or the overall economy if debt were totally forgiven. It only looks at how debt forgiveness would help the borrowers. They warn of some other possible negative effects. If a borrower knew that if he ran into any trouble he would be saved because he could get the debt relief, then he might actually become more reckless (轻率的) with his borrowing in the future.
No matter what, the professors agree that if countries do decide to approve some student debt relief, the neediest students should be helped first.
1. What causes students unable to pay back the loan?| A．High financial needs. | B．Realistic economic situation. |
| C．Rising need for skilled workers. | D．Requirement for higher education. |
| A．Extreme. | B．Welcome. | C．Conditional. | D．Impractical. |
| A．Borrowers will lead a better life. |
| B．The country’s economy will be boosted. |
| C．The loan problem will be forever solved. |
| D．Borrowers will care more about future borrowing. |
| A．Debt relief is a double-edged sword. |
| B．Student loan debt is helpful to all in need. |
| C．Growing global student debt inspires search for solutions. |
| D．Student loan debt will become a serious concern worldwide. |
5 . Is there a single word that motivates us more than “weekend”? It’s like the promise of a sweet holiday following what seems like long-time exhaustion. It’s the spring in our step that gets bouncier with each passing day — until by Friday, we’re practically bumping our heads against the ceiling.
The trouble is that the weekend is a rip-off. You think you’re getting 48 hours of unconditional downtime, but reality takes a discount. In fact, it takes most of Sunday. That’s when anxiety comes creeping in and another countdown begins: 12 hours until Monday. Sure, the weekend is free time. But the mounting stress of an incoming Monday can ease any joy you might get from a Sunday evening.
That feeling is so common among the Monday-to-Friday crowd that there’s even more than one name for it: the Sunday Scaries, or Sunday Fear Syndrome. Going from a countdown to the weekend to a countdown to Monday can be difficult. Even monster.com — a website that specializes in binding humans to the Monday-to-Friday cycle — admits it’s a problem. In a survey, Monster found that 76% of Americans have “really had” Sunday night blues.
For most people, Sunday is no holiday at all. It may all come down to the same problem: We can’t stop thinking about tomorrow. Even worse, we may develop some downright unhealthy coping strategies for that transition from weekends to Monday. Some might resists — staying up late, milking every minute of a fleeting Sunday in the form of mind-numbing distractions.
But why should Monday cast such a long and fearful shadow on our lives? Maybe it’s because the counter is reset and the weekend, or happiness, seems at furthest point. If, like most of us, you have a tolerable job, but don’t much like the whole idea of working, there are plenty of ways to make Mondays a little less stressful. Most importantly, don’t leave any unsettled Friday business hanging over the weekend. So, clear the decks and tie up loose ends.
1. What do we know about the weekend in Paragraph 2?| A．It is hard-earned. |
| B．It doesn’t bring joy as expected. |
| C．It adds to people’s anxiety and stress. |
| D．It provides good time to relax. |
| A．To clarify a question. | B．To show its popularity. |
| C．To provides an illustration. | D．To support his idea. |
| A．Tolerant. | B．Conservative. | C．Unwise. | D．Practical. |
| A．Why People Are Stressed Out on Fridays |
| B．Why Monday Takes a Bite out of Sunday |
| C．Why a Countdown to the Weekend Is Difficult |
| D．Why Monday Casts a Fearful Shadow on Our Lives |
6 . Popularization has in some cases changed the original meaning of emotional intelligence. Many people now misunderstand emotional intelligence as almost everything desirable in a person’s makeup that cannot be measured by an IQ test, such as character, motivation, confidence, mental stability, optimism and “people skills.” Research has shown that emotional skills may contribute to some of these qualities, but most of them move far beyond skill-based emotional intelligence.
We prefer to describe emotional intelligence as a specific set of skills that can be used for either good or bad purposes. The ability to accurately understand how others are feeling may be used by a doctor to find how best to help her patients, while a cheater might use it to control potential victims. Being emotionally intelligent does not necessarily make one a moral person.
Although popular beliefs regarding emotional intelligence run far ahead of what research can reasonably support, the overall effects of the publicity have been more beneficial than harmful. The most positive aspect of this popularization is a new and much needed emphasis (重视) on emotion by employers, educators and others interested in promoting social well-being. The popularization of emotional intelligence has helped both the public and researchers re-evaluate the functionality of emotions and how they serve people adaptively in everyday life.
Although the continuing popular appeal of emotional intelligence is desirable, we hope that such attention will excite a greater interest in the scientific and scholarly study of emotion. It is our hope that in coming decades, advances in science will offer new perspectives (视角) from which to study how people manage their lives. Emotional intelligence, with its focus on both head and heart, may serve to point us in the right direction.
1. What is a common misunderstanding of emotional intelligence?| A．It can be measured by an IQ test. |
| B．It helps to exercise a person’s mind. |
| C．It includes a set of emotional skills. |
| D．It refers to a person’s positive qualities. |
| A．To explain a rule. |
| B．To clarify a concept. |
| C．To present a fact. |
| D．To make a prediction. |
| A．Favorable. |
| B．Intolerant. |
| C．Doubtful. |
| D．Unclear. |
| A．Emotional intelligence is emphasized by all the people. |
| B．People who are highly emotionally intelligent are honourable persons. |
| C．The research we do at present cannot reasonably support popular beliefs of emotional intelligence. |
| D．Emotional intelligence contribute a lot to the qualities like character, motivation, confidence and so on. |
| A．Its appeal to the public. |
| B．Expectations for future studies. |
| C．Its practical application. |
| D．Scientists with new perspectives. |
7 . How would you survive without your smartphone? For many of us, it’s the device we most depend on—looking at it hundreds of times a day. Have we become addicted to our phones?
The inventor of the first mobile phone, American engineer Martin Cooper, thinks we might be. In a BBC interview, he suggested people should stop scrolling (刷屏) and “get a life”. But of course, once we start scrolling or watching videos, we just can’t give up the habit. There’s even a word—a phubber—to describe a person who ignores the real people around them because they are concentrating on their phones.
A study from King’s College London found young people they studied couldn’t control the amount of time they spent on their phone. Such addictive behaviour means that people become anxious or upset if they can’t have constant access, which can cause anxiety and mental health issues. Psychologist Jean Twenge says we’re all ashamed of “repeatedly checking our phone if we’re waiting for a text or getting really into social media, then looking up and realising that an hour has passed.”
Another study by the London School of Economics and Political Science suggests we don’t just look at our phones because we receive a text or email. The people they studied felt naturally eager to interact with their phone, just as a smoker would light a cigar. Prof. Saadi Lahlou, co-author of the study, told the BBC, “We must learn tricks to avoid the desire when we want to concentrate or have good social relations.”
One solution could be an app that rewards students for time spent away from their phones. Another option is replacing your smartphone with a dumbphone that has none of the attractive elements taking your attention away. But most importantly, we just need to look up more and reconnect with the real world!
1. What is Martin Cooper’s attitude to a phubber?| A．Supportive. | B．Negative. | C．Carefree. | D．Neutral. |
| A．They may behave shamefully. | B．They could lose control of screen time. |
| C．They would have no access to social media. | D．They may suffer physically and mentally. |
| A．They have formed the habit. | B．They just want to read a text or email. |
| C．They want good social relations. | D．They avoid the desire for communication. |
| A．Downloading rewarding apps. | B．Making full use of a dumbphone. |
| C．Interacting with people in real life. | D．Replacing the attractive elements. |
8 . The QR-code menu- which you access by scanning a black-and-white square with your smartphone-has taken off. It may dominate going forward.
For restaurants, QR-code menus offer potential benefits beyond putting germ-averse (厌恶细菌的) diners at greater ease. In the near future, rather than offer the same unchanging selections to every diner, restaurants might employ dynamic menus from which dishes disappear as the kitchen runs out.
For diners, however, QR-code menus are not really an advance. You may just be checking to see what you want your next drink to be, but from there it’s easy to start checking texts and emails. Even if everyone resists the temptation (诱惑) to check an incoming text message, merely having a phone out on the table makes a meal less fun for all involved. In the study “Smartphone Use Undermines Enjoyment of Face-to-Face Social Interactions”, the social-psychology researcher Ryan Dwyer and his colleagues randomly assigned some people to keep their phones out when dining with friends and others to put it away. “We found that groups assigned to use their phones enjoyed the experience less than groups that did not use their phones,” Dwyer said, “primarily due to the fact that participants with phones were more distracted.”
QR-code menus reduce privacy, too. Many of the codes “are actually generated by a different company that collects, uses, and then often shares your personal information,” the ACLU has warned.
“In fact, companies that provide QR codes to restaurants like to brag (吹嘘) all the personal information you are sharing along with that food order: your location, your demographics such as gender and age group, and other information about you and your behavior.”
The next few years may determine to what degree the restaurant of the future embraces the digital era or conserves the traditional focus on sociability and connection by deliberately avoiding it. There’s one thing for sure: their success is not appointed in advance.
1. Which kind of menu may a restaurant offer in the near future?| A．A paper menu. |
| B．A clean menu. |
| C．A changeable menu. |
| D．A personalized menu. |
| A．It forces them to check texts. |
| B．It takes their attention away. |
| C．It offers a discount. |
| D．It recommends better drinks. |
| A．QR-code menus will be forbidden. |
| B．Restaurants tend to share diners’ location. |
| C．QR codes aim to collect diners’ personal information. |
| D．Scanning QR-code menus may put diners at risk. |
| A．Problems brought by QR-code menus. |
| B．Restaurants’ difficulties in the digital era. |
| C．Diners’ concerns about privacy exposure. |
| D．Technology challenges of QR-code menus. |
9 . In a video from Visit Iceland, a crew is seen working on making a horse-sized keyboard out of massive blocks of wood. The keyboard is then put outside against the gorgeous scenery for the typing horses to reply to emails. Unsurprisingly, the replies are nonsense, with examples listed as “bpnisi. // hihaihf＝. sf”. “OutHorse Your Email” is Iceland’s latest stunt (噱头) to promote tourism. Visitors can choose a trained horse to type responses to their work emails when they are on holiday.
Due to the pandemic, many workers have transitioned to remote working, finding that the lines between their work and personal lives have become blurred. A survey conducted by Visit Iceland revealed that 59% of people globally now feel as if their boss, colleagues, and customers expect them to reply when on holiday and 41% of people check their work emails between one and four times a day when on holiday. That’s why Iceland is assigning emails to its horses, asking them to make replies.
“When visitors travel to Iceland, we want them to fully experience everything our nation has to offer, from breathtaking surroundings to endless landscapes," said the head of Visit Iceland. "Our OutHorse Your Email service lets them do just that. With our world-first service, we hope to appeal to people to disconnect and take a well-deserved, uninterrupted break.”
Since “OutHorse Your Email” service was launched, it has got a lot of attention from the Internet. “Is it a ridiculous tourism stunt? Sure. But it indeed encourages me to enjoy my trip wholeheartedly,” said Thom Dunn, an online user from Canada. Hunter Boyce from the USA also made a comment, “The service sounds interesting, but I don’t want to drive my boss mad or be fired.”
1. What can we know about the typing horses?| A．They are trained to reply to emails. |
| B．They type meaningful emails. |
| C．They reply to emails in famous scenic spots. |
| D．They work with a common keyboard. |
| A．Unclear. |
| B．Unimportant. |
| C．Controllable. |
| D．Adjustable. |
| A．To reduce people’s pressure. |
| B．To fight against the pandemic. |
| C．To encourage undisturbed trips. |
| D．To improve visitors’ work efficiency. |
| A．Ambiguous. |
| B．Negative. |
| C．Favourable. |
| D．Indifferent. |
增加：在缺词处加一个漏字符号(∧)，并在其下面写出该加的词。
删除：把多余的词用斜线(\)划掉。
修改：在错的词下划一横线，并在该词下面写出修改后的词。
注意：1. 每处错误及其修改均仅限一词;
2. 只允许修改10处，多者(从第11处起)不计分。
For thousands of years, people had accepted challenges in different fields. There are not only physical challenges and also intellectual challenges. Some people risk his lives to play sports to see how good they can do. Others try to invent something make life easier. They all enjoy challenges. Today, there are still much challenges before us. Medical science face the challenge of conquering(攻克)many diseases what still attack human beings. Engineers and planners must build new city and design new kinds of transportation. Scientists must develop new forms of energy. In short of, we live in an age full of challenges.
