Being active in your local community is important because it is an essential part of living a satisfying life.
Humans by nature are social beings. We need to be around other people to feel happy, secure and safe. Hanging out with friends helps, but that isn’t quite enough. We need to be active in our local community.
Everyone benefits from a strong community. Being active within our society helps individuals feel less lonely, have a more vital and interesting life, stay healthy and feel happier. Being active within our society brings us inspiration, helps us succeed in business and helps us find our way in life.
Communities thrive﹙兴旺﹚ when people are better connected. Local economies expand, businesses succeed, education grows, support systems become more efficient, and so on.
There may be some obstacles on the way to being active in the local community. People may become disconnected from their community. It is a modern day reality that people turn to their computers for connection with others. This can be a great thing, but it can also go too far and we can become separated from our local, physical world society. Computers are usually at their best when used as a tool to accomplish tasks and not as a portal (传送门) into an online existence that controls our life. Online communities have become very real and they help millions feel more connected, but they must not take the place of our physical life community.[来
It is also common for people to find jobs online and to migrate to different locations around the world. This uproots﹙使人迁移他处居住﹚ us and takes us away from the local society we grew up in, forces us to make new friends and establish ourselves in a new community.
Becoming active in our community does require effort, but it’s well worth it. Understanding the importance of community and becoming more active within yours will greatly increase your quality of life.
Bicycles, roller skates and skateboards are dangerous. I still have scars (伤疤) on my knees from my childhood run-ins with various wheeled devices. Admittedly, I was a foolish kid, but I’m glad I didn’t spend my childhood trapped indoors to protect me from any injury.
“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” But parents can’t handle it when teenagers put this theory into practice. And now technology has become the new field for the age-old battle between adults and their freedom-seeking kids.
Locked indoors, unable to get on their bicycles and hang out with their friends, teens have turned to social media and their mobile phones to gossip and socialize with their friends. What they do online often mirrors what they might otherwise do if their mobility weren’t so heavily restricted (限制) in the age of helicopter parenting. Social media and smartphones have become so popular in recent years because teens need a place to call their own. They want the freedom to explore their identity and the world around them. Instead of climbing out of windows, they jump online.
As teens have moved online, parents have projected their fears onto the Internet, imagining all the potential dangers that youth might face.
Rather than helping teens develop strategies (策略) to deal with public life and the potential risks of interacting with others, fearful parents have focused on tracking, monitoring and blocking. These approaches don’t help teens develop the skills they need to manage complex social situations. “Protecting” kids may feel like the right thing to do, but it denies teens the chances of learning as they come of age in a technology-soaked world.
The key to helping youth in the modern digital life isn’t more restrictions. It’s freedom — plus communication. Urban theorist Jane Jacobs used to argue that the safest neighborhoods were those where communities collectively took interest in and paid attention to what happened on the streets. Safety didn’t come from surveillance (监视) cameras or keeping everyone indoors but from a collective willingness to watch out for one another and be present as people struggled. The same is true online.
What makes the digital street safe is when teens and adults collectively agree to open their eyes and pay attention, communicate and work together to deal with difficult situations. Teens need the freedom to wander the digital street, but they also need to know that caring adults are behind them and supporting them wherever they go. The first step is to turn off the tracking software. Then ask your kids what they’re doing when they’re online — and why it’s so important to them.
1.When he was a child, the writer ______.
A. became disabled
B. spent much time outdoor
C. always stayed at home
D. was ignored by his parents
2.Teens go online mainly because ______.
A. online games mirror real life
B. they want to fight against their parents
C. online experiences make them strong
D. they need a space of their own
3.By mentioning “helicopter parenting” (Paragraph 3), the writer means parents ______.
A. remove any hidden dangers their kids may face
B. use helicopters to track their kids
C. prevent their kids from going to school
D. protect their kids too much
4.According to the passage, helicopter parents may make kids ______.
A. lose the chances of learning
B. handle complex social situations well
C. adapt to the digital world quickly
D. develop strategies to deal with public life
5.The main idea of the passage is that ______.
A. kids should be given freedom to deal with online risks
B. safe neighborhoods come from joint efforts of all
C. the digital street is a threat to kids’ safety
D. kids should be warned against potential dangers in society
When Jeff Sparkman draws his cartoon superheroes with colored pencils, he often has to ask other people to tell him what color his masked men turned out to be because he's color-blind. Now, a new smart phone application (app) can help him figure out what colors he's using and how the picture looks to most everyone else.
The DanKam app, available for iPhone and Android for $2.99, is an application that turns the vague colors that one percent of the population with color-blindness sees into the "true" colors as everyone else sees them. In America, an estimated 32 million color-blind Americans—95% are males—can soon have their life improved.
“DanKam takes the stream of data coming in through the phone's camera and changes the colors slightly so they fall within the range that people who are color-blind see,”developer Dan Kaminsky told CNET. He came up with the idea after watching the 2009 film Star Trek with a color-blind friend.
It was then that he got to know more about colorblindness like its varying types and degrees. A vast majority, for instance, have trouble seeing red or green due to a genetic defect(遗传缺陷). Blue-yellow colorblindness, however, is rarer and develops later in life because of aging, illness or head injuries, etc. He started experimenting with one of the most common representations of points in the RGB color model. What the DanKam app attempts to do is to clean up the color space of the image or video signal so that colors can be visible to those suffering from viewing problems. “You can adjust the app to fit your needs. There is a range and not everyone who is color-blind sees things the same.” Says Kaminsky.
Sparkman, a copy editor at CNET, tried out the app and was pleased with the results. "It would be useful for dressing for a job interview," he said. But using it for his art is “the most practical application." It worked well on LED and other lights on electronic gadgets, which means Sparkman can now identify the power light on his computer display as green.
1.According to the first two paragraphs, we can know that DanKam ___________.
A. is designed to help people with colorblindness
B. can turn vague colors into real ones
C. is a phone used to help drawing pictures
D. appeared in the movie Star Trek
2.How does DanKam’s app work?
A. It puts LED and other lights on electronic gadgets.
B. It shows common representations of points in the RGB color model
C. It checks color-blind people’s types of degrees of colorblindness.
D. It changes the colors so that color-blind people can see them.
3.It can be inferred from the passage that colorblindness __________.
A. cannot be cured by any methods
B. is not necessarily inborn disease
C. is more commonly seen in women
D. makes people unable to tell any colors
4.The underlined word visible in Paragraph 4 is closest in meaning to _________.
A. recognizable B. enjoyable
C. adjustable D. Portable
5.Which of the following is NOT included in the things that DanKam helps Sparkman with?
A. Choosing clothes.
B. Playing computer games
C. Drawing his pictures.
D. Handling electronic gadgets.
Regarded as one of the English language's most gifted poets, John Keats wrote poetry that concentrated on imagery, human nature, and philosophy. Although Keats didn't receive much formal literary education, his own studies and passion brought him much success. Additionally, his own life situation influenced his poetry greatly.
Growing up as a young boy in London in a lower, middle-class family, the young John didn't attend a private school, but went to a public one. His teachers and his family's friends regarded him as an optimistic boy who favored playing and fighting much more than minding his studies. After his father's death in the early 1800s, followed by his mother's passing due to tuberculosis (肺结核), he began viewing life differently. He wanted to escape the world and did so by reading anything he could get his hands on.
At around the age of 16, the teenage John Keats began studying under a surgeon so that he too might become a doctor. However, his literary appetite had taken too much of his fancy, especially with his addiction to the poetry of Ehmund Spenser. He was able to have his first full poem published in the Examiner in 1816, entitled O Solitude! If I Must With Thee Dwell. Within two months in 1817, Keats had written an entire volume of poetry, but was sharply criticized by a magazine. However, the negative response didn't stop his pursuit of rhythm.
John Keats' next work was Endymion, which was published in May 1818. The story involves a shepherd who falls in love with the moon goddess and leads him on an adventure of one boy's hope to overcome the limitations of being human. Following Engymion, however, he tried something more narrative-based and wrote Isabella. During this time, John Keats began seeing his limitations in poetry due to his own limit in life experiences. He would have to have the "knowledge" associated with his poems. His next work was Hyperion that would attempt to combine all that he learned. However, a bout (发作) with tuberculosis while visiting Italy would keep him from his work and eventually take his life in 1821.
1.John Keats' attitude towards life changed because of________.
A. his early education from school
B. the criticism of a magazine
C. Edmund Spenser's poetry
D. the deaths of his parents
2.What is the common thing between John Keats and his mother?
A. They read many books.
B. They died of the same disease.
C. They had a bad childhood.
D. They showed strong interest in poetry.
3.What do we know from the passage?
A. Keats once had a chance of becoming a doctor.
B. Keats received little education at school.
C. In 1816 Keats spent two months writing a poem.
D. Endymion was about a real love story.
4.While pursuing his dream of becoming a poet at first, John Keats was________.
A. knowledgeable B. experienced
C. determined D. impatient
5.What can we infer from the passage?
A. The poem Hyperion wasn't completed by Keats.
B. Edmund Spenser was the greatest poet in Keats' time.
C. It is likely that Keats rewrote his poem Isabella.
D. Keats' family must have been very poor when he was young.
A report found that over half of the high school boys and two-thirds of the girls never shower after sports at school. Researchers suggest students don't want to sweat 1. take a shower, so they are less active. The researchers questioned almost 4,000 children. Lead researcher Dr Gavin said he was surprised 2. how rarely students showered. He said children were getting poor health because of less exercise. He said: " 3. the unwillingness to shower is a barrier（障碍）to playing sport, we need to do something to promote activity at schools."
4. , the BBC says the study did not look at the exact reasons 5. students do not shower. Maybe there are some other reasons. Undressing in front of 6. may be too much for some children. A spokeswoman for a health organisation said children worry about their body image. She said schools had 7. role to play in changing attitudes. She said schools should encourage students to do physical activity and let 8. know they need to shower after.
From my second grade on, there was one event I feared every year: the piano recital(独奏演唱会). A recital I had to practice a boring piece of music and perform before strangers. Each year I would ask my father if I could skip the recital “just this once”. And each year he would shake his head, saying something about building and working toward a goal.
One recent Sunday I stood in church, video camera in hand, and my 68-year-old father play the piano in his very first recital.
My father had longed to play music since childhood, but his family was poor and couldn’t lessons. He could have gone on regretting it, too many of us do. But he wasn’t stuck in the past. When he retired three years ago, he his church music director to take him as .
For a moment after my father sat down at the keyboard, he stared down at his fingers. Has he forgotten the ? I worried. But then came the beautiful melody (旋律). And I he had been doing what music teachers always stress: the notes and pretend the others aren’t there.
“I’m of him for starting something new at his age,” I said to my son Jeff.
“Yeah, and doing it so ,” Jeff added.
With his first recital, my father taught me more about self-confidence and the life goal than all the words he used those 30-plus years ago.
1.A. reflected B. meant C. explained D. proved
2.A. self-confidence B. self-control C. self-defense D. self-discipline
3.A. kept B. sent C. watched D. felt
4.A. miss B. afford C. select D. understand
5.A. as B. once C. if D. while
6.A. allowed B. invited C. inspired D. persuaded
7.A. a teacher B. an old man C. a student D. a singer
8.A. words B. videos C. notes D. lessons
9.A. predicted B. realized C. imagined D. insisted
10.A. pass over B . turn up C. bring in D. concentrate on
11.A. ashamed B. aware C. tired D. proud
12.A. nicely B. anxiously C. casually D. frequently
