单选题 How to Eat Well A. Why do so many Americans eat tons of processed food, the stuff that is correctly called junk (垃圾) and should really carry warning labels? B. It's not because fresh ingredients are hard to come by. Supermarkets offer more variety than ever, and there are over four times as many farmers' markets in the US as there were 20 years ago. Nor is it for lack of available information. There are plenty of recipes (食谱), how-to videos and cooking classes available to anyone who has a computer, smartphone or television. If anything, the information is overwhelming. C. And yet we aren't cooking. If you eat three meals a day and behave like most Americans, you probably get at least a third of your daily calories (卡路里) outside the home. Nearly two-thirds of us grab fast food once a week, and we get almost 25% of our daily calories from snacks. So we're eating out or taking in, and we don't sit down—or we do, but we hurry. D. Shouldn't preparing—and consuming—food be a source of comfort, pride, health, well-being, relaxation, sociability? Something that connects us to other humans? Why would we want to outsource (外包) this basic task, especially when outsourcing it is so harmful? E. When I talk about cooking, I'm not talking about creating elaborate dinner parties or three-day science projects. I'm talking about simple, easy, everyday meals. My mission is to encourage green hands and those lacking time or money to feed themselves. That means we need modest, realistic expectations, and we need to teach people to cook food that's good enough to share with family and friends. F. Perhaps a return to real cooking needn't be far off. A recent Harris poll revealed that 79% of Americans say they enjoy cooking and 30% 'love it'; 14% admit to not enjoying kitchen work and just 7% won't go near the stove at all. But this doesn't necessarily translate to real cooking, and the result of this survey shouldn't surprise anyone: 52% of those 65 or older cook at home five or more times per week; only a third of young people do. G. Back in the 1950s most of us grew up in households where Mom cooked virtually every night. The intention to put a home-cooked meal on the table was pretty much universal. Most people couldn't afford to do otherwise. H. Although frozen dinners were invented in the '40s, their popularity didn't boom until televisions became popular a decade or so later. Since then, packaged, pre-prepared meals have been what's for dinner. The microwave and fast-food chains were the biggest catalysts (催化剂), but the big food companies—which want to sell anything except the raw ingredients that go into cooking—made the home cook an endangered species. I. Still, I find it strange that only a third of young people report preparing meals at home regularly. Isn't this the same crowd that rails against processed junk and champions craft cooking? And isn't this the generation who say they're concerned about their health and the well-being of the planet? If these are truly the values of many young people, then their behavior doesn't match their beliefs. J. There have been half-hearted but well-publicized efforts by some food companies to reduce calories in their processed foods, but the Standard American Diet is still the polar opposite of the healthy, mostly plant-based diet that just about every expert says we should be eating. Considering that the government's standards are not nearly ambitious enough, the picture is clear: by not cooking at home, we're not eating the right things, and the consequences are hard to overstate. K. To help quantify (量化) the costs of a poor diet, I recently tried to estimate this impact in terms of a most famous food, the burger (汉堡包). I concluded that the profit from burgers is more than offset (抵消) by the damage they cause in health problems and environmental harm. L. Cooking real food is the best defense—not to mention that any meal you're likely to eat at home contains about 200 fewer calories than one you would eat in a restaurant. M. To those Americans for whom money is a concern, my advice is simple: Buy what you can afford, and cook it yourself. The common prescription is to primarily shop the grocery store, since that's where fresh produce, meat and seafood, and dairy are. And to save money and still eat well you don't need local, organic ingredients; all you need is real food. I'm not saying local food isn't better; it is. But there is plenty of decent food in the grocery stores. N. The other sections you should get to know are the frozen foods and the canned goods. Frozen produce is still produce; canned tomatoes are still tomatoes. Just make sure you're getting real food without tons of added salt or sugar. Ask yourself, would Grandma consider this food? Does it look like something that might occur in nature? It's pretty much common sense: you want to buy food, not unidentifiable foodlike objects. O. You don't have to hit the grocery store daily, nor do you need an abundance of skill. Since fewer than half of Americans say they cook at an intermediate level and only 20% describe their cooking skills as advanced, the crisis is one of confidence. And the only remedy for that is practice. There's nothing mysterious about cooking the evening meal. You just have to do a little thinking ahead and redefine what qualifies as dinner. Like any skill, cooking gets easier as you do it more; every time you cook, you advance your level of skills. Someday you won't even need recipes. My advice is that you not pay attention to the number of steps and ingredients, because they can be deceiving. P. Time, I realize, is the biggest obstacle to cooking for most people. You must adjust your priorities to find time to cook. For instance, you can move a TV to the kitchen and watch your favorite shows while you're standing at the sink. No one is asking you to give up activities you like, but if you're watching food shows on TV, try cooking instead.

单选题Directions:Forthispart,youareallowed30minutestowriteashortessay.Youshouldstartyouressaywithabriefdescriptionofthepictureandthenexpressyourviewsonexcessivepackaging.Youshouldwriteatleast120wordsbutnomorethan180words.

单选题 How Alcohol Speeds Memory Loss in Men Middle aged men who drink 2.5 drinks per day may accelerate memory loss by six years, according to a new study. Researchers from University College London in the UK assessed the drinking habits of 5,054 men and 2,099 women at three different times over a ten year period. When the participants turned 56, they took the first of three tests of their memory and executive function over the next 10 years. They report in the journal Neurology that men who downed an average of 2.5 drinks per day showed signs of memory loss sooner than men who didn't drink or men who were lighter to moderate drinkers. Even after they controlled for memory-affecting factors such as their diet and exercise habits and occupation, the connection held. The researchers didn't find a similar trend among women, although the heavier drinking women did show deficits in organization and planning skills. A drink was classified as beer, wine or liquor, and while those ardent spirits (烈性酒) like vodka (伏特加酒), gin or whiskey showed the fastest declines, there didn't appear to be any differences in memory loss among those drinking beer or wine. It's not the first study to document the negative effect that drinking can have on cognitive (认知的) functions. But it is among the first to look at its effects starting in younger, middle aged people. And it demonstrated bow little alcohol it takes to affect higher order functions like memory. According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, for men, drinking up to four drinks a day is considered low risk drinking, while up to three drinks daily is considered low risk for women. When measuring potential health risks associated with drinking, the Centers for Disease Control says moderate consumption involves up to two drinks daily for men and one alcoholic beverage a day for women. The researchers speculate that alcohol somehow interferes with blood flow to the brain. Previous studies showed that excessive drinking can also damage nerve cells that can affect the brain's cognitive functions, but these latest findings suggest that the harm may begin sooner than experts had thought—and last longer than they had expected as well.

单选题 丝绸之路(the Silk Road)起源于公元前1世纪，是一条具有重要历史意义的国际贸易路线。由于丝绸在这条线路的贸易中占有很大比重，1877年德国著名的地理学家费迪南·冯·李希霍芬(Ferdinand von Richthofen)将其命名为“丝绸之路”。它不仅是一条古代国际贸易线路，也是连接中国、印度、波斯(Persia)、希腊和罗马等国的一座光辉灿烂的文化桥梁。中国四大发明和西方宗教正是通过这一桥梁传入各国的。

单选题 Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay on reasons of online game addiction and suggestions as to how to get rid of it. You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words.

单选题 聘金(endowment)是中国传统习俗的一部分。这一习惯在整个中国都很普遍。但是近几年来其标准不断上升，致使大多数家庭都很难达到。高额的聘礼常常“抢劫”了新郎父母毕生的积蓄，甚至引起家庭纠纷。此外，许多新婚夫妇被迫举行奢侈的婚礼宴会，在这个过程中，大量债务的累积可能使他们的新婚生活变得辛酸，至少在最初阶段是这样。想想老一辈节俭的婚礼，虽然简简单单，但也幸福美满，没有给他们婚后的生活带来任何影响。