Your life is built around the choices you make. The more choices you have, the more difficult these choices are to make. 1.
Gather important information
Do your homework when you make a big life decision. Know and understand all the available choices and the influence each may have. 2. Seek information from professionals and learn other people’s experience. Be sure to check the sources you use, particularly online sources.
Explore your goals and values
Know what you value most in your life, the kind of lifestyle you want to have in the future and what you want your life to be filled with. A single decision can influence many areas of your life. 3.
List all possible results
Record all the costs and benefits of each choice and research findings. This will help you recall important aspects because decisions that seem to be simple might have many unseen possibilities. Put the list away for a time and turn the problem over your mind. 4. Use this list to make the best choice for you.
5.
Avoid making choices when you are tired, stressed, hungry or in a hurry. You can do some physical exercise or have a good rest before you make a decision. Make sure your choice supports your positive emotions(情绪) and your long-term goals.
A.Make decisions with a calm mind.
B.Plan out your days or weeks in advance.
C.Talk to people who can offer you good advice.
D.During this stressful time, you are going through many different emotions.
E.People who don’t consider their own goals end up doing what everyone is doing.
F.This will enable you to spot any other benefit or cost you forget and add it to your list.
G.Since some decisions have long-lasting influence, you must make these choices carefully.
Having a smart phone may not be as smart as you think.They may let you surf the Internet,listen to music and take photos wherever you are…but they also turn you into a workaholic（工作狂）,it seems.
A study suggests that,by giving you access to emails at all times,the smart phone adds as much as two hours to your working day. Experts found that British people work an additional 460 hours a year on average as they are able to respond to emails on their mobiles.The study shows the average UK working day is between 9 and 10 hours,but 2 more hours is spent responding to or sending work emails,or making work calls.
Almost one in ten admits spending up to three hours outside their normal working day checking work emails. Some workers say they are on call almost 24 hours a day. Nearly two-thirds say they often check work emails just before they go to bed and as soon as they wake up, while over a third have replied to one in the middle of the night.The average time for first checking emails is between 6 a.m and 7 a.m, with more than a third checking their first email in the period, and a quarter checking them between 11p.m.and midnight.
Ghadi Hobeika,marketing director of Pixmania,said:“The ability to access millions of Apps has made smart phone invaluable for many people.However,there are disadvantages.Many companies expect their employees to be on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week,and smart phones mean that people cannot get away from work.The more frequently in contact we become,the more is expected of us in a work capacity.”
1.With a smart phone the average UK working day is .
A.11 to 12 hours B.9 to 10 hours
C.8 hours D.2 hours
2.We can learn from the text that the British people .
A.prefer to check emails in the morning B.are crazy about different smart phone
C.work more hours with smart phones D.shorten their normal working hours
3.What does the underlined word “invaluable” mean?
A.useless B.necessary
C.expensive D.cheap
4.What does Ghadi Hobeika feel about smart phones?
A.They are unimportant for most of people.
B.They have disadvantages for some companies.
C.They are useful to improve a work ability.
D.They make it impossible for people to rest.
The world’s top automakers are increasingly offering more electric vehicle models. This growth is expected to continue， with more people choosing to hit the road with clean-running electric- powered cars.
Environmentalists have praised the automakers for taking major steps to limit harmful pollutants linked to worldwide climate change. But electric vehicles are also known for not producing another kind of pollution—noise. They run on batteries instead of fuel， and can operate in silence.
While many people might consider this a good thing， quiet cars can also cause problems. The main danger is that people walking in areas around electric vehicles face a greater risk of being hit if they cannot hear the cars coming.
Governments in the United States and Europe have recognized this problem. So， they have set requirements for manufacturers to add warning sounds to vehicles operating on electricity.
The U.S.Department of Transportation finalized its rules a year ago. The rules require electric and hybrid (混合能源) vehicles to be equipped with some kind of warning sound when moving at speeds up to 30 kilometers per hour. The rules are aimed at preventing injuries among people walking or riding bicycles and to protect the blind.
So what kinds of sounds can we expect to hear from the next generation of electric vehicles? One of the easiest solutions would be for carmakers to simply reproduce the sound a car would make if it actually did run on fuel. But many industry officials believe this would be a mistake.They say this would not support the electric vehicle’s true identity. It would also limit great possibilities to link the car’s sound to a whole new image, which could help increase sales.
Frank Welsch is head of technical development at Germany’s Volkswagen. He said that finding the perfect sound mix is not an easy process. “The electric vehicle sound is its identity,” he said. “It cannot be too annoying. It cannot sound like anything we had in the past.”
An official from Mercedes-Benz said the sound was designed to provide a safe warning without annoying passengers inside the vehicle. He said the goal was to create a car that remains completely quiet on the inside, but fills the sound requirements and supports the model’s image on the outside.
It might seem strange to think that part of our automotive future is currently being developed in the same kinds of recording studios used by musicians. But that is exactly what is happening.
1.The underlined words “hit the road” in Paragraph 1 probably mean_________.
A.clean a road B.start a trip
C.avoid an accident D.reduce noise pollution
2.The first two paragraphs are mainly intended to_________.
A.introduce the topic of the passage
B.list the advantages of automobiles
C.provide some facts about electric cars
D.stress the importance of saving energy
3.Sounds are added to electric cars to_________.
A.limit pollutants B.increase sales
C.prevent injuries D.make cars smarter
4.What would be the best title for the passage?
A.Electric Car Sounds Promote Sales to a Large Degree
B.Recording Studios Will Create Sounds for All Electric Cars
C.Governments Call on People to Design Electric Car Sounds
D.Electric Cars Need Creative Sounds to Replace Engine Noise
Traveling with kids is 90 percent reminding yourself to live in the moment and 10 percent making up your mind to never again leave your house.
I have an uncanny ability to forget this as soon as we return home from a trip and I've finished washing piles of dirty clothes in our luggage and cleaning all the messy caused by the kids. Extremely tired and annoyed, I would actually begin to miss the place we just left!
Family travel is like childbirth, I suppose. Painful, loud, messy, sort of awful, actually, but also wonderful. And you remember only the wonderful—until you’re back on a plane and your kids are fighting over who gets the aisle seat. Then you remember the bad stuff.
Last weekend, my kids and I flew to Texas for a trip we would have nothing to complain(抱怨) about—big hotel, wonderful view.
And yet—we found things to complain about. The pool was bigger in that other hotel! Why do you get to shower first? They call this coffee?! Luckily, I’ve learned to put my metaphorical coat of armor (盔甲) on as soon as we land somewhere, and it forces complaints to bounce off me and land in a pile at my feet.
For three days, genuine fun was had and annoying complaints were heard and ignored. Until it was time to catch a plane and fly home.
Unfortunately, our flight was canceled. We spent hours finding a hotel room. We hit the hotel pool before bed and swam well into the night, my kids making up songs and laughing so hard at their silly lyrics (歌词) and their crazy good fortune to be swimming at 10: 30 on a school night.
And that was when it hit me that family travel is all those things I said before but it’s also a lot more. It’s taking your kids to parts of the world that will open their eyes and finding that actually, yours need opening too. It’s remembering that joy and memories are where you make them, not where you find them.
1.The underlined word “uncanny” in Paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to .
A.unknown. B.uncertain.
C.unexpected. D.unusual.
2.According to the passage, family travel is like childbirth in that .
A.they both cause financial trouble and pain.
B.they are both hard as well as rewarding.
C.childhood memories come flooding back when they travel.
D.both of them need many preparations.
3.By saying “I’ve learned to put my metaphorical coat of armor on” in Paragraph 5, the author means that_ .
A.she tries to deal with the complaints more wisely and properly.
B.she turns those annoying complaints into a means to educate kids.
C.she has improved her language skills when handling the complaints.
D.she has succeeded in escaping kids’ fighting thanks to the armor.
4.From the author’s experience in the passage, we can NOT learn that .
A.family vacation benefits her kids as well as her.
B.joy and memories should be created rather than discovered.
C.the most unforgettable memory for her is about the complaints.
D.she has to spend some time on housework after the family vacation.
All over the world people enjoy sports. Sports help to keep people healthy, happy and help them to live longer.
Sports change with the season. People play different games in winter and summer. Games and sports often grow out of people's work and everyday activities. The Arabs use horses or camels in much of their everyday life; they use them in their sports, too.
Some sports are so interesting that people everywhere go in for them. Football, for example, has spread around the world. Swimming is popular in all countries near the sea or in those with many rivers.
Some sports or games go back thousands of years, like running or jumping. Chinese boxing, for example, has a very long history. But basketball and volleyball are rather new. Neither one is a hundred years old yet. People are inventing new sports or games all the time.
People from different countries may not be able to understand each other, but after a game they often become good friends. Sports help to train a person's character (性格). One learns to fight hard but fight fair, to win without pride and to lose with grace (优雅).
1.According to this passage, which of the following isn't true?
A.Sports help to train a person's character.
B.People swim only because there are a lot of rivers in their country.
C.People from different countries may not be able to understand each other before a game.
D.Sports and games can develop the friendship between peoples all over the world.
2.The writer didn't tell us in this passage that ________.
A.basketball was invented in America
B.sports change with the seasons
C.games and sports often grow out of people's work and everyday activities
D.football is played all over the world
3.From this passage we can see that _______.
A.sports and games are unimportant things that people do
B.sports and games should be treated (对待) only as amusement (娱乐活动)
C.sports and games are only useful to the old
D.none of the above is true
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。
A couple of years ago, a day before Christmas, it was so cold in Nebraska. The high temperature for the day had been below zero. Even though it was so cold that it hurt to be outside, I tried to complete some Christmas shopping during my lunch hour. I thought many people would choose to stay inside until it got warmer and that there would be fewer people at the store.
The moment I got out of my house, I realized it was much colder than I had expected. On the way to the store, I could only see a few people on the street. To comfort myself, I kept telling myself that it was my responsibility to offer my family good Christmas gifts.
As I approached a store, hurrying in an effort to keep warm, I saw a young woman standing outside, seeming to wait for somebody, as I saw she kept looking in all directions. She was completely bundled up (裹得严严实实) from head to toe. But it was clear that she still felt cold. She kept stamping her feet because the motion (动作) could help her to warm up a little.
I greeted her and said, ''My Lady, you must feel very cold to stand here in such bad weather. '' She laughed and said, ''I'm so cold that I can't feel the cold anymore! '' She told me that she had been there since 8: 00 that morning. And it was noon when I saw her. And she also said that she might still have several hours to go. However, she didn't tell me why she was standing there and I didn't ask her why she did so, considering for politeness.
I went inside the store, and I was surprised to see so many people there. At last, I did not find anything to buy and I left. As I arrived at the front of the store, I saw the snack bar (小吃店).
Paragraph 1:
Suddenly, an idea came to me.
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Paragraph 2
As I went out of the store, I presented her with the warm drink.
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