B

When almost everyone has a mobile phone, why are more than half of Australian homes still paying for a landline ( 座机 ) .

These days you'd be hard pressed to find anyone in Australia over the age of 15 who doesn’t own a mobile phone. In fact plenty of younger kids have one in their pocket. Practically everyone can make and receive calls anywhere, anytime.

Still, 55 percent of Australians have a landline phone at home and only just over a quarter （ 29% ） rely only on their smartphones, according to a survey （调查） .Of those Australians who still have a landline, a third concede that it's not really necessary and they're keeping it as a security blanket - 19 percent say they never use it while a further 13 percent keep it in case of emergencies. I think my home fallsinto that category.

More than half of Australian homes are still choosing to stick with their home phone.Age is naturally a factor （因素 -only 58 percent of Generation Ys still use landlines now and then, compared to 84 percent of Baby Boomers who've perhaps had the same home number for 50 years. Age isn't the only factor; I'd say it's also to do with the makeup of your household.

Generation Xers with young families, like my wife and I, can still find it convenient to have a home phone rather than providing a mobile phone for every family member. That said, to be honest the only people who ever ring our home phone are our Baby Boomers parents, to the point where we play a game and guess who is calling before we pick up the phone （ using Caller ID would take the fun out of it ） .

How attached are you to your landline? How long until they go the way of gas street lamps and morning milk deliveries?

24. What does paragraph 2 mainly tell us about mobile phones?

A. Their target users.

B. Their wide popularity.

C. Their major functions.

D. Their complex design.

25. What does the underlined word "concede" in paragraph 3 mean?

A. Admit.

B. Argue.

C. Remember.

D. Remark.26. What can we say about Baby Boomers?

A. They like smartphone games.

B. They enjoy guessing callers’ identity.

C. They keep using landline phones.

D. They are attached to their family.

27. What can be inferred about the landline from the last paragraph?

A. It remains a family necessity.

B. It will fall out of use some day.

C. It may increase daily expenses.

D. It is as important as the gas light.

C

You’ve heard that plastic is polluting the oceans—between 4.8 and 12.7 million tonnes enter ocean ecosystems every year. But does one plastic straw or cup really make a difference? Artist Benjamin Von Wong wants you to know that it does. He builds massive sculptures out of plastic garbage, foreing viewers to re-examine their relationship to single-use plastic products.

At the beginning of the year, the artist built a piece called “ Strawpocalypse, ” a pair of 10-foot-tall plastic waves, frozen mid-crash. Made of 168,000 plastic straws collected from several volunteer beach cleanups, the sculpture made its first appearance at the Estella Place shopping center in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Just 9% of global plastic waste is recycled. Plastic straws are by no means the biggest source ( 来源 )of plastic pollution, but they’ve recently come under fire because most people don’t need them to drink with and, because of their small size and weight, they cannot be recycled. Every straw that' s part of Von Wong's artwork likely came from a drink that someone used for only a few minutes. Once the drink is gone, the straw will take centuries to disappear.

In a piece from 2018, Von Wong wanted to illustrate ( 说明 ) a specific statistic: Every 60 seconds, a truckload's worth of plastic enters the ocean. For this work, titled "Truckload of Plastic, "Von Wong and a group of volunteers collected more than 10,000 pieces of plastic, which were then tied together to look like they’d been dumped( 倾倒 )from a truck all at once.

Von Wong hopes that his work will also help pressure big companies to reduce

their plastic footprint.

28. What are Von Wong’s artworks intended for?

A. Beautifying the city he lives in.

B. Introducing eco-friendly products.

C. Drawing public attention to plastic waste.

D. Reducing garbage on the beach.

29. Why does the author discuss plastic straws in paragraph 3?

A. To show the difficulty of their recycling.

B. To explain why they are useful.

C. To voice his views on modern art.

D. To find a substitute for them.

30. What effect would "Truckload of Plastic" have on viewers?

A. Calming.

B. Disturbing

C Refreshing

D. Challenging.

31. Which of the following can be the best title for the text?

A. Artists' Opinions on Plastic Safety

B. Media Interest in Contemporary ArtC. Responsibility Demanded of Big Companies

D. Ocean Plastics Transformed into Sculptures

D

During an interview for one of my books, my interviewer said something I still think about often. Annoyed by the level of distraction( 干扰 )in his open office, he said, “That’s why I have a membership at the coworking space across the street — so I can focus. "His comment struck me as strange. After all, coworking spaces also typically use an openoffice layout ( 布局 ). But I recently came across a study that shows why his approach works .

The researchers examined various levels of noise on participants as they completed tests of creative thinking. They were randomly divided into four groups and exposed to various noise levels in the background, from total silence to 50 decibels( 分贝 ),70 decibels, and 85 decibels. The differences between most of the groups were statistically insignificant; however,the participants in the 70 decibels group — those exposed to a level of noise similar to background chatter in a coffee shop-significantly outperformed the other groups. Since the effects were small, this may suggest that our creative thinking does not differ that much in response to total silence and 85 decibels of background noise.

But since the results at 70 decibels were significant, the study also suggests that the right level of background noise — not too loud and not total silence — may actually improve one’s creative thinking ability. The right level of background noise may interrupt our normal patterns of thinking just enough to allow our imaginations to wander, without making it impossible to focus. This kind of "distracted focus" appears to be the best state for working on creative tasks.

So why do so many of us hate our open offices? The problem may be that, in our offices, we can't stop ourselves from getting drawn into others’ conversations while we’re trying to focus. Indeed, the researchers found that face-to-face interactions and conversations affect the creative process, and yet a coworking space or a coffee shop provides a certain level of noise while also providing freedom from interruptions.

32. Why does the interviewer prefer a coworking space?

A. It helps him concentrate.

B. It blocks out background noise.

C. It has a pleasant atmosphere.

D. It encourages face-to-face interactions.

33. Which level of background noise may promote creative thinking ability?

A. Total silence.

B. 50 decibels.

C. 70 decibels.

D. 85 decibels.

34. What makes an open office unwelcome to many people?

A. Personal privacy unprotected.

B. Limited working space.

C. Restrictions on group discussion.

D. Constant interruptions.

35.What can we infer about the author from the text?

A. He's a news reporter. B. He’s on office manager.

C. He's a professional designer.

D. He's a published writer.

根据短文内容，从短文后的选项中选出能填入空白处的最佳选项。选项中有两项

为多余选项

According to Jessica Hagy, author of How to Be Interesting, it's not difficult to make yourself interesting at a dinner party.

___36___, if you're out of your comfort zone or if you're wandering into somebody's house for the first time. So the main thing is just to show up and be adventurous, trying different foods and talking to strangers.

People love to talk about themselves. If you can start the conversation with a question other than “What do you do for a living?", you'll be able to get a lot more interesting conversation out of whomever it is you're talking to. ____37 ___. it can bring in "I have this old, broken-down vehicle" or "I rode the bus with these crazy people who were laughing at silly jokes in the back." It just opens up conversation.

____38___? If you can't take their wine away, you should certainly try to take away

their soapbox （讲台） .If you're the host, you can ask them to help you in the kitchen

with something and just remove them from the situation.___39_____

And what about that other dinner-party killer: awkward silence? If you're faced with

an awkward silence at a dinner party, the only thing that always gets everyone talking again is to give the host a compliment ( 赞扬 ).__40___. Just quickly tun around and say, "This cake is extremely delicious and you have to tell me all about it.”

So being interesting at a dinner party isn’t that hard.

A. How do you know the host

B. The first step is to go exploring

C. If you ask the question "How did you get here?',

D. Be prepared to have awkward conversations with strangers

E. Or turn the conversation into a topic where they have little to say

F. What about that person who has had too much to drink or won't stop talking

G. He or she is the person who is feeling the weight of that awkwardness the most

阅读下面短文，从短文后各题所给的 A 、 B 、 C 和 D 四个选项中，选出可以填入

空白处的最佳选项。

Simply saying thank you doesn't seem enough in certain situations. I was considering

this while working as a ___41__ Just a few weeks ago. And it came to me then how much easier it would be if we had a range of words that express different ____42___ of gratitude ( 感谢 ).

My thoughts were soon ___43___. We had a woman patient who was ___44____ from

a knee replacement operation. One afternoon, while __45___to get into bed she collapsed ( 倒下 ) from what was ____46_____ discovered to be a heart attack. The collapse was disastrous, ___47____ the emergency medical team and good teamwork. But she recovered, though ___48___ ,and was ready for discharge ( 出院 )after four weeks.

She was __49____ for everything that the medical and nursing team had done for her. On her day of discharge, we shared in her ___50____ at her recovery. As she was ____51___ she was eager to say___52____ to each of us in the nursing team. When she ___53______ one nurse, she tried to press a five-pound note into her hand. My colleague ____54___ to accept it, saying that we were all just ___55___ our job. The patient looked puzzled, and then____56____: "Oh this isn't for the ___57___ I had. I take that as a ____58____. No, this is for setting my hair yesterday.''

And there you have it. To many people, ___59____lives is part of the job but

styling hair is an ___60____ and should be rewarded.

41. A. cleaner B. chemist C. nurse D. doctor

42. A. grades B. meanings C. needs D. expectations

43. A. brushed aside B. put to the test C. brought under discussion D.taken into account

44. A. departing B. escaping C. retiring D. recovering

45. A. attempting B. choosing C. pausing D. promising

46. A. eventually B. fortunately C. casually D. secretly

47. A. assessing B. requiring C. forming D. proving

48. A. slightly B. accidentally C. slowly D. happily

49. A. grateful B. thoughtful C. sorrowful D. fearful

50. A. surprise B. delight C. curiosity D.disappointment

51.A. operating B. thinking C. hesitating D. leaving

52.A. sorry B. hello C. goodbye D.yes

53.A. reached B. consulted C. introduced D. persuaded

54.A. wished B. pretended C. failed D. refused

55.A. enjoying B. doing C. securing D. starting

56.A. repeated B. recited C. replied D. reported

57.A. courage B. patience C. duty D. care

58.A. goal B. given C. push D. greeting

59. A. risking B.changing C. saving D. building

60.A. honour B. ability C. opening D. extra