My mother was a supporter of physical punishment, but for all her talking she has never spanked (打屁股) my siblings and me only once. Instead，she found ways of punishment that left a more lasting memory than giving us a spanking. One of the most memorable of these occasions occurred when I was four.
In the early 70’s my mother attended college during the day and I was in daycare. One day at daycare I watched an extremely tired mother attempt to pick up her daughter. The little girl asked, “Momma, are we going to McDonald’s for dinner?” The mother replied, “Honey, not tonight. Momma has to run a few errands (差事) and then we have to go home and cook dinner for Daddy.” “But I wanna go.” “Susie, I said not tonight. Maybe, if you are a good girl, we can go tomorrow.” Susie immediately dropped to the floor, kicking and screaming, “I want to go to McDonald’s.”
No amount of pleading (恳求) or scolding, her mother tried stopped Susie’s tantrum (发脾气). Finally her mother gave in, “Okay, Susie, let’s go to McDonald’s.” Susie stopped yelling and smiling she grabbed her mother’s hand and they left. To say I was amazed would be inaccurate; I was delighted that anything I wanted could be had by throwing a tantrum.
That day my mother picked me up early from daycare because we were going to a store to purchase some Christmas items. I was excited by the lights and decorations, and as we walked through the toy section on the way to the counter, I saw a toy I had to have. It was a white and red telephone whose bells rang as it was pulled along on a string. Looking lovingly up at my mother I asked, “Mama, can I have that telephone?”
She replied, “Baby, not now, but if you are a good girl, maybe Santa will bring it to you.” “But Mama, I want that telephone right now.” Her eyes narrowed and her hand tightened on mine. “Becky, you can’t have that telephone today, but if you misbehave, you can have a spanking.”
By now we were standing in the long holiday line to pay the bill, and I figured it was a good chance.
“Mama, stop. Mama, get up,” I tearfully pleaded.
The idea that humans are facing a global extinction of experience of nature is popular, but is it true? To give more light on this issue, the scientists measured how the average distance from an individual’s home to the nearest area with low human impact changed in the last decade.
The scientists found that humans currently live 9.7 kilometers away from a natural area on average, which is 7% further away than in the year 2000. Europe and East Asia have the highest average distance to natural areas, such as 22 kilometers in Germany and 16 kilometers in France. The scientists also showed that tree cover within cities has declined worldwide since 2000, suggesting that the possibility for the urban population to access green spaces is reducing as well.
The scientists also systematically searched for scientific publications assessing a trend in experiences of nature, finding that the number of studies assessing these trends was very low (the number is 18), most of which are about the US, Europe and Japan. This shows that more studies should investigate the claim about the extinction of nature experience, especially in Africa and Latin America. The 18 studies found by the scientists show a decline in visits to nature parks in the US and Japan, a decrease in camping activities in the US, and a decrease in the number of flower species observed by Japanese children. They also find signs of decline in the use of natural elements in novels, songs and cartoons.
Despite these examples of decline, other interactions are increasing. Watching wildlife documentaries or interacting with wild animals in videogames is, for example, more common than a few years ago. “New ways of digitally interacting with nature have certainly emerged or increased in recent years,” says Dr Gladys Barragan-Jason. “But several former studies show that these vicarious interactions have a lesser effect on our sense of connection with nature than exposure to nature, such as visiting nature parks.”
1．How does the author mainly develop the text?| A．By giving examples and making contrast. |
| B．By listing data and classifying them. |
| C．By giving examples and definitions. |
| D．By analyzing data and making comparison. |
| A．the distance between humans and nature |
| B．the connection between humans and wild animals |
| C．reading novels, singing songs and watching cartoons |
| D．tree cover, visits to nature parks and nature presence in the arts |
| A．Positive. | B．Novel. | C．Indirect. | D．Complex. |
| A．Global Extinction of Green Spaces. | B．Decline in Experiences of Nature. |
| C．The Lost Joy in the Natural World. | D．A New Way of Connecting With Nature. |
| A．She missed the stop. |
| B．She was late for her train. |
| C．She took the wrong direction. |
| A．The 5：40 train. | B．The 6：20 train. | C．The 7：20 train. |
| A．$11.50. | B．$16.50. | C．$21.50. |
| A．Have a snack | B．Check her baggage. | C．Check platform information. |
Nowadays, media and information coming so quickly on the Internet, kids are used to getting things in quick ways, but refuse to read a book.
I remember the wonderful
As an educator and writer, this is
“Don’t worry too much,” educational consultant Waldinger
“Kids do lots of incidental (伴随的)
She said, “You just can’t expect kids to sit down and
| A．schedule | B．combination | C．moment | D．comment |
| A．sounded | B．spelt | C．exchanged | D．spread |
| A．sorry | B．delighted | C．fortunate | D．upset |
| A．because | B．while | C．if | D．until |
| A．operate | B．program | C．remove | D．negate |
| A．pleasant | B．beneficial | C．distant | D．painful |
| A．routine | B．property | C．vitality | D．disagreement |
| A．comforted | B．favored | C．blamed | D．depressed |
| A．tolerant | B．different | C．ideal | D．precise |
| A．era | B．region | C．mass | D．volume |
| A．cooking | B．setting | C．calling | D．reading |
| A．electricity | B．onion | C．recipe | D．pan |
| A．looked up | B．dug up | C．built up | D．picked |
| A．getting | B．fighting | C．taking | D．falling |
| A．encouragement | B．expectation | C．arrangement | D．version |
On October 12,2021,China officially announced its first five national parks, which are homes to endangered species ranging from the Siberian tigers on the Russian border to the world’s last 30 Hainan black crested gibbons(黑冠长臂猿)in southern China’s tropical rainforest.
By uniting hundreds of protected areas managed by various provinces, the new national park system’s goal is to strengthen conservation under the central authority of the new National Forestry and Grassland Administration(NFGA)
These five parks cover an area two-third the size of the US national park system. The largest, Sanjiangyuan National Park in Qinghai Province, is almost the size of Mississippi.
With such an ambitious plan, there are bound to be challenges. For one the government has to balance the need for the livelihoods of the locals with wildlife conservation. It has not announced a plan to create a permitting system that would regulate how people enjoy nature. What’s more,ecotourism-which is defined as tourism that benefits both locals and their environment-only exists in a fifth of China’s nature reserves.
But there’s hope that the existing ecotourism projects in such nature reserves as Sanjiangyuan National Park and Wolong Nature Reserve will inspire efforts elsewhere in the new park system. Since 2018, Sanjiangyuan National Park has run a community-led tourism program that benefits both locals and snow leopards(豹), the park’s main tourist draw. For $43 a day, visitors can stay with local families, who act as guides to spot these rare “cats” in the wild.
“The community has made all the major decisions, and 100 percent of the income stays in the community. It’s been incredibly successful,” says Marc Brody, who has worked in China since 1994.
NFGA agrees that well-designed ecotourism can improve local ecosystems. It says that a core mission(核心使命)of China’s national parks is to promote eco-civilizationa mission that can be advanced by involving visitors Written into China’s constitution(宪法)in 2012, eco-civilization means scientifically balancing the economic development and the environmental protection.
1．Which park is home to the thirty endangered gibbons?| A．Hainan National Park. | B．Wolong Nature Reserve. |
| C．Northeast National Park. | D．Sanjiangyuan National Park. |
| A．It is bigger than Mississippi. | B．It sits on the Russian border. |
| C．It is a pioneer in ecotourism. | D．It has a mature permitting system. |
| A．Skeptical. | B．Unconcerned | C．Disapproving | D．Positive |
| A．To protect the endangered animals. |
| B．To help the local people out of poverty. |
| C．To balance the economy and the environment. |
| D．To set a better development example for the world. |
If there’s one cliché (陈词滥调) that really annoys Danah Boyd, a specialist researcher who has made a career from studying the way teenagers use the web, it’s that of the digital native. “Today the world has computer-mediated communications. Thus, in order to learn about their social world around them, teenagers are learning about those things too. And they’re using that to work out the stuff that kids have always worked out: peer (同龄人) sociality, status, etc.” she says.
It’s no surprise Boyd takes exception, really. As one of the first digital anthropologists to dig into the way teenagers use social networking sites, she gained insights into the social web by taking a closer look at what was going on.
Lately, her work has been about explaining new ways of interpreting the behavior we see online. She outlined some examples at a recent conference in San Francisco, including the case of a young man from one of the poorest districts of Los Angeles who was applying for a top American college. The applicant said he wanted to escape the influence of violence, but the admissions officer was shocked when he discovered that the boy’s MySpace page was covered with precisely the violent language he claimed to hate. “Why was he lying about his motivations?” asked the university. “He wasn’t,” said Boyd. “In his world, showing the right images online was a key part of surviving daily life.”
Understanding what’s happening online is especially important, for today’s teenagers have a vastly different approach to privacy from their parents. She says, “Adults think of the home as a very private space. That’s often not the case for teenagers because they have little or no control over who has access to it, or under what conditions. As a result, the online world can feel more private because it feels like there’s more control.”
The concept of control is central to Boyd’s work, and it applies to pointing out the true facts about teenage behavior. Boyd suggests control remains in the same places as it always did.
“Technologists all go for the idea of techno-utopia (乌托邦), the web as great democratizer (民主化)”, she says. “But we’re not actually democratizing the whole system; we’re just shifting the way in which we discriminate.”
It’s a call to arms that most academic researchers would tend to sidestep, but then Boyd admits to treading a fine line between academics and activists. “The questions I continue to want to ask are the things that are challenging to me；having to sit down and be forced to think about uncomfortable social stuff, and it’s really hard to get my head around it, which means it’s exactly what I should dive in and deal with, ” she says.
1．What does Danah Boyd think of “computer-mediated communications”?| A．They teach teenagers about social interaction. |
| B．They replace other sorts of social interaction for teenagers. |
| C．They are necessary for teenagers to have social interaction. |
| D．They are barriers to wider social interaction among teenagers. |
| A．To show how easy it is to investigate somebody’s online activity. |
| B．To explain how easy it is to misinterpret an individual online activity. |
| C．To prove how important it is to check the content of someone’s online activity. |
| D．To express how necessary it is to judge someone’s sincerity from his online activity. |
| A．parents tend not to respect teenagers’ need for online privacy |
| B．teenagers are less concerned about privacy than their parents |
| C．teenagers feel more private in the online world than in the home |
| D．parents value the idea of privacy less in a domestic environment |
| A．is willing to take on research challenges others would avoid |
| B．regards herself as being more of an activist than a researcher |
| C．is aware that she is lacking in ability to deal with the challenges |
| D．feels like abandoning the research into uncomfortable social stuff |
A little boy selling magazines for school walked up to a house that people rarely visited. The house was very old and shabby(破旧的)and the owner hardly ever came out. When he did come out, he would not say hello to his neighbors or passers-by but simply just glare at them.
②The boy knocked on the door and waited, sweating from fear of the old man. The boy’s parents told him to stay away from the house, and a lot of the other neighborhood children were told the same thing from their parents.
③As he was ready to walk away, the door slowly opened. “What do you want?” the old man said impatiently. The little boy was very afraid but he had a quota(份额)to meet for school with selling the magazines. So he got up the courage and said, “Uh, sir, I am selling these magazines and uh, I was wondering if you would like to buy one from me. ”
④The old man just stared at the boy without a word. The boy could see inside the old man’s house and saw that he had dog figurines(小雕像)on the fireplace(壁炉)mantle(覆盖物). “Do you collect dogs?” The little boy asked. “Yes, I have many collections(收藏品) in my house. They are my family here and they are all I have. ” The boy then felt sorry for the man, as it seemed that he was a very lonely soul.
⑤“Well, I do have a magazine here for collectors. It is perfect for you. I also have one about dogs since you like dogs so much. ” The old man was ready to close the door on the boy and said, “No, boy. I don’t need any magazines of any kind, now goodbye. ”
⑥The little boy was sad that he was not going to make his quota with the sale. He was also sad for the old man being so alone in the house that he owned. The boy went home and then had an idea. He had a little dog figurine that he got some years ago from an aunt.
The little boy headed back down to the old man’s house.
From that day on something changed inside the old man.
“What are you doing with that ponytail (马尾辫), dear Joe? You look like a little girl!" Mr. Cooper said when Joe walked into his classroom on the first day of school. The rest of his classmates laughed. Joe looked down in shame. But he knew he had to keep growing it. He had his reasons.
Joe had started growing his hair the previous school year. No one paid too much attention to it then because the summer holidays had begun. But now that he was back, everyone saw how overgrown his hair was because he kept it in a ponytail.
Unfortunately, the comments didn’t stop, and the other boys in the class started teasing him every day. They thought that clearly he just wanted to look different. The poor eight-year-old boy returned home every day in tears, but he never told his parents what was happening. Joe started hiding his tears in the bathroom at some point.
Their art teacher, Mrs. Burns, was somewhat new at the school, and she found Joe crying one day when everyone left for recess. “Joe, what’s going on? Why are you growing your hair so long?” she asked kindly.
“Well, I volunteered in a children’s hospital last April. There were many kids who had cancer and lost their hair,” Joe explained. After a pause, he continued, “The hospital called for young volunteers to grow hair and donate it. The hospital will use the donated hair to make beautiful wigs (假发) for those unfortunate kids. Since last April, I have been growing my hair. Unfortunately, now boys in my class often laugh at me due to my long hair.”
Touched, Mrs. Burns said, “Do your classmates know why you grow your hair?” Joe shook his head, saying no one asked him. “Do you have photos of the kids in that hospital?” Mrs. Burns asked. “Yes,” Joe said, and quickly took a few out from his school bag.
Long-term pain may not be an inevitable consequence of bad posture, but the notion that “good” posture is beneficial isn’t completely ill-founded. Certain postures can lift your spirits.
An awareness of a link between our body and our emotions goes back to the 19th century, when philosopher William James suggested that we don’t laugh because we are happy, but rather we are happy because we laugh.
This idea is now known as “embodied cognition”, where the body influences our thoughts. For instance, when you meet a loved one, your heartbeat may increase and you might feel their skin against your own as you embrace. The brain, which is constantly assessing changes to information from the outside world and from our internal body, combines this new data and generates the appropriate emotion. Only then do we consciously sense the feeling of love, or joy.
Several experiments support this idea, for instance, studies by Elizabeth Broadbent at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Her team randomly split people without depression into two groups, using physiotherapy tape to strap their back into either a bent or upright seated position. The participants then gave a speech. Afterwards, the upright group not only reported a more positive mood, but were less stressed as measured by blood pressure.
In another experiment, students were initially shown positive and negative words and asked how well each word described them. They were then guided into walking in a style that resembled that of someone who was unhappy or extremely happy.
At the end of the study, the participants were given a surprise test—to remember as many words from the start of the study as possible. Participants recalled more negative words when walking in a style that resembled individuals who are sad than they did when walking with a happier gait (步态). The researchers suggest that the walking style may have triggered a change in emotional state, which then affected memory recall.
1．What was the relationship between body and emotions discovered in the 19th century?| A．We are happy, so we laugh. | B．The posture of laugh can make us happy. |
| C．We feel happy first, then we laugh. | D．We don’t laugh until we are truly happy. |
| A．He/she gave a speech using a happy tone. |
| B．His/her speech made the audience feel uncomfortable. |
| C．His/her blood pressure dropped. |
| D．He/she felt much more confident in the process. |
| A．Extraordinary. | B．Brilliant. | C．Middle. | D．Down. |
| A．Changing your posture to change your mood. | B．Crying when you feel like it. |
| C．Exercising contributes to health. | D．Being happy if you want to. |
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