【推荐1】There are as many kinds of careers as there are people. They vary greatly in the type of work involved(涉及) and in the ways they influence a person's life. The kind of career you have can affect your life in many ways. By making wise decisions concerning your career, you can help yourself build the life you want. To do that, you need as much information as possible. The more you know about yourself, the better able you will be to choose a satisfying career.

What do people hope to obtain from a career? Some people desire a high income. Some hope for fame. Others seek for adventure. Still others intend to serve people and make the world a better place. Before you begin to explore career fields, you should determine your values, your interests, and your aptitudes that will make you competent for your future work. Most people are happiest in jobs that fit their values, interests, and skills. Each person has many values, which vary in strength. For example, money is the strongest value for some people—that is, wealth is more important to them than anything else. As a result, they focus their thoughts, behaviour, and emotions on the goal of earning a high income. Other values include devoting to religion, taking risks, spending time with family, and helping others.

Before making a career decision, you can ask yourself what is most important to you and examine your beliefs to better know your values. For example, is it important to you to work as a member of a team? Or would you rather be in charge or work alone? If working alone or being in charge is important to you, independence is probably one of your primary values.

1. How can we make a wise career decision?

A．We learn more about ourselves.

B．We stick to our beliefs more firmly.

C．We change our interests more often.

D．We find more career opportunities.

2. According to the writer, what should a satisfying career focus on?

A．Bringing huge wealth.	B．Meeting inner demands.
C．Developing interests and skills.	D．Contributing to forming values.

3. What does the writer convey to us in the last paragraph?

A．The contents of our values.	B．The foundations of our values.
C．The places to achieve our values.	D．The ways to understand our values.

【推荐2】The 2021 Nobel Economics Prize has been awarded to Robert Wilson and Paul Milgrom for their work in analyzing auctions and how to make them more efficient.

At the heart of the work for which Milgrom and Wilson have been awarded is the winner’s curse.    1    . An example might be the right to mine a certain area for gold. If no gold is found, the right will be worthless; but if there turns out to be a lot of gold, it will be valuable. Different bidders may have different opinions about how much hold is on the site. The more optimistic they are, the more they will be willing to bid. The most optimistic bid will win. But the true value is likely to turn out much closer to the average rather than the highest valuation, so winning bidders are likely to overpay.

Wilson’s work has shown that the fear of the winner's curse leads rational bidders to bid less than the own valuation.    2    . Their final price will therefore be lower.

Milgrom built on this to examine the case of auctions where there is not only a common value but also a private value that differs between bidders. In focusing again on the winner’s curse, Milgrom determined that English-style auctions, where the price starts low and is bid upward, are better at avoiding the winner's curse than Dutch-style auctions — where the price starts high and is bid downward. This is because bidders gain more information about an item's value during an English-style auction, as other bidders drop out.    3    .

How have such insights help society? For one thing, Milgrom and Wilson developed the Simultaneous Multiple Round Auction (SMRA). In these auctions, all biddable items are offered at the same time and bidders can bid on any portion of the items. The SMRA is useful, for example, if a company wants to bid for a license in one area only if it can also have the license in another area.    4    . Running auctions simultaneously allows governments to maximize the prices of valuable assets.    5    

A．If the auctions were held sequentially, the uncertainty about winning the second auction would depress bids in the first auction.

B．It arises from common value auctions where people bid for something whose value is unknown at the time but will be agreed upon later.

C．From determining the placement of every ad on a webpage to assigning the rights to fly to hub airports, auctions play a big role in contemporary society.

D．Greater uncertainty or the belief that some participants have more information than others will make bidders even more cautious.

E．He found that more details about the object's value, such as other bidders’ valuations, tend to result in higher revenue.

F．This year’s Nobel Economics Prize is a clear example of the practical effects on the interests of the public.

G．This gives governments more money to spend on public services like health and education.

【推荐3】Picture this: You’re searching the Internet and come across a website with interesting articles. Some are news stories. Their goal is to share information. Others only look like news stories. They’re actually advertisements, or ads. The goal of an ad is to get you to buy something. How do you, the reader, tell the difference between a news story and an ad?

Back when I was growing up, it was easier. We got most of our information from newspapers. Big news stories appeared on the front page, and ads were boxed off and clearly labeled. But on the Internet, the two are often presented together. It can be hard to tell which is which.

That’s why the research group I direct conducted a study. My research team showed kids like you the home page of a popular digital magazine. We asked them to tell us what was a news story and what was an ad. Most were great at identifying certain types   of ads. “It has a coupon code, a big company logo, and the words limited time offer,” one student wrote about an ad on the site. So where did kids get stumped?

Some ads seem the same as real news stories. They have headlines and contain information. But they may also include the words sponsored content. Sponsored means “paid for,” and content refers to the information in the story. “Sponsored content” is a way of saying that something is an ad. Most kids in our study, even if they used the Internet often, didn’t know this.

Just because something is sponsored doesn’t necessarily mean it’s false. It means someone paid money for it to appear. Companies pay so that readers will see their stories, buy their products, and like what the company stands for.

As a reader, you have a right to know who’s behind the information you’re consuming. So look for the phrase sponsored content. (And look carefully. Sometimes, it will be written in tiny letters.) The Internet is a vast sea of information. To use it well, we not only have to know how to swim but also how to avoid the sharks. Learning to tell the difference between an ad and a news story is an important step to becoming Internet smart.

1. The purpose of the first paragraph is to ______.

A．tell the difference between a news story and an ad

B．criticize the websites for too many ads on them

C．show the writer’s preference for newspapers

D．make readers interested and involved in what is going to be talked about

2. Sponsored content means ______.

A．the website gets paid for allowing something to appear on it

B．something is false

C．something isn’t necessarily an ad

D．readers have to buy the products advertised on the website

3. What does “sharks” in the last paragraph refer to?

A．Fierce sea animals.

B．Very bad people on the Internet.

C．Unwanted information.

D．Websites which contain ads.

4. Which is the best title?

A．Watch Out for Traps on the Internet

B．Make the Most of the Internet

C．Be Internet Smart

D．Be Aware of Your Rights

【推荐2】Top College Graduates Get Paid More, but do They Perform Better?

It’s generally believed that better universities attract better students and provide better training, so it makes sense to use the university rank as a predictor of employee performance. But is it a good hiring strategy? Do university rankings predict job performance? Our research suggests yes — but only to a degree.

In a recent study, we tested the relationship between the university rank and performance of graduates. We tracked the performance of 28,339 students from 294 universities that ranked from Top 10 to about top 20,000 in the Webometrics global university rankings.     1    Importantly, we captured not only the quality of the output, but a wide range of hard and soft competencies including cooperation with team members, leadership, language proficiency, technical skills, emotional intelligence, creativity, and more.

Our results offer some comfort to the traditional recruiters. After controlling for age, gender, and the year of study, we found that graduates from higher-ranked universities performed better, but only nominally and only on some dimensions of performance.

    2    The first was selection: higher-ranked universities usually can choose from a larger pool of applicants, which leads to steeper competition and a higher quality of the incoming class. Corroborating the selectivity hypothesis, our data demonstrated that students at higher-ranked universities indeed score higher on general cognitive ability tests, have more international experience, better English proficiency, and higher cultural intelligence.

Second, higher-ranked universities should provide better training. Top universities employ better instructors, offer access to better-equipped facilities, attract better speakers and guests to campus, which in turn, should lead to better training and subsequent performance.

Finally, it might be expected that higher-ranked institutions might provide a more stimulating academic environment.     3     Having notable, hardworking, celebrity-status professors, along with being around intelligent, highly-motivated, achievement-oriented peers, positively affects self-efficacy, motivation, effort, and work ethic.

Despite their slightly better overall performance, hiring graduates from higher-ranked institutions could have a downside. Our data suggest that students from higher-ranked universities might damage team cooperation, sometimes carelessly.     4     In some instances, graduates from top universities tend to be less friendly, are more prone to conflict, and are less likely to identify with their team.

A．Indeed, education is not only lectures and seminars.

B．However, our study revealed no difference in the following aspects.

C．They clearly know that interpersonal relationships at work play a critical role in career success.

D．They tend to excessively focus on the instrumental tasks, paying insufficient attention to interpersonal relationships.

E．We also found several reasons why the graduates from the top universities performed better than those from the lower-ranked schools.

F．We observed the students’ performance for two months as they were working in global virtual teams on real-life business consulting projects.

【推荐3】Communities across the world are starting to ban facial recognition technologies. The efforts are well intentioned, but banning facial recognition is the wrong way to fight against modern surveillance （监 视）.Generally, modern mass surveillance has three broad components: identification, correlation and discrimination.

Facial recognition is a technology that can be used to identify people without their consent. Once we are identified, the data about who we are and what we are doing can be correlated with other data. This might be movement data, which can be used to "follow” us as we move throughout our day. It can be purchasing data, Internet browsing data, or data about who we talk to via email or text. It might be data about our income, ethnicity, lifestyle, profession and interests. There is an entire industry of data brokers who make a living by selling our data without our consent.

It's not just that they know who we are; it's that they correlate what they know about us to create profiles about who we are and what our interests are. The whole purpose of this process is for companies to treat individuals differently. We are shown different ads on the Internet and receive different offers for credit cards. In the future, we might be treated differently when we walk into a store, just as we currently are when we visit websites.

It doesn't matter which technology is used to identify people. What's important is that we can be consistently identified over time. We might be completely anonymous （匿名的）in a system that uses unique cookies to track us as we browse the Internet, but the same process of correlation and discrimination still occurs.

Regulating this system means addressing all three steps of the process. A ban on facial recognition won't make any difference. The problem is that we are being identified without our knowledge or consent, and society needs rules about when that is permissible.

Similarly, we need rules about how our data can be combined with other data, and then bought and sold without our knowledge or consent. The data broker industry is almost entirely unregulated now. Reasonable laws would prevent the worst of their abuses.

Finally, we need better rules about when and how it is permissible for companies to discriminate. Discrimination based on protected characteristics like race and gender is already illegal, but those rules are ineffectual against the current technologies of surveillance and control. When people can be identified and their data correlated at a speed and scale previously unseen, we need new rules.

Today, facial recognition technologies are receiving the force of the tech backlash （抵制），but focusing on them misses the point. We need to have a serious conversation about all the technologies of identification, correlation and discrimination, and decide how much we want to be spied on and what sorts of influence we want them to have over our lives.

1. According to Para. 2, with facial recognition _______.

A．one’s lifestyle changes greatly

B．one's email content is disclosed

C．one's profiles are updated in time

D．one's personal information is released

2. We can learn from the passage that _______.

A．discrimination based on new tech surveillance is illegal

B．different browsing data bring in different advertisements

C．using mobiles anonymously keeps us from being correlated

D．data brokers control the current technologies of surveillance

3. The underlined part “the point^，,in the last paragraph probably refers to _______.

A．people's concern over their safety

B．the nature of the surveillance society

C．proper regulation of mass surveillance

D．the importance of identification technology

4. The author wrote this passage to _______.

A．call for banning facial recognition technologies

B．advocate the urgent need for changes in related laws

C．inform readers of the disadvantages of facial recognition

D．evaluate three broad components in modem mass surveillance

【推荐1】In some countries where racial prejudice is acute, violence has so come to be taken for granted as a means of solving differences that it is not even questioned. There are countries where the white man imposes his rule by brute force; there are countries where the black man protests by setting fire to cities and by looting and pillaging. Important people on both sides, who would in other respects appear to be reasonable men, get up and calmly argue in favor of violence --- as if it were a legitimate solution, like any other. What is really frightening, what really fills you with despair, is the realization that when it comes to the crunch（关键时刻）,we have made no actual progress at all. We may wear collars and ties instead of war-paint, but our instinct remain basically unchanged. The whole of the recorded history of the human race, that tedious documentation of violence, has taught us absolutely nothing. We have still not learned that violence never solves a problem but makes it more acute. The sheer horror, the bloodshed（流血）, the suffering mean nothing. No solution ever comes to light the morning after when we dismally contemplate the smoking ruins and wonder what hit us.

The truly reasonable men who know where the solutions lie are finding it harder and harder to get a hearing. They are despised mistrusted and even persuaded by their own kind because they advocate such apparently outrageous things as law enforcement（执行）. If half the energy that goes into violent acts were put to good use, if our efforts were directed at cleaning up the slums and ghettos, at improving living standards and providing education and employment for all, we would have gone a long way to arriving at a solution. Our strength is sapped by having to mop to the mess that violence leaves in its wake. In a well-directed effort, it would not be impossible to fulfill the ideals of a stable social programme. The benefits that can be derived from constructive solutions are everywhere apparent in the world around us. Genuine and lasting solutions are always possible, providing we work within the framework of the law.

Before we can even begin to contemplate peaceful co-existence between the races, we must appreciate each other’s problems. And to do this, we must learn about them: it is a simple exercise in communication, in exchange information. “Talk, talk, talk” the advocates of violence say, “all you ever do is talk, and we are none the wiser.” It’s rather like the story of the famous barrister who painstakingly explained his case to the judge. After listening to a lengthy argument, the judge complained that after all this talk, he was none the wiser. “Possibly, my lord,” the barrister replied, “none the wiser, but surely far better informed.” Knowledge is the necessary prerequisite to wisdom: the knowledge that violence creates the evils it pretends to solve.

1. What is the best title for this passage?

A．Advocating Violence.

B．Violence Can Do Nothing to Diminish Race Prejudice

C．Violence as a Legitimate Solution

D．Violence: The Instinet of Human Race

2. Recorded history has taught us_______.

A．violence never solves anything

B．nothing

C．the bloodshed means nothing

D．everything

3. It can be inferred that truly reasonable men________.

A．can’t get a hearing

B．are looked down upon

C．are persecuted

D．have difficulty in advocating law enforcement

4. “He was none the wiser” means_______.

A．He was not at all wise in listening

B．He was not at all wiser than nothing before

C．He gains nothing after listening

D．He makes no sense of the argument

5. According to the author, the best way to solve race prejudice is ______.

A．low enforcement	B．knowledge
C．nonviolence	D．mopping up the violent mess

【推荐2】Rumors(谣言):we’ve all heard some and we’ve all spread some. In more traditional times they shook entire families. Today, they circulate differently because the way we share information has also changed.

The fact is that rumors have great potential to upset things, whether socially or personally. We don’t enjoy being on the receiving end of one, since they usually don’t have good intentions. They are somewhat veiled(掩饰的) messages.

Normally rumors are oral messages: word of mouth. The paradox(自相矛盾) is that there is no evidence to support rumors, but the more people share it, the more they see it as true. To finish defining rumors, we think that they follow certain very clear laws. Secrecy:The source is unknown. There is also a proven phenomenon that human beings usually forget the source of a message before they forget its content. Certainty: We hardly question rumors simply because of the mental effort involved. On the other hand, no one likes to doubt a person who convinces us that the information they spread is true. Change: It acts like a tree. New rumors branch out to fill in the gaps left by the initial rumor.

Another property of rumors is that they tend to become viral. Each receiver is at the same time a potential transmitter of the information. The receiver often adds their own opinion. Their manner and tone of transmitting it also changes it.

How can we end rumors? The answer is as simple as it is impossible: preventing people from communicating. A more realistic response is equally difficult, although less than the first one. It is that we should be critical of the information we receive. We should ask ourselves if the source is reliable. Ask (if possible) the person you heard it from whether they also trust the information. We should also think about if the rumor benefits someone, and if that someone started the rumor.

One rumor to be especially cautious of is a rumor about groups relatively unable to defend themselves. That’s why we say, “history is always told by the victors.” The first payment the defeated must make is to accept the victor’s version of the story.

1. What’s the author’s attitude towards rumors?

A．Critical.	B．Positive.
C．Approving.	D．Cautious.

2. What can we learn about rumors?

A．We have all heard some and believed them.

B．We’re happy to be the receiving end of them.

C．They may have negative influence on society.

D．They often hide good intentions in the messages.

3. How are rumors like trees?

A．Rumors keep changing, just as trees change their color.

B．Rumors are deeply rooted in reality, like tree roots in the earth.

C．New rumors have gaps, like the space between tree branches.

D．New rumors grow out of the original, like branches out of a trunk.

4. What does the underlined word “viral” in Paragraph 4 probably mean?

A．Something easily spread	B．Something acceptable
C．Something easily defended.	D．Something beneficial.

5. Which of the following may the author agree with?

A．It is easy to prevent people from spreading rumors.

B．People are often active in judging the rumors critically.

C．We should think about the hidden message of the rumors.

D．Stories told by the victors are usually better worth trusting.