1 . Twelve-year-old Catherine has a lot of friends—632, actually, if you count up her online friends. And she spends a lot of time with them.
But is it possible that Catherine’s online friendships could be making her lonely? That’s what some experts believe. Connecting online is a great way to stay in touch, they say. However, some experts worry that many kids are so busy connecting online that they might be missing out on true friendships.
Could this be true? During your parents’ childhoods, connecting with friends usually meant spending time with them in the flesh. Kids played Scrabble around a table, not words with friends on their phones. When friends missed each other, they picked up the telephone. Friends might even write letters to each other.
Today, most communication takes place online. A typical teen sends 2,000 texts a month and spends more than 44 hours per week in front of a screen. Much of this time is spent on social media platform.
In fact, in many ways, online communication can make friendships stronger. “There’s definitely a positive influence. Kids can stay in constant contact, which means they can share more of their feelings with each other,” says Katie Davis, co-author of The App Generation.
Other experts, however, warn that too much online communication can get in the way of forming deep friendships. “If we are constantly checking in with our virtual world, we will have little time for our real-world friendships,” says Larry Rosen, a professor at California State University. Rosen also worries that today’s kids might mistake the “friends” on the social media for true friends in life. However, in tough times, you don’t need anyone to like your picture or share your blogs. You need someone who will keep your secrets and hold your hand. You would like to talk face to face.
1. What is the purpose of the first paragraph?| A．To tell about true friends. | B．To start a discussion. |
| C．To encourage online friendships. | D．To summarize(总结) the text. |
| A．In any case. | B．In public. | C．In person. | D．In advance. |
| A．Unconcerned. | B．Positive. | C．Worried. | D．Confused. |
| A．Teenagers need to focus on real-world friendships. | B．It’s easier to develop friendships in real life. |
| C．It’s wise to turn to friends online. | D．Social media help people stay closely connected. |
2 . “A novel, like a letter should be loose, cover much ground, run swiftly, take risk of morality and decay,” Saul Bellow once wrote. Like many novelists, in his spare time the author of The Adventures of Augie March was also an enthusiastic letter writer.
A selection of Bellow’s huge correspondence, reproduced in a recent issue of the New Yorker, provides a fascinating insight into the writer’s character. Witty, often brief and almost always entertaining, Bellow’s letters are a reminder of why writers’ letters often prove so popular with readers. At their best, literary letters have something for everyone: general readers get a glimpse of how authors write when freed from the expectation to produce a work of conventional literary worth, and scholars get enough scholarly writings.
All this is well and good—except for one small problem: nobody writes letters anymore, at least not the kind of intellectual, humorous letters that distinguish great correspondence. As we are so often told, we live in the digital age. Like the rest of us, authors now largely correspond with their agents, friends, and occasionally, fans through email, not “snail mail”.
As literary vehicles, emails are severely lacking. Digital messages tend to alternate between the deathly dull and formal and the casually daring complete with BTW, LOLs and unclear text—speak with little middle ground. Letters can be revealing, friendly, humorous; emails, even at their best, tend to exhibit only one of these characteristics of good writing.
Future literary archivists (档案管理员) will need to be digital experts, hacking through hard drives and email accounts, mobile phones, in their attempts to fully document the lives and thoughts of their subjects. But who among us has all their email correspondence from the past five years, let alone a lifetime? Hardware is disposed (废弃) of and forgotten about; mobile phones are replaced every few years. The idea that we can construct a complete record of a writer has always been unrealistic, but technological advances have made it physically impossible, too. With so much material digitalized, and often wiped, writers will no longer leave behind boxes suffered with letters, ripe for investigation and possible publication.
Back in 1898, the New York Times named the long-dead Lord Byron the greatest letter writer in the English language, celebrating his letters’ humor, the force and spirit of their substance, the grace and purity of their style. Saul Bellow’s letters might not be remembered quite so fondly 70 years from now, but chances are that, by then, the entire genre of collected writers’ letters will have disappeared completely—leaving readers significantly poorer for their loss.
1. Authors’ letters are often popular with readers probably because ______.| A．well-known magazines like New Yorker choose to publish them |
| B．authors write them with a specific audience in mind |
| C．not only are they scholarly, but they are also funny |
| D．readers can gain an insight into how the classics are created |
| A．email exhibits characteristics of good writing |
| B．email reaches its receivers much faster |
| C．email is full of variation alternating between “formal” and “casual” |
| D．email conveys clear messages with little ambiguous middle ground |
| A．To illustrate that technological advances can contribute to greater literary loss. |
| B．To arouse readers’ interest in how digital property will be treated in the future. |
| C．To point out that it is impossible to document the life experience of a writer. |
| D．To warn that there will be no writers’ letters left for research. |
| A．Exploring Literature through Letters. | B．Well-Written “Letters”: Saul Bellow Shows Us How |
| C．The Dying Art of Letter Writing | D．The Power of a Letter in the Digital Age |
3 . Findings coming from a new report by the Pew Research Center of Washington D. C. show that Americans are worried about new technology. They are concerned that machines, including robots, will take over work now done by humans.
About 75 percent of Americans questioned by Pew said automation (自动化) will increase income inequality between the rich and the middle class and the poor. And 64 percent of people expect automation to be so common in America that people will face difficulty finding things to do with their lives.
Some of the concerns about technology come from a distrust about whether machines will always make the right decision. Many Americans believe humans have better judgment in dealing with complex matters. One example is selecting a person for a job. Three quarters of Americans said they would not want to apply for a job that uses a computer program to choose the most qualified person.
Most Americans want the government to limit automation. For example, 87 percent support a requirement that all driverless vehicles have a human in the driver’s seat, who can take control when needed. And 85 percent want to limit machines to mostly doing jobs that are dangerous or unhealthy for humans. And only 25 percent expect more jobs to come from automation. Pew said.
Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder of Facebook, spoke last May to graduating seniors from Harvard University in Massachusetts. His talk centered on the uncertain future facing young people. “Our generation will have to deal with tens of millions of jobs replaced by automation like self-driving cars and trucks,” Zuckerberg told the graduates.
Zuckerberg said young people will have to find projects that will bring both jobs and direct benefits to the people of the world. He said in his speech that 300, 000 people worked to put a man on the moon, and millions of people built the Hoover Dam as well as other great projects over the last 100 years.
1. What do Americans think of technology?| A．Useful. | B．Helpful. | C．Effective. | D．Undependable. |
| A．To reduce the cost. | B．To ensure safety. |
| C．To test the new technology. | D．To entertain the passengers. |
| A．Fight against robots. |
| B．Consider large projects. |
| C．Explore new job chances. |
| D．Refuse self-driving vehicles. |
| A．New Technology Creates More Jobs |
| B．Americans Worry Robots Will Take Jobs |
| C．New Technology Makes New Unfairness |
| D．Robots Make Work Easy to Do for Workers |
4 . A competition making up Versailles literature was launched on Sina Weibo recently. So what is Versailles literature?
Actually, the term has nothing to do with the French palace nor with literature. It came from The Rose of Versailles, a Japanese manga series about aristocratic life at the palace of Versailles in France in the late 18th century, and was coined by a Chinese influencer earlier this year. Known as humblebragging, it is a boast disguised as a complaint. “I have too many houses. How can I decide which one to decorate?” and “I thought I lost weight this morning. So disappointed when I realized it was because I took off the huge diamond ring my boyfriend gave me last night” are some examples of Versailles literature. The intention is to show off — usually things of materialistic values, yet one ought to pretend that’s not the point.
As the 19th century English author Jane Austen famously wrote, “Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility.” The psychology behind humblebragging is to be recognized for one’s successes and be liked by others at the same time, according to scholars. In her article titled Why do people hate humblebragging? published in Psychology Today, psychologist Dr. Susan Krauss Whitbourne at the University of Massachusetts Amherst noted that humblebragging is a “strategy in pursuit of respect” because it draws attention to one’s accomplishments in a circuitous way.
However, studies on social media users show that humblebragging as a self-promotion strategy does not work. In the essay Humblebragging: A distinct and ineffective self-presentation strategy, the University of North Carolina researcher Ovul Sezer and Harvard University scholars Francesca Gino and Michael Norton concluded from their research that humblebraggers are perceived more negatively than straight braggers due to the former’s insincerity. “The critical factor differentiating the two groups of people is sincerity. People don’t like braggers, but they at least see them as more sincere than humblebraggers,” said Francesca Gino.
So, how can we annoy humblebraggers back? “Just pretend you don’t get whatever it is they try to show off,” a netizen advised. “And respond with genuine sympathy for their complaints.”
1. Which of the following statements is typical of “Versailles literature”?| A．You know who my father is? My father is Li Gang. |
| B．Got five offers to date. I’m at a loss which to choose. |
| C．It’s a headache how to make my son tidy up his room regularly. |
| D．I’m fed up with living in the countryside with no shopping malls around. |
| A．To win others’ sympathy. | B．To earn others’ admiration. |
| C．To show his/her sincerity. | D．To mask his / her complaint. |
| A．Indirect. | B．Straightforward. | C．Ambiguous. | D．Double-edged. |
| A．Braggers are relatively more sincere than humblebraggers. |
| B．Humblebragging is an artificial appearance of being humble. |
| C．To respond with real sympathy will discourage humblebraggers. |
| D．If you want to be perceived positively, try to use Versailles literature. |
5 . Hillary Clinton said, a decade ago, that "The subjugation(压迫) of women is a threat to the common security of our world." Societies that subjugate women are far more likely to be violent and unstable.
There are several possible reasons for this. In many places girls are selectively aborted(流产). This has led to abnormal sex ratios(比例), which mean millions of young men are doomed to remain single. Frustrated young men are more likely to commit violent crimes or join rebel groups.
Societies based on male bonding tend to subjugate women. Fathers choose whom their daughters will marry. Often there is a bride price -- the groom's family pay what are sometimes considerable sums to the bride's family. This encourages fathers to make their daughters marry early. Bride prices are common in half the world's countries. A fifth of the world's young women were married before the age of 18; a twentieth before 15. Child brides are more likely to drop out of school, less able to stand up to abusive husbands and less likely to raise healthy, well-educated children.
Peace talks should include women. Between 1992 and 2019, only 13% of negotiators and 6% of signatories of peace deals were female. Yet peace tends to last longer when women are at the table. This may be because they are more ready to compromise: or perhaps because a room without women implies a conflict between the men with guns without input from non-combatants(非武装人员).
More broadly, governments should mean it when they say they want to liberate half of humanity. Educate girls, many of whom have quit school to work or marry. Enforce bans on child marriage, hard though that is in remote villages. Equalize inheritance rights. Teach boys not to hit women. Introduce public pensions, which weaken the tradition where couples are expected to live with the man's parents. But policymakers who fail to consider the interests of half the population cannot hope to understand the world.
1. Why are young men likely to create social unrest?| A．Because they can't find wives due to gender imbalance. |
| B．Because they are frustrated by high bride prices. |
| C．Because inequality arouses a feeling of rebellion in them. |
| D．Because being single gives them freedom to commit crimes. |
| A．Daughters are often viewed as burden in some nations. |
| B．Female's status is low in male bonding societies |
| C．The majority of women worldwide get married before 18. |
| D．Fathers obey their daughters' wish to marry early and rich. |
| A．Men should not negotiate with women and cater to them. |
| B．Women should not submit to men and compromise with them. |
| C．Men with guns should be excluded in peace talks. |
| D．Women should get involved in peace negotiations. |
| A．Societies that fail women often fail. |
| B．Governments should educate women. |
| C．Peace is never gained without women. |
| D．Gender discrimination hurts policymakers. |
6 . People in their sixties should go to university to retrain because they will be expected to work for longer before retirement, the government has suggested.
Older workers who take courses to keep their skills up to date will be more likely to keep their jobs,claims David Willetts, the higher education minister. Mr. Willetts said the age limit on student loans to cover tuition fees (学费） had been lifted, making a degree course “great value” for older people. This would help them cope with the pressure they would face to keep up to date as they worked well into their sixties, he suggested.
His comments followed a government report which found that the country's future economic success would depend on the skills and contributions of older workers.
Campaigners for the elderly voiced doubts that prospective pensioners would be willing to commit to challenging degree courses and increased levels of debt to continue working. One in four people will be older than 65 by 2033 and economists have warned that the ageing population will place an unsustainable (无法持续的）burden on taxpayers unless more people work for longer. The state pension age is to rise to 67 by 2028. Ministers have warned that they have no idea when younger workers in their thirties will be able to retire.
Mr. Willetts, urged workers older than 60 to give further education serious consideration. “There is certainly a pressure for continuing to get retrained and upskilled,” he said. “Higher education has an economic benefit in that if you stay up to date with knowledge and skills you are more employable. ” “Education is such a good thing it is not reserved for younger people,” he said.“There will be people of all ages who will want to study. There is great value in lifelong learning.”
Under previous rules, students in England were eligible(符合条件的）for a loan to cover tuition fees only if they were younger than 54. Latest figures showed that only 1,940 under-graduates starting courses last year were older than 60, out of a total of 552,240 students in Britain. Some 6,455 were aged between 50 and 60, according to the Higher Education Statistics Agency.
1. Why is it "great value" for older people to take a degree course?| A．Because they can get training without paying student loans. |
| B．Because they can cover the college tuition fees by themselves. |
| C．Because they are allowed to apply for student loans. |
| D．Because they face the age limit when applying for the tuition fees. |
| A．Elderly workers. |
| B．Prospective pensioners. |
| C．Mature taxpayers, |
| D．Young students. |
| A．It allows people at various ages to get good education paying no tuition fees. |
| B．Younger people have more chances to achieve a higher degree than the old. |
| C．Older workers can take the opportunity to fulfill their dreams of learning. |
| D．Up-to-date knowledge and skills can increase people's probability of being hired. |
| A．People older than 54 now can't apply for student loans to cover their tuition fees |
| B．Older people who are willing to get retrained now are becoming fewer and fewer |
| C．The older people become, the fewer of them will receive higher education |
| D．Undergraduates older than 50 account for more than 7% of students in Britain |
7 . This is going to ruffle(激怒) a few feathers.
PepsiCo purposely packs fewer chips into its flavoured chip bags, Hugh Johnston, the company's CFO, told the Associated Press.“There might be an ounce or two less in those bags, ” Johnston said. Actually, it's half an ounce less. Regular Lay's are sold in 10ounce bags; flavoured Lay's are sold in 9.5ounce bags; and both are sold for the same $4.29 price. That might not sound like a lot, but it will sound like a lot with a bit of simple maths.
Americans buy some $1.6 billion worth of Lay's potato chips every year. Much of that is sold in bulk—or merely in bags bigger than the standard ones mentioned above. But let's assume for a second that those 10ounce bags are the only ones Lay's sells. That would mean the company sells more than 372 million bags of Lay's in the US each year—or 3.72 billion ounces of chips, at about 43 cents per ounce. It would also mean that that halfounce difference is worth about 21.5 cents per bag, and about $80 million in total per year.
That number is likely a good deal lower, but it's not entirely unreasonable. If Lay's is charging an extra payment for the smaller flavoured chip bags, it's likely doing the same for the bigger ones, too. That tiny halfounce difference might only mean a potato chip or two to you, but it's probably worth tens of millions of dollars to PepsiCo annually.
PepsiCo confirmed that flavoured and unflavoured Lay's chips are sold for the same price, but not in the same quantity. “This allows us to keep the same price point across the brand, ” Jeff Dahncke said in an email. He also suggested that the chip difference has nothing to do with extra profit.“The reason why there is a slightly higher price per ounce for flavoured chips is the added seasonings(调味品)，” he said. But that doesn't appear to be the case.
Some of the markups are simply meant to make up for the added input costs of cheese, barbecue, sour cream and onion, and other flavourings. But some of them are also there(or not there) to increase the potato chip maker's profits. PepsiCo has a soft spot for its specialty potato chips, because its specialty potato chips are more profitable than its regular ones, according to Johnston.
Perhaps that's why Lay's is getting ready to launch a mass of new specialty potato chip flavours. The launch is part of PepsiCo's annual “Do Us a Flavour” contest, in which it lets customers participate in the flavour creation process.
1. What did PepsiCo do to arouse public dissatisfaction?| A．They raised the price of their flavoured chips. |
| B．They gave short weight to their flavoured chips. |
| C．They changed the flavours of their potato chips. |
| D．They put more seasonings into their potato chips. |
| A．By listing figures. | B．By giving examples. |
| C．By analysing causes. | D．By making comparisons. |
| A．To make more profits. | B．To upgrade their products. |
| C．To balance additional costs. | D．To satisfy more people's taste. |
| A．Has a say in. | B．Has a look at. |
| C．Has access to. | D．Has affection for. |
8 . On May 1, 1926, Ford Motor Company became one of the first American companies to adopt a five-day, 40-hour week. It was something workers and labor unions had been calling for. However, the five-day workweek was to increase productivity. With more time and money, workers were expected to buy and use the products they were making. Manufacturers soon followed Ford’s lead, and the Monday-to-Friday workweek became standard practice.
Since then, everything has changed but the hours. Many people worked longer, which severely influenced health and well-being, as well as the environment. Until the Second World War, it was common for one person in a family, usually the oldest male, to work full-time. Women gradually made up 42 percent of the world’s full-time workforce. Later, technology made lots of work unnecessary, with computers and robots doing many tasks previously performed by humans.
Well into the 21st century, we continue to work the same long hours as 20th century laborers, using up more of Earth’s supply to produce more goods that we must keep working to buy, use and replace in a seemingly endless cycle of hard work and consumption. It’s time to pause and consider better ways to live like shifting from fossil-fueled lifestyles with which our consumer-based workweeks are connected.
The UK New Economics Foundation argues that a standard 21-hour workweek would address a number of interconnected problems: overwork, unemployment, over-consumption, high carbon emissions, low well-being, and the lack of time to live sustainably, to care for each other, and simply to enjoy life. Economic systems that require constant growth on a finite (有限的) planet make no sense. It’s time for a change in our economic thinking.
1. Why did Henry Ford shorten the workweek?| A．To increase efficiency. |
| B．To cut workers’ salaries. |
| C．To end conflicts with workers. |
| D．To create more job opportunities. |
| A．The oldest male had to work longer. |
| B．Technology let people work more flexibly. |
| C．Job positions were created due to technology. |
| D．Full-time vacancies were filled by more women. |
| A．Companies shouldn’t produce more than people can use. |
| B．The 21st century has witnessed the longest working hours. |
| C．The cycle of longer workweek and consumption should be changed. |
| D．Longer workweek definitely leads to stronger consumption capability. |
| A．Companies would be closed down. |
| B．Economic growth would be stopped. |
| C．Economic systems would break down. |
| D．People would be encouraged to enjoy life. |
9 . Past studies have found that youngsters are less good at identifying road dangers than adults, but Anat Meir wanted to discover exactly which behaviors lead to accidents, with the goal of finding ways to correct them.
In 2013, Meir simulated 18 typical streets and used an eye-tracking device to study how 46 adults and children evaluated when it was safe to cross. Children aged seven to nine exhibited the least caution when crossing, typically deciding to step into the virtual road with little or no hesitation, even when their field of vision was restricted. The older children did not perform much better, though for different reasons. They often stayed on the curb for an excessive amount of time—an indication that they are less able to distinguish between safe and dangerous situations than adults—and in interviews did not express an understanding of how factors such as car speed and field of vision affect crossing safety.
Interventions do seem to improve crossing success. In Meir's most recent study, two dozen seven-to nine-year-olds receive 40 minutes of danger-detection training. Afterwards, Meir compared trainees' and control kids' performances in the virtual road-crossing task. The children who received safety instructions were significantly better at crossing than the control subjects-to the point that their crossing skills resembled those of adults.
Next, Meir and policy makers aim to figure out how to translate these findings into the real world. “These kind of results are important because you cannot build interventions without an understanding of the problem,” says Joseph Kearney, a professor of computer science. “Now it's up to people with their feet on the ground to determine how they can develop training programs for children and for parents about good road-crossing habits.”
1. What is Meir's early study mainly about?| A．The benefits of employing virtual reality. |
| B．The problem with children's crossing roads. |
| C．The variety of risks of children crossing roads. |
| D．The ways of correcting children's wrong behaviors. |
| A．Their age and experience. | B．The limited field of vision. |
| C．Their carelessness and hesitation. | D．The duration of crossing the road. |
| A．Instructing children how to face danger. | B．Comparing children's performances. |
| C．Copying adults' crossing manners. | D．Teaching children about road safety. |
| A．Put their feet on the ground. | B．Learn good road-crossing habits. |
| C．Design practical training programs. | D．Understand the problem of the results. |
10 . According to a Turkish custom, if someone passes away, leaving a pair of that person's shoes on the wall outside his or her home is a way of mourning.
| A．Various obstacles are put in local women's way. |
| B．oping to end the violence, he decided to put up a display. |
| C．The artist builds his installation outdoors rather than indoors. |
| D．The number of female victims of violence has been on the rise. |
| E．Turkish artist Tuna expanded upon this tradition by creating an art installation. |
| F．As women fight for equal rights,Turkish politicians have responded with violence. |
| G．Tuna hopes his art project will aid Turkish women's ongoing struggle for equal rights. |
