1 . If someone were to ask me what it is like to be a student in today’s society, I would probably answer them something like this: Being a student in today’s society is not always easy.
Adults often tell us that we don’t know what stress (压力) is. But we as teenage students have our own levels of stress. For example, all school activities require you to uphold your grade point to high standards.
Then, getting your homework turned in on time seems simple, but you still hope to have a life outside of school as well. Many students in their high school years start their first job, so now you have school in the mornings and then you’re off to part-time work. By the time you are done there, you are too tired to finish your school work, but you stay up late to try and return to school feeling sleepy the next day. What good is that?
Let’s not forget about peer (同龄人) pressure. All high school students meet with it at some point in their lives. High school can be a place where students are made fun of and pointed at.
My point is, it is more stressful to be a student in high school than adults believe. Our “stress” may not include paying bills or taking care of a family, but I’m sure if the adults in our lives could go back to school today, they would be surprised at how much it has changed.
I know that the world outside of school is often hard and that the responsibilities are serious. That’s exactly why I know that the focus I give to my future is important in leading me to a career (事业) that will allow me to contribute (贡献) to society.
1. What is the text mainly about?| A．The way of dealing with stress of study. |
| B．The stressful life of high school students. |
| C．The role of students in today’s society. |
| D．The differences between teenagers’ and adults’ life. |
| A．He is against it. | B．He feels disappointed at it. |
| C．He thinks it is worth a try. | D．He shows great interest in it. |
| A．Adults are more stressful than students. |
| B．Adults should help students to deal with stress. |
| C．Adults have undervalued students’ stress. |
| D．Adults should go back to school to experience students’ life. |
| A．Society. | B．Study. | C．School. | D．Stress. |
2 . Social comparison is natural human behavior and there are two types of it: upward social comparison, where we look at people who we feel are better off than we are and downward social comparison, where we look at people who we feel are worse off than we are. These comparisons aren’t always bad for us, but they can sometimes be less helpful than we think.
Whether social comparison is helpful or harmful is decided by our self-respect, the stressors (压力因素) we already have in our lives, and whether we’re making upward or downward social comparison. For example, when we make downward social comparison and compare ourselves to those who are less well-off, it generally makes us feel better. However, those who are experiencing greater threats or stress in their lives tend to use downward comparison more often.
In addition, social media has taken social comparison to a whole new level in the last few years. We see who is doing what were not, and we may become stressed wondering if we’re doing enough, earning enough, or enjoying life enough.
If you feel somewhat hooked on (沉迷于) feelings of superiority from downward social comparison or beating yourself up when you make upward social comparison, it’s important to get out of this mental trap. To train your brain to care less about what others are doing or thinking, find role models and learn from them without adding the element of competitiveness to your own life. You can also create a supportive circle:
| A．This can lift their mood |
| B．Focus on your own failures |
| C．Try to be a modest person |
| D．This can be a group of friends sharing a common goal |
| E．Remind yourself of what you have achieved and are good at |
| F．And sometimes they’re bad for our happiness and stress levels |
| G．We compare our regular lives with other people’s best memories |
3 . Online eating shows, or Mukbang(直播吃饭), originated in South Korea and have gained popularity globally.
Many hosts of such shows have become popular for their ability to eat large amounts of food. But these shows have also received criticism for their waste of food. While some hosts actually do consume the amount of food shown, others may be faking it.
On Aug 12, CCTV exposed several Chinese hosts who were pretending to eat large amounts of food while on camera, but actually later threw it away.
To discourage this practice, many video and livestreaming platforms, including Douyin, Kuaishow and Bilibili, have removed videos that show food waste, and have promoted messages to “stop food waste and eat reasonably.”
In June 2020, the United Nations warned that the world is on the verge of the worst food crisis in 50 years.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, about a third of the world’s food-1.3 billion tons- is wasted every year. In China alone, 50 million tons of food ends up in landfills every year, according to Beijing News.
Recently, campaigns against food waste have been further promoted. In August, President Xi Jinping stressed the need for safeguarding food security and stopping food waste.
According to China Daily, restaurants and catering associations in more than 18 provinces and all 4 municipal cities have issued guidelines to control food waste.
In Shanxi province, local restaurants have been asked to serve half portions to avoid waste. The Wuhan Catering Association proposed that restaurants adopt the “N-1 mode”. For example, a group of 10 diners should only order enough for nine people first. More food is only brought to the table if required.
In addition, a nationwide “Clear Your Plate” campaign has been launched online. Users of Sina Weibo are encouraged to share photos or videos of empty plates after finishing their meals.
Meanwhile, new laws are also being considered, according to China daily. “We will make new laws that give clear instructions on avoiding food waste,” said Zhang Guilong from the legislative Affairs Committee of the National People’s Congress. The instructions will be detailed in every year of food production, purchasing storage, transportation, processing and consumption, according to Zhang.
1. What is CCTV’s attitude toward online eating shows?| A．Supportive. | B．Critical. | C．Objective. | D．Unclear. |
| A．Most video media are contributing to stopping food waste. |
| B．We should eat up all the food on the table. |
| C．It’s hard to carry out "Clear Your Plate campaign. |
| D．All the videos that show food waste have been removed. |
| A．We can adopt the “N+1 mode”. |
| B．We can eat more food than we need. |
| C．We can choose not to watch online eating shows. |
| D．We can ask the restaurants to serve us half portions. |
| A．Online eating shows should be banned. |
| B．New laws should be made to avoid food waste. |
| C．Measures are being taken to stop food waste. |
| D．We should share photos or videos of empty plates. |
4 . The word “adulting” started as a kind of joke—whenever a millennial (千禧一代) would do something as an adult does, this was an act of “adulting”. However, now, millennials clearly need training in being an adult.
Rachel Flehinger has founded an Adulting School, which includes online classes on simple sewing (缝纫), problems solving and cooking. The cause for such classes is that many millennials haven’t left childhood homes—in America 34 percent of adults aged 18 to 34 still lived with their parents in 2015, up from 26 percent 10 years before. There’s a good deal of truth to this. If you’re living at home, with Mom and Dad doing their best to spoil (溺爱) you, you’re less likely to know how to wash clothes, cook or make the bed. Dependency leads to enervation. Over time, you are unable to adult.
But living at home doesn’t necessarily bring dependency. Back in 1940, 30 percent of 25-to-29-year-olds lived at home with parents or grandparents. But they were adulting. Parents expected their kids to do housework, and to prepare for life. Then, what’s the real problem now?
Instead of blaming (责备) living at home, we have to blame our style of parenting. The truth is that we’ve simply become lazier as parents. We’re more likely to let our kids lie on a sofa than tell them to get a job. We don’t push our kids to build families of their own, because life cost has increased. Then the question is how we can encourage young people to “adult” in such a situation.
1. What is the purpose of showing the data (数据) in paragraph 2?| A．To show that millennials liked to live with their parents. |
| B．To show that the Adulting School became popular in 2015. |
| C．To show that more adults still depended on their parents. |
| D．To show that the online courses were necessary to learn. |
| A．Emergency | B．Argument | C．Tension | D．Weakness |
| A．Living at home certainly leads to dependency. |
| B．Parents are too lazy to do housework. |
| C．We often tell kids to get a job. |
| D．Kids are not pushed to start their own families. |
| A．What the life of the millennials is like. |
| B．Why millennials need adulting training. |
| C．How parents encourage millennials to “adult”. |
| D．How parents educated kids in the past. |
5 . “A lie can travel half way around the world before the truth can put its bots on.” That quote is attributed to Mark Twain. In today’s Internet world of “fake（假的）news”, lies spread even faster than the truth is having trouble finding its boots.
To make matters worse, most young people get news from social media sites where facts are mixed with rumors（谣言）, half-truths and complete lies. This has led to young people becoming confused. In the latest PISA, which tested 15-year-old worldwide on academic subjects, fewer than one in ten of the examinees were reported to be able to distinguish fact from opinion. A Stanford University study showed that students at all levels of education could not tell real news from fake news. In one instance, 80 percent thought that a paid advertisement was a real news story.
Fake news is spread by people who have a prejudice. They want to influence public opinion either for or against something or someone. It is important, then, for young people to recognize when they are being used and to be skeptical of online information.
Traditional media, such as newspapers and television, are still the more credible sources of information. Reporters are professionally trained to look for facts, and editors have the job of making sure those facts are correct. However, if you getting most of your information online, you have to be your own editor. In that case, the first thing to do is to look at the writer of a post. Is this person known to be credible? Does the site where you read the post have a prejudice? Next, look for other sources from mainstream media to confirm the information. In other words, by putting on your truth boots you won’t be fooled into chasing lies.
1. Why is the quote mentioned in paragraph 1？| A．To give a definition. |
| B．To introduce the topic. |
| C．To offer background information. |
| D．To highlight the wisdom of Mark Twain. |
| A．They prefer to real news story. |
| B．They are easily taken in by fake news. |
| C．They can distinguish fact from opinion. |
| D．They get worried about their education. |
| A．Fight against prejudices. | B．Avoid traditional media. |
| C．Be an editor of your own. | D．Believe in trained reporters. |
| A．The truth about fake news. | B．The influence of fake news. |
| C．Problems with online information. | D．Sources of online information. |
6 . Birth order, according to conventional wisdom, molds (塑造) personality; Firstborn children, secure with their place in the family, are expected to be mature and more responsible. Younger siblings (兄弟姐妹) work harder to get their parents’ attention and take more risk. That’s the central idea in psychologist Frank J. Sulloway’s “Born to Rebel”, an influential book on birth order.
However, birth order does not appear to influence personality in adults, according to several ambitious studies published in the past few years, which relied on larger data sets and more statistical methods than earlier reports.
Schmukle, a psychologist at University of Leipzig. and his colleagues, in a study published in 2015, assessed birth order for about 20,000 people from different countries and found that birth order did not change any of five broad personality traits (特征). A follow-up study on more specific characteristics, published by Sehmukle two years later, did not find any effect of birth order, either. Rodica Damian, a social psychologist at the University of Houston, studied more than 370,000 high school students and also concluded, in 2015, that birth order does not influence the Big Five.
In the Basel-Berlin Risk Study, one of the most exhaustive attempts to measure risk preference, researchers asked participants about driving too fast and other risky behaviors. “None of these behavioral measures showed any convincing relationship between being a later-born and talking more risks,” the study authors wrote.
We tend to confuse birth order and age. “Some of the birth order effects that we observe in everyday life are not birth order effects, but actually are age effects,” Schmukle said. “It is not surprising that when you look at differences within families, firstborns are more responsible than later-borns. But take age out of the picture, and the effect disappears.”
1. What’s Sulloway’s attitude to birth order effects?| A．Favorable. | B．Cautious. | C．Doubtful. | D．Ambiguous. |
| A．They all proved the birth order effects. |
| B．They were conducted by the same team. |
| C．They concentrated on firstborn children. |
| D．They based the results on statistical data. |
| A．Birth order. | B．Risky behaviors. |
| C．Age effects. | D．Parents’ attention. |
| A．By giving examples. | B．By listing findings. |
| C．By making comparisons. | D．By showing instructions. |
7 . For many parents, raising a teenager is like fighting a long war, but years go by without any clear winner. Like a border conflict between neighboring countries, the parent-teen war is about boundaries: Where is the line between what I control and what you do?
Both sides want peace, but neither feels it has any power to stop the conflict. In part, this is because neither is willing to admit any responsibility for starting it. From the parents’ point of view, the only cause of their fight is their adolescents’ complete unreasonableness. And of course, the teens see it in exactly the same way, except oppositely. Both feel trapped.
In this article, I’ll describe three no-win situations that commonly arise between teens and parents and then suggest some ways out of the trap. The first no-win situation is quarrels over unimportant things. Examples include the color of the teen’s hair, the cleanliness of the bedroom, the preferred style of clothing, the child’s failure to eat a good breakfast before school, or his tendency to sleep until noon on the weekends. Second, blaming. The goal of a blaming battle is to make the other admit that his bad attitude is the reason why everything goes wrong. Third, needing to be right. It doesn’t matter what the topic is—politics, the laws of physics, or the proper way to break an egg—the point of these arguments is to prove that you are right and the other person is wrong, for both wish to be considered an authority—someone who actually knows something—and therefore to command respect. Unfortunately, as long as parents and teens continue to assume that they know more than the other, they’ll continue to fight these battles forever and never make any real progress.
1. Why does the author compare the parent-teen war to a border conflict?| A．Both are about where to draw the line. |
| B．Both can continue for generations. |
| C．Neither has any clear winner. |
| D．Neither can be put to an end. |
| A．The teens tend to have a full understanding of their parents. |
| B．The teens agree with their parents on the cause of the conflict. |
| C．The teens cause their parents of misleading them. |
| D．The teens blame their parents for starting the conflict. |
| A．give orders to the other |
| B．know more than the other |
| C．gain respect from the other |
| D．get the other to behave properly |
| A．Solutions for the parent-teen problems. |
| B．Examples of the parent-teen war. |
| C．Causes for the parent-teen conflicts. |
| D．Future of the parent-teen relationship. |
8 . When Ariyah Georges was born 15 weeks early, she weighed only one pound 12 ounces. Her mother, Jovan, knew how important breastfeeding (母乳) was, especially for a premature (早产的) baby like Ariyah, so she began pumping milk to feed her through a tube. But two days later, Jovan felt dizzy and feverish —104 Fahrenheit degrees, in fact. She had a blood disease and was close to full shock.
She was separated from others for nearly two weeks at the regional Northern Virginia hospital where she’d delivered. During that time, she could still pump breast milk, but Ariyah couldn’t consume it because of the risk of infection (感染). Without it, the newborn was particularly easily affected by diseases. There are many cases like this, which creates the need for the milk donation.
Enter donor (捐献者) milk — breast milk purchased by hospitals for mothers who aren’t able to produce enough milk on their own, due to health complications, stresses, or other factors. The milk comes from milk banks, organizations that collect and screen breast milk from those women willing to donate. Usually processed in intensive-care units, the milk is only available by prescription (处方).
In recent years, both milk banks and the use of donated human milk have risen swiftly in the United States. In 2011, 22 percent of NICUs used donor breast milk; four years later, that number doubled to nearly 40 percent, and went even higher for the most intensive NICUs — as much as 75 percent. There are 23 milk banks in the United States recognized by the Human Milk Banking Association of North America, or HMBANA, double the number that existed five years ago.
But as the demand for donor milk rises, banks must find more charitable donors — a task made more complicated by informal networks of milk sharing that happens online. And many of the most vulnerable (脆弱的) infants are still not being reached.
1. Jovan couldn’t feed her baby Ariyah on her breast milk because _______.| A．Ariyah was a premature baby | B．Jovan couldn’t produce enough milk |
| C．Jovan was in poor health | D．Jovan was separated from others |
| A．introduce the topic of an increasing need for donated human milk |
| B．remind us of the importance of breastfeeding the newborn |
| C．tell us what to do if mothers cannot produce enough milk |
| D．warn us against the risk of the newborn being affected by diseases |
| A．By following time order. | B．By making predictions. |
| C．By giving examples. | D．By listing data. |
| A．It’s difficult to find enough charitable donors. |
| B．Networks of milk looking for donors online are informal. |
| C．The milk purchased from milk banks cannot reach infants’ home. |
| D．The number of women willing to donate breast milk are decreasing. |
9 . “The price of books for our students is just getting higher and higher and，combined with the rising cost of tuition，it’s killing these students，”said Peter Jason，a college professor. “Remember，students are one of the poorest groups of people in America. Almost half of them have at least one part-time job. In fact，one of my students has three jobs. And she still manages to have high scores and go to school full-time. ”
Textbook prices are traditionally high. Adding to that problem, many college teachers change textbooks year after year; they either upgrade to a new edition or switch to an entirely different textbook. This further hurts students because if an instructor no longer uses a particular textbook，that book has no resale value.
Dr. Jason decided to make reading a little easier and a lot cheaper for his students by writing his own book on public speaking. “Many books have an increased price because of CD-ROMs，lots of color photographs and pictures. I talked to my students，and many of them，like me，prefer to keep things simple! So，a few years ago，I wrote my own textbook. Compared to most other public speaking books，mine is half the number of pages，and one-third the price. That is，$30 instead of $90. When I wrote a second edition last year，students only had to buy the 35 new pages, For only $7. 00，they had almost a new book. Now my loose-leaf textbook enjoys great popularity among the students. Maybe in the future more writers and publishers will try it. ”
1. What did Dr. Jason say about students at college?| A．They are short of money. |
| B．They need better textbooks. |
| C．They should do part-time jobs. |
| D．They are trying to get high scores. |
| A．To choose cheaper textbooks. |
| B．To write a textbook himself. |
| C．To speak to his students. |
| D．To use old textbooks. |
| A．About 7 dollars. | B．About 30 dollars. |
| C．About 37 dollars. | D．About 90 dollars. |
| A．Dr. Jason’s textbook has CD-ROMs and nice pictures. |
| B．More writers and publishers will write simpler textbooks. |
| C．Dr. Jason teaches public speaking at a college. |
| D．Dr. Jason’s textbook is not well received. |
10 . About one in ten video game players shows signs of addictive behavior that could have negative effects on their family, friends and school work, according to a new study conducted in New York.
Researchers at Iowa State University(ISU) and the National Institute on Media and the Family found that some gamers show at least six symptoms of gambling addiction such as lying to family and friends about how much they play games, using the games to escape their problems and becoming restless when they stop playing.
They may also skip homework to play video games or spend too much time playing games and do poorly in school. “While the medical community currently does not recognize video game addiction as mental disorder, hopefully this study will be one of many that allow us to have an educated conversation on the positive and negative effects of video games,” said Dr Douglas Gentile, an assistant professor of psychology at ISU.
Dr David Walsh, the president of the National Institute on Media and the Family which tries to reduce the harm of media on the health and development of children and families, said the findings are a wake-up call.“This study gives everyone a better idea of the problem,” he explained.
The researchers, who studied 1,178 American children and teenagers, aged 8 to 18, found some displayed at least 6 of 11 symptoms of pathological (病态的) gambling as stated by the American Psychiatric Association. Addicted gamers played video games 24 hours a week, twice as much as casual gamers. Some addicted gamers even steal to support their habit, according to the findings that will be published in the journal Psychological Science.
While video games can be fun and entertaining, some kids are getting trouble. “I continue to hear from families who are concerned about their kids’ gaming habits. Not only do we need to focus on identifying the problem, but we need to find ways to help families prevent and treat gaming addiction.
1. The author mainly tells us about________.| A．video game addiction in children |
| B．positive effects of addictions |
| C．families’ concern about their children’s addiction to video games |
| D．treatment for video game addiction |
| A．disappointed | B．sleepy |
| C．annoyed | D．exhausted |
| A．they play games to escape their problems | B．they lie about how long they spend gaming |
| C．they perform badly in their studies | D．they often stay away from school |
| A．parents will prevent their kids from playing games |
| B．the media will arouse people’s awareness of the problem |
| C．parents will stop buying video games for their children |
| D．they will find ways to help families deal with this problem |
