A person with a photographic memory could remember every detail of a picture, a book or an event many years later, but it has not been proved
2 . Newspapers, advertisements, and labels surround us everywhere, turning our environment into a mass of texts to be read or ignored. As the quantity of information we receive continually increases and as information spreading is shifting from page to screen, it may be time to ask how changes in our way of reading may affect our mental life. For how we receive information bears vitally on the ways we experience and interpret reality.
What is most obvious in the evolution of reading is the gradual displacement of the vertical (垂直的) by the horizontal—a shift from intensive to extensive reading. In our culture, access is not a problem, but proliferation (激增) is. And the reading act is necessarily different than it was in its earliest days. Awed by the availability of texts, the reader tends to move across surfaces without allowing the words to resonate (共鸣) inwardly.
Interestingly, this shift from vertical to horizontal parallels the overall societal shift from bounded lifetimes spent in single locales to lives lived in wider geographical areas amid streams of data. This larger access was once regarded as worldliness—one traveled, knew the life of cities, the ways of diverse people…. It has now become the birthright of anyone who owns a television set.
How do we square the advantages and disadvantages of horizontal and vertical awareness? The villagers, who know everything about their surroundings, are blessedly unaware of events in distant lands. The media-obsessed urbanites, by contrast, never lose their awareness of what happens in different parts of the world.
We may ask, which people are happier? The villagers may have found more sense in things owing both to the limited range of their concern and the depth on their information. But restricted conditions and habit also suggest boredom and limitation. The lack of a larger perspective (视角) leads to suspiciousness and cautious conservatism, but for the same reason, the constant availability of data and macro-perspectives has its own decreasing returns. When everything is happening everywhere, it gets harder to care about anything.
How do we assign value? Where do we find the fixed context that allows us to create a narrative of sense about our lives? Ideally, I suppose, one would have the best of both worlds—the purposeful fixity of the local, as well as the availability of enhancing views: a natural ecology of information and context.
1. What can we learn about the first two paragraphs?| A．Readers today tend to ignore deep engagement with texts. |
| B．It’s difficult to shift from vertical to horizontal reading. |
| C．Where and how we read texts shapes our mental life. |
| D．People are tired of information proliferation. |
| A．have a deeper understanding of their surroundings |
| B．show no interest in what happens in the world |
| C．are less bored than media-obsessed urbanites |
| D．cannot adapt to changing situations |
| A．Vertical awareness allows us to care about others. |
| B．Changes in our reading habits lead to the societal shift. |
| C．It’s wise to keep a balance between a local and a global view. |
| D．Horizontal reading affects our mindset more than vertical reading. |
If you’ve spent any time on social media sites, you’ve probably noticed it: parents share news, photos, and other information about their children. This phenomenon is called “sharenting”, a combination of the words “sharing” and
“parenting”.
Much of the research on sharenting focuses on why parents choose to share online. Studies found that for parents of infants (婴儿), sharenting can help ease the social isolation that comes with this period in their children’s lives. Parents of teenagers also share information about their kids on social media. Research has shown their motivations include communicating their pride in their children’s accomplishments and informing friends and family about their kids’ lives.
However, when parents post about their children on social media with high frequency, the phenomenon of “oversharenting” occurs, which can be a great cause for concern. For example, if parents share too much information that their children don’t want disclosed, it may lead them to withhold information about their lives from their parents so they can better control what can and can’t be posted about them.
Additionally, the cute photos or funny observations parents share online about their children could become a problem when their kids get older. In particular, colleges and employers are increasingly checking applicants’ online activity, and as a result, information posted by parents could become a source of embarrassment or affect a potential college’s or employer’s assessment of their child.
Sharing information has never been faster than in the digital age. While it can be very convenient to post milestones of their children, it’s important for parents to ensure they’re sharenting responsibly. After all it’s not just a picture, it’s the child and their digital footprint.
1. According to the passage, what is sharenting?2. Why do parents of infants choose to share online?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
When parents oversharent, their children may make up information about their lives to better control what can and can’t be posted about them.
4. Besides what’s mentioned in the passage, what else can you do if your parents oversharent? (In about 40 words)
4 . Technology has changed the ways in which we communicate with each other. For many people, the primary form of communicating these days is via instant messaging. When you run out of space or ideas, you just hit the send button or turn it off. There are no silences between the words, literally or figuratively (比喻地).
In real life, getting along with another person takes effort and energy. There are moments when neither person has anything to say. Silence can feel awkward. So too, emotions can arise in real life that are difficult. There are moments when things can get painful with another person. Misunderstandings happen, hard truths are revealed, and feelings can get hurt.
A trend has started to pop up. When difficulty or conflict arises within a relationship, we are simply dropping out of it rather than facing the issue. I hear of this more often in my practice and notice it more in my own life. We come and go, in and out of each other’s lives with remarkable ease, as if relationships are not really worth investing in or working for any longer. It makes me wonder if we are simply losing the ability to deal with the messy and uncomfortable parts of life. The result is that we are left with a lot of relationships but not much in the way of nourishing relationships. We have it easy, but we don’t have it real.
When we run into conflict with others, the reason we are willing to address the conflict is that we want the relationship and we care about it. Discomfort, awkwardness and challenges are an unavoidable part of being in a relationship with others. We have to remind ourselves that we can wade (涉水) through that messy river to get to the other side where the relationship can be restored. In psychology, we call this process repair. And the relationship that is formed after dealing with the conflict together is actually stronger than if the conflict had not happened.
We will never end up anywhere deeply satisfying by avoiding challenges. Each moment that we are willing to be uncomfortable in a relationship, to live in and through the messiness, is a drop of gold in the relationship itself. The investment in the hard stuff is finally what makes the relationship worth investing in. The willingness to be uncomfortable with something and the value of that something are part of the same circle.
1. What can be inferred from the first two paragraphs?| A．Technology has brought people closer. |
| B．True friends are not embarrassed by silence. |
| C．Online communication creates a lot of misunderstandings. |
| D．More challenges arise in real-life interpersonal relationships. |
| A．Negative. | B．Positive. |
| C．Reserved. | D．Unclear. |
| A．Step back and avoid conflict. |
| B．Pay more attention to themselves. |
| C．Try to fix the relationship. |
| D．Learn to identify unhealthy relationships. |
| A．To describe a growing trend. |
| B．To stress the importance of handling conflict. |
| C．To guide people into meaningful relationships. |
| D．To show the influence of the Internet on relationships. |
5 . University educators largely think highly of the wonders of teaching through technology, but experts question whether something is lost when professors and lecturers rely too heavily on electronic media or when interaction with students takes place remotely — in cyberspace rather than the real space of the classroom. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, the Professor of Literature at Stanford University, is one such expert. “I think this enthusiastic and sometimes childish and blind pushing toward the more technology the better, the more websites the better teacher, and so forth, is very dangerous — is, indeed, self-destructive,” he indicates.
However, Gumbrecht warns that there are few, if any, studies either supporting or disapproving the assumption that traditional ways of teaching are superior to teaching via the Internet. He says that he could point only to his “insight that real classroom presence should be kept,” and emphasizes the need for educators to examine critically where technology serves a useful pedagogical (教学法的) function and where it does not.
Yet, Gumbrecht allows that, for courses in which knowledge transmission (传递) is the sole purpose, electronic media probably can do the job well enough. Indeed, given the 20th century’s knowledge explosion and the increasing costs of higher education, using technology as opposed to real-life teachers for the transmission of information is probably unavoidable, he admits. In any case, knowledge transmission should not be the core function of the university he maintains, noting that universities should be places where people deal with open questions, places for ‘‘intellectual complexity” and “riskfill thinking”.
“We are not about finding or transmitting solutions; we are not about recipes; we are not about making intellectual life easy. Challenges with complexity are what expands your mind. It is something like intellectual gymnastics. And this is what makes you a suitable member of the society.”
Moreover, discussions in the physical presence of others can lead to the intellectual innovation. There’s a qualitative change, and you don’t know how it happens. Discussions in the physical presence have the power of being the catalyst (催化齐) for such intellectual breakthroughs. The possibility of in-classroom teaching — of letting something happen which cannot happen if you teach by the transmission of information — is a strength.
1. What is Professor Gumbrecht’s major concern about teaching?| A．The systems of teaching through technology. |
| B．Students’ overdependence on electronic media. |
| C．The trend towards the more technology the better. |
| D．Experts’ questions on remote interaction with students. |
| A．replace the real-life teachers for the increasing costs |
| B．facilitate solution transmission for the knowledge explosion |
| C．prepare students for a well-rounded life for society |
| D．help students establish core values |
| A．reduce the intellectual complexity |
| B．be the catalyst for the qualitative changes |
| C．lead to swifter and stronger information transmission |
| D．combine traditional teaching ways well with technology |
| A．Cyberspace Interaction |
| B．Traditional Teaching Has Its Place |
| C．The Core Function Of The University |
| D．Information Transmission Cannot Help You Survive |
Before ending upon a supermarket shelf, an avocado(牛油果) has produced 1.3 kilograms of carbon into the atmosphere. Its production alone consumes 60 gallons of water. Despite this, the fruit will often be thrown away as household waste.
Household food waste is the result of mismanagement. Much of the waste is avoidable and the food may have been eaten had it been better managed. To reduce household food waste, a growing number of food retailers decide to remove date labelling(标签), such as the “use-by” or “best-before” date, from some fresh food items.
Past studies have confirmed the importance of date labelling. Almost 60% of western European consumers surveyed said they “always” check date labels while purchasing. But date labelling has long come under criticism because failure to truly understand date labelling often leads to unreasonable decision making. Indeed, consumers commonly don’t accept edible(可食用的), but date-expired(过期的) food.
The removal of date labelling is therefore a promising start. Without date labels, information that may affect consumers’ understanding of what is edible, is removed. Instead, consumers are encouraged to sense-check fresh food items.
In the case of an avocado, the advice given to consumers is that when ripe, it should have a “pleasant and slightly sweet aroma(气味)”, while the skin should be “dark green or brown”. Information is also provided on how an avocado should look, taste, and feel when “overripe”. It is hoped that a better informed consumer will be less likely to blindly throw away food due to an expiration date.
1. What do food retailers decide to do to reduce household food waste?2. Why has date labelling long been criticized?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
If consumers can be better informed, they will not accept edible, but date-expired food.
4. Once date labels are removed from some fresh food items, what problem(s) might be caused? (In about 40 words)
7 . Over millions of years humans have responded to certain situations without thinking too hard. If our ancestors spotted movement in the nearby forest, they would run first and question later. At the same time, the ability to analyze and to plan is part of what separates us from other animals. The question of when to trust your instinct (直觉)and when to think slow matters in the office as much as in the savannah(草原).
Slow thinking is the feature of a well-managed workplace. Yet instinct also has its place. Some decisions are more connected to emotional responses and less to analysis. In demanding customer-service or public-facing situations, instinct is often a better guide to how to behave.
Instinct can also be improved. Plenty of research has shown that instinct becomes more unerring with experience. In one well-known experiment, volunteers were asked to assess whether a selection of designer handbags were real or not. Some were instructed to operate on instinct and others to deliberate(深思熟虑)over their decision. Instinct worked better for those who owned at least three designer handbags; indeed, it outperformed analysis. The more expert you become, the better your instinct tends to be.
However, the real reason to embrace fast thinking is that it is, well, fast. It is often the only way to get through the day. To take one example, when your inbox floods with new emails at the start of a new day, there is absolutely no way to read them all carefully. Instinct is what helps you decide which ones to answer and which to delete or leave unopened. Fast thinking can also help the entire organization. The value of many managerial decisions lies in the simple fact that they have been made at all. Yet as data explodes, the temptation(诱惑)to ask for one more bit of analysis has become much harder to resist. Managers often suffer from overthinking, turning a simple problem into a complex one.
When to use instinct in the workplace rests on its own form of pattern recognition. Does the decision maker have real expertise in this area? Is this a field in which emotion matters more than reasoning? Above all, is it worth delaying the decision? Slow thinking is needed to get the big calls right. But fast thinking is the way to stop deliberation turning to a waste of time.
1. What does the underlined word “unerring” in Paragraph 3 probably mean?| A．Accurate. | B．Creative. | C．Controllable. | D．Obvious. |
| A．Managers can afford the cost of slow thinking. |
| B．Fast thinking can be a boost to work efficiency. |
| C．Slow thinking will hold us back in the long run. |
| D．Too much data is to blame for wrong decisions. |
| A．To explain how instinct works. |
| B．To compare instinct and slow thinking. |
| C．To highlight the value of instinct in the workplace. |
| D．To illustrate the development of different thinking patterns. |
8 . If there’s one cliché (陈词滥调) that really annoys Danah Boyd, a specialist researcher who has made a career from studying the way teenagers use the web, it’s that of the digital native. “Today the world has computer-mediated communications. Thus, in order to learn about their social world around them, teenagers are learning about those things too. And they’re using that to work out the stuff that kids have always worked out: peer (同龄人) sociality, status, etc.” she says.
It’s no surprise Boyd takes exception, really. As one of the first digital anthropologists to dig into the way teenagers use social networking sites, she gained insights into the social web by taking a closer look at what was going on.
Lately, her work has been about explaining new ways of interpreting the behavior we see online. She outlined some examples at a recent conference in San Francisco, including the case of a young man from one of the poorest districts of Los Angeles who was applying for a top American college. The applicant said he wanted to escape the influence of violence, but the admissions officer was shocked when he discovered that the boy’s MySpace page was covered with precisely the violent language he claimed to hate. “Why was he lying about his motivations?” asked the university. “He wasn’t,” said Boyd. “In his world, showing the right images online was a key part of surviving daily life.”
Understanding what’s happening online is especially important, for today’s teenagers have a vastly different approach to privacy from their parents. She says, “Adults think of the home as a very private space. That’s often not the case for teenagers because they have little or no control over who has access to it, or under what conditions. As a result, the online world can feel more private because it feels like there’s more control.”
The concept of control is central to Boyd’s work, and it applies to pointing out the true facts about teenage behavior. Boyd suggests control remains in the same places as it always did.
“Technologists all go for the idea of techno-utopia (乌托邦), the web as great democratizer (民主化)”, she says. “But we’re not actually democratizing the whole system; we’re just shifting the way in which we discriminate.”
It’s a call to arms that most academic researchers would tend to sidestep, but then Boyd admits to treading a fine line between academics and activists. “The questions I continue to want to ask are the things that are challenging to me；having to sit down and be forced to think about uncomfortable social stuff, and it’s really hard to get my head around it, which means it’s exactly what I should dive in and deal with, ” she says.
1. What does Danah Boyd think of “computer-mediated communications”?| A．They teach teenagers about social interaction. |
| B．They replace other sorts of social interaction for teenagers. |
| C．They are necessary for teenagers to have social interaction. |
| D．They are barriers to wider social interaction among teenagers. |
| A．To show how easy it is to investigate somebody’s online activity. |
| B．To explain how easy it is to misinterpret an individual online activity. |
| C．To prove how important it is to check the content of someone’s online activity. |
| D．To express how necessary it is to judge someone’s sincerity from his online activity. |
| A．parents tend not to respect teenagers’ need for online privacy |
| B．teenagers are less concerned about privacy than their parents |
| C．teenagers feel more private in the online world than in the home |
| D．parents value the idea of privacy less in a domestic environment |
| A．is willing to take on research challenges others would avoid |
| B．regards herself as being more of an activist than a researcher |
| C．is aware that she is lacking in ability to deal with the challenges |
| D．feels like abandoning the research into uncomfortable social stuff |
