1 . Why do old people dislike new music? As I’ve grown older, I often hear people my age say they just don’t make good music like they used to. Why does this happen? Luckily, psychology can give us some insights into this puzzle. Musical tastes begin to become clear as early as age 13 or 14. By the time we’re in our early 20s, these tastes get locked into place pretty firmly.
In fact, studies have found that by the time we turn 33, most of us have stopped listening to new music. Meanwhile, popular songs released when you’re in your early teens are likely to remain quite popular among your age group for the rest of your life.
There could be a biological explanation for this, as there’s evidence that the brain’s ability to make subtle distinctions between different chords, rhythms, and melodies weakens with age. So to older people, newer, less familiar songs might all “sound the same.”
But there are maybe some simpler reasons for older people’s dislike to newer music. One of the most researched laws of social psychology is something called the “mere exposure effect”, which in essence means that the more we’re exposed to something, the more we tend to like it.
This happens with people we know, the advertisements we see and, the songs we listen to. When you’re in your early teens, you probably spend a fair amount of time listening to music or watching music videos. Your favorite songs and artists become familiar, comforting parts of your routine.
For many people over 30, job and family obligations increase, so there’s less time to spend discovering new music. Instead, many will simply listen to old, familiar favorites from that period of their lives when they had more free time.
Psychology research has shown that the emotions that we experience as teens seem more intense than those that come later. And we also know that intense emotions are associated with stronger memories and preferences. Both of these might explain why the songs we listen to during this period become so memorable and beloved.
So there’s nothing wrong with your parents because they don’t like your music. Rather it’s all part of the natural order of things.
1. What have studies found about most people by the time they turn 33?| A．They no longer listen to new music. |
| B．They find all music sounds the same. |
| C．They can make subtle distinctions about music. |
| D．They seldom listen to songs released in their teens. |
| A．Tom likes the book, so he reads it more times. |
| B．Andy recites the words repeatedly and he is fed up with them. |
| C．Mike often listens to the same song and becomes more and more interested in it. |
| D．Peter goes to school by bike every day, and therefore his riding skills are better and better. |
| A．Teenagers are much more sensitive. | B．Teenagers are much more emotional. |
| C．Teenagers’ preferences are more lasting. | D．Teenagers’ emotions are more intense. |
| A．Quality issues of new music. | B．Older people’s dislike of new music. |
| C．Older people’s changing musical tastes. | D．Insights into the features of good music. |
2 . Across the country, university students sit in lectures every day, listening to someone speak for an hour in crowded theatres. Most are daydreaming, checking Facebook, surfing the web, texting and tweeting; if they're particularly motivated or the lecture is unusually good, some might actually be paying attention.
At the same time, millions of learners around the world are watching world-class lectures online about every subject imaginable, from fractional reserve banking to moral philosophy to pharmacology, supplied by Harvard, MIT, and The Open University.
One group gets its education for free, and the other pays thousands of pounds per year. It's a situation that can't continue, and unless universities face-up to the internet's fierce competition they won't have any future.
We have a romantic ideal of universities being places of higher education where students absorb knowledge, skills and critical thinking—an ideal modeled over centuries on universities like Oxford and Heidelberg. Since they used a multi-year, highly structured residential course of lectures, tutorials, and exams to produce smart graduates, we now believe that this same model ought to work for the majority of the adult population.
We're wrong. The simple fact is that university lectures never worked that well in the first place—it's just that for centuries, we didn't have any better option for transmitting information. In fact, the success of top universities, both now and historically, is in spite of lectures, not because of it.
The mediocrity of the average lecturer was made very clear when I watched Professor Michael Sandel's fantastically engaging Harvard philosophy lectures on Justice on YouTube, seen by millions around the world. Other universities, including MIT's Open Course Ware and The Open University, now offer videos of lectures free as a matter of course.
Today, we don't go to the music hall to hear songs—we can listen to the most popular performers on iTunes or the radio. Most of us don't visit the theatre for an evening's entertainment—we can watch TV. You can guess where this is heading with universities. Anyone online can now watch thousands of world-class lectures whenever they want. They can pause and rewind if they don't understand something and they can review the transcript when revising. At some universities, they can even email questions to lecturers without the risk of embarrassment. Undergraduate education should be paid for by the government—after all, most of us have enjoyed free or highly subsidized education that also benefits the whole country. However, if universities are going to cost over f 7,000 a year, students should think very hard about whether they're getting value for money.
Freely available online lectures and textbooks give universities the opportunity to reduce costs and increase quality, while focusing resources on what really matters: contact time between teachers and students. The simple fact is that the education most universities provide isn't worth the money. If they don't have world-class reputations, and only a few do—then they need to change fast, or watch an exodus of students away to cheaper, better alternatives.
1. Which of the following cannot be inferred from Paragraph 4?| A．University is Garden of Eden in every learner's heart. |
| B．Oxford and Heidelberg are like the precursor of universities. |
| C．In college, students can equip themselves with knowledge and skills. |
| D．University's educational model has barely changed so far |
| A．Traditional high educational system is not that efficient as expected. |
| B．Most lecturers are little more than talking textbooks. |
| C．Lectures, tutorials and exams have done little in transmit knowledge. |
| D．Lectures are not a decisive factor in judging whether a university is good or not. |
| A．tuition fees vs. free | B．residential vs. network-based |
| C．world-renowned vs. barely recognized | D．boredom vs. entertainment |
| A．Why free online lectures will destroy university. |
| B．Online lecturing vs. traditional universities. |
| C．Universities should get their act together to avoid extinction. |
| D．Online lecturing is gaining ground among educational community. |
| A.tirelessly B. urgency C.concrete D.acknowledged E.roadmap F.call G committed H. intended I. update J. summed K.just |
The pressure for change is building: reactions to the Glasgow climate pact
The Glasgow climate package, aimed at ensuring the world limits global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, was
"There is still a huge amount more to do in the coming years. But today's agreement is a big step forward and, critically, we have the first ever international agreement to phase down (逐步减少)coal and a
Al Gore,the former US vice-president,also praised the public pressure put on world leaders at the conference: “The Glasgow Climate Pact and the pledges made at Cop26 move the global community forward in our urgent work to address the climate crisis and limit global temperature rise to 1.5C, but we know this progress, while meaningful,is not enough. “We must move faster to deliver a
Many developed and developing countries nailed the progress it represented on the world's goals .But green campaigners warned that the
On the last-minute weakening of language about phasing out coal, Timmermans said: "Let's be clear, I'd rather not have the change. I was very happy with the language we had." But he added it was “like going from 24 carat gold to 18 carat, it's still gold...we are now making
Countries will have to return next year and the year after to
4 . How are “global” students different from “glocal” students and how is their mobility likely to take shape in future?
To answer the above question, I am adapting and extending the results of a previous research study published by World Education Services. The research
“Global” students comprise Highfliers and Strugglers, who will not
On the other hand, the “global” segment will grow at a slower pace due to a shift in institutional
Of course, not all international students can be boxed into this framework. However, the intention is to provide a broad framework for institutions to
| A．featured | B．called | C．identified | D．discovered |
| A．separated | B．characterized | C．divided | D．joined |
| A．give up | B．give in | C．turn up | D．take up |
| A．rising | B．traditional | C．transnational | D．present |
| A．ability | B．objection | C．right | D．desire |
| A．open | B．opposed | C．indifferent | D．related |
| A．payments | B．markets | C．benefits | D．assignments |
| A．slower | B．faster | C．regular | D．reasonable |
| A．refusal | B．pay | C．priority | D．gift |
| A．originating | B．coming | C．resulting | D．ranging |
| A．mainly | B．negatively | C．dramatically | D．never |
| A．prevent | B．chase | C．preserve | D．recognize |
| A．To sum up | B．As a result | C．In addition | D．However |
| A．causing | B．getting | C．resulting | D．developing |
| A．make | B．adapt | C．create | D．abandon |
A “ Robert” in Your Pocket
The final bell rings at a high school in downtown Los Angeles, and nearly every student walking our of the school gate studies a screen, with head bowed. Over the past decade, such scenes have become the norm — at least in the United States. Research reveals that American millennial (千禧一代的人) look at their phones 150 times a day on average.
In the meantime, the number of American teenagers reporting feelings of depression has grown significantly. Some people blame the increase on the Great Economic Depression following 2008 and other social changes. However, a big new study suggests a different explanation — the rise of social media.
Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University, led the study. With data collected from more than 500,000 American teenagers, she found that those who spent lots of time on social media were more likely to agree with remarks such as "The future often seems hopeless. Those who used screen less, spending time playing sport or socializing with friends in person, were less likely to report feelings of depression.
This, in fact, is not the first time that scientists have found that social media can rob people of their happiness. One study published in 2016 asked a randomly selected group of adults to quit Facebook for a week. It turned out that they reported feeling less depressed at the end of the week than those who continued using it.
Some research, however, suggests that social-networking sites can promote happiness if used to engage directly with other users, rather than just to feel jealous of happy moments someone shares online. This provides a reminder that it is user's attitudes that shape their experiences on social media. "I often remind myself that it's all filtered," reflects Sarah, a junior at the high school in Los Angeles. "People only post what they want you to see, so it can seems that their life is better than yours." But when asked if she has ever considered deleting her social media accounts, Sarah looks confused. "No. I would feel lost."
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6 . Most of the people who appear most often and most gloriously in the history books are great conquerors and generals, while the people who really helped civilization forward are often never mentioned. We do not know who first set a broken leg, or launched a seaworthy boat, or calculated the length of the year, but we know all about the killers and destroyers. People think so much of them that on all the highest pillars in the great cities of the world you will find the figure of a conqueror or a general.
It is possible they are, but they are not the most civilized. Animals fight, so do savages; so to be good at fighting is to be good in the way in which an animal or a savage is good, but it is not to be civilized.
This is what the story of mankind has on the whole been like. But we must not expect too much. After all, the race of men has only just started. From the point of view of evolution, human beings are very young indeed, babies of a few months old. Scientists assume that there has been life of some sort on the earth for about twelve hundred million years; but there have been men for only one million years, and there has been civilized men for about eight thousand years.
| A．Even being good at getting others to fight most efficiently is not being civilized. |
| B．Most people believe those who have conquered the most nations are the greatest. |
| C．However, every year conflicts between countries and nations still claim thousands of lives. |
| D．And not only has it won, buts also because it has won, it has been in the right. |
| E．So there has been little time to learn in, but there will be oceans of time in which to learn better. |
| F．People don’t fight and kill each other in the streets, but nations still behave like savages. |
7 . The biggest house of cards, the longest tongue, and of course, the tallest man: these are among the thousands of records logged in the famous Guinness Book of Records. Created in 1955 after a debate concerning Europe's fastest game bird, what began as a marketing tool sold to pub landlords to promote Guinness, an Irish drink, became the bestselling copyright title of all time (a category that excludes books such as the Bible and the Koran). In time, the book would sell 120 million copies in over 100 countries— quite a leap from its humble beginnings.
In its early years, the book set its sights on satisfying man's inborn curiosity about the natural world around him. Its two principal fact finders, twins Norris and Ross McWhirter, moved wildly around the globe to collect facts. It was their task to find and document aspects of life that can be sensed or observed, things that can be quantified or measured. But not just any things. They were only interested in superlatives: the biggest and the best. It was during this period that some of the remarkable Guinness Records were documented, answering such questions as "What is the brightest star?" and "What is the biggest spider?"
Once aware of the public's thirst for such knowledge, the book's authors began to branch out to cover increasingly doubtful, little-known facts. They started documenting human achievements as well. A forerunner for reality television, the Guinness Book gave people a chance to become famous for accomplishing odd, often pointless tasks. Records were set in 1955 for consuming 24 raw eggs in 14 minutes and in 1981 for the fastest solving of a Rubik's Cube (which took a mere 38 seconds). In 1979 a man yodeled non-stop for ten and a quarter hours.
In its latest appearance, the book has found a new home on the internet. No longer restricted to the limits of physical paper, the Guinness World Records website contains seemingly innumerable facts concerning such topics as the most powerful combustion engine, or the world's longest train. What is striking, however, is that such facts are found sharing a page with the record of the heaviest train to be pulled with a beard. While there is no denying that each of these facts has its own, individual temptation, the latter represents a significant deviation from the education-oriented facts of earlier editions. Perhaps there is useful knowledge to be obtained regarding the tensile strength of a bread, but this seems to cater to an audience more interested in seeking entertainment than education.
Originating as a simple bar book, the Guinness Book of Records has evolved over decades to provide insight into the full range of modern life. And although one may be more likely now to learn about the widest human mouth than the highest number of casualties in a single battle of the Civil War, the Guinness World Records website offers a telling glimpse into the future of fact-finding and record-recording.
1. As used in paragraph 2, which is the best definition for empirical?| A．able to catch attention | B．derived from experience |
| C．recorded for nature | D．easy to gain |
| A．a departure from book sales a promotion tool to the local bars |
| B．an end to the use of facts as a means to promote Guinness |
| C．a shift in focus from educational to entertaining material |
| D．a move from fact-finding to the recording of achievements |
| A．Sympathetic | B．idiotic |
| C．invaluable | D．shallow |
| A．The encyclopedia of the extremes reflects the changing interests of modern society. |
| B．A book of simple origins makes it to the top as sales total a staggering 120 million copies. |
| C．The Guinness World Records website proves itself a valuable resource for insight into the full spectrum of modern life. |
| D．Where other books fall short, the index of superlative sciences never ceases to amaze. |
Is Student-loan Forgiveness Unforgivable?
Roughly 45 million Americans currently hold $1.6 trillion in student debt, with the average student-loan receiver owing between $20,000 and $25,000, according to the Federal Reserve. Among those actively making payments on their debt, the average monthly installment is between $200 and $300. And with 5.3 million more people unemployed than in February, right before the U.S. fell into the economic depression caused by pandemic (流行病), some people say that student-debt forgiveness could be beneficial to the economy.
“Student-debt cancellation feels like one of the most accessible executive actions to stimulate the economy at the moment,” says Suzanne Kahn, director of the Education. Kahn says the move would also help close the wealth gap between white Americans and people of color. Some 90% of Black students and 72% of Latino students take out loans for college versus just 66% of white students, according to an analysis from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
But others argue that sweeping student-loan forgiveness doesn’t help the people who need aid most. Americans with college degrees, as a whole, have been less influenced by the economic effects of COVID-19 than their non-college-educated counterparts. Besides, they raise concerns that if the government wipes out current student loans, future college students may have a motivator to take on debts, hoping they will also be forgiven. Colleges may in turn tend to raise their prices further.
What’s clear, according to the both sides of the aisle (过道), is that economic crises worsen the problem of student debt. The last time the U.S. dipped into a recession, state governments cut their investments in colleges and universities—which, in turn, raised their tuition prices and forced students to take on ever larger loans.
In recent weeks, the government has walked a fine line on the issue, offering support for a bill calling for $10,000 worth of student-loan forgiveness but turning down anything close to a plan to issue $50,000 per borrower through executive action.
That’s not sustainable in the long run. It remains to be seen if the government can arrive at a political solution that is.
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9 . The inside story of how a “band of misfits” saved Lego
When executives at toymaker Lego first learned that adults were buying large quantities of their interlocking plastic bricks and getting together to build Lego creations of their own, “they thought it was very strange,” says Paal Smith-Meyer.
Thanks to a handful of employees who worked to change attitudes inside the company, Lego is no longer embarrassed by its adult fans.
Today Lego is the world’s largest and most profitable toymaker. The Lego brick was named “Toy of the Century” in 1999, and in 2014 Time magazine crowned it the “Most Influential Toy of All Time”, ahead of Barbie, G.I. Joe, and the Easy Bake Oven.
The enthusiasm and buying power of Adult Fans of Lego — or AFOLs, as they’re known in the industry — played a major role in the company’s rise to the top.
Lego founder Ole Kirk Kristiansen always knew he wanted to market his products exclusively to kids. As the company grew over its first six decades, few imagined that its products could appeal as much to adults as to children.
Despite the benefits AFOLs brought to the brand, executives at the company’s corporate offices in Billund, Denmark had little interest in catering to adult customers. As fan mail and product ideas poured in from AFOLs around the world, the company posted its off-putting position: “We don’t accept unsolicited ideas.”
“Adult fans were often seen as a source of irritation,” says Jake McKee, a Lego executive from 2000 to 2006 who oversaw the company’s Global Community Development team.
| A．But insiders say the road from “kids only” to “adults welcome” was a long, uphill climb. |
| B．AFOLs are also organizing unofficial Lego fan conventions and networking in online user groups. |
| C．Gone are the days when labels on Lego boxes stated that the contents were appropriate only for boys ages 7 to 12. |
| D．Attitudes began to shift in the late 1990s and early 2000s when the once-invulnerable toymaker started to struggle. |
| E．AFOLs were having a dramatic impact on Lego’s bottom line years before the company recognized their value. |
| F．“Before the late 1990s, the company didn’t think their adult fans had value,” says Smith-Meyer, who held a variety of senior posts at Lego from 2000 to 2014. |
10 . A few years ago, Charles Barkley got into a lot of trouble for making the observation that sports figures didn't need to be role models. Thousands of fans and professional journalists were cross at this attack on the fundamental principle that the person who jumps highest must aim highest and the person who handles the running back must also be able to deal with life's problems with grace as well.
The problem is not that we look to these people for perfection when they take off their uniforms. It's that we expect anyone to be our representatives for perfection. That's stupid and it makes the rest of us down here lazy.
I get the importance of having heroes, the people who inspire us to cultivate the best potential within us and nurture our better angels. I personally have many heroes, from my mother, Lucy, to my favorite law professor, Howard. But these are personal contacts, people who have-actually touched my hand and my heart, and who occupy a pedestal（基座）built of my own experiences and aspirations. To look at an athlete or an actress with high salary and demand that he or she match our dreams is not only a waste of time, but it's dangerous. The danger comes in how this type of hero worship dehumanizes both the object of affection and the person who blindly adores. That was Barkley's point, not that we should give public figures a pass for being faulty but that we shouldn't abandon our own moral compasses and look to them for true north.
Recently on a television program I participated in, the discussion turned to Kathleen Kane. Someone suggested that the fact that the first female attorney general（首席检察官）in Pennsylvania was really messing things up could have unfortunate consequences for women seeking elected office. I offered the opinion that Kane was unquestionably criticized and that it was not hatred towards woman but incompetence at the root of the attacks. After the show aired, I had people emailing to tell me that I was either a traitor（叛徒）for publicly attacking a fellow female when we need to stand together behind this "role model", or a fool for not going a step further to say that this incompetent lawyer had made it harder for all women to move to the next level.
How depressing! Why should the inferior performance of one woman lead to such diverse but passionate views in people? The answer is obvious: Kane has stopped being an attorney general but has instead become The First Female Attorney General. She can't just make a mistake and pay the normal consequences.
If we stopped trying to live our lives through the accomplishments of public figures, many of whom look and sound like us, we'd learn how to recognize the heroic character of those we might actually know, and the heroic potential within ourselves. Or, perhaps, the honesty to accept our ordinary humanity.
1. Many people were angry with Charles Barkley mainly because________.| A．he broke fundamental principles in life | B．he was not good enough to be a role model |
| C．he doubted the perfection of some sports figures | D．he thought sports figures could have weaknesses |
| A．Because we may let go of our own moral standards. |
| B．Because an athlete or actress cannot match our dreams. |
| C．Because we blindly admire public figures for their faults. |
| D．Because we shouldn't waste time imitating public figures. |
| A．unfairly criticized due to being female | B．the first female attorney general in the US |
| C．less qualified than the public had expected | D．a role model for women seeking elected office |
| A．Be Our Representatives for Perfection | B．Exploration of Our Own Heroic Potential |
| C．Our Unrealistic Expectation of Public Figures | D．Our Conventional Views of Female Politician |
