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 . Optimism (乐观) is probably not a surprise that optimistic thinkers tend to be happier than pessimistic thinkers.
Optimists live longer.
Optimistic thinkers have lower rates of high blood pressure, heart disease, and even risk of cancer, as well as lower rates of mortality in general. These health factors may be influenced by optimists’ focus on taking care of themselves.
Optimists are more successful.
Just as optimists tend to be more resilient (有复原力的) outside of the workplace, they are also resilient on the job. Even if their bosses don’t recognize that they’re doing a good job, optimists are able to bounce back and keep performing well. People who are more optimistic also seem to have better job security than less optimistic workers.
People with higher levels of subjective well-being — a mindset that can include optimism — have stronger immune systems and even experience faster wound healing than others with lower levels of well-being. People with positive experiences lowered their rates of depression, physical symptoms, and sleep complaints.
| A．Optimists take fewer sick days. |
| B．Optimists pick themselves up faster. |
| C．But there are other benefits to being optimist. |
| D．They are more likely to live to age 85 or older. |
| E．Optimists are more likely to take steps to cope with it. |
| F．This improved security can even lead to increased optimism. |
| G．Optimists tend to exercise more, sleep better and eat healthier. |
3 . Sometime in the early 1960s, a significant thing happened in Sydney, Australia. The city discovered its harbor. Then, one after another, Sydney discovered lots of things that were just sort of there — broad parks, superb beaches, and a culturally diverse population. But it is the harbor that makes the city.
Andrew Reynolds, a cheerful fellow in his early 30s, pilots Sydney ferryboats for a living. I spent the whole morning shuttling back and forth across the harbor. After our third run Andrew shut down the engine, and we went our separate ways — he for a lunch break, I to explore the city.
“I’ll miss these old boats,” he said as we parted.
“How do you mean?” I asked.
“Oh, they’re replacing them with catamarans. Catamarans are faster, but they’re not so elegant, and they’re not fun to pilot. But that’s progress, I guess.”
Everywhere in Sydney these days, change and progress are the watchwords (口号), and traditions are increasingly rare. Shirley Fitzgerald, the city’s official historian, told me that in its rush to modernity in the 1970s, Sydney swept aside much of its past, including many of its finest buildings. “Sydney is confused about itself,” she said. “We can’t seem to make up our minds whether we want a modern city or a traditional one. It’s a conflict that we aren’t getting any better at resolving.”
On the other hand, being young and old at the same time has its attractions. I considered this when I met a thoughtful young businessman named Anthony. “Many people say that we lack culture in this country,” he told me. “What people forget is that the Italians, when they came to Australia, brought 2000 years of their culture, the Greeks some 3000 years, and the Chinese more still. We’ve got a foundation built on ancient cultures but with a drive and dynamism of a young country. It’s a pretty hard combination to beat.”
He is right, but I can’t help wishing they would keep those old ferries.
1. What can we know about Sydney’s harbor?| A．It is a culturally respected area. | B．It used to be a striking architecture. |
| C．It’s crucial to Sydney’s development. | D．It was a famous tourist attraction in 1960. |
| A．Anxious. | B．Negative. | C．Doubtful. | D．Supportive. |
| A．Controlling. | B．Discovering. | C．Solving. | D．Distinguishing. |
| A．A city being young and old is more attractive. |
| B．A city built on ancient cultures is more dynamic. |
| C．Modernity is usually achieved at the cost of elegance. |
| D．Italians bring Australians more cultures than Chinese. |
4 . Any parent knows how challenging it can be to separate kids from social media, messaging apps, or online games and videos.
Be a good role model. Children have a strong impulse (冲动) to imitate, so it’s important you manage your own smartphone and Internet use. Don’t let your own smartphone use distract from parent-child interactions.
Encourage other interests and social activities. Get your child away from screens by exposing them to other hobbies and activities, such as team sports and after-school clubs.
Talk to your child about underlying issues. Compulsive smartphone use can be the sign of deeper problems.
Get help. Teenagers often rebel against their parents, but if they hear the same information from a different authority figure, they may tend to listen.
| A．Is your child having problems fitting in? |
| B．Spend time as a family away from screens. |
| C．Is your child having trouble working harder? |
| D．Try a sports coach, doctor, or respected family friend. |
| E．Use apps to monitor and limit your child’s smartphone use. |
| F．Turn devices off and leave them in another room overnight to charge. |
| G．Youngsters lack the maturity to control their smartphone use on their own. |
增加：在缺词处加一个漏字符号(∧)，并在其下面写出该加的词。
删除：把多余的词用斜线(\)划掉。
修改：在错的词下划一横线，并在该词下面写出修改后的词。
注意：1.每处错误及其修改均仅限一词;
2.只允许修改10处，多者(从第11处起)不计分。
When I was my way to school last Saturday afternoon, I saw a mother and her son preparing to go across the street. A mother was about to run the light while her son prevented her. The mother felt embarrassed and stops. With more and more cars coming into our families, it had greatly improved our life. But unlucky, it has also brought many problems, such as heavy traffic and traffic accident. Traffic safety is everybody’s business. We must to obey the rules. We can tell our parents not to drink before we drive, not to run through red lights, not to talk and laugh while drive etc.
6 . In the last 50 years the media influence has grown increasingly with the advance of technology. First there was the telegraph, then the radio, the newspaper, magazines, the television and now the Internet.
We live in a society that depends on information and communication to keep moving in the right direction and do our daily activities like work, entertainment, health care, education, personal relationships, traveling and anything else that we have to do.
In our daily life, we rely on the media to get the current news and facts about what is important and what we should be aware of. We have put our trust on the media as an authority to give us news, entertainment and education. However, the influence of mass media on our kids, teenagers and society is so big that we should know how it really works.
Of all the media distribution channels the most influential has been the television. We are constantly exposed to thousands of images of violence, advertising, sex, celebrities and much more, in fact a child may be exposed to about 40,000 ads a year.
But who owns the media, which are the companies or people that shape our values, beliefs and decisions? In America, the media is basically dominated by five major companies. Those five companies own 95% of all the media that we get every day. They own the major entertainment theme parks, entertainment movie studios, television and radio broadcast networks and programming, video news and sports entertainment. They also own integrated telecommunications, wireless phones, video games softwares, electronic media, the music industry and more.
Years ago there was more diversity in companies, but they have been combined so now they are just a few and they have the power to shape our opinions and beliefs and those of our kids. So it’s important to be aware of what your kids are exposed to every day and you should also try to look at things from different perspectives and not just from the one the media gives you.
1. What does the underlined word “dominated” probably mean?| A．Invested. | B．Controlled. | C．Played. | D．Sold. |
| A．Newspaper. | B．Telegraph. | C．Radio. | D．TV. |
| A．We will know nothing about the outside world. |
| B．We’ll know more about what our kids are exposed to. |
| C．Our opinions and beliefs will be easily shaped. |
| D．A lot of money will be saved and spent on other projects. |
| A．Mass media influence |
| B．The concept of mass media |
| C．What are we exposed to? |
| D．How does the media harm the public? |
7 . Feeling controlled by your to-do list can certainly make you unhappy, but new research suggests that more free time might not be the magic elixir (灵丹妙药) many of us dream it could be.
In a new study shown last week, researchers analyzed data from two major surveys about how Americans spend their time. Together, the surveys included more than 35,000 respondents (受访者). The researchers found that people with more free time generally had higher levels of subjective well-being—but only up to a point.
People who had up to two hours of free time a day generally reported they felt better than those who’d had less time. But people who had five or more hours of free time a day generally said they felt worse.
So finally the free-time “sweet spot” might be two to three hours per day, the findings suggest. “While too little time is bad, having more time is not always better,” said Marissa Sharif, lead author of the paper.
Of course, most people know that being too busy can cause stress. But the new study is not the first to question whether more free time will actually make people as happy as they believe it will. Part of “sweet spot” has to do with how people spend the free time. Researchers conducted several smaller online experiments. In one they asked participants to imagine having 3.5 to 7 free hours per day. They were asked to imagine spending that time doing “productive” things (like exercising) or to imagine doing “unproductive” activities (like watching TV).
Study participants believed their well-being would suffer if they had a lot of free time during the day—but only if they used it unproductively. Though that experiment was hypothetical (假设的), which is one limitation of the new research, it’s certainly in line with other research showing that being in a state of “flow” can be good for people’s mental health.
In other words, how people use their free time matters, Sharif said. Of course, what feels “productive” is up to you.
1. What can we know about the new study?| A．It included many American respondents. | B．It surveyed people from different countries. |
| C．It found that more spare time was better. | D．It’s the first to question the importance of free-time. |
| A．Less than 2 hours. | B．About 3.5 hours. | C．About 2 to 3 hours. | D．More than 7 hours. |
| A．The experiment included unproductive activities. |
| B．The experiment wasn’t in line with other researches. |
| C．The experiment didn’t include enough participants. |
| D．The experiment was not based on adequate evidence. |
| A．Being productive is an important matter. |
| B．The way people spend their spare time makes a difference. |
| C．Being in a state of “free” can be good for people’s mental health. |
| D．More free time will actually make people as happy as they believe. |
增加：在缺词处加一个漏字符号(∧)，并在其下面写出该加的词。
删除：把多余的词用斜线(\)划掉。
修改：在错的词下划一横线，并在该词下面写出修改后的词。
注意：1. 每处错误及其修改均仅限一词；
2.只允许修改10处，多者(从第11处起)不计分。
With the popularity of cellphones and Internet, some of we students spend too much time playing with cellphones, which is bad for our studies. Worse is still, we have little time to communicating with our parents and friends. So do we have time for physical exercises.
How shall we do to improve the situation? All of us should realize the negative effects of modern media. Let’s limit our time by playing with cellphones. Instead we should spend more time playing sports or talking straightly with our parents and friends, which helped us relax and communicate.
9 . According to a research, more than 130 billion pounds of uneaten food go to waste in Laura’s county each year. That is about 30% of the yearly food supply (供应). It is a sad fact, especially when you consider how many families and homeless people are in hunger.
When Laura saw her school dining hall throw away food that was not eaten at all every day, she came up with an idea. She started a project to help her school dining hall to give away uneaten food to homeless shelters (避难所) in her community. In the past three years, the same protect has spread to other schools and some fast food restaurants throughout the city. The project is called Feed & Find, which has already fed thousands of people in her city.
How does it work? Through an app, Feed & Find matches local homeless shelters with school dining halls and restaurants that have uneaten food to provide. When dining halls or restaurants have uneaten food left, they can use the app to share the information about the food. A truck driver working for the project is then sent to pick it up and take it to a shelter.
Pretty cool, right? It’s not surprising that people in other cities have got in touch with Laura, to hoping that she could help develop similar projects for their communities.
Some people, however, dread the safety of the uneaten food. They think such food may not be clean enough. Still, this project is a clever way to help solve the problem of food waste and it helps those in need.
1. The numbers in Paragraph 1 tell us ________.| A．some people are poor | B．food waste is serious |
| C．the population is large | D．the research is interesting |
| A．her school dining hall | B．her family |
| C．a fast food restaurant | D．a homeless shelter |
| A．find a truck driver | B．visit their communities |
| C．give away food to them | D．help develop projects like hers |
| A．ways | B．secrets | C．worries | D．decisions |
10 . How did nearsighted people manage in the pre-glasses past? Have you ever thought about this? Aristotle may have written the first observations of myopia around 350 B.C. Because their eyeballs are too long, people with this condition can see objects that are close by, but distant objects tend to look blurry.
Neil Handley, a museum curator, said not much is known about how people dealt with myopia before the first lenses for nearsighted people were invented in the 15th century in Europe. And he noted that “even in the history of the invention of spectacles, that is a late development.”
There are 13th-century European examples of handheld convex lenses that were used to treat age-related vision loss known as presbyopia. But the technology wasn’t applied to treat nearsightedness for another 200 years.
“Because of the way that lens is held, you can see through it, and the artist has captured the effect that the glass has,” Handley said. Myopia could be something of a modern condition. Rates of myopia have risen sharply in recent decades, and researchers have projected that half the world will be myopic by 2050.
Doctors are still trying to figure out the cause behind this trend. Some have blamed genetic causes or an increase in studying and screen time.
It’s likely that myopia didn’t affect as many people in the past as it does now. Handley said the late creation of nearsighted glasses suggests that treating the small number of people with myopia wasn’t regarded as a priority and that people could have gotten by with this condition by making some adaptations in their lifestyle. Or, maybe there was more of an emphasis on putting people in jobs that were suited to their ability to see, he said.
For example, people with myopia were historically valued in artisan contexts, such as medieval European monasteries, where illuminating manuscripts and painting required making tiny, precise skills.
1. What can be learned about the first myopia glasses?| A．They came into people’s view around 350 B.C. |
| B．They could help shorten people’s eyeballs. |
| C．They didn’t come out until the 15th century. |
| D．They were initially designed for old people. |
| A．Noticed. | B．Predicted. | C．Doubted. | D．Conducted. |
| A．People in the past didn’t develop myopia. |
| B．My opia could be cured by changing one’s lifestyle. |
| C．People with myopia could also lead a normal life. |
| D．Most art-related jobs favored near sighted people. |
| A．Glasses for nearsighted people have developed a lot. |
| B．Nearsightedness is increasing at an alarming rate. |
| C．Various reasons contribute to modern myopia. |
| D．Myopia was not so disturbing in the past. |
