1 . A lot of people are experiencing hunger, so communities and organizations across the U. S. have put up community fridges in their city. The fridges offer free food to the neighborhood. Anyone can take or donate food.
The spread of COVID-19 has brought more attention to America’s hunger problem. It has also made it worse. Food shortage doubled because people lost their jobs, according to a study by Northwestern University. The loss of a job, high costs of living or not living near a store that has healthy, affordable food can all cause food shortage.
Now, there are more than 160 new community fridges in cities across the country. The fridges come with special challenges. They need electricity and looking after. Also, food safety rule should also be considered. Some experts feel the fridges cover up more important questions. Yet the community relationships they create can make a difference.
Mark Bucher, owner of a restaurant in Washington D. C, wanted to help make sure no child went hungry in his community. He created a program called Feed the Fridge. Restaurants make meals which go into 19 fridges around the city. In return, the restaurants get the money that is donated to the program. This is an example of mutual(相互的)aid. Delano Hunter, a partner of Bucher, said “The fridges are a way of providing meals, in a respectful way, to those who need them.”
However, community fridges cannot fix all the problems. Andy Fisher, an expert on food shortage, believes the problem is how the United States thinks about hunger. “People think it can be solved by handing out food,” Fisher said, “this ignores the problems that create hunger.”
Fridges are short-term solutions. I expect one day long-term solutions can be found. For now, the fridges bring life back into communities at least.
1. What advantage do the community fridges bring?| A．They improve the food safety. |
| B．They lower the high cost of living. |
| C．They connect the people in the neighborhood. |
| D．They provide affordable food to the community. |
| A．To attract more people to donate the food. |
| B．To offer food in a respectful way to adults. |
| C．To help the restaurant to make more money. |
| D．To prevent kids in his community from hunger. |
| A．It acts as a short-term solution to hunger. |
| B．It raises the living costs of the needy. |
| C．It removes hunger forever. |
| D．It brings no trouble now. |
| A．Restaurants help American community a lot. |
| B．Various problems are caused by COVID-19. |
| C．Many American people are experiencing hunger. |
| D．Community fridges strengthen ties during COVID-19. |
2 . It’s been an hour, and your phone hasn’t pinged as you expected. You sent off a text, expecting a quick reply. With each minute passing, you get increasingly anxious. “How hard is it to take two seconds and say you’ll respond later?” You think. Then, the longer you wait, you start to worry. What if your friend is angry with you, and your message isn’t welcome? What if he (she) is hurt?
While some people mind much less about how quickly a friend responds, many people ride an emotional roller coaster (过山车) when a message isn’t immediately answered. It’s driven by the effect of 24/7 “digital availability (可得性)”, a social expectation that a receiver is always around and should immediately shoot back a reply.
There are many reasons message-senders can get easily annoyed when their phone doesn’t sound with a rapid reply. Our phones give us an illusion of proximity (近距离错觉): a friend in another place feels only a simple text away. Yet senders don’t know what’s going on with the person at the other end of their message. So, when a text goes unanswered, “some people get really upset, because they’re putting their own anxieties into the situation,” says Jeff Hancock, a professor of communication.
Part of what can strengthen these continuous, uncomfortable feelings is that there’s no widely agreed-upon etiquette (礼节) for behavior in a world of 24/7 digital availability; we don’t have a universally accepted rule on how long people can take to reply to a message before it becomes “rude”.
In the end, is there anything you can do? Maybe yes, maybe no. Feeling that immediacy — and the unpleasant feelings that come from it — may just be life in the 24/7 connected world. However, if you have a friend whose communication patterns are driving you crazy — whether as a sender or receiver — perhaps an honest chat might be in order. At the same time, if you find your blood boiling the next time someone leaves your message unanswered, the best solution may be to just put down the phone for a while — being connected 24/7 causes great pressure already.
1. What does the underlined word “pinged” in Paragraph1 probably mean?| A．Had a repair. | B．Got an update. | C．Needed a charge. | D．Received a reply. |
| A．Their friends are faraway. |
| B．Their messages aren’t welcome. |
| C．They can’t bear the receivers’ rude behavior. |
| D．They’re affected by the social expectation for an early reply. |
| A．Leave the messages aside. | B．Lead a 24/7 connected life. |
| C．Set a time limit for response. | D．Change the communication patterns. |
| A．News. | B．Business. | C．Society. | D．Education. |
3 . Handwritten thank-you letters are such a simple way of making other people feel good, it is strange that so few people write them anymore. At work, a thank-you letter to employees is unbelievably effective. It costs little and has no side effects. The effort involved in writing letters very low. The pleasure on receiving them is very high.
Doug Conant, manager of Campbell’s Soup Company since 2001, knows the power of thank you letters. He said that every day he works with an assistant, searching the company for people deserving thanks.
In these days of such busy schedules and people running all over the place and trying to get ahead, sometimes we forget the simplest things in life are the most powerful and rewarding. You need to think to yourself about a time someone sent you a thank-you and how much it meant to you.
| A．He then writes them a thank-you letter. |
| B．Why are thank-you letters so important? |
| C．You may ask what side effects exactly mean. |
| D．This makes them an excellent way to reward and motivate staff. |
| E．But if these letters are so inspiring, why don’t more managers write them? |
| F．Always remember to “Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you!” |
| G．Since no one ever writes them thank-you letters they don’t write any themselves. |
Have you noticed the confusion, which seems to extend in our world today? People seem to be going in all
If you don’t live with a purpose, you live by accident. You could end up
Take time to think
Your highest purpose should be giving and serving others. You don’t need to expect anything
Be true to yourself. Don’t confuse yourself by living for nothingness on Sunday morning
5 . For high school leavers starting out in the working world, it is very important to learn particular skills and practice how to behave in an interview or how to find all internship(实习). In some countries, schools have programs to help students onto the path to work. In the United States, however, such programs are still few and far between.
Research shows that if high schools provide career-related courses, students are likely to get higher earnings in later years. In Germany, students as young as 13 and 14 are expected to do internships. German companies work with schools to make sure that young people get the education they need for future employment.
But in America, education reform (改革) programs focus on how well students do in exams instead of bringing them into contact with the working world. Harvard Education school professor Robert Schwartz has criticized education reformers for trying to place all graduates directly on the four-year college track. Schwartz argued that this approach leaves the country’s most vulnerable(易受影响的) kids with no jobs and no skills.
Schwartz believed that the best career programs encourage kids to go for higher education while also teaching them valuable practical skills at high school. James Madison High School in New York, for example, encourages students to choose classes on career-based courses. The school then helps them gain on-the-job experience in those fields while they’re still at high school.
However, even for teens whose schools encourage them to connect with work, the job market is daunting. In the US, unemployment rates for 16-to 19-year-olds are above 20 percent for the third summer in a row. “The risk is that if teenagers miss out on the summer job experience, they become part of this generation of teens who had trouble in landing a job,” said Michael, a researcher in the US.
1. What’s the main idea of the text?| A．Arguments about recent US education reform. |
| B．Tips on finding jobs for high school leavers. |
| C．The lack of career-based courses in US high schools. |
| D．Advice for American high school leavers. |
| A．there is no need for kids to go for higher education in the US |
| B．teenagers in the US can’t miss out on the summer job experience |
| C．education reform should focus on students’ performance in exams |
| D．students should get contact with the working world at high school |
| A．discouraging | B．interesting |
| C．creative | D．unbearable |
| A．High school leavers with no practical skills can’t find a job at all. |
| B．Unemployment rates for US teenagers remain high at the moment. |
| C．Students with career-based courses never have problems finding a job. |
| D．US companies work with schools to prepare young people for future employment. |
6 . Recently I read the Human Development Report. I couldn’t help thinking about another problem which the world is facing--hunger. According to the report, 2,400 people are dying from hunger every day; nearly 13 million in southern Africa will be worried about their food supply because of earthquakes, floods or wars.
In a word, hunger remains the biggest problem of the world today. It’s strange to see that man can travel to the moon, but still doesn’t know how to feed himself. You may ask, “Who steals our bread? The first thieves should be population growth, poverty and loss of rich farmland.
In less developed areas like South Africa, the population grows faster than the crops. It is almost impossible for its government to feed so many people and provide education for them. So it is very important to control the population growth and protect their farmland in countries whose people are suffering from hunger.
According to the report, the world’s food production is enough to feed everyone if it is given away well. But the problem is that the developed countries are eating food that should be given to the poor. Although they are just using their own earning, the fact is that they are coldly watching others starving away.
Luckily, some developed countries such as Netherlands, Norway and Sweden have done a lot to help those hungry people in African countries. We hope other developed countries will follow them.
1. According to the passage, which of the following CANNOT help to make fewer people hungry?| A．Poor countries protect their rich farmland. |
| B．Poor countries control their population growth. |
| C．Rich countries give some food to the poor ones. |
| D．Rich countries produce more food to feed themselves. |
| A．Poor countries are cold and going to die out. |
| B．Rich countries aren’t willing to help poor countries. |
| C．Rich countries notice the problems of the poor countries |
| D．Rich countries are trying their best to help poor countries. |
| A．Because there are so many people. |
| B．Because there are so many developed countries. |
| C．Because there are so many natural disasters and wars. |
| D．Because there isn’t enough food production in the world. |
| A．More countries will give help to Norway. |
| B．More countries will be as rich as Sweden. |
| C．Poor countries should learn from rich ones. |
| D．More rich countries will help the hungry people. |
Psychometric testing—personality testing—has been very popular nowadays as studies show their results to be three times more accurate in predicting your job performance. These tests are now included in almost all graduate recruitment (招聘) and are widely used in the selection of managers.
The most popular of these personality tests is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). It is based on the theory that we are born with a tendency to one personality type which stays more or less fixed throughout life. You answer 88 questions and are then given your “type”, such as Outgoing or Quiet, Feeling or Thinking.
Critics of personality testing raise doubts about “social engineering”. Psychologist Dr. Colin Gill warns that the “popular” personality traits (特性) have their disadvantages. “People who are extremely open to new experiences can be butterflies, going from one idea to the next without mastering any of them.” However, the psychometric test is here to stay, which may be why a whole sub-industry on cheating personality tests has sprung up. “It’s possible to cheat,” admits Gill, “but having to pretend to be the person you are at work will be tiring and unhappy and probably short-lived.”
So can we change our personality? “Your basic personality is fixed by the time you’re 21,”says Gill,“ but it can be affected by motivation and intelligence. If you didn’t have the personality type to be a doctor but desperately wanted to be one and were intelligent enough to master the skills, you could still go ahead. But trying to go too much against type for too long requires much energy and is actually to be suffered for long. I think it’s why we’re seeing this trend for downshifting—too many people trying to fit in to a type that they aren’t really suited for.”
Our interest in personality now exists in every part of our lives. If you ask an expert for advice on anything, you’ll probably be quizzed about your personality. But if personality tests have any value to us, perhaps it is to free us from the idea that all of us are full of potential, and remind us of what we are. As they say in one test when they ask for your age: pick the one you are, not the one you wish you were.
1. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is based on the belief that ______.
| A．certain personality traits are common |
| B．personality is largely decided from birth |
| C．some personality types are better than others |
| D．personality traits are various from time to time |
| A．Employers often find the results unclear. |
| B．They may have a negative effect on takers. |
| C．People can easily lie about their true abilities. |
| D．The results could be opposite to what employers want. |
| A．It’s possible in your adult life. |
| B．It’s easy if you have great motivation. |
| C．It’s difficult before the age of 21. |
| D．It’s unlikely because it requires much energy. |
| A．They are not really worth doing. |
| B．They may encourage greater realism. |
| C．They are of doubtful value to employers. |
| D．They can strengthen the idea we have of our abilities. |
8 . With all the wars, fighting and sadness in the world today, it’s not only necessary, but also essential to have a good sense of humor just to help us get through each and every day of our lives. “Putting a smile on someone’s face when you know they are feeling down in the dumps (处于沮丧中),” as the saying goes, “makes me feel good and warms my heart.”
How would you feel if you could not joke around with your wife, husband, child, co-worker neighbor, close friend, or even just someone that you are standing in line with at your comer store? I am always saying things that make others smile or laugh, even if I don’t know the person I’m joking around with. My Grandma always found humor in everything she did, even if it was the hardest job anyone could imagine. This not only relieves stress in any situation, but also is common courtesy (礼貌) to speak to others that are around you.
I know of a few people that don’t have a funny bone in their bodies, as they say. Everyone around them could be rolling on the floor after hearing a great joke and they would sit there without the slightest smile on their face. They don’t get the joke that makes others laugh. I am busting a gut while they just sit there, looking at me as if I were from outer space. How can people not get a really funny joke?
Laughing is essential to keep your stress levels under control. Without humor we would find ourselves with a lot of psychological problems, or on a lot of medications to keep us from going crazy. There is too much sadness in this present world. It drives people crazy. We all need to find a way to bypass the sadness and bring a little light into our lives. So, I believe our best medicine is to get together and tell some jokes and have some fun laughing together.
1. According to the author, humor is useful in the aspect that ____________.| A．it makes people more confident |
| B．it can pick up people’s spirits |
| C．it can help get rid of the cruelty in the world |
| D．it can help people get on well with others |
| A．explaining carefully | B．speaking loud |
| C．keeping silent | D．laughing hard |
| A．talk about his own understanding of humor |
| B．encourage people to be humorous in daily life |
| C．introduce a practical way to get through daily life |
| D．convince people of the power of being optimistic about life |
| A．Positive. | B．Critical. |
| C．Satisfied. | 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。
As is often the case, when people are attending to meetings, having meals or waiting for buses, you can always find them addicting to their phones, completely ignoring others.
This is really a common phenomena in our life. The reason is why smart phones nowadays can be used for people to play mobile games and kept in touch with friends through QQ and WeChat. Therefore, too much exposure to phones are bad for people in terms of health. Moreover, people involved in phones fail to communicate well with these around them.
As far as I am concerned, people should wisely make use of their phones to help their work and study. Meanwhile, care much about their family and friends rather than mobile phones.
