Recently, I read about a promotion from a home builder in San Diego where consumers (消费者) could buy a 4,000 square foot house for $1.6 million and get a smaller home by the developer valued at $400 thousand for free. This sounds like a fantastic deal, but I am always wary of any promotion labeled (给……加标签) with“buy one get one free”, and here is why.
Oftentimes, “buy one get one free” ends up being “buy two at the regular price”. For example, I often see “buy one get one free” ads for orange juice at the supermarket, but the first box always costs over $5.00. At the same time, the juices not in the promotion are selling for $2.50 to $2.99 a box.
Another problem with “buy one get one free” is that oftentimes you do not need the second item. I only consume one gallon of milk every two weeks. If I were talked into buying a second gallon in a “buy one get one free” promotion, then the second gallon would go bad before I have time to consume it. That creates waste instead of savings.
In the case of the San Diego developer, so far they have received one offer on their expensive houses, but the buyer does not want the cheaper house for free. Instead, he wants the value of the smaller home taken away from his purchase price. I think this guy is quite wise because he saw right through the marketing of “buy one get one free”.
Finally, it is up to you to see how much you need and how much you are willing to spend. Knowing the regular price of things also helps you in deciding whether a “buy one get one free” promotion is truly a great deal.
1. What does the underlined part “wary of” in Paragraph 1 probably mean?| A．annoyed at | B．careful about | C．familiar with | D．puzzled about |
| A．To show that there are many promotions of food. |
| B．To suggest that people think twice before they shop. |
| C．To prove that the second item isn’t always as good as the first one. |
| D．To show that people often buy more than they need in the promotion. |
| A．Buy the smaller house only. |
| B．Get the smaller house for free. |
| C．Buy the larger house for $1.2 million. |
| D．Buy both the larger and smaller houses for $2 million. |
A． | B． | C． | D． |
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【推荐1】The word addiction usually makes you think of alcohol or drugs, but in modern-day society we are seeing some new kinds of addictions. Some people are compulsive (难以自制的) shoppers. Others find it impossible to pull themselves away from their work.
Over the years, shopping has become a very common activity. Many people enjoy going to malls or stores more and more every day, but it’s more than a common hobby for some of them. They have turned into shopaholics.
| A．Shopaholism seems to be a harmless addiction, but it can result in many problems. |
| B．Still others spend countless hours watching TV or playing computer games. |
| C．They are people who simply enjoy shopping and walking around spending money without being able to stop doing it. |
| D．The question is: why do they have this addiction? |
| E．It can also cause financial problems. |
| F．Accordingly, these shopaholics should turn to a certain organization for help so that they can stop compulsive shopping. |
| G．Here are some ways to help you deal with shopping addiction. |
【推荐2】Although his 1-year-old smartphone still works perfectly, Li Jijia already feels the need to replace it. “There are many better ones available now. It’s time to upgrade (升级) my phone.”
Li’s impatience is shared by many. Shortly after the season when new products are released (发布), many consumers feel the urge to upgrade their electronic equipment, even though the ones they have still work just fine.
As consumers’ minds are occupied by Apple’s newly-released products and they debate whether the Google tablet is better than the new Amazon Kindle, it might be time to take a step back and ask: “Do we really need the latest upgrades?”
According to Donald Norman, an American author, “planned obsolescence (淘汰)” is the trick behind the upgrading culture of today’s consumer electronics industry.
Electronics producers strategically (战略性地) release new upgrades periodically, for both hardware and software, so that customers at every level feel the need to buy the newest version.
“This is an old-time trick — they’re not inventing anything new,” Norman said. “This is a wasteful system through which companies — many of them producing personal electronics — release poor-quality products simply because they know that, in six months or a year, they’ll put out a new one.”
But the new psychology of consumers is part of this system, as Norman admitted, “We now want something new, something pretty, the next shiny thing.” In its most recent year, Apple’s profit margin (利润) was more than 21 percent. At Hewlett-Packard, the world’s biggest PC maker, it was only 7 percent.
Apple’s annual upgrades of its products create sales of millions of units as owners of one year’s MacBook or iPhone line up to buy the newest version, even when the changes are slight.
As to Li Jijia, the need for upgrading his smartphone comes mainly from friends and classmates. When they are switching to the latest equipment, he worries about feeling left out.
“Some games require better hardware to run,” said Li. “If you don’t join in, you will lose part of the connection with your friends.”
1. What’s the author’s attitude towards people’s greed for new products?| A．Supportive. | B．Satisfied. |
| C．Critical. | D．Unclear. |
| A．They make a fool of customers by recycling their old products. |
| B．They make full use of the “planned obsolescence” strategy. |
| C．They control the customers’ way of thinking while shopping. |
| D．They invent new products to attract the youth like Li Jijia. |
| A．To provide customers with better service. |
| B．To defeat other competitors like Hewlett-Packard. |
| C．To establish a favorable image of itself among its customers. |
| D．To make huge profits (利润) out of its business. |
【推荐3】A shop wholly run by a robot has been set up in downtown Tokyo, capital of Japan. The shop was set up by a Japan-based company.
When a customer comes to the shop, he will be given a pencil and a piece of paper. When he is looking at the shelves for goods, he can write down the number of each thing he wants to buy. Then he may come to a machine, which looks like a bank ATM (Automatic Teller Machine), and press the buttons to tell the machine the numbers and some other information about the goods. The machine will soon give the customer a bill. When the customer puts money into the machine, change will be given back at once, and the words “Thank You for Coming” will appear on the screen of the machine. The robot will select the ordered goods for the customer according to computer center information. The robot, as round as a bucket, is able to decide the weight and size of any goods. It will always take the bigger and heavier goods first before picking up the smaller and lighter ones such as cakes or biscuits. Within half a minute, the robot will make everything ready, and wait for a customer at a certain delivery place. The shop is to meet the needs of the public for the socalled “silent purchase”. It means that a customer can do shopping through mail or even an international computer network without facing the shop owner. This will reduce the cost on the part of the shop, and thus lower the price of goods for the customer. The robot now can deal with most goods in a fast and easy way. Only when dealing with those goods needing special care will the robot ask for help.
1. When you want to buy something in the robot shop, first you have to .| A．put money into the machine |
| B．press the buttons of the machine and tell it what you want to buy |
| C．find out what you want to buy and write down the numbers on paper |
| D．go into the shop and select the goods you want with the help of the machine |
| A．the shop has a great future | B．customers often get false goods |
| C．few customers go there to buy goods | D．the shop will close down soon |
| A．May I Help You? | B．Welcome to Our Shop. |
| C．Robot Shop. | D．Nobody Sells Goods in the Shop. |
| A．not all the work in the shop can be done by the robot |
| B．the robot has already taken the place of human shop assistants in Japan |
| C．the robot has brought great convenience to the people of Japan |
| D．customers are very satisfied with the robot’s service |
【推荐1】“The really frightening thing about middle age,” the actor Doris Day is said to have joked, “is that you know you'll grow out of it.” We may bravely try to claim that life begins at 40- but for many people，it can feel more like the beginning of the end.
Mid life wasn't always seen this way. It isn't clear why we have a more negative view today, but Margie Lachman, director of the lifespan development lab at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, suggests it may be linked to the pressures that begin piling up in our 30s. “Midlife is a period of high stress today, more so than in the past,” she says. “One is exactly in the middle of work and family careers. This can affect one's ability to focus on one's own well-being.”
There are, however, many reasons to feel positive about this crucial period. In a series of experiments, Laura Germine at Harvard Medical School has tested tens of thousands of people to examine the differences in cognitive abilities between age groups. Germine's studies have included the famous “mind in the eyes” test, for instance, which gets people to infer emotional states from small differences in facial expressions. She found that people in their late 40s scored highest. This may be due to practice, she suggests. “When you think about the amount of social differences that one has to learn across the lifespan- that's where we think that comes from.”
Germine found similar patterns in a task demanding continuous attention. In this, the participants had to watch different scenes fade into one another and adapt their response according to what they saw-pressing a button when they saw a city and releasing it when they saw a mountain. 40-somethings found it much easier to “get into the zone” than younger people.
It is interesting to note that middle-aged people frequently bring in the most supplies in traditional hunter-gatherer societies. According to various studies, hunter-gatherers often take decades to learn their skills, and these abilities continue to grow into their 40s.
There are some downsides to hitting this age, of course. Our skin tends to become loose and our body fat starts to be redistributed around the midriff. But after a drop in life satisfaction, happiness is already set to rise at the end of this decade and the beginning of the next.
Contrary to popular opinion, humans seem to have evolved to flourish into middle age and beyond.
1. What can we infer from the first paragraph?| A．Doris Day felt excited in her 40s. | B．It's believed that life begins at 40. |
| C．Lots of people feel worried at 40. | D．We are supposed to be braver at 40. |
| A．People in their 40s attach more importance to their well-being. |
| B．There seem to be reasons for us to be optimistic about middle age. |
| C．The participants in their 40s did badly in Germine's experiments. |
| D．Humans' physical appearance definitely gets worse in their 40s. |
| A．Succeed | B．Panic | C．Calm | D．Decline |
| A．A textbook | B．An art review. |
| C．A science magazine. | D．A biography. |
【推荐2】We lead very busy lives and we too easily forget how hard it was for us to focus on homework when we were in school. Now that we have jobs to do, food to buy and cook and other errands(差事) to run, even I sometimes think it would be a welcome change to have to sit down and quietly read and write with no distractions. But, in case you don’t remember - homework is pretty much every child’s least favorite thing to do. In the age of Netflix, Snapchat and wifi, the distractions are almost endless. It can sometimes almost be too hard to even keep up with all the new tech advances our kids are using, so how can we make sure that those advances take a back seat to our children’s education? Here are some ideas.
There’s no point in stopping the reality that young people are going to focus on their phones and tablets instead of other things at times. Your best way is to accept, actually the tech sector continues to be the most profitable and fast-growing industries and that’s unlikely to change fast. There are ways to use technology to help your kid do homework. Ask your teacher and school staff what apps and websites they’re using to teach lessons and supplements(补充) them with at-home activities as well.
Even though technology has changed, the basics haven’t. If you want to read, write and think properly, you need to have peace and quiet and the ability to focus, right? Well, your kids are just the same.Try and find a space in your home to enable your kids to do work away from televisions, the Internet or other distractions. Let me be clear: this shouldn’t be a prison.I feel like I’m my most productive working alone in an office or at a busy cafe with my headphones on. Getting lost in other realities helps my creativity grow. Placing kids in isolation(独处) can often have a harmful effect and doesn’t always equal being more productive.
I feel like “getting engaged( 参 与 )” is always a big part of my advice for parents on just about everything. How can you make sure your children are being successful if you have no idea what they’re doing? How can you be sure they’re doing it right if you don’t know what is the correct answer? What do they need? You should be in touch with their teachers, have a sense of where the lessons are going, what kinds of tasks are being given and what success looks like in the classroom.
Knowing all of that is key to your child’s success, especially when matched with some encouraging praise and helpful tips on how he can keep going. Thinking about how your child is best motivated(激励) by other things and using those methods here reasonably isn’t a bad idea.
And if by chance you’re having trouble solving that Math problems or understanding a sentence, don’t fear – you’re not alone. Use the school staff, other parents or friends as your support. Better to seek help than do nothing.
We all know that homework isn’t exactly the most entertaining way anyone spends their time. And sometimes we can’t help but feel that since we left school, we’re done with homework forever. But the circle of life plays out in all times and it’s up to us to make sure that we pass on the lessons we’ve picked up and that while homework might seem dull, it’s how we build skills, learn real lessons and get on the road to greatness. That greatness is on the inside, it’s up to us as adults to enable the young people to bring it out. The key to achieving greatness is to take a lifelong learning.
1. What is the author’s attitude towards new tech?| A．It affects parents’ everyday life. |
| B．It should be kept out of children’s reach. |
| C．It can benefit student’s education. |
| D．It makes homework easier. |
| A．Homework should be made entertaining. |
| B．Parents should know what motivates their children best. |
| C．Students should do their homework independently. |
| D．School staff should help parents on new tech. |
| A．must be better at all the lessons |
| B．needn’t make sure that their children are being successful |
| C．can teach their children by themselves |
| D．should know as much as possible about it |
| A．Children should achieve greatness on their own. |
| B．Parents and their children should learn from each other. |
| C．Children can hardly succeed without parents’ efforts. |
| D．Parents can only obtain skills by helping their children. |
| A．Education | B．Health | C．Technology | D．Science |
【推荐3】Many people believe that you lose the ability to learn new languages as you get older. Language experts, however, will tell you that you're never too old to learn a new language. As you get older, it can be more difficult to learn a new language, though.
Children and adults learn new languages in different ways. For children, language is their life. They study for thousands of hours every year, because they need to learn languages to become part of their communities. Adults, on the other hand, are already part of a language community. Learning a new language means becoming part of another language community, and adults rarely get the chance to practise as much as young children do.
Moreover, children learning a new language are expected to make mistakes. This gives them freedom when learning to be daring and confident. Adults, however, often feel pressured to be perfect when learning a new language. This can discourage many people and make it even harder to learn a new language.
When young children learn a new language, they come to see various languages as a “normal” part of society. This mindset helps them embrace learning a new language without feeling like they're doing something unusual or “too hard”．
So if you want to learn a new language, go for it! It's never too late to learn a new language. If you're older, it may take more work, but it can be done. If you're a young child, though, now is the time to step out and learn a new language!
1. By saying “language is their life” in Paragraph 2, the author means that children ________．| A．can't live without language | B．lead a happy life every day |
| C．practise a new language a lot | D．are taken good care of by adults |
| A．They are afraid of being laughed at. | B．They usually have too many interests. |
| C．They think making mistakes is natural. | D．They always make different kinds of mistakes. |
| A．The behaviour they have. | B．The learning attitudes. |
| C．The future plans they have made. | D．The materials they are using. |
| A．can never be learnt by the old people | B．can be grasped by the old people easily |
| C．can be understood only by the old people | D．can be learnt by both the old and the young |
