假设你是红星中学高三学生李华。请根据以下四幅图的先后顺序，以“Concert at the Balcony” 为题，用英语写一篇短文向校刊“英语园地”投稿，记述上周末发生在你们小区的一个真实故事。
注意：词数不少于60。
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假设你是红星中学高三学生李华。你们班拟开展“阳光心态，轻装前行”的活动，现面向全 班征集活动设计方案。请给你的英国朋友Jim写信，内容包括：
1. 介绍你的方案；
2. 征求他的建议。
注意：1.词数不少于50;
2.开头和结尾已给出，不计入总词数。
Dear Jim,
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Yours,
Li Hua
Once considered an optional lifestyle choice, recycling has become a commonplace activity in most areas. One type of recycling, called downcycling, involves re-purposing a material into a new product of lesser quality. 1.
Downcycling is also known as downstream recycling. It is most common in terms of industrial materials. These products lose their value as they are recycled, which limits their capacity for new use. 2. White writing paper, for example, is often downcycled into cardboard; once downcycled to this new form, it can no longer be used as white paper again. Another example of downcycling includes the use of plastic components.
Giving products a new life is considered a good way to reuse materials and avoid waste. Once downcycled to their full capacity, however, these materials are eventually so degraded that they cannot be reused further. Since downcycled products are considered of lower quality than their original form, they cannot be used in remaking their original product.
3. Plastic, glass, and aluminium products coded with the number one may be remade into something of equal or greater value. This type of recycling is known as upcycling, and represents the forward compatibility of recycled components. Materials available for downcycling, such as water, juice, and milk bottles, are coded with the number two. 4.
Items available for downcycling often require additional chemicals, energy, and other treatments in order to transform them into something usable. Durable plastic products in particular require much additional treatment. Trash bins, tables, and chairs are also considered materials with a high energy cost to recycle.
When a product reaches a code seven, it is considered no longer recyclable. 5. Since these products can no longer be made into new ones, they will either have to be reused or discarded, typically in a landfill.
A.These recycled materials may often be put into new use.
B.It can include varying grades of plastic, paper products, and other materials.
C.Their recycled form is typically both weaker and cheaper than their original one.
D.They may not be used to contain food-grade items again upon being downcycled.
E.Products are provided with codes to determine their grades and whether or not they may be recycled.
F.A code will determine the type of the recycled materials and give an idea of how many times they can be recycled.
G.This usually occurs when a substance is blended with other substances, such as different types of plastic with various recycling codes.
Communities across the world are starting to ban facial recognition technologies. The efforts are well intentioned, but banning facial recognition is the wrong way to fight against modern surveillance （监 视）.Generally, modern mass surveillance has three broad components: identification, correlation and discrimination.
Facial recognition is a technology that can be used to identify people without their consent. Once we are identified, the data about who we are and what we are doing can be correlated with other data. This might be movement data, which can be used to "follow” us as we move throughout our day. It can be purchasing data, Internet browsing data, or data about who we talk to via email or text. It might be data about our income, ethnicity, lifestyle, profession and interests. There is an entire industry of data brokers who make a living by selling our data without our consent.
It's not just that they know who we are; it's that they correlate what they know about us to create profiles about who we are and what our interests are. The whole purpose of this process is for companies to treat individuals differently. We are shown different ads on the Internet and receive different offers for credit cards. In the future, we might be treated differently when we walk into a store, just as we currently are when we visit websites.
It doesn't matter which technology is used to identify people. What's important is that we can be consistently identified over time. We might be completely anonymous （匿名的）in a system that uses unique cookies to track us as we browse the Internet, but the same process of correlation and discrimination still occurs.
Regulating this system means addressing all three steps of the process. A ban on facial recognition won't make any difference. The problem is that we are being identified without our knowledge or consent, and society needs rules about when that is permissible.
Similarly, we need rules about how our data can be combined with other data, and then bought and sold without our knowledge or consent. The data broker industry is almost entirely unregulated now. Reasonable laws would prevent the worst of their abuses.
Finally, we need better rules about when and how it is permissible for companies to discriminate. Discrimination based on protected characteristics like race and gender is already illegal, but those rules are ineffectual against the current technologies of surveillance and control. When people can be identified and their data correlated at a speed and scale previously unseen, we need new rules.
Today, facial recognition technologies are receiving the force of the tech backlash （抵制），but focusing on them misses the point. We need to have a serious conversation about all the technologies of identification, correlation and discrimination, and decide how much we want to be spied on and what sorts of influence we want them to have over our lives.
1.According to Para. 2, with facial recognition _______.
A.one’s lifestyle changes greatly
B.one's email content is disclosed
C.one's profiles are updated in time
D.one's personal information is released
2.We can learn from the passage that _______.
A.discrimination based on new tech surveillance is illegal
B.different browsing data bring in different advertisements
C.using mobiles anonymously keeps us from being correlated
D.data brokers control the current technologies of surveillance
3.The underlined part “the point，,in the last paragraph probably refers to _______.
A.people's concern over their safety
B.the nature of the surveillance society
C.proper regulation of mass surveillance
D.the importance of identification technology
4.The author wrote this passage to _______.
A.call for banning facial recognition technologies
B.advocate the urgent need for changes in related laws
C.inform readers of the disadvantages of facial recognition
D.evaluate three broad components in modem mass surveillance
The ancient tale of the Country Mouse and the Town Mouse was only the first to emphasize rural folk's supposed simplicity when compared with more sophisticated urbanites. However, neuro-scientists announce that, in fact, it is city living that can dull the wits.
The new study led by Dr. Spiers at Nantes University describes how they used a dataset from 4 million people of a computer game, which tests navigating skills by asking players to memorise a map showing the location of checkpoints and then measuring how well players can find them, guided only by their mental map. Dr. Spiers and his colleagues examined the 4 million people from 38 countries, and found that the strongest indicator of a high score was a player's age—older people performed relatively poorly, which agrees with what researchers know about age-related cognitive decline. But the benefit of rural living was strong enough to offset some of that. Data showed that a 70-year-old who grew up in the countryside had the navigational abilities of an average 60-year-old across the dataset.
There is a huge gap between the navigation skills of rural and city people, and the researchers think they know why. Dr. Spiers says that the brain's navigational abilities probably weaken in the less challenging city environment because they are not being used as much. Although cities may appear more elaborate, they also feature more clues to help residents find their way, such as numbered streets. In the countryside, however, one field tends to look much the same as another, so there are fewer external landmarks to help guide the way.
Neuroscientists already know that living and working in more complex environments can influence the function and structure of the brain. Brain scans of London taxi drivers, who have gained an encyclopedic memory of the city5 s streets, show that they tend to have an enlarged hippocampus—a region of the brain acting as a neural GPS, sensing position and path on an internal map of the environment.
The harmful effect of city living on navigation is probably most serious in people under 16—18, Dr. Spiers says, because their still-developing brains respond and change the most according to external stimuli. And while people who live in cities with young children should not be alarmed, the study does raise some interesting ideas for urban planners: keep their city designs not so simple perhaps. And for everyone else, it might be an idea to turn off maps on the phone.
1.The study led by Dr. Spiers shows that _______.
A.the seniors score higher at computer games
B.rural life benefits people's sense of direction
C.participants are better at finding ways in cities
D.the young remember checkpoints better in maps
2.The underlined word "offset", in Para. 2 most probably means _______.
A.achieve B.confirm
C.reduce D.replace
3.What is the purpose of the passage?
A.To introduce a new way of driver training.
B.To expose the drawbacks of living in the urban area.
C.To show the contrast between lives in the country and city.
D.To present environments' impact on one's ability to locate places.
4.What is the best tide for the passage?
A.Lost in the City
B.Brain Weakened in Cities
C.Navigating to the Countryside
D.The Negative Effects of City Living
Stuttering （口 吃）has nothing to do with intelligence. I know this because I stutter. If it takes me a while longer to say a word, it's not because I can't remember the word; it's because the neural(神经的） pathway that transforms words in my head into sounds in my mouth is wired differently. And differences, of course, are the best way to get negative attention in our society. Taking extra time to get my words out can surely be frustrating, but that's nothing compared to the misery of dealing with people's reactions.
Almost all children who stutter are discouraged from speaking in one way or another. It's usually not as direct as someone walking up to them and saying, “Hey, stuttering kid! Keep your mouth shut!” But when your voice causes adults and peers to snicker （窃笑）or roll their eyes, it's pretty discouraging.
Growing up, I learned to avoid speaking whenever possible. I hated what came out of my mouth, full of awkward breaks and pauses. I figured whatever future I had, it probably involved a vow of silence.
Today Fm a touring author and comedian. It took me 30-something years to get over stuttering. Did I stop stuttering? No! I couldn't stop if I wanted to. But I stopped wanting to stop. Instead of wasting all my time and energy trying to meet unattainable standards, I learned that it's OK to stutter. And I learned by example. I attended the National Stuttering Association conference and met all kinds of people who stutter—people who didn't hate themselves, who didn't silence themselves. They stuttered, and they were OK with it! I remember watching them and thinking, "That's who I want to be!"
There's a popular saying in comedy: "Your weakness is your strength." When I first entered my local open-mic scene, I was quickly met with some "smart" guys looking to score a cheap laugh at my expense. I remember introducing myself to one comedian and stuttering on my name, as I usually do. Eager to demonstrate his smartness, he replied, "Is that Nina with five Ns?" "No," I said, "it's Nina with two Ns!" Just like that, I had created a joke as the result of someone making fiin of my stutter.
To this day, whenever I need inspiration for a new joke, I just think about all the ridiculous comments I get from non-stuttering people. It's a comedy gold mine!
1.It takes the author longer to say a word because she has _______.
A.a comparatively low IQ B.trouble in organizing ideas
C.a relatively small brain D.problems in her neural system
2.What annoys the author most about her stuttering is _______.
A.the unfriendly reactions of others
B.the difficulty in memorising words
C.her unpromising future as a stutterer
D.her embarrassing pauses during talks
3.The author got over stuttering by _______.
A.adjusting her attitude towards it
B.getting help from non-stutterers
C.telling herself constantly to stop it
D.silencing herself whenever possible
4.Paragraph 5 is mainly about the author's _______.
A.success as a comedian
B.respect for other comedians
C.resistance to others' strength
D.acceptance of her imperfection
