1 . China has set new rules limiting the amount of time children can play online games. The rules limit children to just three hours of online game playing a week. That is one hour between 8 p. m. and 9 p. m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday most weeks.
Li Zhanguo has two children aged 4 and 8. Even though they do not have smartphones, they enjoy playing online games. Like many other parents. Li is happy with new government rules. But experts say it is unclear if such policies can help prevent addiction to online games. Children might just get addicted to social media instead. In the end, experts say, parents should be the ones to set limits and support good practice.
There has been a growing concern in China about gaming addiction among children. Government reports in 2018 found that about one in ten Chinese children were addicted to the Internet. The new rules are part of an effort to prevent young people from spending too much time on unhealthy entertainment. That includes what officials call the “irrational fan culture”
Under the new rules, the responsibility for making sure children play only three hours a day as largely on Chinese gaming companies like Net Ease and Ten cent. Companies have set up real-name registration systems to prevent young users from going past game time limits. They have used facial recognition technology to check their identities. And they have also set up a program that permits people to report what is against the law. It is unclear what punishments gaming companies may face if they do not carry out the policies. And even if such policies are performed, it is also unclear whether they can prevent online addiction.
A specialist treating Internet addiction expects about 20 percent of children will find ways to break the rules by borrowing accounts of their older relatives and find a way around facial recognition. In his opinion, short-video alps such as Douyin and Kuaishou are also very popular in China. They are not under the same restrictions as games.
1. When can children play games according to the new rules?A.Between 8 p. m. and 9 p. m. On Friday. | B.Between 8 p. m. and 9 p. m. On Tuesday. |
C.Between 10 p. m. and 11 p. m. On Saturday. | D.Between 10 p. m. and all p. m. On Thursday. |
A.the new rules can stop children’s addiction to social media |
B.companies are more responsible for kids ‘ obeying the rules |
C.the new rules will help prevent children playing online games |
D.parents play a greater part in limiting the time of online games |
A.Design an advanced program. | B.Use facial recognition systems. |
C.Set up real-name registration systems. | D.Borrow accounts of their older relatives. |
A.Rules Limiting Short-video alps | B.Rules Limiting Video Game Time |
C.Rules Banning Irrational Fan Culture | D.Rules Breaking Addition to Social Media |
2 . We know it can be hard to put your phone to bed before you sleep. However, if you’re trying to improve your sleep, you really should ditch your phone at least an hour before bedtime. Luckily, our experts can help.
Scientific evidence suggests that the blue light emitted from your phone, tablet, computer, and TV suppresses (抑制) your body’s production of melatonin, a hormone (荷尔蒙) that plays an important role in your sleep cycle. Melatonin release in the evening helps you relax before bedtime. A 2013 study that analyzed technology use and sleep patterns with data from a National Sleep Foundation poll found that using devices like phones was tied to more sleep disruption than electronics that aren’t interactive.
Many of us use the excuse that our mobile devices serve as our wake-up calls, or keep them nearby to use meditation apps. If you want to use your phone as an alarm, consider setting it a couple of hours before you turn in for the night, and then setting the phone itself to bedtime mode for the rest of the evening.
Here’s another groundbreaking idea: You could get a real alarm clock. After reviewing them at Reviewed, we recommend the Sharp Dream Caster. Not only is it easy to set a wake-up time, the clock includes white noises and rain noises to help you sleep, plus a number of volume settings to pick what works best for you.
But an alarm clock won’t help you avoid doom-scrolling through social media. Take things a step further by avoiding using electronic devices. You can try reading a book (one made of paper), taking a bath or drinking a cup of chamomile tea.
Finally, if you want to keep up your meditation practice screen-free, consider the Morphée. It looks like a little music box and comes with a variety of breathing exercises and soundscapes to help you get to sleep.
1. What does the underlined word “ditch” in paragraph 1 probably mean?A.Set aside. | B.Pick up. | C.Show off. | D.Turn to. |
A.Relaxing yourself before bedtime. |
B.Sleeping less than you normally would. |
C.Adapting to your sleep cycle more easily. |
D.Reducing the pressure from screen use. |
A.It is sold at a lower price. | B.It can predict a heavy rain. |
C.It is controlled by cellphone. | D.It helps put your eyes together. |
A.Making the best of the eco-friendly products. |
B.Making a change according to circumstances. |
C.Establishing a bedtime routine without electronics. |
D.Keeping a consistent bedtime and wake-up time. |
1. 新青年应具备的品质;
2. 新青年应该如何做。
注意:
1. 词数80左右;
2. 内容充实、行文连贯;
3. 题目已给出,不计入总词数。
Chinese Youth of the New Era
Dear fellow students,
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4 . Large amounts of waste, or garbage, are filling streets in Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, after protesters blocked a road leading to a landfill outside the city. People in Bancharedanda where the garbage is kept blame the government for not doing enough to protect them from the waste.
One British tourist, Richard McSorley, recently talked about the problem. He remembered how clean Kathmandu was when he first visited it many years ago. “If I were a new tourist, I would be despondent now,” McSorley said, while pointing to a load of garbage next to a city street. For weeks, treatment of waste has been a continuous problem in the city surrounded by hills. The problems started after people in the village of Bancharedanda refused to have the garbage thrown at a nearby landfill.
Biswas Dhungana was one of the protesters. He said the villagers were refusing to permit trucks loaded with garbage to enter. They say government officials have done little to provide basic equipment and effective ways to deal with the garbage. He added, “We have been forced to live like pigs in terrible conditions for several years as the government has not done anything to keep the village clean.”
Last week, hundreds of villagers built a wall of rocks on the road leading to Bancharedanda. It forced about 200 trucks filled with Kathmandu’s garbage to return without dumping their load. It was said that protesters also threw stones from surrounding hills.
Sunil Lamsal is an official to watch over how Kathmandu’s garbage is treated. He said, “I am working to deal with the concerns of the locals in Bancharedanda. But now, garbage continues to grow on the streets of Kathmandu. This has led to increased danger for people living in the capital. In the light of it, the government will soon take further positive measures to tackle the problem, as the environment affects every family.”
1. How does the author begin the text?A.By listing statistics. | B.By asking questions. |
C.By describing a phenomenon. | D.By drawing a comparison. |
A.Disappointed. | B.Dependent. | C.Dynamic. | D.Disabled. |
A.Government officials. | B.Foreign visitors. |
C.City residents. | D.Truck drivers. |
A.Punish the protesters. | B.Meet the villagers’ demand. |
C.Stop the villagers’ illegal actions. | D.Urge every family to clean their village. |
5 . “More and more consumers across the country are using cashless payment methods. The rapid development of third⁃party mobile payment tools is helping to encourage cashless payment across the country,” said Dong Ximiao, a researcher at Renmin University of China.
Although there were 3.4 billion third⁃party payment accounts in total in China in 2016, China is not the first country to seek a cashless society. Developed countries like Sweden, Denmark and Singapore are also seeing that increase.
However, the rapid development of the cashless payment does not mean there are no challenges or criticisms. Alibaba’s Hema store has come under the spotlight (成为焦点) recently. The media said that consumers couldn’t buy goods in cash there, which would be considered illegal.
Alipay and WeChat Pay, the nation’s two major third⁃party mobile payment tools, also launched campaigns this month to encourage more people to use cashless payment methods, which caused concern over whether cash will soon disappear.
“Some offline sellers refuse to accept cash, which influences the natural circulation (流通) of cash,” said Dong. He stressed that a cashless society would not mean that cash would completely disappear. “Also it’s important to remember that nearly half of China’s population live in the country, and they are unable to enjoy innovation (革新) brought by the Internet,” said Dong. “And when it comes to China’s senior citizens, most of them prefer to use cash in their daily lives,” he added.
“It’s ridiculous (荒谬的) to question digital payment tools’ contribution to financial development. In the long term, various payment methods will be used by consumers, and merchants should respect consumers’ payment habits,” Dong noted.
1. What does the underlined word “that” in Paragraph 2 probably refer to?A.The economic activity. | B.A large amount of payment. |
C.The development of the economy. | D.The cashless payment. |
A.It fights against illegal activities. |
B.Customers are not permitted to use cash there. |
C.It provides comprehensive services. |
D.It starts campaigns to encourage mobile payment. |
A.The cashless payment should be limited in the countryside. |
B.The innovation from payment is ridiculous in fact. |
C.Various payment methods should be supported. |
D.The digital payment should replace cash completely. |
A.Innovation on the Internet | B.Cash or cashless? |
C.Payment online should replace cash | D.Is the circulation of cash dying? |
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! |
7 . Christmas cards are a big tradition in the English-speaking world. In 2017, people in Britain sent and received about 900 million cards. That’s an average of about twelve cards for every person, from tiny babies to the oldest grandparents. The number of cards that are sent around Britain causes an annual headache for the postal service. Each year, the postal service has to take on seasonal staff to help with the extra mail, and postal sorting offices are stretched to their maximum capacity and sometimes beyond it.
In 1994, before the age of email and social media, the service handled about 1.6 billion cards! In spite of advertisements telling people to “Post Early for Christmas”, few people got round to sending their cards off before December 10th; and from that point on, the postal service slowed down. Until the age of faxes, emails and social media, the pre-Christmas period often caused a lot of problems for firms, as “urgent” letters and documents took several days to reach their destinations by post, which were slowed down by the mass of Christmas mail!
During the month of December in Britain, a house with no Christmas cards is like a pub with no beer. For the most part, however, people of all faiths and of no faith join in the tradition of celebrating Christmas as a festival, whether they do so for religious reasons or not. Every British home at Christmas is merrily decorated not just with hollies, but also with a display of Christmas cards received from friends, family members, neighbors, employers and a variety of other people. In some places, the number of Christmas cards people receive is seen as a measure of their status among their friends and neighbors.
As for the subjects of Christmas cards, the range, today, is enormous. At one time, two principal themes predominated (占多数): the Christmas story, with pictures of the biblical scenes; and “traditional Christmas”, with imaginary scenes of Christmas which included burning wood fires and happy-looking parents and kids sitting together. Today, while “traditional Christmas” is favored by most people, there is no limit to the variety of pictures on cards.
While more and more people send e-cards to their friends and family members, you can’t hang an e-card on the wall, and you can’t decorate a room with rows of e-cards. Sending and receiving Christmas cards is still best done by “snail mail” which includes a real card and a real envelope. It’s much more fun.
1. How did the postal service handle the problem of Christmas cards?A.By hiring temporary employees. | B.By sending the cards off earlier. |
C.By turning to social media for help. | D.By delaying sending letters from firms. |
A.The popularity of Christmas. | B.The decoration of British homes. |
C.The religious belief in Christmas. | D.The significance of Christmas cards. |
A.The religious story. | B.The holiday gift. |
C.The family reunion. | D.The landscape painting. |
A.Positive. | B.Negative. | C.Neutral. | D.Unclear. |
8 . Leia was fresh out of college when she began working as a member of a business-development team at a company. Though her skills had earned her the job, she was the youngest person in the team. “Everybody else was pretty much twice my age,” she says. “I exhibited” too much ambition’ in the eyes of my superiors. I heard about comments being made behind my back. There were even a couple of times when my superiors referred to my age right in front of me, saying I was too young: “What does a 23-year-old know about these things?”
Leia tried to change her appearance at work. “I changed the way I dressed. I tried to dress older, more ‘ladylike’. I changed my mannerisms and tried to act older,” she says. “It worked, to an extent.” The comments about her age and inexperience lessened, but Leia says she still felt like her growth potential was limited. She left the company soon after.
What Leia experienced was ageism, traditionally seen as something only older people face. For instance, older workers might be judged based on assumptions that they won’t fit into a progressive office or learn technology quickly. A US study showed that nearly two-thirds of workers aged 45 and older had seen or experienced age discrimination. But younger workers face age discrimination, too. In fact, new research shows it may actually be the youngest team members who are bearing the brunt of workplace ageism right now, potentially impacting their careers.
Leia says removing ageism entirely will ultimately require a fundamental change to corporate culture, which has long tied seniority to skill. “We prize years of experience a little too much, and I don’t think years of experience and skill are necessarily correlated,” she says. “Steve Jobs was 21 when he founded Apple. We don’t know how much younger people actually have to contribute. Hopefully, more employers are realizing it.”
1. What did Leia’s co-workers mainly talk about behind her back?A.Her appearance. | B.Her younger age. |
C.Her way of behaving. | D.Her family background. |
A.She disliked dressing more ladylike. |
B.She received many negative comments. |
C.She was under much pressure from her work. |
D.She needed more room for her career growth. |
A.They may be quick in learning technology. |
B.They have trouble adapting to a progressive office. |
C.They experience more ageism than younger workers. |
D.A small part of them were faced with age discrimination. |
A.To share information about Apple Company. |
B.To tell us Steve Jobs’ major contributions. |
C.To show that age and experience are not connected. |
D.To prove that experience matters to young people. |
Lin Congying, Chairman of JOEONE, a Chinese brand focused on men’s trousers created in 1989,
This represented a sharp turnaround of the conventional way of branding, where some Chinese companies tended to design their products with a name sounding the
Recent years have witnessed
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What’s the price of a family meal? The answer seems to be, “too much”. For instance, in the United States, as is often
So perhaps we had better ask ourselves
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