1 . Most children now chat daily either online or through their mobile phones.     1     Some are shy in real life but are confident to communicate with others online; others find support from people of their own age on relationship issues, or problems at home.

Sometimes the online world, just like the real world, can cause problems, such as bullying (恃强凌弱) or arguments.     2     But there are also a few people who use the Internet for illegal aims. Children must be made aware of both the good things and the dangers.

    3     Just as you decide which TV programs are suitable, you need to do the same for the websites and the chat rooms your children visit. Remind your children that online friends are still strangers. Reminding them of the risks will keep them alert (警惕的).

    4     So it’s likely that your children may know more than you do. We get left behind when it comes to the latest gadgets and the interactive areas of websites, like chat rooms and message boards.     5     Chatters love to use abbreviations (缩略语) such as: atb (all the best), bbfn (bye bye for now), Idk (I don’t know), xlnt (excellent).

2 . Every festival has its own meaning. Labor Day, for example, celebrates the value of hard work. Thanksgiving is about showing thanks to people around you. And Valentines’ Day is a time when you express love to your loved ones. But somehow it now seems that all festivals we just care about one thing — shopping. And that can be a big problem.

“In a way, over-consumption (过度消费) is the mother of all our environmental problems,” Kalle Lasn once told CNN. Lasn is the organizer of Buy Nothing Day, a day set up in Canada in 1992 to fight against unhealthy spending habits, and has now become an international event. It’s held on the day, which is known as Black Friday — a famous shopping day in the US and Canada.

You can see the irony (讽刺) here.

Even though the idea of Buy Nothing Day was brought up 26 years ago, we seem to need it now more than ever. It’s just as Lasn said, all the different kinds of pollution in our lives today — bad air quality, the reduction of forest area, endangered animal species, and plastic bags found in the ocean — seem to be the same cause: over-consumption.

The latest example is the Singles’ Day shopping craze of Nov 11, which saw a new sales record. But as Nie Li, a campaigner at Greenpeace, told Reuters, “Record-setting over-consumption means record-setting waste.” And it was reported that last year the Singles’ Day packages left more than 160,000 tons of waste, including plastic and cardboard. The Collins Dictionary has also just named “single-use” its Word of the Year, pointing out the problem that there’re too many things we tow out after only using them once.

So, Buy Nothing Day might only be here for one day a year, but it’s not just to remind us to the a break from shopping on that day, but to change our lifestyle completely, focusing on fun “with people we care about” rather than wasting money on useless things.

3 . Keeping fit often means sharing a busy pathway with cyclists,runners and walkers,but imagine facing the task of doing it all without being able to see or hear.It is a challenge many disabled athletes face,unless someone agrees to be their eyes and ears.

Newly formed group Achilles Brisbane pairs visually and audibly impaired (视觉和听觉受损的) athletes with people who would like to guide them.

Jane Britt,president of Achilles Brisbane,who is—vision and hearing—impaired,said,“When we go out,it’s much less frightening to have someone beside us that has full hearing to listen for us and tell us what’s there.”

Ms.Cullen and Ms.Britt meet up most Saturday mornings to take part in the five-kilometer park run.Their partnership is built on trust,but Ms.Britt said that it took time to develop.

Ms.Britt said it took an unexpected storm for her to trust Ms.Cullen completely.“There was violent rain,my glasses were broken and we were walking together.I suddenly had to tell her I couldn’t see anything,and I was going to have to completely trust her.From that time I knew it was going to work because she was so good about dealing with the special situation we both found ourselves in,” she said.

Isabella Allen and her seeing eye dog Tatum are two new additions to the Achilles Brisbane.Ms.Allen kept active by rowing,running and cycling but found it difficult to keep going as her vision became worse.After nearly giving up completely,she worked up the courage to ask Achilles Brisbane to find someone to share a boat with her.

Ms.Allen said the fear of not finding anyone to row with almost stopped her from reaching out to Achilles Brisbane.“But,they found people and matched me to them,” she said.“It’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”

4 . By now, we are all aware that social media has had a tremendous influence on our culture, in business, on the world-at-large. Social media websites revolutionized the way people communicate and socialize on the Web. However, aside from seeing your friend’s new baby on Facebook, or reading about Justin Bieber’s latest conflict with the law on Twitter, what are some of the real influences?

Social networks offer the opportunity for people to re-connect with their old friends and acquaintances, make new friends, share ideas and pictures, and many other activities. Users can keep pace with the latest global and local developments, and participate in campaigns and activities of their choices. Professionals use social media sites like LinkedIn to enhance their career and business development. Students can work together with their peers to improve their academic and communication skills.

Unfortunately, there are a few downsides too to social networking. If you are not careful, immoral people can target you for cyber bullying and disturbance on social sites. School children, young girls, and women can fall victim to online attacks which can create tension and suffering. If you are a victim of cyber bullying, do not take it lying down, but try to take appropriate legal action against the attacker.

Many companies have blocked social networks as addicted employees can distract themselves on such sites, instead of focusing on work. In fact, studies show that British companies have lost billions of dollars per year in productivity because of social media addiction among employees.

Also, what you carelessly post on the Internet can come back to trouble you. Revealing (泄露) personal information on social sites can make users vulnerable (易受伤害的) to crimes like identity theft, stalking, etc. Many companies perform a background check on the Internet before hiring an employee. If a potential employee has posted something embarrassing on social media, it can greatly affect their chances of getting the job. The same holds true for our relationships too, as our loved ones and friends may get to know if we post something undesirable on social networks.

Social media has its advantages and drawbacks as each coin has two sides. It is up to each user to use social sites wisely to enhance their professional and social life, and exercise caution to ensure they do not fall victim to online dangers.

A．	B．
C．	D．

New research shows that the average cost of raising a child to the age of 18 in China in 2021 was 485,000 yuan for a first child,     1     is far more than     2     in the United States and Japan. The high cost of child-raising is one more     3     (difficult) Chinese policymakers face while     4     (deal) with rapidly decreasing birth rates. Experts warn China’s aging population will put pressure     5     its health and social security systems. A decrease in workers could also     6     (severe) limit growth for the world’s second-largest economy in the coming years.

New policies permit     7     (family) to have as many as three children. But China`s birth rate dropped to 7.52 births per 1,000 people in 2021. That is the     8     (low) since the National Bureau of Statistics` began recording the information in 1949. The high costs of raising a child     9     (cause) officials in China to place restrictions on the private tutoring industry in the last few years. Some areas have been giving couples money for having     10     second or third child.

7 . You may know the English letters A, B and C. But do you know there are people called ABCs? Do you know there is such a thing as “a banana person”? How strange! ABC means American-born Chinese. An ABC is a Chinese, but was born in the United States. Sometimes, people call an ABC a “banana person”. A banana is yellow outside. So, when a person is a “banana”, he or she is white inside-thinking like a Westerner and yellow outside-looking like a Chinese.

Usually, ABCs know little about China or the Chinese language. Some of them don’t speak Chinese. But if ABCs cannot speak Chinese, can we still call them Chinese people? Yes, of course. They are overseas (海外的)Chinese. These people may be citizens (公民)of another country like the US, Canada or Singapore. But they have Chinese blood. Their parents, grandparents or even great-grandparents were from China. They all have black eyes and black hair.

But they are not Chinese citizens. They are people of the People’s Republic of China. For example, we all know the famous scientist C. N. Yang(杨振宁). He got the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1957. Chinese people love him. But he is an American citizen.

9 . After finishing my teaching for a school year. I thought that I should go back to Montreal, Quebec, my hometown, for a visit. My main goal was to relax in preparation for the challenges of my retirement in the coming year.

Through my stay in Montreal, I met lots of Chinese who were trying hard to succeed and then led a better life in Canada. Some travelled thousands of miles to get knowledge. When I spoke with some of them about the major barrier they had to face after they arrived in Canada, they all talked about the two official languages of Canada. But I was impressed by their ability to express their ideas while they were changing between English and French.

Almost all of those people said they often felt homesick. They missed their families and friends. Though Montreal had lots of Chinese restaurants, they longed for a home-cooked meal.

I met some tourists who were trying to realize their childhood dreams of experiencing the life in a developed country. When I asked them if Montreal had lived up to their expectations, they hesitated. They said that reality never agreed with fantasies. However, they were glad to have the opportunity to visit Montreal and didn’t regret taking the trip.

Not all the Chinese people I met were happy. I once met a young lady who met with a gentleman through the Internet. However, to her disappointment, he disappeared after he promised to marry her in Montreal.

I was served by another Chinese person who could not deal with the challenges of studying in an English-speaking environment and ended up working in a restaurant with low pay.

Exploring different parts of the world, without any doubt, is a rich experience .However, one should be realistic when it comes to leaving his hometown to start a new life in a foreign country. One should spend time examining the advantages and shortcomings of the adventure before he decides to chase an uncertain dream of achieving success or leading a better life.

10 . According to a new US study, couples who expect their children to look after them in old age should hope they have daughters because daughters are twice as loving as sons generally.

The research by Angelina Grigoryeva, from Princeton University, found that, while women provide as much care for their elderly parents as they can manage, men do as little as they can get away with and often leave it to female family members.

Her analysis of the family networks of 26, 000 old Americans concluded that gender （性别）is one of the most important things that decide whether or not people will actively care for their elderly parents.

In a paper presented at the annual conference of the American Sociological Association in San Francisco, she concludes that simply having a sister makes men likely provide less care. Using data from the University of Michigan Health and Retirement Study, a study which has been recording those people over 50s for the last decade, she analyzed that women provide an average of 12. 3 hours a month of care for elderly parents while men offer only 5. 6 hours.

“Sons reduce their relative caregiving efforts when they have a sister, while daughters increase theirs when they have a brother.”

“This suggests that sons pass on parent caregiving responsibilities to their sisters.”

In the UK, the 2011 Census showed that there are now around 6.5 million people with caring responsibilities, a figure which has risen by a tenth in a decade.

But many are doing so at the risk of their health. The census showed that those who provide 50 hours or more of care a week while trying to hold down a fulltime job are three times more likely to be struggling with ill health than their working counterparts who are not carers.