High school students have a lot more pow...

    Holiday season is drawing near. Choosing presents for your friends or loved ones is a hard nut to crack. 1.

Don’t try to price-match.

The first thing you should do when planning your gift list is to create a budget (预算) of how much you’re willing to spend — and stick to it, even if you receive a more expensive gift from someone else. “A void matching spending, because that’s when gift-giving is driven more by pressure than by thoughtfulness,” says Sharon Schweitzer, an international etiquette (礼节) expert and founder of Protocol Etiquette Worldwide. After all, loved ones dropping a lot of money on expensive gifts could probably afford expensive items on their own and aren’t looking for you to return the favor. 2.

Don’t give just because you did in the past.

When you’re figuring out whom to give to keep in mind your list might not have all the same people as last year’s. “You have to review it every year because you have relationships with different people, so you have to look at how those relationships have grown and developed,” says Schweitzer. 3. Even if you’ve exchanged gifts in the past, don’t feel you should give presents to friends who you haven’t kept in touch with much this year. Send a holiday card instead to show you’re thinking of them.

Be honest if you don’t have a gift.

If someone surprises you with a present you weren’t expecting, be honest that you don’t have one to give in return. 4. “Say you’re touched and delighted and a little embarrassed you don’t have anything for them.” says Schweitzer. Don’t try to think up a gift on the spot by taking something out of your closet suddenly, because the other person will likely know exactly what you’re doing.

5.

With the exception of family members or best friends, never ask people what they want for a present. “That makes people very uncomfortable, and they feel they ought to get you something in return,” says Schweitzer. Gift requests leave little creativity to the giver, so come up with your own ideas for a more thoughtful present.

A.Never ask for a wish list.

B.People come in and out of your life.

C.Have creative ideas when you choose gifts.

D.The best way to deal with that is to be honest and sincere.

E.Here are pieces of gift-giving etiquette you need this holiday season.

F.Expensive gifts are sometimes thoughtful items your friends selected.

G.Find a thoughtful gift instead, like a frame with an old favorite photo.

    Clothing rental (租赁) is a hot new industry and businessmen are trying their best to attract shoppers. This past summer alone, Urban Outfitters, Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, and American Eagle have all announced rental subscription services — a sure sign of changing times.

But is renting fashion actually more environmentally-friendly than buying it, and if so, how much more? Journalist and author Elizabeth Cline researched this question in an article for Elle, and she concluded that it’s not as green as it seems.

Take shipping, for example, which has to go two ways if an item is rented — receiving and returning. Cline writes that consumer transportation has the second largest footprint of our fashion habit after producing.

She writes, “An item ordered online and then returned can send out 20 kilograms of carbon each way, and increases to 50 kilograms for rush shipping. However, the carbon effect of a pair of jeans bought in a store and washed and worn at home is 33.4 kilograms, according to a 2015 study.”

Then there’s the burden of washing, which has to happen for every item when it’s returned, regardless of whether or not it was worn. For most rental services, this usually means dry-cleaning is a high-effect and polluting process, which can produce dangerous waste and air pollution if not dealt with correctly.

Lastly, Cline fears that rental services will increase our, desire for fast fashion, simply because it’s so easy to get. There’s something called ‘share-washing’ that leads to more wasteful behaviors mainly because a product or service is shared and thus is regarded as more eco-friendly. Uber is one example of this, advertised as “a way to share rides and limit car ownership,” and yet “it has been proven to discourage walking, bicycling, and public transportation use.”

Renting clothes is still preferable to buying them cheap and throwing them in the waste after a few wears, but we shouldn’t let the convenience of these services make us satisfied. There’s an even better step—and that’s wearing what is already in the closet (衣柜).

1.How much carbon will be produced when an item is normally ordered online and then returned?

A.10 kilograms. B.20 kilograms.

C.40 kilograms. D.50 kilograms.

2.What does Elizabeth Cline think of clothing rental?

A.It is considered fashioned.

B.It is popular to young people.

C.It can reduce transport burden.

D.It can leave large carbon footprint.

3.The example of Uber is used to show the rental services ________.

A.cause more wasteful behaviors

B.satisfy our desire for fashion

C.help protect the environment

D.replace the public transport

4.What does the author actually want to express in the last paragraph?

A.The request for throwing cheap clothes.

B.The advice on wearing what we own.

C.The disadvantage of clothing rental.

D.The call for renting clothes.

    What were you like as a teenager? I was a nightmare. I was rude to my parents, always stayed out late, never did my homework, hung out with the wrong people and made lots of bad decisions. Obviously, this is the age when teenagers are out of control and behave badly. Maybe, if you’re a teenager now, you think this is unfair judgment or it’s not your fault. Well, you might be right!

Experts have found that it’s a teenager’s brain that is to blame. Between the ages of about 13 to 19 — a period known as adolescence, the brain is still developing in areas that control behavior. This has an influence on learning and multitasking, stress and memory, sleep, and decision-making. For parents, these results often make them notice lots of behaviors that they may have earlier blamed on hormones (荷尔蒙) or just moodiness.

So our brains are still developing much later than it was thought before. Is this the perfect excuse for teenagers to walk around aimlessly and not get their homework done on time? Of course not! According to Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, who made the new discovery, it’s to do with our prefrontal cortex that’s the part of our brain right at the front, just behind the forehead. She says “It takes part in a whole area of very high-level cognitive (认知的) tasks such as decision making and planning — we know that this area is going through very large amounts of development during the adolescent years”. This is the part of the brain which plays an important role in planning, and, for a teenager, this hasn’t developed yet. So getting organised to do their homework, for example, can come as a bit of challenge.

I wish I’d known about this because instead of telling my teacher I’d left my homework on the bus or that the dog had eaten it. Now I could say, “Sorry sir, my brain isn’t developed enough for the cognitive task of planning my homework.”

1.Which of the following is common in teenagers?

A.Doing some bad deeds.

B.Being blamed for their age.

C.Stopping their brain development.

D.Making excuses for their bad behaviors.

2.What do we know about the new discovery?

A.The brain develops in the first few years of life.

B.The forehead stops developing during adolescence.

C.Hormones take responsibility for teenagers’ behaviors.

D.The prefrontal cortex affects us performing cognitive tasks.

3.What is the best title for the text?

A.Behind the adolescence

B.Inside a Teenager’s Brain

C.For the Naughty Teenagers

D.About the brain Development

    A Uber driver stopped her work day so she could help a new mother with a sick child.

Nicole Ihus’s son John Henry was born last month with a rare disease called congenital diaphragmatic hernia. Nicole and her husband, who live in Kansas City, got m touch with doctors from Minnesota and Missouri in hopes of finding a doctor who could treat John Henry for the condition — but to no avail.

Luckily, Nicole managed to get in contact with the “best doctor in the world for this condition” at Johns Hopkins All Children in St. Petersburg, Florida — so she traveled all the way to the Sunshine State to give her newborn son a fighting chance.

After John Henry was bon into the hands of the NICU, Nicole felt sad and alone in the new state, although she knew that she had to leave her son’s side in order to buy him some new clothes.

After ordering an Uber ride to the nearby Rhea Lana children’s clothing store, she was picked up by a woman named Belinda. Shortly after Nicole got into Belinda’s car, the new mother couldn’t help but told her heartbreaking story.

“She told me her story,” Belinda said in the interview below. “She was in tears a couple of times and I was really concerned about her.”

Rather than simply dropping Nicole off at the store, however, Belinda parked the car and was firmly determined to accompany her passenger into the store.

“She was like, ‘I’m going to help you buy some clothes for your son.’ I asked her, ‘Are you serious?’ I can’t even imagine,” said Nicole. “For this stranger to go completely out of her way — stop what she was doing and stop making money — to come to be with me for a couple of hours while we shopped together, that was just unbelievable.”

1.What does the writer mean by saying “to no avail” in Para.2?

A.Henry’s condition became worse.

B.The couple lost hope of finding a doctor.

C.The doctor didn’t want to treat John Henry.

D.The couple didn’t find the doctor they wanted.

2.How did Belinda help Nicole after hearing her story?

A.By offering her a free ride.

B.By going shopping with her.

C.By buying new clothes for her.

D.By chatting with her for hours.

3.What is the writer’s purpose of writing the passage?

A.To advise readers to help the baby.

B.To tell a story of a helpless mother.

C.To speak highly of the driver’s kindness.

D.To call on people to learn from the driver.

阅读下面材料，根据其内容和所给段落开头语续写两段，使之构成一篇完整的短文。 续写的词数应为150左右。

We were three thousand miles away from home on a Random Acts of Kindness and Volunteerism Road Trip. We were short of money, so we had two goals today:

1. Try out our new “Smile!” signs and see how much kindness and joy we could spread in Pike Place Market.

2. Raise at least $80 by doing street performances. Singing, drawing or storytelling. This would be enough for gas to Portland and a small hotel room.

We weren’t sure how people would react to our signs. It’s so easy to walk past a busy crowd, lost in your own world, refusing to make eye-contact with strangers, and feeling alone despite being surrounded by hundreds of people just like you. Finally, I gathered courage to raise our signs and shouted, “Hi here!” to a young couple. They looked over, confused for a moment,read my sign and broke into smiles. Then we saw more smiling faces in the crowd.

Before long, our signs were wildly popular. Tourists wanted photos with us. Strangers stopped to ask us about our signs. We told them the story of our acts of kindness road trip and listened to their stories,too.

Sometimes I’d see unfriendly faces and feel particularly nervous to show them my bright sign. But I was always rewarded with a big smile whenever I did so. Suddenly they were no longer faces of strangers but those of neighbors and friends. This world is full of good people we just don’t know yet. We got so wrapped up in our wonderful “Smile! ” project that we forgot the other goal. Before we knew it,the sun was setting,and we had no money for our trip to Portland.

Paragraph 1: We sat down to watch a musician play the guitar while we thought about our second goal. _________________________________________________________________________

Paragraph 2: Our little band of five attracted a large audience.__________________________________________________________________