1 . You’ve heard that plastic is polluting the oceans — between 4.8 and 12.7 million tonnes enter ocean ecosystems every year. But does one plastic straw or cup really make a difference? Artist Benjamin Von Wong wants you to know that it does. He builds massive sculptures out of plastic garbage, forcing viewers to re-examine their relationship to single-use plastic products.
At the beginning of the year, the artist built a piece called “Strawpocalypse,” a pair of 10-foot-tall plastic waves, frozen mid-crash. Made of 168,000 plastic straws collected from several volunteer beach cleanups, the sculpture made its first appearance at the Estella Place shopping center in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Just 9% of global plastic waste is recycled. Plastic straws are by no means the biggest source (来源) of plastic pollution, but they’ve recently come under fire because most people don’t need them to drink with and, because of their small size and weight, they cannot be recycled. Every straw that’s part of Von Wong’s artwork likely came from a drink that someone used for only a few minutes. Once the drink is gone, the straw will take centuries to disappear.
In a piece from 2018, Von Wong wanted to illustrate (说明) a specific statistic: Every 60 seconds, a truckload’s worth of plastic enters the ocean. For this work, titled “Truckload of Plastic,” Von Wong and a group of volunteers collected more than 10,000 pieces of plastic, which were then tied together to look like they’d been dumped (倾倒) from a truck all at once.
Von Wong hopes that his work will also help pressure big companies to reduce their plastic footprint.
1. What are Von Wong’s artworks intended for?| A．Beautifying the city he lives in. | B．Introducing eco-friendly products. |
| C．Drawing public attention to plastic waste. | D．Reducing garbage on the beach. |
| A．To show the difficulty of their recycling. |
| B．To explain why they are useful. |
| C．To voice his views on modern art. |
| D．To find a substitute for them. |
| A．Calming. | B．Disturbing. |
| C．Refreshing. | D．Challenging. |
| A．Artists’ Opinions on Plastic Safety |
| B．Media Interest in Contemporary Art |
| C．Responsibility Demanded of Big Companies |
| D．Ocean Plastics Transformed into Sculptures |
2 . When almost everyone has a mobile phone, why are more than half of Australian homes still paying for a landline (座机)?
These days you’d be hard pressed to find anyone in Australia over the age of 15 who doesn’t own a mobile phone. In fact plenty of younger kids have one in their pocket. Practically everyone can make and receive calls anywhere, anytime.
Still, 55 percent of Australians have a landline phone at home and only just over a quarter (29%) rely only on their smartphones according to a survey (调查). Of those Australians who still have a landline, a third concede that it’s not really necessary and they’re keeping it as a security blanket — 19 percent say they never use it while a further 13 percent keep it in case of emergencies. I think my home falls into that category.
More than half of Australian homes are still choosing to stick with their home phone. Age is naturally a factor (因素)— only 58 percent of Generation Ys still use landlines now and then, compared to 84 percent of Baby Boomers who’ve perhaps had the same home number for 50 years. Age isn’t the only factor; I’d say it’s also to do with the makeup of your household.
Generation Xers with young families, like my wife and I, can still find it convenient to have a home phone rather than providing a mobile phone for every family member. That said, to be honest the only people who ever ring our home phone are our Baby Boomers parents, to the point where we play a game and guess who is calling before we pick up the phone (using Caller ID would take the fun out of it).
How attached are you to your landline? How long until they go the way of gas street lamps and morning milk deliveries?
1. What does paragraph 2 mainly tell us about mobile phones?| A．Their target users. | B．Their wide popularity. |
| C．Their major functions. | D．Their complex design. |
| A．Admit. | B．Argue. |
| C．Remember. | D．Remark. |
| A．They like smartphone games. | B．They enjoy guessing callers’ identity. |
| C．They keep using landline phones. | D．They are attached to their family. |
| A．It remains a family necessity. |
| B．It will fall out of use some day. |
| C．It may increase daily expenses. |
| D．It is as important as the gas light. |
3 . Rock music consists of many different styles. Even though there is a common spirit among all music groups, they make very different music.
After they were given an invitation to appear live on BBC, the Beatles quickly became famous in Britain with nationwide tours. By mid-1963, the Beatles had been extremely popular in England.
| A．They decided on a tour to the United States in 1964. |
| B．Even their hairstyles became major trends at that time. |
| C．Rock music developed in the 1950s and the early 1960s. |
| D．However, their songs changed the lives of generations to come. |
| E．Many rock bands were able to follow in the footsteps of the Beatles. |
| F．They appeared in the films A Hard Day's Night(1964)and Help！(1965). |
| G．They performed their first concert in America at CBS television’s 53rd street studio. |
4 . Who cares if people think wrongly that the internet has had more important influences than the washing machine? Why does it matter that people are more impressed by the most recent changes?
It would not matter if these misjudgments were just a matter of people’s opinions. However, they have real impacts, as they result in misguided use of scarce resources.
The fascination with the ICT(Information and Communication Technology) revolution, represented by the internet, has made some rich countries wrongly conclude that making things is so “yesterday” that they should try to live on ideas. This belief in “post-industrial society” has led those countries to neglect their manufacturing sector(制造业), with negative consequences for their economies.
Even more worryingly, the fascination with the internet by people in rich countries has moved the international community to worry about the “digital divide” between the rich countries and the poor countries. This has led companies and individuals to donate money to developing countries to buy computer equipment and internet facilities. The question, however, is whether this is what the developing countries need the most. Perhaps giving money for those less fashionable things such as digging wells, extending electricity networks and making more affordable washing machines would have improved people’s lives more than giving every child a laptop computer or setting up internet centres in rural villages, I am not saying that those things are necessarily more important, but many donators have rushed into fancy programmes without carefully assessing the relative long-term costs and benefits of alternative uses of their money.
In yet another example, a fascination with the new has led people to believe that the recent changes in the technologies of communications and transportation are so revolutionary that now we live in a “borderless world”. As a result, in the last twenty years or so, many people have come to believe that whatever change is happening today is the result of great technological progress, going against which will be like trying to turn the clock back. Believing in such a world, many governments have put an end to some of the very necessary regulations on cross-border flows of capital, labour and goods, with poor results.
Understanding technological trends is very important for correctly designing economic policies, both at the national and the international levels, and for making the right career choices at the individual level. However, our fascination with the latest, and our under valuation of what has already become common, can, and has, led us in all sorts of wrong directions.
1. Misjudgments on the influences of new technology can lead to ________.| A．a lack of confidence in technology |
| B．a slow progress in technology |
| C．a conflict of public opinions |
| D．a waste of limited resources |
| A．take people’s essential needs into account |
| B．make their programmes attractive to people |
| C．ensure that each child gets financial support |
| D．provide more affordable internet facilities |
| A．Neglecting the impacts of technological advances. |
| B．Believing that the world has become borderless. |
| C．Ignoring the power of economic development. |
| D．Over-emphasizing the role of international communication. |
| A．People should be encouraged to make more donations. |
| B．Traditional technology still has a place nowadays. |
| C．Making right career choices is crucial to personal success. |
| D．Economic policies should follow technological trends. |
Will you eat everything in your lunch box today? If not, will you save it for another time or just throw it away?
A recent study
Food waste in homes
Cultural habits could also lead to waste at home,
Food was
6 . In today’s world of fast-paced games and short videos, people are spending less and less time on things. For example, research has shown that the average visitor spends just 15 seconds on a website before moving on to other things. But the Internet is a huge and busy place, with millions of sites to choose from. You might expect people to slow down a bit more when they’re in museums full of great works of art. But you’d be wrong.
Several studies have shown that the amount of time for people to spend looking at a piece of art is ten seconds. Many people may spend more time, but not much more — the average is about 28 seconds. At the Tate Modern Museum in London, it’s even worse. People there spend an average of just eight seconds on each artwork. And in that short period of time, the visitors are also managing to do another important thing — take selfies !
In recent years museums have been working to change this behavior. Today, over 170 museums around the world are celebrating “Slow Art Day”. They are asking their visitors to spend at least 5-10 minutes looking at just one work of art. Slow Art supporters believe that when visitors spend more time looking at and studying the work of art, they admire it more. Studying a work of art for more time can also help people get a better understanding of the artist’s ideas and what the artist went through to create the work.
Most of the museums taking part in Slow Art Day are choosing just a few works for their visitors to see. Some of the museums are offering chances for visitors to talk about the artworks and share their ideas.
1. Generally speaking, people spend ______ on each piece of art in a museum.| A．8 seconds | B．10 seconds | C．15 seconds | D．28 seconds |
| A．Admiring each artwork thoroughly. | B．Taking selfies in museums busily. |
| C．Celebrating “Slow Art Day” widely. | D．Looking at each artwork hurriedly. |
| A．To attract more people to visit the museums |
| B．To stop visitors from taking selfies inside |
| C．To make people spend more time on each artwork |
| D．To give visitors an opportunity to relax themselves |
| A．Museums on the Rocks: Please Advise! |
| B．Museums: Slow down to Admire more! |
| C．Slow Art Day: a Fruit of Museums! |
| D．Museums: an Escape from the Fast-paced Life! |
Did you grow up in one culture, your parents came from another, and you are now living in a
The term “third-culture kid”
Yet many
8 . Childhood is an important period of social development, particularly in the formation of social identity, which is how we perceive our various roles in society in relation to others.
Not all children who experience threats to their social identity will experience depression.
How can a child’s identity be supported? As an adult, you can acknowledge what and who is important to them. Try not to place too much emphasis on any one single social role.
| A．Social identity allows people to be part of groups. |
| B．In fact,the child may hide their negative side and try to fit in. |
| C．Our social identities are often influenced by people around us. |
| D．Instead,encourage them to try new and different things in life. |
| E．Only those with a limited number of social roles are more at risk. |
| F．So gaining status within the group can help people develop a sense of belonging. |
| G．Why does a child feel depressed without being noticed by their parents or teachers? |
9 . According to a survey, the waste of food on the dining table occupies 10% of the total grain output. Last week Meituan co-published a proposal with a number of business organizations, calling on restaurants to stop food waste and help develop new eating habits for customers. “Restaurants should use official accounts on social media and live-streaming to promote and advocate food-saving actions,” the proposal said.
Meituan and the organizations are advocating that merchants offer guidance for consumers, including reminding them during the ordering process about the taste of the ingredients, portion sizes and other information about the dishes, to help them avoid food waste due to misleading information.
Catering associations in more than 18 provinces have also joined the campaign to remove food waste. The Wuhan Catering Association proposed an “N-1” ordering code for restaurants in which a group of 10 diners would only order enough for nine people. More food is only brought to the table if required. It has inspired people to rethink their relationship with food and waste.
On Friday, the China Cuisine Association announced that it had teamed up with Ele. me, a food delivery platform, to launch a “ half-dish plan", encouraging restaurants to provide customers with the option to order smaller portions. Besides, customers are encouraged to take their leftovers home.
To reduce food waste on social media platforms, some popular video platforms have stepped up content reviews of food-related live streams and implemented regulation of online eating shows. Now, if users search certain keywords, such as “eating show" or “competitive eaters", a cautionary message pops up to remind them to cherish food and keep a reasonable diet.
1. What is the purpose of the proposal mentioned in the passage?| A．To monitor food sales on social media and live-streaming. |
| B．To expand the business and competitive ability of Meituan. |
| C．To encourage restaurants to take measures to reduce food waste. |
| D．To promote cooperation between Meituan and other organizations. |
| A．By doing a survey. | B．By offering analysis. |
| C．By making comparisons. | D．By giving an example. |
| A．Purchasing their favorite food. | B．Buying proper amounts of food. |
| C．Following some competitive eaters. | D．Leaving their leftovers in the restaurant. |
| A．Appears unexpectedly. | B．Spreads widely. |
| C．Moves quickly. | D．Fades slowly. |
10 . More and more electronic devices and services in our daily life mean we have too many passwords and numbers to remember. Passwords help us protect our
Every day I need to remember much
I’ve tried systems to help me
If you are a technical expert, you can download a “password safe”. These are programs that
Some of the banks are starting to
Well, putting all your cash in a box under the bed never seems so attractive.
1.| A．health | B．life | C．wealth | D．qualities |
| A．fun | B．conveniences | C．advantages | D．troubles |
| A．useless | B．practical | C．valuable | D．meaningful |
| A．turn off | B．turn on | C．turn down | D．pick up |
| A．control over | B．access to | C．words with | D．pity on |
| A．passwords | B．assistants | C．cards | D．accounts |
| A．another | B．others | C．the other | D．neither |
| A．with | B．in | C．from | D．above |
| A．As long as | B．As if | C．In case | D．Even if |
| A．hit | B．thrown | C．attracted | D．hurt |
| A．steal | B．carry | C．bring | D．take |
| A．have | B．tell | C．allow | D．make |
| A．Above all | B．In all | C．After all | D．Of all |
| A．remember | B．operate | C．recognize | D．study |
| A．work | B．do | C．act | D．serve |
| A．process | B．destroy | C．store | D．create |
| A．changed | B．separated | C．hurt | D．stolen |
| A．promise | B．offer | C．teach | D．buy |
| A．fact | B．offer | C．rule | D．problem |
| A．end up | B．turn up | C．give up | D．make up |
