— I’m amazed that she can make anything ...

假设你是红星中学的学生李华。请根据以下四幅图的先后顺序，为校刊“英语园地”写一篇短文，记述你参加学校“社团招新”活动的整个过程。

注意：1. 词数不少于60；

2. 短文的开头已给出，不计入总词数。

The new term began and the school clubs were looking for new members.

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你的美国朋友Chris目前在北京学习汉语，他对中国传统文化非常感兴趣。本周五下午你校将要举办一个茶文化讲座，请你根据以下提示给他写一封电子邮件，内容包括：

1. 邀请他参加；

2. 讲座内容及讲座后活动安排；

3. 你将陪同翻译讲解。

注意：1. 词数不少于50。    2. 可适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。

3. 开头和结尾已给出，不计入总词数。

Hi Chris,

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Yours,

Joe

    Today it is common to see people who walk about with colored wires hanging from their ears wherever they go. They move about in their personal bubbles, sometimes unaware of what’s happening around them. 1. Outside life is shut out. So are you one of “them”?

For me, walking around in my own personal bubble is perfect. 2. What’s even better, wearing earphones seems to give a signal to people which says, “I’m not available for chatting at the moment!”

Suppose, you’re at work and about to make an incredible breakthrough, but a colleague suddenly turns up. At this precise moment, the slightest disturbance would break your concentration. 3. Once again, those wires hanging from your ears would be sure to give that “Go away!” signal.

4.It’s probably part of the growing up stage when they just want to ignore their whole family. While their mothers give them lectures about why they should do their homework, they can just turn up the volume on their MP3 player, smile, and say “Yes, Mum.” Problem solved.

Pretty soon, not only will we have pretty colored wires hanging from our ears—but also our brains will be directly plugged into some new high-tech instruments. We’ll be in a virtual(虚拟的) world, communicating with everyone else, or choosing not to, as we like. In this world, we will all be permanently plugged in. 5. And they are changing our social habits along the way.

In the end, there is a thin line between using technology as a tool for making life better and being a slave to it! It’s so strange—suddenly, I don’t feel like wearing my earphones anymore.

A. Our instruments are changing quickly.

B. I also have wires hanging from my ears.

C. In the home situation, teenagers love these wires.

D. I don’t have to deal with the noise from the environment.

E. After all, I am listening to my favorite music and would rather not be disturbed.

F. Listening to music through earphones is the perfect way to ignore such interruptions.

G. They walk around in their own spaces, with their personal “digital noise reduction systems”.

    A generation of parents raised according to the permissive principles of postwar childcare experts is rediscovering the importance of saying "No" to their children. They are beginning to reclaim the house as their own. Even spanking (打屁股) is back.

While today's parents do not want to return to the Victorian era (时代) — when children were seen, spanked, but not heard — there is a growing acknowledgement that the laissez-faire approach produced a generation of children running rings around puzzled parents struggling to restore order.

Janthea Brigden, a trainer with Parent Network, says: “The problem is that parents don't want all that controlling things. What they want is to be able to discipline (管教) their children through teaching and encouraging."

According to Steve Biddulph, the author of More Secrets of Happy Children, the permissive era was often just an excuse to ignore children. He believes discipline involves firm but friendly teaching and does not need to involve punishment. He teaches a method called "stand and think”, where a child is helped to figure out what is wrong and how to get it right. Mr. Biddulph understands parents using spanking, but lie is against it. "The happiest children are those who know Mum and Dad are in charge. As children grow into their teens, more negotiation can take place, such as: Prove you can be home safely by 1l pm, and we might let you stay out till midnight."

“There is no good evidence that an occasional, properly administered spanking is harmful in any way.”says John Rosemond, an American who has won a huge following by calling for "parent power". It is pure nonsense to believe that restricting children to their room as a punishment could make them have negative feelings about the room and cause sleep problems.

Mr. Rosemond tracks the overturning of traditional family values to the end of the Second World War. He blames the change of the American family into a child-centered, self-respect-oriented (以……为导向) unit on psychologists and social workers, who for 30 years have weakened traditional approaches. Previous generations of American parents raised children not by the book, but by self-evident truth, he says. Children should be seen and not heard. If you make your bed, you'll have to lie in it. He says that those phrases contain time-honored understanding and principles that helped children to develop what we refer to as the "three Rs" of parenting: respect, responsibility and resourcefulness.

1.Which is closest to the meaning of the underlined word "laissez-faire" in the second paragraph?

A.Let it be.  B.Go for it.

C.Get it right.  D.Take it easy.

2.If his child did something wrong, Steve Biddulph would ______.

A.give him a good beating

B.lock him up in a dark room

C.ask him to stand in a corner for hours

D.help him find out the problem and solution

3.By mentioning the underlined part in the last paragraph, Mr. Rosemond        .

A.blames parents for ignoring children's rights

B.reminds parents to communicate more with children

C.encourages parents to involve children more in family affairs

D.explains how previous generations of parents raised children

4.What does the passage mainly talk about?

A.The causes of discipline problems.

B.The best way to discipline children.

C.Different opinions on ways of parenting.

D.Differences between parents of different times

An open office is supposed to force employees to cooperate. To have them talk more face to face. To get them off instant messenger (IM) and brainstorming new ideas. But a recent study by two researchers offers evidence to support what many people who work in open offices already know: It doesn’t really work that way. The noise causes people to put on headphones and tune out. The lack of privacy causes others to work from home when they can. And the sense of being in a fishbowl means many choose email over a desk-side chat.

Ethan Bernstein and Stephen Turban, two Harvard Business School professors, studied two Fortune 500 companies that made the shift to an open office environment from one where workers had more privacy. Using “sociometric” electronic badges (徽章) and microphones, as well as data on email and instant messenger use by employees, the researchers found in the first study that after the organization made the move to open-plan offices, workers spent 73% less time in face-to-face interaction. Meanwhile, email use rose 67% and IM use went up 75%.

The participants wore the badges and microphones for several weeks before the office was redesigned and for several after, and the company gave the researchers access to their electronic communications. The results were astonishing. “We were surprised by the degree to which we found the effect,” Bernstein said. The badges could tell that two people had a face-to-face interaction without recording actual spoken words. The researchers were careful to make sure other factors weren’t in question—the business cycle was similar, for instance, and the group of employees were the same.

In a second study, the researchers looked at the changes in interaction between specific pairs of colleagues, finding a similar drop in face-to-face communication and a smaller but still significant increase in electronic correspondence.

Another wrinkle in their research, Bernstein said, is that not only did workers shift the way of communication they used, but they also tended to interact with different groups of people online than they did in person. Moving from one kind of communication to another may not be all bad—“maybe email is just more efficient,” he said—but if managers want certain teams of people to be interacting, that may be lost more than they think. The shift in office space could “have strong effects on productivity and the quality of work”.

Bernstein hopes the research will offer evidence that will help managers consider the possible trade-offs of moving to an open office plan. In seeking a lower cost per square foot, they buy into the idea that it will also lead to more cooperation, even if it’s not clear that’s true. “I don’t blame the architects,” he said. “But I do think we spend more of our time thinking about how to design workplaces based on the observer’s angle”—the manager—“rather than the observed.”

1.Employers prefer an open office because they think it can ______.

A. increase competition

B. improve communication

C. create a safe environment

D. motivate workers’ responsibility

2.Why was there an increase in electronic correspondence among employees?

A. Because they thought little of desk-side chat.

B. Because they shifted to a new business cycle.

C. Because they wanted to protect their privacy.

D. Because they needed to complete more tasks.

3.What does the underlined word “they” in Paragraph 5 refer to?

A. The researchers.

B. The managers.

C. Certain teams of people.

D. Different groups of workers.

4.As for the design of workplaces, what is Bernstein’s major concern?

A. Connectivity.

B. Accessibility.

C. User-friendliness.

D. Cost-effectiveness.