1 . Are you happy with your appearance?     1    

“Almost all the girls with single-fold eyelids (单眼皮) in our class have had double eyelid operations,” Zeng, a Senior 2 student from Chengdu, told Xinhua. Zeng had the same surgery done this summer.     2    

From popular photo-editing apps to plastic surgery (整形手术), it seems that large eyes, pale skin and a skinny body are the only standard for beauty these days. But can following this standard really make us feel good about ourselves?

    3     . According to Huxiu News, over six in ten girls choose not to take part in certain daily activities, such as attending school, because they feel bad about their looks. As much as 31 percent of teenagers avoid speaking up in class because they worry that others will notice their looks.

“Many teenagers are upset about their appearance because they believe in unrealistic standards of beauty,” experts say.       4     Seeing all these things can make anyone believe that they’re too dark, too fat, too short, or too tall.

However, trying to live up to strict standards can make us feel anxious. What troubles us is not just our “imperfect” looks, but the fact that we criticize ourselves too much.

    5     Plus-size models are being featured in some fashion shows. All of us should be just as confident as they are.

A．Beauty comes in all shapes and sizes.

B．Body image anxiety is common among teenagers.

C．Guys care just as much as girls do about their body image.

D．Some teenagers might feel negative about their appearance.

E．It’s common for teenagers to feel confident about their appearance.

F．She and many of her classmates believe bigger eyes look more beautiful.

G．Perfect faces and bodies are everywhere in advertising, TV shows and social media.

2 . In China, if you are not married by the time you are 30, you are in for trouble: social blame and pressure from family and friends can get you down. And if you are a woman, it’s even worse.

Many young people get married simply to get other people off their backs (免受别人的指责) . This is a serious compromise (妥协). One ends up not marrying the ideal partner.

There are, however, a few young people who refuse to compromise: if they can’t find a good marriage partner, they say, they would rather not marry at all.

34-year-old Kate is a university lecturer in English. She said she would not describe herself as celibatarian (独身主义者) but simply a woman who hasn’t come across the right man yet. She has sharp comments for the way in which the old generation looks at marriage.

“Many people think marriage is a duty--to your parents, family and society. Nobody cares if your marriage is happy or not, she said, I think this is very wrong and I intend to live and act according to my own will.”

Happily for her, her parents are open-minded and not put pressure on her. But the same does not apply to her friends. They are constantly trying to get her together with some young man or another. She always refuses politely.

1. The main idea of this passage is that _______ .

A．marriage is a duty to society

B．people should get married before 30 years old

C．women should get married earlier than men

D．late marriage should be respected

2. Miss Kate refuses to get together with some young man or another because _______.

A．she doesn’t think he is the right man she wants

B．he is either too old or too young

C．he is either important or little learned

D．he doesn’t have good manners

3. Which is NOT TRUE according to this passage?

A．In China, one may face social blame and family pressure if one hasn’t got married by the age of 30.

B．Miss Kate won’t compromise if she can’t have her ideal marriage.

C．Miss Kate’s parents are always worried about her marriage.

D．Miss Kate wants to many a worthy young man.

4. If marriage is regarded as a duty to society, __________.

A．nobody will pay attention to whether you are happy or not in your family life

B．everybody will be happy and satisfied

C．you can easily find an ideal partner

D．young people will have nothing to worry about in marriage

3 . Many young Chinese people suffer from image anxiety.     1     For many people, struggling with body image issues is a continuous battle.

“How unfriendly is the world to unattractive girls?” became a popular hashtag on Sina Weiboin March. The hashtag resonated (引起共鸣) with many girls who shared their personal experiences.     2     What became clear was that this feeling of insecurity and alienation was all too common.

“My nose is not high enough, my chin is short and flat, and my eyes are small,” Tang Yuqi, acollege student, told China Youth Daily. She doesn’t even answer the door without putting on makeup first. “I just can’t accept myself if I’m not wearing it,” Tang added.

    3     As the country’s economy has developed rapidly, people are more likely to be influenced by what others think of them, noted CGTN. Greater time spent online also means greater exposure to advertisements promoting “paper-thin waists” or “chopstick legs”. Such unrealistic ideals only further young people’s anxiety and lead to an unhealthy mindset of perfectionism. The anxiety over appearance and shape has pushed some people into physical and mental illness. According to Beat, the UK’s leading eating disorder charity, the idealization of thinness is a key factor in worsening the illness and preventing recovery.     4    

But beauty doesn’t come from a makeup brush or a thinner waist. Growing taller and having perfect skin isn’t the solution to insecurity. The fact that every person is different is something to be celebrated.

A line from an episode of China’s first female monologue drama called Hear Her Says it perfectly: “I am not perfect. Perfection is mundane.     5    .”

A．I am perfect when I fully realize myself.

B．The fact that every person is different is something to be celebrated.

C．Some people even go through surgery just to achieve what they believe society considers “beautiful”.

D．When I was a teenager, I was always doubting whether my face was too big, whether my nose was too wide.

E．If you’re someone who looks in the mirror every day and concentrates only on any minor flaw, you’re not alone.

F．What promotes this anxiety among young people?

G．One internet user talked about how her friends would often cut her image out of group pictures because they thought she was too fat.

5 . The year 2114 will be an eventful one for art. In May of that year in Berlin, the philosopher-artist Jonathon Keats’ “century cameras” — cameras with a 100-year-long exposure (曝光) time — will be brought back from hiding places around the city to have their results developed and exhibited. Six months after that, the Future Library in Oslo, Norway, will start to welcome its guests, presenting 100 books printed on the wood of trees planted in the distant past of 2014. As Katie Paterson, the creator of the Future Library, puts it: “Future Library is an artwork for future generations.”

These projects, more than a century in the making, are part of a new wave of “slow art” intended to push viewers and participants to think beyond their own lifetimes. They aim to challenge today’s short-term thinking and the brief attention spans of modern consumers, forcing people into considering works more deliberately. In their way, too, they are fighting against modern culture — not just regarding money, but also the way in which artistic worth is measured by attention.

In a similar fashion, every April on Slow Art Day, visitors are encouraged to stare at five works of art for 10 minutes at a time — a tough task for the average museum visitor, who typically spends less than 30 seconds on each piece of art.

Like the Future Library, the century cameras are very much a project for cities, since it’s in cities that time runs fastest and the pace of life is fastest. “Since I started living in a city, I’ve somehow been quite disconnected,” Anne Beate Hovind, the Future Library project manager, who described how working on the library drew her back to the pace of life she knew when she was growing up on a farm in her youth, told The Atlantic magazine.

1. According to the first paragraph, what will happen in 2114?

A．The wood of trees planted in 2014 will be made into books.

B．The Future Library will be open to the public for the first time.

C．A camera which was produced 100 years ago will be exhibited.

D．A book about photos with a 100-year exposure time will come out.

2. What can we learn about today’s people when they admire works of art?

A．They ignore works of modern culture deliberately.

B．They spend only a little time in admiring artworks.

C．They seldom pay attention to the price of artworks.

D．They focus too much on artistic worth of artworks.

3. What is the purpose of the wave of slow art?

A．To preserve works of art for a longer time.

B．To promote works of art for modern culture.

C．To advocate creating works of art more slowly.

D．To encourage people to consider works of art more deliberately.

4. How does Anne Beate Hovind feel about the city life?

A．Convenient.	B．Competitive.
C．Efficient.	D．Busy.

6 . Student loan (贷款) debt has become a worldwide problem. In America, the country’s overall student debt reached a record of $1.6 trillion in 2019. The average person with student loan debt owed between $20, 000 and $25, 000, A recent Japanese government report says it has been lending over $9 billion yearly to students since 2010. Similar conditions exist in Africa and South America.

Several factors account for high student loan debt. One is that employers everywhere have increased their demands for skilled workers, making higher education a requirement for many jobs. The students, however, after graduation, often find that their country’s economy is not strong enough to support their financial needs, so their ability to pay back the loan becomes a problem.

To solve the problem, many countries are seeking their ways. Australia has developed a system where students do not have to pay anything back until they are earning at least $40, 000 a year. In America, several candidates (候选人) running for president in the 2020 election have offered more extreme solutions that all or at least some of these loans will be forgiven (免除).

Some professors in several universities recently studied what the effects of debt forgiveness might be. They found that, on the whole, sudden debt relief greatly improved the borrowers’ lives. Not only did they have more money, but they were more likely to move to a new area and seek better paying work.

Yet the professors’ research doesn’t include what might happen to financial institutions or the overall economy if debt were totally forgiven. It only looks at how debt forgiveness would help the borrowers. They warn of some other possible negative effects. If a borrower knew that if he ran into any trouble he would be saved because he could get the debt relief, then he might actually become more reckless (轻率的) with his borrowing in the future.

No matter what, the professors agree that if countries do decide to approve some student debt relief the neediest students should be helped first.

1. How does the author introduce the problem of student loan?

A．By making a comparison.	B．By making classifications.
C．By setting down general rules.	D．By presenting some data.

2. What can we learn about student loan debt relief?

A．It will surely provide some benefits to borrowers.

B．It aims to encourage more students to borrow money.

C．It has already been carried out in South America.

D．It will prevent a person from landing a well-paving job.

3. What is the professors’ attitude to debt forgiveness?

A．Uncaring.

B．Positive.

C．Cautious.

D．Disapproving.

4. What’s the main idea of the text?

A．Student loan debt is the most serious problem worldwide.

B．Growing global student debt encourages search for solutions.

C．Student loan debt tends to pull the needy out of trouble.

D．People hold different opinions on debt forgiveness.

7 . 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.

1. What’s the authors purpose of writing the first paragraph?

A．To express the people’s love for all festivals.

B．To talk about the meaning of the festivals.

C．To appreciate the value of the festivals.

D．To bring out the topic of the passage.

2. Why did Kalle Lasn organize Buy Nothing Day?

A．To help people save money.	B．To cut the cost for daily life.
C．To prevent over-consumption.	D．To set up a new sales record.

3. What’s Nie Li’s attitude towards the shopping craze?

A．Opposed (反对的).	B．Supportive.
C．Unknown.	D．Neutral (中立的).

4. What can be a suitable title for the passage?

A．Creating a New Lifestyle	B．Buy Nothing Day
C．Festivals Around the World	D．A Change in People’s Life

8 . Recently I spoke to some of my students about what they wanted to do after they graduated, and what kind of job prospects they thought they would have.

Given that I teach students who are training to be doctors, I was surprised to find that most thought that they would not be able to get the jobs they wanted without “outside help”. “What kind of help is that?” I asked, expecting them to tell me that they would need a relative or family friend to help them out.

“Surgery (外科手术)”, one replied. I was pretty alarmed by that response. It seems that the graduates of today are increasingly willing to go under the knife to get ahead of others when it comes to getting a job. One girl told me that she was considering surgery to increase her height. “They break your legs, put in special extending screws, and slowly expand the gap between the two ends of the bone as it regrows, you can get at least 5cm taller! ”

At that point, I was shocked. I am short, I can’t deny that, but I don’t think I would put myself through months of agony (痛苦) just to be a few centimeters taller. I don’t even bother to wear shoes with thick soles, as I’m not trying to hide the fact that I am just not tall! It seems to me that there is a trend toward wanting “perfection”, and that is an ideal that just does not exist in reality.

No one is born perfect, yet magazines, TV shows and movies present images of thin, tall, beautiful people as being the norm (基准). Advertisements for slimming aids, beauty treatments and cosmetic surgery clinics fill the pages of newspapers, further creating an idea that “perfection” is a requirement, and that it must be purchased, no matter what the cost. In my opinion, skills, rather than appearance, should determine how successful a person is in his chosen career.

1. We can know from the passage that the author works as ________ .

A．a doctor

B．a model

C．a teacher

D．a reporter

2. Many graduates today turn to cosmetic surgery to ________ .

A．marry a better man/woman	B．become a model
C．get an advantage over others in job-hunting	D．attract more admirers

3. According to the passage, the author believes that ________ .

A．everyone should purchase perfection, whatever the cost

B．it’s right for graduates to ask for others to help them out in hunting for jobs

C．media are to blame for misleading young people in their seeking for surgery

D．it is one’s appearance instead of skills that really matters in one’s career

4. What does the author think of his height?

A．He hates to be called a short man.

B．He tries to increase his height through surgery.

C．He always wears shoes with thick soles to hide the fact.

D．He just accepts it as it is.

5. What is the purpose of this passage?

A．To talk about how to find jobs.

B．To discuss the standard of beauty.

C．To warn students it’s difficult to find jobs.

D．To criticize the media for its misleading in pursuing beauty.

10 . Lawmakers in Massachusetts have introduced a law that would ban children in the seventh grade or younger from playing tackle football (冲撞式橄榄球). The Act for No Organized Head Impacts to Schoolchildren, or the NO HITS Act, was introduced last month in an effort to protect children’s heads from blows (重击) while at a particularly fragile age.

The bill would cause fines of up to $ 2,000 for each time the law is broken. People who frequently break the law, or those whose actions cause physical harm, would face bigger fines.

“It’s all about kids’ health and we have a number of studies that say that repeated contacts to the head are very bad for you and the younger that starts, the worse it is,” said Paul, who introduced the bill with House Minority Leader Bradley Jones .

According to a 2017 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers examining 111 brains belonging to former NFL (National Football League) players found the brain disease Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE, in 110 of them. The disease is associated with repeated head injuries, not just concussions (脑震荡), and is generally found in athletes, retired soldiers and others with a history of repetitive brain injuries, according to the Concussion Legacy Foundation, a non-profit organization that works to study, treat and prevent future cases of brain injuries among athletes and other at-risk groups.

Similar laws have been considered elsewhere in the country, including California and Illinois last year, though they didn’t secure enough votes to become law. Those against previously proposed (提议的) bans have argued that adequate progress has been achieved to make the sport safer and that the sport offers too many benefits for children to totally avoid it.

Several former NFL players, who have been directly or indirectly affected by CTE, have argued differently, however. “I made the mistake of starting tackle football at 9 years old. Now, CTE has taken my life away.Youth tackle football is all risk with no reward,” Nick Buoniconti, a former NFL player, told CNN last year.

1. Why was the law introduced by lawmakers in Massachusetts?

A．To ban children from doing sports too young.

B．To make tackle football safer for players.

C．To keep young children from suffering brain injuries.

D．To encourage the popularity of some safe sports.

2. What is Paragraph 2 mainly about?

A．The fines of playing tackle football incorrectly.

B．The causes of the new law in Massachusetts.

C．The consequences of breaking the new law.

D．The reason why the sport is forbidden.

3. What does the author want to show by mentioning the 2017 study?

A．Brain injuries can really be prevented with action.

B．Repeated head blows can result in brain diseases.

C．NFL players used to pay much attention to CTE.

D．Future cases of brain injuries can be reduced.