Today’s demands for measuring childhood success have chased household chores from the to-do lists of many young people. In a survey of 1,001 US adults released by Braun Research, 82% reported having regular chores growing up, but only 28% said that they require their own children to do them. “Parents today want their kids spending time on things that can bring them success, but ironically, we’ve stopped doing one thing that’s actually been a proven predictor of success—and that’s household chores.” says Richard Rende, a developmental psychologist.
Giving children household chores at an early age helps to build a lasting sense of mastery, responsibility and independence, according to research by Marty Rossmann, professor at the University of Minnesota. In 2002, Dr. Rossmann analyzed data from a longitudinal(纵向的) study that followed 84 children across four periods. She found that young adults who began chores at ages 3 and 4 were more likely to have good relationships with family and friends and to achieve academic and early career success, as compared with those who didn’t have chores or who started them as teens.
Chores also teach children how to be empathetic(感同身受的) and responsive to others’ needs, notes psychologist Richard Weissbourd. In research, his team surveyed 10,000 high-school students and asked them to rank what they treasured more: achievement, happiness or caring for others. Almost 80% chose either achievement or happiness over caring for others. As he points out, however, research suggests that personal happiness comes most reliably not from high achievement but from strong relationships. “We’re out of balance,” says Dr. Weissbourd. A good way to start re-adjusting priorities(优先事项), he suggests, is by learning to be kind and helpful at home.
The next time that your child asks to skip chores to do homework, resist the urge to let him or her off the hook. Being slack(懈怠的) about chores when they compete with school sends your child the message that grades and achievement are more important than caring about others. What may seem like small messages in the moment but add up to big ones over time.
1.What can we learn from the first paragraph?
A. Parents today have recognized the importance of chores.
B. Most parents today think chores are necessary for measuring kids’ success.
C. Most adults require their children to do regular chores now.
D. Doing regular chores can help children to succeed.
2.What can we conclude from Rossmann’s longitudinal study?
A. Children will not achieve academic and career success with few chores.
B. It makes little difference when children begin chores.
C. Chores should be given to children at an early age.
D. Young adults beginning chores as teens are more likely to be responsible.
3.What do students value more according to Weissbourd’s survey?
A. Responding to others’ needs.
B. Achieving high achievements.
C. Practising kindness and giving help.
D. Building strong relationships
4.What can be the best title for the text?
A. Children need regular chores
B. Children need to be independent
C. Household chores build up relationships
D. Chores bring children responsibility
For every cup of coffee you made, about two spoons of grounds end up in the waste. That doesn’t seem like a lot, but just think about the millions of coffees consumed around the world every single day, and you’ll see the problem. Sure, some of those coffee grounds are recycled as fertilizer to enrich the soil or beauty products like face masks, but most will be buried into the ground. It was while considering this issue that German product designer Julian Lechner came up with a new way of recycling coffee grounds — turning them into tableware.
“We were always drinking coffee at university,” Lechner remembers. “And that’s how I started to wonder. What happens to all that coffee? It was all just getting thrown away.” He began consulting with his professors about ways of using coffee grounds to create a solid material.
“We tried combining with a lot of different things,” Lechner said, “We even tried sugar. That was close, but basically it was a candy cup. It just kept melting after being used three times.” The whole point was to make it last long, so Lechner and his partners went back to the institute to continue their research. Finally, after many failed experiments, they came up with a mix of coffee grounds and a biopolymer(生物高聚物) that seemed to behave the way Lechner had expected it.
“The moment of knowing the cup would actually stand was super-exciting,” he recalls. “It was wonderful to drink that first coffee out of the cup. It proved to be totally worth the wait.” And his creation has proven commercially successful, which is just the icing on the cake. The coffee cups are now present in ten shops across Europe, and the company can hardly keep up with demand, regularly selling out of its stock online.
Lechner will soon launch a larger line of coffee grounds cups and also work on a travel mug. But those are just short-term plans, as Lechner hopes to one day use recycled coffee grounds to create all sort of useful stuff—like sheets and furniture in cafés and restaurants.
1.What do people do with coffee grounds before Lechner?
A. Make products beautiful.
B. Improve the soil.
C. Produce drinking cups.
D. Create solid materials.
2.What can we infer from Paragraph 3?
A. Candy cups can last longer than coffee cups.
B. Coffee grounds are rich in biopolymer.
C. Biopolymer can get coffee cups used repeatedly.
D. Lechner invented coffee cups alone.
3.What does the underlined phrase refer to in Paragraph 4?
A. Profits from coffee cup business.
B. Creation of coffee cups.
C. Decreasing demands for coffee grounds.
D. Consumption of delicious iced coffee.
4.What is the main idea of the passage?
A. A new way of recycling coffee cups.
B. Commercial success from consuming coffee.
C. Recycling coffee grounds into stuff like coffee cups.
D. Different product designers of recycling coffee grounds.
Food for Italians isn’t a trend; it’s a way of life. Italians live to eat, and the importance of food in family life is absolutely important and deep-rooted in everyday routines.
In Italy, kids are encouraged to be part of every social occasion that revolves around food — it’s not about dividing the children from the adults, giving them separate meals or putting them to bed early. In Britain, by contrast, my sister and I often see children eating separate meals from their parents.
Letting children experience food like an Italian will develop not just their palate(味觉) but also their social skills, manners, teaching them new and mature ways to interact. Here are some food customs that are part of every Italian child’s upbringing.
One of the most celebrated Italian food customs is the morning coffee. Coffee shops and bars have customers streaming in and out of them each morning as the Italians get their daily dose–and this habit is just as much about the social setting as it is about the coffee.
While the morning is all about coffee, pre-lunch or dinner, it’s all about the local snacks. Most often, Italian city centres and squares are jam packed with locals who come out with their kids to enjoy this pre-dinner treat, and children are encouraged to enjoy snacks available. This is a brilliant way to get kids to try new tastes without the pressures of meal times. It’s important to note that “kids’ menus” do not exist in Italian restaurants—children are treated like adults and are offered plates from the main menu — in smaller amounts, if they’re young.
Post-lunch, most cities can seem quite deserted. But by 4 p.m. onwards, the crowds start to re-emerge. One by one, families spill out and the streets liven up. Everyone begins their afternoon stroll, enjoying the afternoon snacks, like ice-cream, which turns over a huge trade in Italy.
1.What will parents do at meal times in Italy?
A. Let children have their meals separately.
B. Offer children plates from kids’ menu.
C. Order some food for children but in small amounts.
D. Encourage children to eat with them.
2.What won’t children develop if they experience food like an Italian?
A. Cooking ways.B. Sense of taste.
C. Social skills.D. Interacting manners.
3.What do we know about the pre-dinner treat in Italy?
A. It is most often about coffee.
B. It can get children to experience new foods with ease.
C. It is unavailable in city centres and squares.
D. It can reduce the pressure of meal times.
4.What is the author’s purpose in writing this passage?
A. To introduce different Italian local foods.
B. To stress the importance of food for Italians.
C. To show Italians’ children education.
D. To advertise Italian food trends.
Breakthroughs in science and technology are paving the way for modern cities to support bigger populations. Now, we see the most exciting urban innovations to show you exactly how they’ll improve your city’s infrastructure(基础设施).
Lighting Up The Night
Anthony Di Mari dreamed up an electric tree to help irrigate public parks and light them at night. These electric trees contain a special infill (填充物) that collects water from rainfall. The water is then distributed through a shallow underground irrigation system with the help from the trees’ swaying movement. An electric motor turns energy from the waving of the artificial trees into electricity, which is used to light up the trees’ outer LEDs.
Thinking Outside The Box
As more people flock to urban areas, city planners will need to get increasingly creative about how to satisfy residents’ health and transportation needs within decreasing available space. One way to achieve this is by updating infrastructure to support biking and walking by building suspended(悬浮的) roundabouts like hovering in the Netherlands. By lifting bicycle and pedestrian traffic above busy roadways, cities can significantly decrease over-crowded traffic condition.
Waving Hello To Clean Energy
Cities that don’t receive enough sunlight may find an attractive alternative in wave power. Since ocean waves rarely experience disruption(中断), electric engines driven by their clockwork push-and-pull can reliably provide power throughout the year. Further, thanks to advances in wave power technology, engineers have been able to move wave power engines farther offshore, where the waves pack the most punch, making the engines extremely efficient. So in the future, heavily populated coastal cities may use wave to meet their energy needs.
1.What is the special infill used to do?
A. To make the trees beautiful.
B. To produce electricity.
C. To help the trees’ swaying.
D. To collect water from rainfall.
2.How do the Netherlands improve the city traffic according to the text?
A. By updating the city roadway condition.
B. By building walking passages underground.
C. By creating suspended roundabouts above roadways.
D. By supporting more biking and walking.
3.What does the author mainly tell us in the last paragraph?
A. The advantages of wave power.
B. The ways to use wave power.
C. The future of wave power.
D. The advances in wave power technology.
今年九月，北大考试研究院院长秦春华发文称，四大名著不适合孩子阅读。可能不少人不太认同他的观点，但只限于私下议论。郑州外国语学校高三学生高泽林却站出来公开叫板秦春华，他认为四大名著孩子可以读，相较于四大名著中的负面内容，现实中的低俗更甚。他的文章条理清晰，有理有据，引来不少网友点赞。
高中生挑战北大教授，你真觉得好吗？请以李华的名义给高泽林同学写一封信表达自己的看法。（提示词：四大名著：four great classical novels）
要点：1．写信目的；
2．与他交流你对四大名著的看法；
3．希望收到回信。
注意：1．词数100左右；
2．可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯；
3．开头和结尾已给出,不计入总词数。
Dear Zelin Gao,
I am a high school student of the same age with you.
Yours truly,
Li Hua
假定英语课上老师要求同桌之间交换修改作文，请你修改你同桌写的以下作文。文中共有10处语言错误，每句中最多有两处。每处错误仅涉及一个单词的增加、删除或修改。
增加：在缺词处加一个漏字符号(∧)，并在其下面写出该加的词。
删除：把多余的词用斜线( \ )划掉。
修改：在错的词下划一横线，并在该词下面写出修改后的词。
注意：1. 每处错误及其修改均仅限一词；
2. 只允许修改10处，多者(从第11处起)不计分。
When I was in grade 5, I met an teacher who made me remembered her forever. Her family name is called Ding. And Miss Ding was a very kind women teacher. She often played games with us, and sometime she talked with us. He had a unique set of teaching methods. We students could get good marks without write so much homework. She was very so popular in the school that many teachers also liked to interact with her. There was always a big smile on face, and she seldom lost her temper. She was always patiently with us.
There are so many teachers in my heart. Whatever, Miss Ding is the most unforgettable.
