简答题There’s been _________ response to the UN Secretary-General’s recent peace efforts. A、sure B、optimistic C、right D、positive简答题After the terrorist attack that had killed several people, the city tried to forget it by getting busy again. But fear always ________ back and haunted those alive who often found themselves woken up by nightmares in the middle of the night. A、crammed B、craved C、cruised D、crept判断题Living with Peter Pan A)Social scientists are starting to realize that a permanent shift has taken place in the way we live our lives. In the past, people moved from childhood to adolescence and from adolescence to adulthood, but today there is a new, intermediate phase along the way. The years from 18 until 25 and even beyond have become a distinct and separate life stage, a strange, transitional period between adolescence and adulthood during which people put off the iron cage of adult responsibility that constantly threatens to crash down on them. They’re betwixt and between. You could call them twixters. B)Maybe the twixters are in denial about growing up, but the rest of society is equally in denial about the twixters. Nobody wants to admit they’re here to stay, but that’s where all the evidence points. Tom Smith, director of the General Social Survey, a large sociological data-gathering project run by the National Opinion Research Center, found that most people believe that the transition to adulthood should be completed by the age of 26, on average, and he thinks that number is only going up. “In another 10 or 20 years, we’re not going to be talking about this as a delay. We’re going to be talking about this as a normal trajectory (轨迹),” Smith says. “And we’re going to think about those people getting married at 18 and forming families at 19 or 20 as an abnormal historical pattern.” C) There may even be a biological basis to all this. The human brain continues to grow and change into the early 20s, according to Abigail Baird, who runs the Laboratory for Adolescent Studies at Dartmouth. “We as a society consider an individual at the age of 18 ready for adult responsibility,” Baird points out. “Yet recent evidence suggests that our neuropsychological development is many years from being complete. There’s no reason to think 18 is a magic number.” How can the twixters be expected to settle down when the gray matter in their central nervous system hasn’t? D)A new life stage is a major change, and the rest of society will have to change to make room for it. One response to this very new phenomenon is extremely old-fashioned: old-style apprenticeship (学徒) programs that give high school graduates a cheaper and more practical alternative to college. In 1996 Jack Smith, then CEO of General Motors, started Automotive Youth Educational Systems (AYES), a program that puts high school kids in shops alongside seasoned car mechanics. More than 7,800 students have tried it, and 98% of them have ended up working at the business where they apprenticed. “I knew this was my best way to get into a dealership,” says Chris Rolando, 20, an AYES graduate who works at one in Detroit. “My friends are still at pizza-place jobs and have no idea what to do for a living. I just bought my own house and have a career.” E)But success stories like Rolando’s are rare. Child welfare, the juvenile-justice system, special-education and support programs for young mothers usually cut off at age 18, and most kids in foster care get kicked out at 18 with virtually no safety net. “Age limits are like the time limits for welfare recipients,” says Frank Furstenberg, a sociologist who heads a research consortium called the MacArthur Network on Transitions to Adulthood. “But people are not necessarily able to transition into supportive services or connections to other systems.” And programs for the poor aren’t the only ones that need to grow up with the times. Only 54% of respondents in the Time poll were insured through their employers. That’s a reality that affects all levels of society, and policymakers need to strengthen that safety net. F)Most of the problems that twixters face are hard to see, and that makes it harder to help them. Twixters may look as if they have been overindulged, but they could use some good support. Psychologist Terri Apter’s research at Cambridge suggests that the more parents sympathize with their twixter children, the more they take time to discuss their twixters’ life goals, the more aid and shelter they offer them, the easier the transition becomes. “Young people know that their material life will not be better than their parents’,” Apter says. “They don’t expect a safer life than their parents had. They don’t expect more secure employment or finances. They have to put in a lot of work just to remain O.K.” Tough love may look like the answer, but it’s not what twixters need. G)The real heavy lifting may, above all, have to happen on the level of the culture itself. There was a time when people looked forward to taking on the responsibilities of adulthood. That time is past. Now our culture trains young people to fear it. “I don’t ever want a lawn,” says Gordon. “I don’t ever want to drive two hours to get to work. I do not want to be a parent. I mean, hell, why would I? There’s so much fun to be had while you’re young.” He does have a point. Twixters have all the privileges of grown-ups now but only some of the responsibilities. H)If twixters are ever going to grow up, they need the means to do it — and they will have to want to. There are joys and satisfactions that come with assuming adult responsibility, though you won’t see them on The Real World. To go to the movies or turn on the TV is to see a world where life ends at 30; these days, every movie is Logan’s Run. There are few road maps in the popular culture — and to most twixters, this is the only culture — to get twixters where they need to go. If those who are 30 and older want the rest of the world to grow up, they’ll have to show the twixters that it’s worth their while. “I went to a Poster Children concert, and there were 40-year-olds still rocking,” says Jennie Jiang. “It gave me hope.” _______ 1. Our society assumes a person of eighteen should take responsibility as an adult, but his or her biological development is actually not ready yet. _______ 2. It is unfortunate that support programs for young people to grow up are no longer available when they reach the age of eighteen. _______ 3. Pop culture is what young people are exposed to only and it provides little guidance for them to grow up. _______ 4. Society needs to change by providing practical programs as an option to young people and helping them make a living. _______ 5. Now that young people are afraid to take adult responsibility, significant changes need to happen in culture. _______ 6. There is a transitional period between adolescence and adulthood, when people do not want to take responsibility for now. _______ 7. Better and stronger supportive programs need to be provided for young people’s transition to adulthood. _______ 8. Research shows that young people’s transition to adulthood can be made easier with their parents’ support. _______ 9. Young people need to know how to grow up, and they need to have the desire to grow up. _______ 10. Whether people want to admit it or not, young people are experiencing a longer transition to adulthood.简答题Artworks from all over the world seem to suggest that the preference for symmetry is not unique to any nation, but _________. A、general B、local C、commonplace D、universal简答题If that seems surprising, it is only because of the myth that the transition to adulthood was more seamless and smoother in the past. (Para. 4) A、If that seems surprising, it is only because people believe the story which says in the past the transition to adulthood was easier than it is now. B、If that seems surprising, it is only because people wrongly believe that in the past the transition to adulthood was easier than it is now.简答题We just cannot help wondering how he _________ to get himself out of such a serious trouble. A、contracted B、contradicted C、contrived D、contested简答题I was ________ to find out that my problems were due to a genuine disorder. A、released B、received C、relived D、relieved简答题The demand for places at some schools ________ the supply. A、covers B、exceeds C、over D、under判断题The period of adolescence. i.e. the period between childhood and adulthood may be long or short, depending on social expectations and on society’s definition as to what constitutes maturity and adulthood. In primitive societies adolescence was frequently a relatively short period of time, while in industrial societies with patterns of prolonged education coupled with laws against child labor, the period of adolescence is much longer and may include most of the second decade of one’s life. Furthermore, the length of the adolescent period and the definition of adulthood status may change in a given society as social and economic conditions change. Examples of this type of change are disappearance of the frontier in the latter part of the nineteenth century in the United States, and more universally, the industrialization of an agricultural society.In modern society, ceremonies for adolescence have lost their formal recognition and symbolic significance and there no longer is agreement as to what constitutes initiation ceremonies. Social ones have been replaced by a sequence of steps that lead to increased recognition and social status. For example, grade school graduation, high school graduation and college graduation constitute such a sequence, and while each step implies certain behavioral changes and social recognition, the significance of each depends on the socio-economic status and the educational ambition of the individual. Ceremonies for adolescence have also been replaced by legal definitions of status, roles, rights, privileges and responsibilities. It is during the nine years from the twelfth birthday to the twenty-first that the protective and restrictive aspects of childhood and minor status are removed and adult privileges and responsibilities are granted. The twelve-year-old is no longer considered a child and has to pay full fare for train, airplane, theater and movie tickets. Basically, the individual at this age loses childhood privileges without gaining significant adult right. At the age of sixteen the adolescence is granted certain adult rights which increase his social status by providing him with more freedom and choices. He now can obtain a driver’s license, leave public schools, and he can work without the restrictions of child labor laws. At the age of eighteen the law provides adult responsibilities as well as rights. The young man can now be a soldier, but he also can marry without parental permission. At the age of twenty-one the individual obtains his full legal rights as an adult. He now can vote, he can buy liquor, he can enter into financial contacts, and he is entitled to run for public office. No additional basic rights are acquired as a function of age after maturity status has been attained. None of these legal provisions determine at what points adulthood has been reached but they do point to the prolonged period of adolescence. 1. The period of adolescence is much longer in industrial societies because _________. the definition of maturity has changed the industrialized society is more developed more education is provided and laws against child labor are made ceremonies for adolescence have lost their formal recognition and symbolic significance 2. Former social ceremonies that used to mark adolescence have given place to _______. graduations from schools and colleges social recognition socio-economic status certain behavioral changes 3. No one can expect to fully enjoy the adulthood privileges until he is _________. eleven years old sixteen years old twenty-one years old between twelve and twenty-one years 4. Starting from 22, __________. one will obtain more basic rights the older one becomes, the more basic rights he will have. one won’t get more basic rights than when he is 21 one will enjoy more right granted by society 5. According to this passage, it is TRUE that _________. in the late 19th century in the United States the dividing line between adolescence and adulthood no longer existed no one can marry without the permission of his parents until the age of twenty-one one is considered to have reached adulthood when he has a driver’s license one is not free from the restrictions of child labor laws until he can join the army简答题The public have an insatiable __________ for scandal. A、mood B、taste C、emotion D、appetite简答题It can be legislated, but not completely. (Para. 13) A、Laws can rule whether one is an adult, but the ruling is not everything of what adulthood means. B、Laws rule whether one is an adult, but they cannot rule it completely.简答题The fact that in the not-too-distant future China’s output of goods and services will ________ that of the US terrifies the US politicians, who have been trying to curb the growth of China. A、succeed B、exceed C、recede D、obsess简答题Equivalence is an important objective for a translator to achieve and a ______ by which the quality of translation is judged as well. A、criterion B、norm C、custom D、model简答题She is still too young and easily seen through. She needs more time to master those little tricks with which people ________ their true feelings. A、conceal B、conceive C、concede D、compile简答题On the surface, the encouragement of private foreign investment may not be ________ with our wish to be more self-reliant. Yet, we should realize that to be self-reliant, we need more help from outside. A、compatible B、complacent C、complimentary D、compassionate