There are some popular family videos posted on Chinese social media. In these videos, a young child calls out to their mother or father; the parent enters the room smiling, turns around and calls out to their own parent; the grandparent then enters smiling and calls out to their parent – the great-grandparent.
The format of these videos is being described as the “four-generation challenge”. 1. People from all over the world have left comments and even made their own versions.
A Facebook user named Antoine Yupud wrote, “I have to give that to China. 2..” The “four-generation” videos have not only touched foreign viewers, but also given them a deeper look into Chinese family values.
In most East Asian cultures, it is common for many generations of a single family to live together under one roof. 3.. Many Western countries tend to have nuclear families, made up of just children and their parents.
4.. Kids usually move out of the family home after turning 18. Many apply for loans and work part-time jobs to pay for college and rent. If they choose to continue living with their parents after becoming an adult, it can be seen as a sign of immaturity or failure.
Although family structures in the United States may differ, the loving bonds between family members are common to both. 5..
A. Family devotion is usually a strong value.
B. This is called an extended family.
C. These videos have spread to social media in other countries.
D. Nuclear families gradually took the place of extended families.
E. In United States culture, independence is highly valued.
F. These videos have made many people miss their own grandparents.
G. That might be why the “four-generation” videos have gained popularity around the world.
I can’t stop looking at my phone, but I’m not alone.
Over 2.5 billion people have smartphones now, and a lot of them are having a hard time putting them down. The problem is, out devices are designed to be addicting. But if you understand the tricks that grab your attention, you can learn to have a healthier relationship with your phone.
It starts with turning off all notifications（推送通知）, except when a real human is trying to reach you. But a lot of today’s apps simulate the feeling of that kind of social interaction, to get you to spend more time on their platform. If Facebook sends you a push notification that a friend is interested in an event near you, they’re essentially acting like a puppet master, taking advantage of your desire for social connections so that you use the app more.
Today you can get notifications from any app on your phone. So, every time you check it, you get this grab bag of notifications that can make you feel a broad variety of emotions. If it wasn’t for random, if it was predictably bad or predictably good, then you would not get addicted. That’s the same logic behind slot machines（老虎机）. Some apps even copy the process of pulling a slot machine lever with the “pull to refresh” feature. Those apps are usually capable of continuously updating content, but the pull action provides an addicting illusion of control over that process.
Then, you have to make your screen grayer. The easiest way to attract your eye’s attention on a screen is through color. In eye-tracking tests, human eyes gravitate（被吸引）particularly to bright red. That’s why so many apps have redesigned their icons to be brighter, bolder, and warmer over the years. It’s also why notification bubbles are red. So just noticing that if I take out the color, it changes some of the addictiveness.
Finally, restrict your home screen to everyday tools. Make sure that your home screen, when you unlock it, doesn’t have anything except for the in-the-moment tools that help you like live your life.
If you’re not sure what counts as a bottomless vortex（漩涡）of stuff, it helps to filter out apps that use infinite scrolling. Infinite scrolling continuously loads new material so there’s no built-in endpoint. Video autoplay works in a similar way. These interfaces create a frictionless experience, but they also create a user’s sense of control and make it harder to stop.
Technology might not always look harmful. There are ideas for alternative interfaces that give you functional choices and are more transparent about how much time you’ll lose with one action, versus another.
But it’s a really deep philosophical question: what is genuinely worth your attention? Do people even know how to answer that question? It’s a really hard question, it’s not something we think about. But, for now, it’s a question that everybody needs to start asking.
1.Which is the most accurate word to replace the underlined word “essentially”?
A.basically B.necessarily
C.temporarily D.punctually
2.What does the author mean by mentioning “slot machine”?
A.Users can probably predict what the notification is before checking their phones.
B.Netizens can do gambling on the internet legally.
C.There’re a lot of similarities between apps and slot machines.
D.It’s unpredictability that makes phones addicting.
3.From the end of the article we can know that ______.
A.all the interfaces are not extremely addicting
B.we users are not enabled to choose but to waste time on technology
C.it’s philosophers’ job to reflect on the value of technology in information age
D.the development of technology cannot be changed back to the way they were before
4.We can learn from the passage that the author’s attitude to technology is ______.
A.negative B.concerned
C.positive D.indifferent
Most of us are already aware of the direct effect we have on our friends and family. But we rarely consider that everything we think, feel, do, or say can spread far beyond the people we know. Conversely(相反地), our friends and family serve as conduits(渠道) for us to be influenced by hundreds or even thousands of other people. In a kind of social chain reaction, we can be deeply affected by events we do not witness that happen to people we do not know. As part of a social network, we go beyond ourselves, for good or ill, and become a part of something much larger.
Our connectedness carries with it fundamental implications(影响) for the way we understand the human condition. Social networks have value precisely because they can help us to achieve what we could not achieve on our own. Yet, social network effects are not always positive. Depression, obesity, financial panic, and violence also spread. Social networks, it turns out, tend to magnify(放大) whatever they are seeded with.
Partly for this reason, social networks are creative. And what these networks create does not belong to any one individual—it is shared by all those in the network. In this way, a social network is like a commonly owned forest: we all stand to benefit from it, but we also must work together to ensure it remains healthy and productive. While social networks are fundamentally and distinctively human, and can be seen everywhere, they should not be taken for granted.
If you are happier or richer or healthier than others, it may have a lot to do with where you happen to be in the network, even if you cannot recognize your own location. And it may have a lot to do with the overall structure of the network, even if you cannot control that structure at all. And in some cases, the process feeds back to the network itself. A person with many friends may become rich and then attract even more friends. This richget-richer dynamic means social networks can dramatically reinforce two different kinds of inequality in our society: situational inequality and positional inequality.
Lawmakers have not yet considered the consequences of positional inequality. Still, understanding the way we are connected is an essential step in creating a more just society and in carrying out public policies affecting everything from public health to the economy. We might be better off vaccinating(接种疫苗) centrally located individuals rather than weak individuals. We might be better off helping interconnected groups of people to avoid criminal behavior rather than preventing or punishing crimes one at a time.
If we want to understand how society works, we need to fill in the missing links between individuals. We need to understand how interconnections and interactions between people give rise to wholly new aspects of human experience that are not present in the individuals themselves. If we do not understand social networks, we cannot hope to fully understand either ourselves or the world we inhabit.
1.What can be inferred from the first paragraph?
A.We can't be easily affected by strangers.
B.We are connected and form a social network.
C.We have negative effects on other social members.
D.We will not make a difference in a specific group.
2.What does the underlined word “it” in the second paragraph refers to ?
A.something larger B.our connectedness
C.the human condition D.a social network
3.A social network can be compared to a commonly owned forest because ______.
A.it remains healthy and productive.
B.it tends to magnify negative things.
C.it is creative and shared by people in the whole society.
D.what it creates can be enjoyed by everyone in the network.
4.What's the author's purpose in writing the passage?
A.To introduce the characteristics of social networks.
B.To urge people to understand how our society works.
C.To show the significance of understanding social networks.
D.To explain the possible consequences of ignoring social networks.
One day, “supercharged plants” may help feed people around the world. Supercharged plants are ones that grow faster than normal plant life. Scientists can speed up the growth by modifying, or changing, the structure of plants’ genes. The modifications make them react quickly to changes in light. This all has to do with photosynthesis（光合作用）, the process in which plants turn sunlight, carbon dioxide and water into food.
Plants grow fastest in the sun. That is when they make the most food for themselves. But their rate of growth can slow when things like clouds or trees block sunlight. But when the sun returns, it can take many minutes for growth to speed up again. This can be a problem because it means some of our most important crop plants are not as productive as they could be.
Steve Long, a plant biologist with the University of Illinois, wanted to find a way to help plants get back up to speed quickly after a period of darkness. So he and his team added genes that shortened the recovery time. It also increased the speed at which the plants grew. His modified plants grew up to 20 percent more than untreated ones.
"This finding, where we've just made one modification that has boosted crop yield, is really a boost to the whole area, because everyone else working on photosynthesis can now see that if we can improve photosynthetic efficiency in crops, we will get more yield.” Long wrote in a magazine article.
In Long's study, his group used a form of genetic engineering called transgenics. It means taking genes from one plant, then putting them into another. There is a scientific debate about whether transgenics is a good idea or not.
Matthew Reynolds from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center spoke to VOA on Skype. “The increased rates of production noted by Long's team are impressive.” He has some hope about the process. But he also has questions. "What is the downside? Why have the plants not done that before? And we always ask those questions when we see something that looks a bit too good to be true..."
Long's group worked with tobacco plants because they are easy to study. Now they are experimenting with rice, soybeans, cowpeas, and cassava – four important food crops. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provided money for the study. The organization says any new technology approved from this research will be made freely available to farmers in Africa and South Asia.
1.What’s the purpose of Steve Long’s experiment with tobacco?
A.To make plants healthier and more productive than before.
B.To help plants grow quickly after the sun returns.
C.To shorten the time that plants adapt themselves to light.
D.To increase crop yield through modifying plants’ genes.
2.Which of the following is not included in the process of Long’s experiment?
A.genes are added to some tobacco plants.
B.Experiments are being conducted with rice and soybeans.
C.Some crop plants are not as productive as they could be.
D.Improved photosynthetic efficiency means more yield.
3.What can we learn about Long’s group and his study from the passage?
A.The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has financed Longs group.
B.VOA interviewed Steve Long on Skype about his group and his study.
C.The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center approved of his study.
D.Matthew Reynolds didn’t believe the production rates noted by Long’s group.
4.Which of the following can be the best title for the passage?
A.Transgenics May Cause a Scientific Debate
B.Photosynthesis May Improve Crop Production
C.Supercharged Plants May Mean More Crop Yield
D.Genetic Modifications May Help Plants Grow Better
Millions of people nowadays use Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat to converse with their friends. They use Skype to bridge long distances and Twitter to interact with public figure. But as more of our lives move online, are Internet-based interactions sufficient for a fulfilling life?
There have been considerable warnings about the drawbacks of online interactions. Some scholars have realized that our devotion to the screens is detracting from face-to-face conversations. For instance, a study showed that children who had been spending time with television and computers for a long period of time were significantly worse at recognizing nonverbal（非语言的）psychological suggestions in a conversation than those who had just five days without screens.
But there is another side to the argument: A 2015 Pew Foundation report found that teenagers use online interactions to strengthen their friendships. Plus, 57% of teenagers reported that they’d made friends online. Amori Milkami, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia, has conducted several studies on online interactions and tells that the nature of online communication is changing as young people treat social networks in an entirely different ways.
Too much research tends to mix all online interactions together, she says, instead of distinguishing between positive, meaning conversations and more superficial, negative exchanges. According to her, online communities can be especially useful for people who have an unusual concern and live in isolated areas, and so are unlikely to meet people with similar concerns in person.
“The major good aspect of online interactions compared to in-person ones is that social network allow users to interact with so many people at once. Whether or not that’s positive or negative depends on the type of friends you have. It’s possible to get the same level of achievement from online interactions as it is from in=person friends,” says Mikami. “This might be hard for older adults to believe and it might not be possible for them, because they might not feel comfortable having those kinds of deep online interactions. To them, the online world will always be more superficial. But young people really see it differently.”
As the nature of online interactions continually evolve, it’s difficult to definitely establish whether or not social media friendships alone are sufficient. But for those who don’t have strong in-person support groups, the value of online communities shouldn’t be dismissed.
1.The underlined part in Paragraph 2 probably means that the screens are ______.
A.becoming more and more appealing
B.controlling what people talk about with each other
C.making face-to-face conversations less efficient
D.changing the way people communicate with each other
2.What is the advantage of online interactions according to Milkami?
A.More positive topics will be focused on.
B.Communication efficiency will be improved.
C.People will feel more comfortable with communicating.
D.People will have more in-depth communication with others.
3.Which of the following will the author agree with?
A.Compared with the real world, the online communities are superficial.
B.It is impossible to know whether social media friendships are sufficient.
C.Teenagers can depend on online interactions to strengthen their friendships.
D.The importance of online communities should be considered for some people.
假定你是李华，作为一名交换生（an exchange student）刚结束在英国为期一个月的学习。学习期间，你和房东Mr. Wilson 结下了深厚的友谊。请按下列要点给Mr. Wilson发一封邮件表示感谢：
1. 生活上的照顾；2. 学习上的帮助；3. 希望保持联系。
注意：1. 词数100左右；2. 可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯；3. 开头语已为你写好。
Mr. Wilson,
Time flies! I’ve been back home.
Best wishes, Li Hua
