Parents and kids today dress alike, listen to the same music, and are friends. Is this a good thing? Sometimes, when Mr. Ballmer and his 16-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, listen to rock music together and talk about interests both enjoy, such as pop culture, he remembers his more distant relationship with his parents when he was a teenager.
“I would never have said to my mom,’ Hey, the new Weezer album is really great. How do you like it?’” says Ballmer. “There was just a complete gap in taste.”
Music was not the only gulf(分歧). From clothing and hairstyles to activities and expectations, earlier generations of parents and children often appeared to move in separate orbits.
Today, the generation gap has not disappeared, but it is getting narrow in many families. Conversations on subjects such as sex and drugs would not have taken place a generation ago. Now they are comfortable and common. And parent-child activities, from shopping to sports, involve a feeling of trust and friendship that can continue into adulthood.
No wonder greeting cards today carry the message, “To my mother, my best friends.”
But family experts warn that the new equality can also result in less respect for parents.
“There’s still a lot of strictness and authority on the part of parents out there, but there is a change happening,” says Kerrie, a psychology professor at Lebanon Valley College. “In the middle of that change, there is a lot of confusion among parents.”
Family researchers offer a variety of reasons for these evolving(演化的) roles and attitudes. They see the 1960s as a turning point. Great cultural changes led to more open communication and a more democratic process that encourages everyone to have a say.
“My parents were on the ‘before’ side of that change, but today’s parents, the 40-year-olds,were on the ‘after’ side,” explains Mr. Ballmer. “It’s not something easily accomplished by parents these days, because life is more difficult to understand or deal with, but sharing interests does make it more fun to be a parent now.”
Several years ago, I had a huge falling out with one of my best friends. So huge, in fact, that now I can’t even remember what happened.
In the past nine years, I’ve seen her twice, and each time we’ve been polite but distant. And that troubles me because we were once inseparable. I’d like nothing more than to go back nine years, and continue our friendship. But how? How do you reconnect with friends you’ve lost throughout the years?
Linking to your past
The desire to reconnect with lost friends isn’t unusual. Why? Because friends link us to the past. “Friends from years ago are custodians (监护人) of our past,” says Sandy Sheehy.
Although you can share information about your past with friends you’ve met recently, you don’t have a shared history with them. So you wind up only telling them about your past, rather than sharing it with them.
But many people never try to reconnect. Women especially have trouble taking the first step. Shyness or fear that the other person doesn’t want to reconnect often stops many women. And that shouldn’t be. Your friends probably want to be in touch with you as much as you want to be in touch with them.
Searching for friends
Fortunately, finding lost friends isn’t as difficult as it once was, thanks to tools like the Internet. Our experts offer these suggestions for locating contact information:
Search Internet sites designed to locate people like classmates.com and switchboard.com.
Contact your high school or college alumni (校友) office to request current address information.
Surf online yellow pages. Check current phone records from your friend’s hometown.
Network with other friends who might have known your friend.
Get in touch with any of her relatives, if you know where they live. If you know where she works, find the company’s website and search the directory of personnel.
1.What is the subject discussed in the passage?
A. How to make new friends.
B. How to rebuild friendship.
C. How to develop healthy friendship.
D. How to keep in touch with friends.
2.The underlined sentence “friends from years ago are custodians of our past” in Paragraph 3 means _____.
A. years ago old friends kept something for us
B. in the past old friends took care of us
C. old friends are part of our life history
D. old friends know what wrongs we did
3.What makes us unwilling to reconnect old friends?
A. Lack of money. B. Busy time. C. Regret and shame. D. Fear and shyness.
4.How can we make contact with the lost friends?
A. By asking other friends of the information on your lost friends.
B. By searching your friends’ telephone number on the Net.
C. By asking the local post office about your friends’ new address.
D. By putting an advertisement in your friends’ local town.
Researchers found that walking around with a forced smile and fake (假的) happiness simply leads to people feeling unhappier. So, putting a brave face on your sadness could be harmful. The research also found that women suffered more than men when pretending to be happy.
Dr. Brent Scott, who led the study, said employers should take note because forcing workers to smile when dealing with the public can result in bad outcomes. He said, “Smiling for the sake of smiling can lead to emotional tiredness, and that’s bad for the organization.” He also said the research showed customer-service workers who had “fake smiles” throughout the day fell into a bad mood and didn’t want to work, so their productivity dropped.
The study is one of the first of its kind to examine emotional expressions over a period of time and compare the different effects on men and women. Dr. Scott’s team examined the effects of “surface acting”, or fake smiling, compared to “deep acting”, or making people smile by thinking of peasant memories.
Dr. Scott said, “Women were harmed more by surface acting, meaning their moods worsened even more than men’s. However, they were helped more by deep acting, which means their moods improved more by thinking of pleasant memories. ”
According to Dr. Scott, women tend to suffer more when pretending to be happy because they are expected to be more emotionally expressive than men. Therefore, forcing a smile while feeling down is more likely to go against their normal behavior and cause more harmful feelings.
Although deep acting can improve moods a little in the short term, Dr. Scott says, it’s not a long-term solution to feeling unhappy. “There have been some suggestions that if you do this over a long period you start to feel unreal. You’re trying to develop positive emotions, but at the end of the day you may not feel like yourself any more.”
1.According to the passage, Dr. Scott’s study ______.
A. is supported by some big employers in the USA
B. is meaningful as there haven’t been many similar ones
C. examined more women than men for a long time
D. aimed to make the employees more productive
2.Women suffer more from fake happiness mainly because ______.
A. they usually turn up shy in public places
B. they should be more emotionally expressive
C. they are often treated in a terrible way
D. they like thinking of pleasant memories
3.It is implied in the passage that deep acting _____.
A. doesn’t have any effect on men
B. cannot improve our moods in any case
C. harms our feelings in the long run
D. pleases people by feeling like another person
4.What is the best title for the passage?
A. Fake smiling makes people unhappy.
B. Women shouldn’t be forced to smile.
C. An important suggestion for workers.
D. Why people don’t want to work.
Name: Julia Rosetti
Email: n1950215@droid.fit.qut.edu.au
Location: Brisbane, Australia
Age: 18
Sex: Female
Drugs: No
Alcohol: No
Sports/ Activities: I used to do a lot of ballet and stage work, my ambition was to be a professional dancer before I got sick. Nowadays I love to read, and other stuff like that, as well as spending a lot of time with my family and friends.
Grades: I finished high school last year, and I haven’t started college because I’ve been sick. But I got subject prizes in three subjects and high as in the rest.
Favorite Subject: I loved Music, English, History and Biology. Hard to pick a favorite – they’re all so different.
Volunteer Work: It all depends on what you call “volunteer”. Nothing really official, but I spend a lot of my time working and playing with really sick kids, and they come to me for advice a lot.
What My Future Goals Are: I’d either like to go on to do stage work, or work with kids with serious illnesses. I haven’t decided which, yet.
What I do in My Spare Time: Talk to my friends and my family. Hang around with my hospital friends. Watch TV. Go to the movies when I can. I love going on picnics and other outdoorsy stuff.
How I’d Change the World: No question. Cure cancer. Eradicate it forever.
Largest Problem: Sometimes, I think it’s having too many choices, and having too many expectations and others having too many expectations of you. And all the implications (牵连) of this.
Why Would I Make a Good Counselor (顾问): I really want to help other people. I’ve made that my life’s ambition, to help as many people as I can.
Qualifications: I spend a lot of time doing this sort of stuff “unofficially” – I am the Discussion Manager on a discussion list for seriously ill young people. People also write to me because of my homepage, often wanting advice, which I try to give them.
1.What can we infer about Julia Rosetti?
A. She is ill now with a cancer.
B. She has had an operation.
C. She is curing people of cancer.
D. She is working in a hospital.
2.The underlined word “eradicate” most probably means _____.
A. get out of B. put an end of C. break up D. set aside
3.The underlined word “you” stands for _____.
A. Julia Rosetti herself
B. all her friends in her life
C. the person she refers to
D. everyone including herself
4.Which of the following statements is true about Julia Rosetti?
A. She had wanted to become a doctor.
B. She had done very well at college.
C. She often visits hospitals in her spare time.
D. She has her own homepage on the Internet.
Many people have heard stories of the California gold rush during the 19th century, when lots of people went there in search for gold. Panning (淘洗) for gold has a rich and interesting history. Nowadays some people continue to pan for gold in California. Although it cannot be regarded as a method for earning income, taking on gold-panning as a hobby can give you a feeling of being in the old west and get you out into nature.
The only tool that is required to pan for gold is a gold pan. You can use a regular old flat pan, but “officially” gold pans are quite cheap so you may as well buy one that is made for the task. Most sold pans come in either plastic or medal.
Once you have your pan you will want to start practicing your gold panning technique. Panning for gold works because gold is much heavier than most rocks. To pan for gold you add rock and dirt form the bottom of a stream to your pan and then gently let water flow through the pan. The lighter-weight rocks are slowly swept away while any gold will be left behind in the pan.
To start panning for gold, first you will need to find a good location. Try checking maps of your area and old history books to find location where there were gold mines in the past. Even though most of the gold have already been removed, there are likely to be small leftovers that you can find. Once you have found an area that looks promising, look for any small stream or river where you can try out panning for gold.
Panning for gold requires patience and it may be a long time before you hit anything of value. However, it is an enjoyable hobby and provides a great opportunity to get outdoors, so don’t give up too quickly.
1.What is Paragraph 4 mainly about?
A. Where to pan for gold.
B. How gold-panning works.
C. What tools are needed.
D. A promising area for panning.
2.What is the author’s attitude toward modern gold-planning?
A. Opposed. B. Indifferent . C. Positive. D. Neutral .
3.In which part of a newspaper would you probably find this article?
A. Lifestyle. B. Health. C. Travel. D. Sports.
Bobby was sitting out in his back yard in the snow. The thin sneakers he wore had a few holes in them. Try as he might, he could not come up with an idea for his mother’s Christmas gift.
Ever since his father had passed away three years ago, his mother worked nights at the hospital, but the small wage could only be stretched so far.
What the family lacked in money and material things, they more than made up for in love and family unity. They ran the household in their mother’s absence. All three of his sisters had already made beautiful gifts for their mother.
It was Christmas Eve already, and he had nothing. Bobby started to walk down to the street. He walked from shop to shop. Everything seemed so beautiful and so out of reach. It was starting to get dark, then suddenly his eyes caught a shiny dime. Never has anyone felt so wealthy as Bobby did at that moment.
He went inside a flower shop. When the owner asked if he could help him, Bobby presented the dime and asked if he could buy one flower. The shop owner looked at Bobby, then said, “You just wait here and I’ll see what I can do for you.”
The shop owner returned holding red roses all tied together with a big silver bow. Bobby’s heart sank as the owner placed them gently into a long white box. “That will be ten cents, young man,” said the shop owner, reaching out his hand for the dime. Slowly, Bobby moved his hand to give the man his dime.
Then the shopkeeper’s wife appeared. “Where are the roses you were fixing?”
The shop owner replied, “A strange thing happened to me this morning. I thought I heard a voice telling me to set aside a dozen of my best roses for a special gift. I wasn’t sure at the time whether I had lost my mind or what, but I set them aside anyway. When I saw that little boy tonight, I knew who that voice was.”
1.According to the first three paragraphs we know that _____.
A. Bobby’s sisters didn’t help Bobby to buy a gift
B. Bobby had known what gift he’d give to his mother
C. the children in the family all loved their mother
D. Bobby’s family was rich before his father died
2.Why did Bobby walk along the street?
A. Because he didn’t know what to do.
B. Because he wanted to try his luck there.
C. Because he wanted to get some money.
D. Because he hoped to see what he could get.
3.What could he buy with a dime then?
A. A flower. B. Nothing. C. A piece of cake. D. Many flowers.
4.Bobby slowly gave the dime to the shop owner because _______.
A. he did not want any rose flowers
B. the flowers weren’t worth a dime
C. the shop owner would cheat him
D. he hardly believed what had happened
5.From the last two paragraphs we can infer that the shop owner ______.
A. was shocked by the voice he heard
B. was always ready to help others
C. didn’t know how to run a business
D. was good at making up stories
