1 . Nowadays, for many people, buying a house or flat is just too expensive. However, the total amount of rent paid by tenants in Britain in 2017 rose to more than 50 billion-more than double the level of ten years prior. Consequently, a lot choose to share the flat.
The pros? People rent a room and share the kitchen, living room and bathroom to save money.
Now the cons.
| A．Lastly, there’s the emotional support. |
| B．Those flat-sharing can share the secrets. |
| C．To start with, do you lack private space? |
| D．There’s limited storage space, for a start. |
| E．Whether the pros outweigh the cons depends. |
| F．Then what are the pros and cons of flat-sharing? |
| G．Also, living with others means that you can pool your resources. |
China’s top liquor maker Kweichow Moutai and domestic coffee chain Luckin Coffee have got a hit on their hands, with a new baijiu-flavored latte. The latte has become one of the most discussed topics on Chinese social media with people curious about
In Beijijng, the Moutai-flavored latte sold out in some Luckin Coffee
“It seems that people prefer
People have been sharing their reactions after trying the latte on social media, with most
In recent years, Moutai has been looking for ways to be more
3 . Personality used to be a one-per-customer deal: like it or not, you were who you were, and lying to a pen pal was about the closest you could get to have a different ego. That was then. With the appearance of MySpace, Facebook, and other social networking sites, a second, carefully crafted identity is now available to anyone with an Internet connection. And that has psychologists wonder: just how well do these online personalities match the person sitting at the keyboard?
The answer, it turns out, is pretty well. In a recent study of 133 undergraduates with Facebook profiles, University of Texas psychologist Samuel D. Gosling measured the correlation between personality tests online and off, and found — contrary to the assumption that social networking sites can’t capture one’s features—that the students represented themselves quite faithfully.
Gosling surveyed the group on a standard five-point personality test, which measures extroversion (外向性), agreeableness, sense of responsibility, emotional stability, and openness to new experiences. Then he rated the same subjects based only on their Facebook profiles, which usually included photos and lists of interests, from academic majors to favorite books and movies.
Gosling found a correlation between assessments in four of the five categories, with emotional stability as the only one showing no significant results across personal and online assessments.(Gosling says he was not surprised at the latter, since emotional stability is something that people are good at hiding across most media.)While extroversion showed the highest correlation, the study suggests that “openness to new experience” is perhaps better conveyed online than in person.
“Facebook users don’t tend to put a lot of personal information on their pages, ” Gosling says, so someone who posted touching personal stories, for example, might come off as oversharing without intending to.
In short, says Gosling, Facebook users aren’t generally using the site as an image buffer, a resume enhancer, or a separate self. “They just use it as a medium for social life.”
1. What is the usual assumption about social networking sites?| A．They provide good study platforms. |
| B．They contain totally fake information. |
| C．They couldn’t show one’s real nature. |
| D．They are friendly to various personalities. |
| A．Openness to new experience. | B．Extroversion. |
| C．Sense of responsibility. | D．Emotional stability. |
| A．True personality beautifies image. |
| B．The site is a medium for social life. |
| C．Only cheats invest in a false identity. |
| D．Various interests can be shared there. |
| A．To introduce a finding. | B．To offer a recommendation. |
| C．To defend a viewpoint. | D．To present a phenomenon. |
4 . In the race to catch up with the changing time, we are forgetting how to live without the support of our phones, laptops, and tablets.
The first thing you need to do to unplug is to turn off your phone notifications. As soon as we hear a notification drop on our phones — whether it is something of importance or not — we are attracted to check it. When you’re not working and are not required to call, text, or return an email, turn off your phone (or put it on silent mode).
I know it’s hard to stay away from your phone when it keeps buzzing with incoming texts, calls, and emails.
One of the best ways that I believe can help you disconnect is being in nature.
| A．Keep track of how much time you’re spending on your phone. |
| B．This way you won’t be tempted and keep getting distracted. |
| C．Take a walk in the park near you or your garden without your phone. |
| D．When feeling bored, we often look for our phones to overcome our boredom. |
| E．Here are some simple ways you can disconnect and unplug for a more mindful living. |
| F．Therefore, setting a boundary on what to reply, and when to reply should be important. |
| G．Disconnecting from technology can be very helpful for quality time with your beloved ones. |
5 . Survivor bias (偏见，偏差), occurs when you tend to assess successful outcomes and disregard failures. This sampling bias paints a more promising or even misleading picture of reality.
Survivor bias is a sneaky problem that tends to slip into analyses unnoticed. For starters, it feels natural to emphasize success, whether it’s entrepreneurs, or survivors of a medical condition. We focus on and share these stories more than the failures.
Think about the famous college dropouts who became highly successful, such as Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates. These successful examples might make you think a college degree isn’t beneficial. However, that’s survivor bias at work! These famous individuals are at the forefront of media reports. You hear more about them because they are extraordinary. You’re not considering the millions of other college dropouts that aren’t rich and famous. You need to assess their outcomes as well.
Survivor bias has even occurred in medical studies about severe diseases. Younger, healthier, and more fit patients tend to survive a disease’s initial diagnosis more frequently. Hence, they are more likely to join medical studies. On the contrary, older, weaker patients are less likely to survive long enough to participate in studies. Consequently, these studies overestimate successful disease outcomes because they are less likely to include those who die shortly after diagnosis.
Undeniably, successful cases are usually more visible and easier to contact than unsuccessful cases. However, focusing on the high-performing successes and disregarding other cases introduces survivor bias. After all, you’re leaving out a significant part of the picture as it’s harder to collect data from the less successful members of a population. Incomplete data can affect your decision-making process. Put simply, survivor bias produces an inaccurate sample, causing you to jump to incorrect conclusions.
To minimize the impact of survivor bias, you should find ways to draw a representative sample from the population, not just a few of successful samples. That process might call for more expense and effort, but you’ll get better results.
1. What writing technique is used in Paragraphs 3 and 4?| A．Making comparisons. | B．Giving examples. |
| C．Describing facts. | D．Analyzing data. |
| A．You will take all factors into account before making a final analysis. |
| B．You will overestimate the failure rate so you may quit your project. |
| C．You will only have partial data and reach an incorrect conclusion. |
| D．You will be more likely to survive in unfavorable circumstances. |
| A．People tend to lose sight of the overall statistics. |
| B．People are unwilling to read unsuccessful stories. |
| C．Doctors don’t have enough expense to collect abundant samples. |
| D．The media should be responsible for kids’ dropping out of school. |
| A．Leave out the famous historic cases. |
| B．Collect a wide enough range of samples. |
| C．Focus on those most mentioned examples. |
| D．Select some successful and inspiring tales. |
6 . A March 2023 report from Goldman Sachs estimated that AI could do a quarter of all the work currently done by humans.
The second category is jobs that require complicated interpersonal relationships like nurses, business consultants and investigative journalists. These are jobs where you need a very deep understanding of people.
The third safe zone are jobs that really require lots of mobility and problem-solving ability in unpredictable environments. Electricians, plumbers, and the like all fall under this umbrella, where you’re dealing with a new situation all the time. They are probably the hardest of anything to automate.
It’s important to note that an advanced education is not a defence against AI takeover. In many cases, more educated workers are going to be more threatened than then even the least educated workers.
In short, seeking roles in dynamic, shifting environments that include unpredictable tasks is good way to avoid job loss to AI.
| A．And that could be terrible. |
| B．Thankfully, it’s not all bad news. |
| C．The robots really are coming for some jobs. |
| D．The first would be jobs that are genuinely creative. |
| E．Think of the person that works cleaning hotel rooms. |
| F．That doesn’t necessarily mean all jobs that are considered ”creative” are safe. |
| G．It’ll be a long time before AI has the ability to really build relationships and interact. |
7 . The debate of having siblings versus being an only child (or a singleton) has merits on either side. I believe that it is better to have siblings than none.
Having at least one sibling is beneficial to a child’s socio-emotional development. Through siblings, the child learns important life skills. The child takes on multiple roles such as playmate, friends and even rival and in the process, learns to share, compromise and resolve conflicts—from parental affection to toys, space or other resources. Thus, siblingship fosters the environment where children pick up invaluable skills that they can apply to workplaces, marriages and other interpersonal relationships in future. More importantly, having siblings is a help when it comes to parental care. Caring for sick elderly parents can be physically, mentally and financially exhausting. Having at least one sibling who can share the responsibilities would certainly go a long way. The only child, on the other hand, would have to shoulder this responsibility alone, or at best with a spouse (配偶) for support, and this can be overwhelming.
While some singletons may enjoy being the attention of parents and even grandparents, they also shoulder a heavier burden of being the only one in the spotlight, having no sibling to share it with. Parents of the singleton tend to hyper-focus all their energies on their one child. The glare are can get intense and discomforting. The singleton may find that being the focus of such excessive attention may be detrimental in the long run. Eventually, this child may lack the confidence and natural instincts to address real-world issues by himself or herself. Besides, there is the perception of the only child being spoilt.
The seeming privileges of being a singleton during childhood pale in comparison to the more substantial advantages of having siblings, especially during adulthood. The network of emotional, mental and material support that a sibling can potentially provide throughout their life is immeasurable.
1. What does the author mainly talk about?| A．Benefits of having siblings. | B．Changes of family structure. |
| C．Relationships between siblings. | D．Advantages of being a singleton. |
| A．Life skills. | B．Emotional support. |
| C．Self reliance. | D．Parental care. |
| A．Supportive | B．Stressful. |
| C．Uncomfortable. | D．Harmful. |
| A．By stating reasons. | B．By describing a scene. |
| C．By analyzing effects. | D．By providing examples. |
8 . 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. |
9 . Today, being freelancers (自由职业者) is one of the most powerful trends in the way we work. According to a current study, there are 70.4 million freelancers in the US. By 2028, this number will increase to 90.1 million, or54% of the workforce, basically divided equally between genders.
It would appear to be solid guidance in today’s modern workforce to tell some one who wants the “3Fs”— flexibility, fulfillment, and financial independence — to “just go freelance”, right? The large numbers and data support this direction and suggest that it could be regarded as safe and wise advice.
However, telling someone who is unhappy in their current professional situation to “just go freelance”, is like telling them to climb Mt Qomolangma without oxygen: 5% of climbers have succeeded, so it can be done, but there will be hardship and a much higher chance of failure. Just as one should weigh the risks of attempting to climb the 8848.86m mountain without essential supplies, the idea of being freelancers must be truly understood.
The number is increasingly growing, however, actually three quarters of self-described freelancers in the USare part-time, meaning the vast majority are using freelance work as a side hustle (副业). What’s more, research shows that 70% of full-time freelancers participated in upskilling training. Besides, more than half (58%) of freelancers have experienced non-payment from clients, and most do not have retirement plans or affordable health insurance. Many freelancers fail after the first year as a result of making avoidable mistakes with only a third making it.
We can’t simply tell people to “just go freelance” unless we also tell them to invest in training and cooperate with like-minded, supportive communities to strengthen industry rights before they start their journey to the summit as an individual, but never alone.
1. Which of the following is NOT a benefit as a freelancer?| A．Flexible schedule. |
| B．Safer environment. |
| C．Less financial reliance. |
| D．A sense of achievement. |
| A．To indicate a bright future of freelancers. |
| B．To show the determination of freelancers. |
| C．To highlight the challenge of reaching the top. |
| D．To emphasize the importance of weighing risks. |
| A．Concerned. | B．Supportive. | C．Understandable. | D．Ambiguous. |
| A．Most of the freelancers meet with failure. |
| B．Many Americans choose to be freelancers. |
| C．Being a freelancer is not as easy as imagined. |
| D．Going freelance brings us a promising future. |
10 . It was a quiet morning in the library, and we librarians were enjoying a rather loud chat. Suddenly, a patron (常客) marched up to us, gave us an annoyed “Shush!” and went back to her seat. How strange for a group of librarians to be shushed by a patron! Shouldn’t it be the other way around?
Well, it’s complicated. If you’re like me, a middle-aged woman, you probably remember libraries as places of silent reading. These days, however, libraries are more like active community centers.
In the past, most libraries didn’t focus much on programs for kids whose age made it impossible for them to be quiet on demand. But growing knowledge about the importance of kids and teens learning through hands-on experiences has since caused a sea change in how libraries connect with young readers. Now libraries begin offering interactive programs for kids, including crafts, board games, and story times. These types of programs certainly aren’t designed to be silent.
Along with more programs for ever-younger children, technology today has played a part in the transformation of libraries into places where both kids and adults can use computers, make something on a 3D printer and more. In addition, many libraries now offer programs for adults, who can participate in in book discussion, learn calligraphy, and even take college classes.
Of course, libraries still need peaceful phones. These days, many libraries have glassed-off study rooms or quiet areas. They are also less noisy in the early afternoons, after morning children’s programs and before the after-school kid crowd arrive.
It’s clear to me now that on the day my colleagues and I were shushed by a patron, we should have been using our “library voices” as we talked. Still, it’s unlikely that libraries will ever return to the days when they were places of silence. There’s just too much fun and learning happening.
1. How did the author respond to the patron’s behavior?| A．She approved of it. | B．She was disappointed at it. |
| C．She hesitated about it. | D．She was astonished at it. |
| A．The past and the present of libraries. | B．The reason for the change of libraries. |
| C．The activities for young children in libraries. | D．The connection between libraries and readers. |
| A．They heavily depend on technology. | B．They offer online programs for adults. |
| C．They still provide silent reading places. | D．They care much about time arrangement. |
| A．Libraries Should be Loud | B．Reading Can be Fun in Libraries |
| C．Libraries Make Learning Happen | D．Library Programs Target Children |
