A 17-year-old boy, caught sending text messages in class, was recently sent to the vice principal's office at Millwood High School in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The vice principal, Steve Gallagher, told the boy he needed to focus on the teacher, not his cellphone. The boy listened politely and nodded, and that's when Mr. Gallagher noticed the student's fingers moving on his lap. He was texting while being scolded for texting. “It was a subconscious act,” says Mr. Gallagher, who took the phone away. “Young people today are connected socially from the moment they open their eyes in the morning until they close their eyes at night. It's compulsive.”

    A study this year by psychology students at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Ga., found that the more time young people spend on Facebook, the more likely they are to have lower grades and weaker study habits. Heavy Facebook users show signs of being more sociable, but they are also more likely to be anxious, hostile or depressed. (Doctors, meanwhile, are now blaming addictions to 'night texting' for disturbing the sleep patterns of teens.)

    Almost a quarter of today's teens check Facebook more than 10 times a day, according to a 2009 survey by Common Sense Media, a nonprofit group that monitors media's impact on families. Will these young people get rid of this habit once they enter the work force, or will employers come to see texting and 'social-network checking' as accepted parts of the workday?

    Think back. When today's older workers were in their 20s, they might have taken a break on the job to call friends and make after-work plans. In those earlier eras, companies discouraged non-business-related calls, and someone who made personal calls all day risked being fired. It was impossible to imagine the constant back-and-forth texting that defines interactions among young people today.

    Educators are also being asked by parents, students and educational strategists to reconsider their rules. “In past generations, students got in trouble for passing notes in class. Now students are skilled at texting with their phones still in their pockets,” says 40-year-old Mr. Gallagher, the vice principal, “and they're able to communicate with someone one floor down and three rows over. Students are just fundamentally different today. They will take suspensions rather than give up their phones.”

Oxford English Language Center

Information for New Students

    CLASS TIME：8:30a. m. —10:00a. m.，10:30a. m. —12:00a. m.，1:30p. m. —3:00p. m..

    The Language Center is open Monday to Friday. Each class has one afternoon free per week. On the first day, go to the lecture hall to check your timetable.

    SELF—ACCESS：The language laboratory（Room 1110）is open Monday to Friday from 3:15p. m. to 5:00p. m. for all full-time students.

    You can learn how to use computers for language games or word-processing. There are tapes for students to borrow to practice their English. Go in and ask the teacher to show you. If you plan to take public examinations, there are dictation and listening comprehension tapes for you to practice with. There are cloze exercises on the computers. Ask your class teacher for a list of past exam essays. Students can borrow tapes to take home but they must be returned after two days.

    ATTENDANCE: All students are expected to attend classes as it is required. Students who do not attend classes will be reported to OSS. Eighty percent attendance is required for students to receive their certificates when they finish their courses. It is also required by OSS for an extension to your visa.

    BOOKS: If students are given course books, the books are their responsibility. If a book is lost, the student will be expected to pay for it. If students wish to buy books, there is a bookshop in the college specializing in English books（Room 3520.

根据短文内容，选择最佳答案，并将选定答案的字母标号填在题前括号内。

    On 29 May last year, I was doing my swim training for a half Ironman race in the bay near my home.

    I was finishing my first loop (圈) when I felt jaws coming around my body and a sharp pain. The water was dark, so I couldn't see anything. It just came out of nowhere and then it was gone in a flash. I knew it was something really big and assumed it was a shark. I panicked, but knew I needed to get out of the water. I was kicking wildly in case it came back. There was a lifeguard boat close by, so I waved my arms in the air and screamed for help. It got to me within 20 seconds. At that point I didn't feel anything; adrenaline (肾上腺素) had taken over. The lifeguards held me under the arms and pulled me up out of the water. Then the pain kicked in and it was pretty hard to bear. Some muscle had been bitten off my right arm. I felt a lot of warm, gushing blood.

    My chest felt heavy, as if someone had put their foot on it, and I was having trouble breathing. It was extremely painful. When I got to the hospital, I told the nurses to put me to sleep because of the pain. I just wanted them to fix me.

    I woke up after surgery four hours later. My doctor was amazed when I managed to move my fingers: the bite just missed a major nerve. My right lung had been damaged; I had several broken bones and a nerve in my leg was cut, so I have reduced feeling at the top of my leg. The shark also bit through my upper back muscle.

    Local experts determined that the shark was probably 9-10 feet long. It was young, about seven years old. It just attacked me, left and didn't come back because it figured I wasn't food.

根据短文内容，选择最佳答案，并将选定答案的字母标号填在题前括号内。

    One of the problems with passwords (密码) is that users forget them. In an effort to remember them, people use simple things like their dog's names and their birth dates — anything that will give them a clue to remember what their passwords are. But for a hacker(黑客), this is the same as locking your door and leaving the key under the doormat(门口地垫).

    To create a safe password that is easy to remember, follow these simple steps:

    You should never use personal information as part of your password. It is very easy for someone to guess things like your last name and your pet's name.

    With the help of today's computing power, it doesn't take long to try every word in the dictionary and find your password, so you'd better not use real words for your password.

    You can make a password much safer by mixing different types of characters. Use some capital letters along with small letters, numbers and even special characters such as & and %.

    In order not to create a password using different character types that is hard to remember or using a word from the dictionary, you can use a "passphrase(代码)". Think of a sentence from a song or a poem that you like and create a password using the first letters from each word. For example, instead of just setting a password like "yr$1Hes", you can take a sentence such as "I like to read the about.com Internet network security website" and make it a password like "il2rta!nsw" by using the number "2" for the word "to" and using "!" in place of "Internet". You can use many characters types and create a safe password that is hard to guess, but much easier for you to remember.

    For many, music is as important to the human experience as eating and breathing. We hear music everywhere—at home, the gym, parties and stores. But what kind of music do we prefer to listen to, and when and why do our musical preferences change?

    The relationship between the change of seasons and musical preferences was the focus of a study led by psychologist Terry Pettijohn. He and his team based their research on a previous study that examined the relationship between popular music preferences and the Environmental Security Hypothesis(假设). The results showed that over time, when social and financial conditions were more risky, the songs of the year that were slower, longer, more comforting and serious were most popular. And during periods in which social and financial conditions were generally stable, the result was opposite.

    Building on these findings, Pettijohn and his team wondered if the Hypothesis could also be applied to the change of seasons. For college students, the participants in this study, autumn begins at the start of the school year. Gone are the carefree days of summer, when school is out. Winter means colder temperatures, shorter days, and, in many places in the country, snow. Spring, however, is a different story. It represents a fresh start and when clocks spring forward, we gain an extra hour of daylight. As students walk into summer, they're absorbed in the sunshine and social activities—and enjoy a break from school.

    But do changing seasonal conditions influence musical preferences? To answer this question, the researchers designed two studies. What did they find? Both groups of college students favored more serious music during the seasons of fall and winter, and more active and energetic music during the spring and summer seasons. And these findings, Pettijohn argues, have practical significances.

    There was a lot of news related to artificial intelligence, or AI, and machine learning. Among the stories were two dealing with direct competitions between humans and machines.

    In one competition, machines that used AI performed better than human beings in a high-level reading test. Two natural language processing tools beat human in the experiment. One of the tools was built by the American technology company Microsoft. The other was created by Chinese online seller Alibaba Group.

    In another competition, a computer took on humans in live, public debates.

    The event demonstrated how AI-powered computers are increasingly being developed to think ' and sound like humans. The organizer of the debates, U. S. technology company IBM, announced split results. It said a majority of those watching said they felt the machine had done more to improve their knowledge of the subject. But, the human got more praise for communicating their ideas.

    This year, we also explored the many ways AI and machine learning are now being used. For example, some U. S. judges use machine learning systems to help them decide when, and for how long, criminals should be jailed. The system uses computers to examine data from thousands of court cases.

    One fast-growing area of AI is facial recognition, which is increasingly being used for security purposes. Recently, Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson airport became the first in the U. S. to permit passengers to use facial recognition technology to get on flights. A Chinese company showed off an AI system it developed to recognize individuals by body shape and walking movements. The system is already being used by Chinese police in Beijing and Shanghai.

    In addition, machine learning was used during 2018 to predict results of the World Cup soccer competition. The technology also created artwork that sold for a large amount of money. And it is being used to help farmer save time and money, while reducing environment-harming chemicals. Other technology systems are being used to follow farm animals and wildlife to collect information on their activities.