One of the most striking findings of a newly research in the UK is that of the people interviewed, one in two believes that it is becoming more difficult to meet someone to start a family with.
Why are many finding it increasingly difficult to start close relationships? Does modern life really make it harder to fall in love? Or are we making it harder for ourselves? It is certainly the case today that contemporary couples benefit in different ways from relationships. Women no longer rely upon partners for money or status. A man doesn’t expect his wife to be in sole (唯一的) charge of running his household and raising his children.
But perhaps the knowledge that we can live perfectly well without a partnership means that it takes much more to persuade people to abandon their independence.
In theory, finding a partner should be much simpler these days. Only a few generations ago, your choice of soul mate was limited by geography, social convention and family tradition. Although it was never clear, many marriages were essentially arranged. Now those barriers have been broken down. You can approach a builder or a brain surgeon in any bar in any city on any given evening. When the world is your oyster (牡蛎), you surely have a better chance of finding a pearl.
But it seems that the old conventions have been replaced by the limitation of choice. The expectations of partners are raised to an unmanageable degree: good looks, impressive salary, kind to grandmother, and right socks. There is no room for error in the first impression.
We think that a relationship can be perfect. If it isn’t, it should be ended. We work to protect ourselves against future heartache and don’t put in the hard emotional labor needed to build a strong relationship. Twelve-hour work at the office makes relaxed after-hours dating difficult. The cost of housing and child-raising creates pressure to have a stable income and career before a life partnership.
1.What is a contemporary family like in the UK today?
A. Women are responsible for housework.
B. Men begin to depend on women.
C. Couples share the burdens.
D. It is difficult to take care of a family.
2.Why do people want to preserve their independence?
A. To ignore traditions. B. To have more choices.
C. To avoid marriages. D. To live alone happily.
3.What makes it hard for people to date?
A. Mental headache in dating. B. Bad luck in finding a partner.
C. The pressure to survive. D. The disbelief in life partners.
4.What is the author trying to inform us in this text?
A. Expectations and reality stand in the way of relationships.
B. People should spend more money on marriages.
C. Perfect marriages conflict with individual independence.
D. Independence is much more important than love.
Cosmetic surgery (整容手术) is not something to be entered into lightly. Unfortunately, in this modern world, we have become confused by very narrow standards of beauty. Images of celebrities who never seem to age are seen everywhere these days. We forget the fact that most of these images are the result of super photo manipulation (处理), driven by the incredibly powerful beauty industry. We are all different — why should we all look the same? Isn’t there more to life than undergoing surgery in order to have the same boring face that everybody else wants to have?
—Dr Elisabeth McKenna, Psychologist
Yes, it’s fake! That’s what I told my friends when they started asking me about my nose job. I’d always been sensitive to my nose, but it took me a long time before I decided to go for cosmetic surgery. I took advice from several doctors and after careful consultation I finally decided to have it done. I had been saving money from my part-time job and my parents helped me out with the rest. It was quite expensive but I don’t regret a penny of it. In fact I wish I’d had it done a few years ago. I’ m sure I wouldn’t have been teased so much at school.
—Debbie Caron, Student
It makes me really angry to think of the millions of people who spend a fortune on cosmetic surgery. Surgery should be carried out for medical purposes, not vanity (虚荣心). I would rather all the money spent on cosmetic surgery was available to treat people around the world who are in need but can’t get proper medical treatment. Furthermore, there are thousands of under-qualified surgeons out there who only care about getting as rich as possible and as quickly as possible. They don’t care about the psychological and physical damage they do. The whole industry makes me sick. We should do something to ban it.
—Danny Glass, Student
1.What does Dr. Elisabeth McKenna suggest?
A. Cosmetic surgery often goes wrong.
B. Don’t be fooled by “perfection”.
C. The beauty industry needs improving.
D. It’s necessary to set new standards of beauty.
2.What did Debbie Caron’s cosmetic surgery bring to her?
A. More friends. B. More self-confidence.
C. More worries. D. More job opportunities.
3.How does Danny Glass feel about those who have cosmetic surgery?
A. They should be treated as patients. B. They should be ashamed.
C. They can have a new start. D. They hurt themselves badly.
4.What would be the best title for the text?
A. The mystery of cosmetic surgery B. The future of cosmetic surgery
C. Hard talk — cosmetic surgery D. A new fashion — cosmetic surgery
It’s 5:00 in the morning when the alarm rings in my ears. I roll out of bed and walk blindly through the dark into the bathroom. I turn on the light and put on my glasses. The house is still as I walk downstairs while my husband and three kids sleep peacefully. Usually I go for a long run, but today I choose my favorite exercise DVD，Insanity. Sweat pours down my face and into my eyes. My heart races as I force my body to finish each movement. As I near the end of the exercise, I feel extremely tired, but a smile is on my face. It’s not a smile because the DVD is over, but a smile of success from pushing my body to its extreme limit.
Some people enjoy shopping, smoking, food, work, or even chocolate. But I need exercise to get through each day. Some shake heads when they see me run through the town. Others get hurt when I refuse to try just one bite of their grandmother’s chocolate cake. They raise their eyebrows, surprised by my “no，thank you,” or by my choice to have a salad. Over the years, I have learned it’s okay to just say “no.” I shouldn’t feel sorry for refusing food that I don’t want to eat.
So what drives me to roll out of bed at 5:00 a.m.? What gives me the reason to just say no to ice cream? Commitment. A commitment to change my life with a way that reduces daily anxiety, increases self-confidence and energy, extends life and above all improves my body shape. This is the point where a smile appears on my face as I look at myself in the mirror or try on my favorite pair of jeans that now fit just right. It’s through commitment and sweat that I can make a difference within myself inside and out.
1.Why is there a smile on the author’s face in the morning?
A. Because she sees her family sleeping peacefully.
B. Because she finishes her favorite exercise.
C. Because she enjoys the interesting DVD.
D. Because she feels a sense of achievement.
2.Which of the following is true according to Paragraph 2?
A. She doesn’t treat others politely.
B. She likes to make others surprised.
C. Others don’t understand what she does.
D. Others try to help her by offering her food.
3.What does the underlined word “commitment” in the last paragraph mean?
A. Good health. B. Willingness.
C. A promise. D. A regular habit.
4.What can we learn about the author from the text?
A. She acts in a strange way.
B. She wants to look different from others.
C. She aims to develop a good body shape.
D. She has difficulty getting along with others.
Valerian capsules (缬草胶囊)
A traditional herbal medicinal product used for the temporary relief of symptoms of mild anxiety and to aid sleep.
Active Ingredients:
Each capsule contains 337mg of extract (as dry extract) from Valerian root (Valerian officinalis L) (equivalent to 1683mg-2020mg of Valerian root).
Dosage（剂量）:
For oral use only.
For adults and elderly.
Mild anxiety — Take 1 capsule 3 times daily.
To aid sleep — Take 1 capsule 30 minutes to 1 hour before bedtime with an earlier dose during the evening if necessary.
Swallow the capsule with water. As the effects of this product may not occur immediately, the capsule should be taken continuously for 2-4 weeks.
Duration of use: If symptoms worsen or do not improve after 4 weeks, a doctor or a qualified healthcare practitioner should be consulted.
Warnings:
Do not exceed (超过) the stated dose.
Do not take this product if you are:
Under 18 years of age
Pregnant or breastfeeding
Allergic to Valerian or any of the excipients in this product
Already taking a medicine for sleep or anxiety
Storage:
Store the capsules below 25C.
Keep the bottle tightly closed.
Keep out of sight and reach of children.
Registration Holder:
NBTY Europe Limited, Samuel Ryder House, Barling Way, Nuneaton, Warwickshire, CV10 7RH, United Kingdom
1.Which of the following can this product be intended for?
A. A mother with a child to breastfeed. B. A junior high school student.
C. An elder allergic to Valerian. D. An adult with no other dose.
2.How many capsules can you take at most to aid your night sleep each day?
A. 1. B. 2.
C. 3. D. 4.
3.How long can the capsule be taken continuously at most before it works?
A. 4 weeks. B. Half a month.
C. 1 hour. D. 30 minutes.
请阅读下面文字，并按照要求用英语写一篇150词左右的文章。
More than 100，000 volunteers in 132 cities spent a weekend picking up plastic and other waste across the country, in a joint worldwide effort to clean up the planet.
To celebrate the 10th World Cleanup Day on Sept 15，some 700 nonprofit NGOs (nongovernmental originations) and social groups held activities aimed at cleaning up the environment and tackling the waste crisis throughout China, mobilizing an estimated 1 millionplus people.
From snowcapped mountains to vast oceans, people united in taking action to remove waste from the environment to raise awareness of the severity of the crisis.
“Where there is a will, every day can be and should be ‘Cleanup Day’， says Ma Yongjian, a volunteer from Beijing who recently did “plogging”—jogging while picking up trash—with his friends in Yudong Park in the northwest of the city.
“We must change the way of living we are used to, to reduce waste from its source，” says Joe Harvey, a British national and promoter of “zero waste” lifestyles in China. He and his girlfriend Carrie Yu created The Bulk House, a brand that provides zerowaste solutions for daily living. They are urging people to reduce or eliminate the use of plastic and singleuse disposables, such as plastic utensils，bags and beverage bottles.
Sounding a note of caution, Mao Da, a specialist in environmental history at Beijing Normal University, says: “In recent years, the massive consumption and materialistic craze have worsened the waste situation as trash has been produced at a faster pace and in greater quantities.”
（写作内容）
1. 以约30个词概括文章大意；
2. 以约120个词就“世界清理日”这个主题发表你的看法，内容要包括如下要点:
(1) 你对于“世界清理日”及类似活动有哪些看法？
(2) 你觉得要采取哪些措施来保持环境整洁？
（写作要求）
1. 可以使用实例或其他论述方法支持你的论点，也可以参照阅读材料的内容，但不得直接照抄原文；2. 标题自定。
（评分标准） 概括准确、语言规范、内容合适、篇章连贯。
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请认真阅读下面短文，并根据所读内容在文章后表格中的空格里填入一个最恰当的单词。注意:每个空格只填1个单词。
Pretending you're someone else can make you creative
One great irony(讽刺) about our collective fascination with creativity is that we tend to frame it in uncreative ways. That is to say, most of us marry creativity to our concept of self: We are either “creative” people or we aren't，without much of a middle ground.
Pillay, a tech businessman and Harvard professor has spent a good part of his career destroying these ideas. Pillay believes that the key to unlocking your creative potential is to dismiss the conventional advice that urges you to “believe in yourself”. In fact, you should do the exact opposite: believe you are someone else.
In a recent column for Harvard Business Review, Pillay pointed to a 2016 study showing the impact of stereotypes(刻板印象)on one's behavior. The authors, education psychologists Denis Dumas and Kevin Dunbar, divided their collegestudent subjects into three categories, instructing the members of one group to think of themselves as “eccentric(古怪的) poets” and the members of another to imagine they were “rigid librarians”(people in the third category, the control group, were left alone for this part). The researchers then presented participants with 10 ordinary objects，including a fork, a carrot, and a pair of pants, and asked them to come up with as many different uses as possible for each one. Those who were asked to imagine themselves as “eccentric poets” came up with the widest range of ideas for the objects, while those in the “rigid librarian” group had the fewest. Meanwhile, the researchers found only small differences in students' creativity levels across academic majors—in fact, the physics majors inhabiting(寄生) the personas(伪装的外表) of “eccentric poets” came up with more ideas than the art majors did.
These results, write Dumas and Dunbar, suggest that creativity is not an individual quality, but a “malleable(可塑的) product of context and perspective.” Everyone can be creative, as long as they feel like creative people.
Pillay's work takes this a step further: He argues that identifying yourself with creativity is less powerful than the creative act of imagining you're somebody else. This exercise, which he calls “psychological halloweenism”， refers to the conscious action of inhabiting another persona—an inner costuming of the self. It works because it is an act of “conscious unfocus”， a way of positively stimulating the default mode(默认模式) network, a collection of brain regions that spring into action when you're not focused on a specific task or thought.
Most of us spend too much time worrying about two things: How successful/unsuccessful we are, and how little we're focusing on the task at hand. The former feeds the latter—an unfocused person is an unsuccessful one, we believe. Thus, we force ourselves into quiet areas, buy noisecanceling headphones, and hate ourselves for taking breaks.
What makes Pillay's argument stand out is its healthy, forgiving realism: According to him, most people spend nearly half of their days in a state of “unfocus”. This doesn't make us lazy people—it makes us human. The idea behind psychological halloweenism is: What if we stopped judging ourselves for our mental down time, and instead started using it? Putting this new idea on daydreaming means addressing two problems at once: You're making yourself more creative, and you're giving yourself permission to do something you'd otherwise feel guilty about. Imagining yourself in a new situation, or an entirely new identity, never felt so productive.
Title: Pretending you're someone else can make you creative
Some misleading ideasabout creativity | ●Most of us are 1. with the idea that we are either creative or we are not: there doesn't exist a middle ground in between.●2. to popular belief，Pillay's suggestion is that you should believe you are someone else. |
Dumas and Dunbar's study | ●One group were asked to think of themselves as “eccentric poets”，another “rigid librarians” and a third 3. as the control group.●The former two groups were required to come up with as many different uses as possible for each 4. object. ●The level of students' 5. is not always in direct proportion to the type of academic majors. ●Therefore, creativity is probably a product of context and perspective rather than something 6.. |
Pillay's further study | ●The exercise of “psychological halloweenism” refers to the conscious action of being others by 7. stimulating the default mode network.●Pillay 8. firmly to the idea of imaging you're someone else and advises us not to worry about how successful/unsuccessful we are. |
The 9.significance of the exercise | ●We should start using it instead of stopping judging ourselves for our mental down time.●We have every right to 10. ourselves for being unfocused because it is not only human but also makes us more creative and productive. |
