1 . Which is more important for parents, making more money to give the kids a better life or spending more time with them? It is a problem for parents and it is not easy to decide. A new study shows that today’s parents are spending more time with their children than parents in the past. According to the study, today’s college-educated mothers spend about 21.2 hours a week taking care of their children. But women with less education spend about 15.9 hours. Before 1995, it was only 12 hours.
Dads are spending more time on ball games. Before 1995, fathers with college educations only spent about 4.5 hours a week playing with their children. Today, it increases to 9.6 hours a week. For fathers with high school education, the time goes up from 3.7 hours to 6.8.
These days, parents don’t care more about the cleaning or the cooking. They are trying their best to spend time with their families. As for the kids, they don’t mind how much time their parents spend with them. They just want to enjoy the time their parents do be with them.
So, take part in the kids’ activities when you are with them, such as helping with homework or playing soccer with them.
1. How long do college-educated mothers spend taking care of their kids a week?A.About 9.6 hours. | B.About 12 hours. |
C.About 15.9 hours. | D.About 21.2 hours. |
A.Women with less education spend about12 hours staying with their kids, |
B.Mothers in the past spent less time staying with kids than mothers these days. |
C.Mothers with college education are lazier than those with less education. |
D.Dads spend more time staying with their kids than mothers do. |
A.About 4.5 hours. | B.Less than 9 hours. |
C.About 13.5 hours. | D.About 18 hours. |
A.They care about how much money their parents can make. |
B.They care about how much time their parents spend with them. |
C.They care if their parents are really with them. |
D.They care if their parents can give them a better life. |
2 . We’ve all been there: in a lift, in line at the bank or on an airplane, surrounded by people who are, like us, deeply focused on their smartphones or, worse, struggling with the uncomfortable silence.
What’s the problem? It’s possible that we all don’t have enough conversational ability. It’s more likely that none of us start a conversation because it’s embarrassing and challenging, or we think it’s annoying and unnecessary. But the next time you find yourself among strangers, consider that small talk is worth the trouble. Experts say it’s a valuable social practice that leads to big benefits.
It is easy to consider small talk as unimportant, but we can’t forget that deep relationships wouldn’t even exist (存在) if there weren’t casual conversations. Small talk is the grease (润滑剂) for social communication, says Bernardo Carducci, director of the Shyness Research Institute at Indiana University Southeast. “Almost every great love story and each big business deal begins with small talk,” he explains. “The secret to successful small talk is learning how to connect with others, not just communicate with them.”
In a 2014 study, Elizabeth Dunn, professor of psychology at UBC, invited people to a coffee shop. One group was asked to interact with its waiter, the other, to speak only when necessary. The results showed that those who chatted with their server reported obviously higher positive feelings and a better coffee shop experience. “It’s not that talking to the waiter is better than talking to your husband,” says Dunn. “But interactions with peripheral (边缘的) members of our social network is important for our happiness and health.”
Dunn believes that people who reach out to strangers feel a greater sense of belonging, a link with others. Carducci believes developing such a sense of belonging starts with small talk. “Small talk is the basis of good manners,” he says.
1. What does the underline word “casual” in paragraph 3mean?A.Addictive | B.Public | C.Personal | D.Informal |
A.Showing good manners. | B.Making business deals. |
C.Focusing on a topic. | D.Keeping in contact with other people. |
A.It raises people’s confidence. | B.It makes people feel good. |
C.It improves family relationships. | D.It matters as much as a formal talk. |
A.Conversation Counts | B.Ways of Making Small Talk |
C.Importance of Small Talk | D.Uncomfortable Silence |
Teenage life is full of adventures and challenges. Doing voluntary work is popular among some teenagers. And extra-curricular activities
4 . Technology seems to discourage slow, immersive reading. Reading on a screen tires your eyes and makes it harder for you to keep your place. Online writing tends to be more skimmable and list-like than print. The cognitive neuroscientist Mary Walt argued recently that this “new norm” of skim reading is producing “an invisible, game -changing transformation” in how readers process words. The neuronal circuit that sustains the brain’s capacity to read now favors the rapid absorption of information.
We shouldn’t overplay this danger. All readers skim. From about the age of nine, our eyes start to bounce around the page, reading only about a quarter of the words properly, and filling in the gaps by inference. Nor is there anything new in these fears about declining attention spans. So far, the anxieties have proved to be false alarms. “Quite a few critics have been worried about attention spans lately and see very short stories as signs of cultural decline,” the American author Selvin Brown wrote. “No one ever said that poems were evidence of short attention spans.”
And yet the Internet has certainly changed the way we read. For a start, it means that there is more to read, because more people than ever are writing. And digital writing is meant for rapid release and response. This mode of writing and reading can be interactive and fun. But often it treats other people’s words as something to be quickly harvested as fodder (素材) to say something else. Everyone talks over the top of everyone else, desperate to be heard.
Perhaps we should slow down. Reading is constantly promoted as a social good and source of personal achievement. But this advocacy often emphasizes “enthusiastic” “passionate” or “eager” reading, none of which adjectives suggest slow, quiet absorption. To a slow reader, a piece of writing can only be fully understood by immersing oneself in the words and their slow comprehension of a line of thought.
The human need for this kind of deep reading is too tenacious for any new technology to destroy. We often assume that technological change can’t be stopped and happens in one direction, so that older media like “dead-tree” books are kicked out by newer, more virtual forms. In practice, older technologies can coexist with new ones. The Kindle has not killed off the printed book any more than the car killed off the bicycle. We still want to enjoy slowly. formed ideas and carefully-chosen words. Even in a fast-moving age, there is time for slow reading.
1. Selvin Brown would probably agree that ________.A.poetry reading is vital to attention spans |
B.the gravity of cultural decline is urgent |
C.fears of attention spans are unnecessary |
D.online writing harms immersive reading |
A.It demands writers to abandon traditional writing modes. |
B.It leads to too much talking and not enough deep reflection. |
C.It depends heavily on frequent interaction with the readers. |
D.It paves the way for enthusiastic, passionate or eager reading. |
A.Deep-rooted. |
B.Fast-advanced. |
C.Slowly-changed. |
D.Rarely-noticed. |
A.The Wonder of Deep Reading |
B.Slow Reading is Here to Stay |
C.The Internet is Changing the Way We Read |
D.Digital vs Print: A Life-and-Death Struggle |
利1. 有更多机会与别人交流和分享,更容易结交新的朋友;
2.能够更快捷地了解世界各地的最新信息。
弊1.个人隐私难以得到保障;
2.社交媒体会占据大量的时间,影响我们的现实生活。
你的观点……
注意:
1.写作词数应为80左右;
2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
6 . Keeping animals safe on the road
Roadkill is not a rare sight when driving down most highways and sometimes also on roadways in cities.
They chose Nanjing as the study subject, where there are more than 9,700 kilometers of paved roads. A total of nine roads were chosen for the research, including three national highways.
A.You may not feel good about seeing roadkill |
B.The object is to educate people about road safety |
C.The length of the roads combined was over 224.27 kilometers |
D.It refers to animals being hit by cars or other vehicles by accident. |
E.Cats, dogs and blackbirds were the three commonly killed animals |
F.In the past, research in China focused on roadkill in nature reserves |
G.Roadkill incidents are more likely to happen in November and January |
7 . With the rising cost of living, a growing number of adult children are moving back in with their parents. While lots of parents will enjoy the chance to spend more time with their grown-up children, having them move back in can also cause some problems.
Sit down and talk
While the situation is clearly hard for the parents, Counselling Directory member Octavia Landy advises them to take a step back. “
When things get heated, it can be easy to just storm off and not really hear each other out. But every effort needs to be made, on both sides, to properly listen. “As parents, you need a cool head,” suggests Landy. “Bring the conversation back to the matter at hand, and listen to your kids.”
Set clear boundaries (界限)
“Boundaries and communication lie at the heart of this difficult situation,” says Landy. “At the moment, it feels as if no boundaries will lead to a sense of anger on your part. Consider what your boundaries look like.
Ask yourself what you need to feel happy in your home
Landy suggests parents ask themselves what they need to feel happy and safe in their home—and the answer might be a difficult one to come to terms with. “It might mean that you need to ask your kids to leave,” she says. “
A.So, what can parents do |
B.Put everything in good order |
C.Be prepared to listen patiently |
D.Are they cheered by the news from home |
E.You’d better set a proper time for a family meeting |
F.Work together to set basic rules and a timeline to be reviewed |
G.If you fear your kids get homeless, then address these fears directly |
8 . For those of us who grew up watching Star Trek, exploring space has been about discovering strange new worlds. And there are plenty of worlds to explore in time, but we still need major technological advancements to reach planets that are light years away.
What we are doing in space today is providing unbelievable benefits right now, right here on Earth. From space, we can monitor, manage and care for our planet. Satellite-based sensors show us the short- and long-term effects of human activity on our environment. Many companies are using their interest in space to help solve problems here, from using hyperspectral imaging(高光谱成像), which enable us to map vegetation(植被) and rain forests, to microsatellites that provide global connectivity for the network of things.
My company, OneWeb, is focusing on what I believe is one of the world’s most important issues: the need for equal access to the Internet. The Internet has become our economic lifeblood. And yet, nearly half of the world’s population doesn’t have Internet access. Space is playing a key role in bridging this digital divide. OneWeb is launching 1,980 satellites to help bring Internet access to people everywhere, and our first production satellites are already flying in space and have shown very high download speeds.
Fiber and cable Internet access technologies already cover most financially viable(可行的) major cities. Similarly, these regions will also be the first to be served with 5G. Poor communities are the last to get connected, and without connectivity, those communities have no chance to lift themselves from poverty. OneWeb’s satellites will reach every community in the world and enable equal access to the Internet for the world’s less developed places.
Fifty years from the day when man first walked on the moon, we are still only approaching the possible. There will be tens of thousands of new satellites, space stations and factories in the coming years to bring advancements in communications, scientific research, monitoring the earth, exploring space and more. This is exciting, but we must take action carefully.
1. What is the second paragraph mainly about?A.Benefits space exploration can bring to us. |
B.Problems space exploration leads to. |
C.Steps of space exploration requires. |
D.Equipment space exploration needs. |
A.Increase download speeds. |
B.Narrow the gap in Internet learning. |
C.Help people set up and maintain a website. |
D.Enable people to make use of the Internet equally. |
A.More than six decades ago, man first walked on the moon. |
B.More than half of the world’s people have no access to the Internet. |
C.OneWeb’s satellites will make it possible for most people to be served with 5G. |
D.Without the Internet, poor communities can hardly help themselves out of poverty. |
A.The risks of furthering space exploration. |
B.The value of setting up space stations. |
C.The way we could monitor our earth. |
D.The features of microsatellites. |
9 . The first wave of concerns over artificial intelligence(AI)in 2023 appeared soon after New Year’s Day when classrooms reopened and schools from Seattle to Paris started blocking ChatGPT, a powerful software based on AI large language models, because teenagers were using it to do their homework.
The AI large language models behind such products as ChatGPT work by repeatedly guessing the next word in a sentence after having “learned” the rules from a huge amount of/human-written works. Although they often get facts wrong, their answers appear so natural that Keven, their inventors begin to worry about their possible use for spreading false information.
People became more worried when various AI products started to create not just texts but novel images, music and human voices, which threatened the livelihoods of anyone who writes, draws or sings for a living. It led to strikes by Hollywood writers and actors and legal challenges from artists and bestselling authors. Some of the most respected scientists even warned that the technology’s unchecked progress was possibly threatening human existence. “In the longer term, they might manage our attention,” pioneering AI scientist Fei Fei Lisaid. “They would tell us which video to watch, which book to read or whose communication to respond as AI technology’s abilities improve rapidly. They could be a very good assistant, but also with really big risks.”
Li hoped that 2023 is going to be a year for people to think about what Al is, how to use it and what the effects are — all the good, the bad and the ugly.
“It’s easy to forget that they are not the first wave of AI products. Computer vision techniques developed by Li and other scientists have helped sort through a huge database of photos to recognize objects and individual faces and guide self-driving cars. Speech recognition advances have made voice assistants like Siri and Alexa a normal thing in many people’s lives,” said Tom Gruber, co-founder of Siri Inc.
1. Why did schools try to stop their students from using ChatGPT?A.ChatGPT often got facts wrong in the class. |
B.Students spent too much time on the software. |
C.ChatGPT helped students spread false information. |
D.Students used the software to cheat at their homework. |
A.AI’s training costs. | B.ATs amazing abilities. |
C.AI’s possible threats. | D.AI’s fast developments. |
A.Think carefully about AI’s impact. | B.Welcome AI technology |
C.Do use ChatGPT more carefully. | D.Upgrade ChatGPT in time. |
A.A news report. | B.A guide book to a software. |
C.A product review. | D.An introduction to a person. |
10 . Once I told someone I wanted to get a master’s degree of fine arts in creative writing and they told me it was the second-to-worst post-graduation plan they’d ever heard from a student. Arts degrees—especially fine arts degrees, which usually come in the form of music, studio art, creative writing and theater—have been, over the years, labeled useless.
It’s true that for the most part, STEM degrees lead to higher paying jobs than liberal and fine arts degrees, and it’s understandable why young people care about a higher starting salary and financial security. Student loan debt is playing a role in the physical and mental stress of young people.
And while STEM majors usually have starting salaries that are $20,000 higher than those of liberal arts majors, by the time people reach the age of 40, the salaries between those who majored in the liberal arts and those who majored in STEM are virtually the same. For example, women who major in STEM earned nearly 50% more than social science and history majors at ages 23-25, but only 10% more by ages 38-40, a New York Times analysis reported. So even in terms of salary, which doesn’t solely determine whether or not a degree is useful, liberal arts degrees aren’t all that far behind STEM.
It seems too that since people nowadays are going to have to work longer, it’s more important than ever that we actually like and care about what we’re doing. Pursuing something enjoyable, or else a passion, is continuously found to be a key factor in maintaining healthy relationships, mental health, physical health and energy. In other words, not useless.
Art is also a method of communication. It allows people from different backgrounds, from different walks of life to communicate with each other. In a world where borders and division seem to be all over the place, we need art more than ever. We need liberal arts majors. And more than anything, we need to be able to pursue what we love with confidence, and we need to not get caught up in the ”usefulness“ of what we love.
And just because someone’s primary job isn’t in their field of study—a writer who teaches high school for example—doesn’t make the degree useless. It just means that their way of finding a stable income is different. The same goes for artists who have to work multiple jobs to support themselves. They might have to find other means of supporting themselves and their artistry. It might be copy editing or it might be tutoring,
So I am going to graduate school, and I am going to graduate school for writing. I might be paying rent by way of overnight restaurant shifts—there’s so much I’m not sure of. But one thing I am sure of is this—I would rather be a writer working two jobs to pay my bills than be no writer at all.
1. A New York Times analysis report is mentioned in Paragraph 3 to .A.analyse the potential value of different majors |
B.put forward the opinion on majors by example |
C.prove the argument against arts degrees wrong |
D.demonstrate the link between majors and incomes |
A.Following one’s dream of arts keeps one in good condition. |
B.Doing what one loves builds up one’s self-confidence in arts. |
C.Mastering arts improves one’s understanding of different jobs. |
D.Developing a love for arts helps one maintain passion for work |
A.Students learning arts are more concerned about the value of life. |
B.People tend to place income in the first place when choosing majors. |
C.The man who doesn’t love his work won’t stick with the job for long. |
D.Graduates can find a broader space of development in the field of arts. |