听下面一段较长对话，回答以下小题。

阅读理解

Each year thousands of U.S. families open their homes and hearts to student visitors from all over the world. In a homestay, students can observe, learn and experience a new lifestyle and culture, while practicing English skills in a home environment.

Successful homestay experiences can help to ease homesickness. Often students feel that they have found a second family who loves and cares for them. This experience can also help students make a smooth transition into an American university or enable them to reach a future career goal.

Hosts involve their student guests in day-to day family activities and also include them in social gatherings such as summertime barbecues, holiday celebrations, or trips to local attractions.

Homestay hosts will reflect the variety of the region in which they live. They may be single parents, retired couples, widows, or families with young children. They will come from different socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds. What they will have in common is a desire to share their homes and their time with international students.

Usually, international visitors enjoy staying with hosts who have family members of similar ages or with similar interests. The homestay coordinator will consider a student's needs, interests and requests before matching the student with a host.

Living in a homestay will always require an adjustment period. There may be simple house rules or guidelines about Internet usage, laundry, television viewing, meal times, cleanliness, and money matters.

Universities that offer homestays programs set certain standards for hosts. For example, at the University of Delaware, all hosts living more than one mile from campus must provide students with transportation to and from campus every weekday. Hosts must also provide each student with a private, furnished room and access to a shared or private bathroom.

The homestay coordinators carefully screen host applicants to make sure they have a passion for hospitality and an interest in other cultures. Coordinators will also interview and visit applicants to determine the suitability of the living space and meet the family members. Regular meetings, phone calls, and emails keep the hosts up to date in order to keep high standards of operation within the homestays.

This is often (appreciate) since at a housewarming there isn't a lot of food served.

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Protect Children from Cyber-bullying

    When you think about bullying, you might think of a child being bullied by another in the schoolyard. As more young people have access to computers and cell phones, traditional bullying has gone digital, which has not yet gained awareness in Chinese parents.

    Cyber-bullying, first invented by Canadian educator Bill Belsey, is the use of the Internet and related technologies to harm other people, in an intentional, repeated, and unfriendly manner. It involves threatening text messages, the spread of online rumors on social networking sites, and intentionally keeping someone out of an online group. Cyber-bullying is at an all-time high in the US. According to a study from the US Department of Justice, more than 43% of teenagers report being victims（受害者）of cyber-bullying.

    Compared to face-to-face bullying, cyber-bullying is considered to have a worse emotional effect on the victims, and kids could feel more desperate and depressed. Severe, long-term or frequent cyber-bullying can leave victims at greater risk for anxiety, depression, and other disorders. Research says that cyber-bullying victims were almost twice as likely to have attempted suicide compared to youths who had not experienced it.

In traditional schoolyard bullying, at least home is a safe place for the victims. But cyber-bullying is endless—it could happen anytime. Moreover, in the digital world, bullying is much easier, as a bully can pick on people with a much lower risk of being caught.

    Actually, cyber-bullying has become a worldwide issue. In the US, as several teens committed suicide because of cyber-bullying, some schools set rules to punish cyberbullies. Laws to punish cyber-bullying have been introduced in some states. In China, cyber-bullying is still considered by many parents and educators as a problem that involves physical contact. However, as cell phones and laptops are becoming common equipment for teenagers, social interactions have increasingly moved from personal contact to virtual contact. Cyber-bullying is spreading faster than expected.

    For schools and parents, safety rules should be set in the virtual world for kids, such as telling them not to let out anything to a stranger. Active steps should be taken to make the public aware of the seriousness of this problem, because it would be too late to take measures after tragedy strikes.

选词填空

A. then    B. while    C. as    D. down    AB. that    AC. but   AD. away    BC. within

The eighth chapter is exceedingly brief, and relates that Gibbons, the amateur naturalist of the district, lying out on the spacious open downs without a soul a couple of miles of him, as he thought, and almost dozing, heard close to him the sound as of a man coughing, sneezing, and swearing savagely to himself; and looking, beheld nothing. Yet the voice was indisputable. It continued to swear with that breadth and variety distinguishes the swearing of a cultivated man. It grew to a climax, diminished again, and died in the distance, going it seemed to him in the direction of Adderdean. It lifted to a spasmodic sneeze and ended. Gibbons had heard nothing of the morning's occurrences, the phenomenon was so striking and disturbing that his philosophical tranquillity vanished; he got up hastily, and hurried the steepness of the hill towards the village, as fast as he could go.

1）Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once.

2）I hope all the precautions against air pollution, suggested by local government, will be seriously considered here.

A. while         B. since           C. after              D. as

3）Writers often coupled narration with other techniques to develop ideas and support opinions that otherwise abstract, unclear, or unconvincing.

A. may remain    B. could remain    C. must have remained  D. might have remained

阅读理解

    As more and more schools rush to put digital devices（数码设备）in the hands of every student, many parents are becoming increasingly concerned about the quality of their children's education. The promise of increased student academic（学业上的）achievement through the use of technology hasn't produced any significant results in the past 20 years.

    Researchers at the University of California Los Angeles conducted a study in 2014 to determine if the social skills of elementary students were blocked by screen time. Two groups of sixth grade students were compared. One group was sent to an outdoor camp for one week with no screen time, while the control group live life as normal. After one week, the students at camp had made significant improvements over their peers（同龄人）. The good news is that when we limit access to screen time and give children the opportunity to interact face to face, they quickly become better at reading the emotional state of others. The bad news is that we have a generation of children that struggle with this basic emotional intelligence skill.

    Too much screen time has been linked to childhood obesity, sleep disorders, behavior problems, and academic challenges. But is there a difference between schoolwork and entertainment media?

    When students are using technology for academic work they are more likely to be communicating with peers, working cooperatively, and developing other important skills. However, all these are impossible when students watch entertainment media. They just sit and watch!

    Parents have right to be concerned about their children's screen time at school, but they should begin by discussing the use of digital media at home. Some parents are continuously engaged in their own devices, responding to every ring of their phones, receiving and sending messages. How can they expect their children to do better?

Some students even become (addict) to the Internet and cannot concentrate on school and family life. （所给词的适当形式填空）

The Games are known as the friendly games because of their      on kindness and mutual respect.

When a worker sustains a serious work injury, the psychological effects can persist even after one's physical injuries have h(愈合). 

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    Our planet is home to about seven billion people. Since the 1990s, population experts have predicted the number would grow to nine billion before it begins to slow down and possibly decrease.

    But a new report predicts the world's population is likely to increase to almost 11 billion by 2100. Based on the most modem statistical tools, the new report makes use of government records and considers expert predictions, including death rates, birthrates and international migration, or people moving across borders. The report says during the rest of this century, Africa's population will grow from about 3.5 billion to 5.1 billion over the next 85 years.

    John is director of the United Nations Population Division. He says that in the past, researchers thought population growth in Africa would be similar to that of other areas. They expected slower growth rates as birth control use became more widespread. But he says those ideas were wrong.

    “The level of contraception use has continued to increase but slowly — more slowly than expected, and birthrate therefore has been falling less rapidly than expected, and the population therefore continues to grow somewhat more rapidly than we expected.

    The new findings are based on a joint research project of the United Nations and the University of Washington,

    The researchers believe the population of Asia will reach five billion by 2050. That is up from the current 4.4 billion. And then begin decline. The researchers also believe that North America, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean area will have a total population of below one billion.

    John says the pressure of feeding the rising population is likely to be less than that might be expected.

    “The relatively good news is that the world has been winning the race between population growth and food production. If you look back historically over the last 50 years, certainly for the world as a whole and for many, most individual countries and regions, the increase in food production has outpaced the increase of population.”

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    Robots are increasingly being developed to think and act like humans. But it is difficult for engineers to create humor (幽默) in machines. Computer scientists have hoped to help them understand humor. But they failed again and again. Why is it so difficult?

    Kiki, a computer language expert (专家), studies humor at a university. "Most robots are powered by artificial intelligence (人工智能AI). But AI will never understand jokes like humans do." He said, "The main problem is that AI system doesn't have the sense of humor."

    Other experts agree that context (语境) is very important to understand humor, both for humans and robots. In one project, Tristan Miller, a computer scientist, studied more than 10, 000 puns. Puns are a kind of joke that uses a word with two meanings. For example, you could say, "Balloons (气球) do not like pop music." The word "pop" can be a way of saying popular music, or "pop" can be the sound a balloon makes when it explodes(爆炸). "A robot might not understand the joke because it doesn't know the meaning of the puns." Miller said.

    Although it's difficult, some scientists say there are good reasons to keep trying to teach humor to robots. It can make machines understand humans better and serve humans better. And it can also help them to think more like humans.

    But other scientists don't think it's a good idea to teach humor to robots. They may find humor, but they may use it in a wrong way. Maybe bad Al will start killing people because it thinks it is funny. Besides, it may make some people feel not safe. The comedians(喜剧演员) may lose their jobs when the robots can understand humor.

He realized how much he loved his parents only then. (变为倒装句)

This was a courageous decision,         all the board members of the company opposed.