【推荐2】Danone Portugal introduced a new yogurt named Juntos. For every pack of yogurt that a person bought, he would donate yogurt to a family in need. Danone had done its research. Increasingly, people say they want to buy from brands that give them a sense of purpose. Surely a yogurt that helped the needy would be appealing. But Juntos was a failure. Despite sinking millions into a marketing campaign, Danone pulled Juntos from the market only months after it was launched. Now the same product is simply marketed as a tasty yogurt.

What happened? To find the reason behind Juntos’ failure, Lawrence Williams and his colleagues did an experiment where they showed people some products and asked these people to pick one option. They reminded some to focus on the “purposeful and valuable” aspect while others were told to “enjoy themselves” and focus on “delight and pleasure.” They found that participants who prioritized meaning preferred the less expensive product when compared with people who put pleasure in the first place.

So why were meaning-seekers cheaping out? Lawrence Williams asked participants to explain their decision-making to find out. He learned that meaning-oriented people were not thinking about how the product they might buy could bring meaning to their lives. Instead, they were occupied with what else they could do with their money.

I am all for people making wise and strategic financial choices. But cheap products can create many problems. Inexpensive options often do not last as long as the higher-end ones. As a result, we shop more often, which is ultimately worse for our wallets. Plus, that spending pattern can do a greater damage to the environment. Thanks in part to fast fashion, people buy 60 percent more clothing today than they did 15 years ago. The fashion industry alone emits more greenhouse gases than international flights and maritime (海洋的) shipping combined.

So before you dive into your wallet for some deals, try not to fix only on what you are spending or saving. Think carefully about what you are buying, too.

1. What is the main reason for the failure of Juntos?

A．It ignored marketing strategies.	B．It priced itself relatively high.
C．It lacked a particularly good taste.	D．It focused on delight and pleasure.

2. What can be inferred about meaning seekers?

A．They frequent high-end stores.	B．They think products extend their lives.
C．They hesitate to make decisions.	D．They make more purchases with money.

3. How is Paragraph 4 mainly developed?

A．By giving some examples.	B．By listing numbers and data.
C．By explaining reasons.	D．By making some comparisons.

4. Which is the most suitable title for the text?

A．Innovation: a Product’s Life	B．To Buy or not to Buy
C．Meaning seekers or Quality-pursuers	D．Fast Fashion: a Hit to Your Wallet

【推荐3】The personal grievance provisions of New Zealand’s Employment Relations Act 2000 (ERA) prevent an employer from firing an employee without good cause. Instead, dismissals must be justified. Employers must both show cause and act in a procedurally fair way.

Personal grievance procedures were designed to guard the jobs of ordinary workers from “unjustified dismissals”. The premise was that the common law of contract lacked sufficient protection for workers against arbitrary conduct by management. Long gone are the days when a boss could simply give an employee contractual notice.

But these provisions create difficulties for businesses when applied to highly paid managers and executives. As countless boards and business owners will attest, constraining firms from firing poorly performing, high-earning managers is a handbrake on boosting productivity and overall performance. The difference between C-grade and A-grade managers may very well be the difference between business success or failure. Between preserving the jobs of ordinary workers or losing them. Yet mediocrity is no longer enough to justify a dismissal.

Consequently and paradoxically laws introduced to protect the jobs of ordinary workers may be placing those jobs at risk.

If not placing jobs at risk, to the extent employment protection laws constrain business owners from dismissing under-performing managers, those laws act as a constraint on firm productivity and therefore on workers’ wages. Indeed, in “An International Perspective on New Zealand’s Productivity Paradox” (2014), the Productivity Commission singled out the low quality of managerial capabilities as a cause of the country’s poor productivity growth record.

Nor are highly paid managers themselves immune from the harm caused by the ERA’s unjustified dismissal procedures. Because employment protection laws make it costlier to fire an employee, employers are more cautious about hiring new staff. This makes it harder for the marginal manager to gain employment. And firms pay staff less because firms carry the burden of the employment arrangement going wrong.

Society also suffers from excessive employment protections. Stringent job dismissal regulations adversely affect productivity growth and hamper both prosperity and overall well-being.

Across the Tasman Sea, Australia deals with the unjustified dismissal paradox by excluding employees earning above a specified “high-income threshold” from the protection of its unfair dismissal laws. In New Zealand, a 2016 private members’ Bill tried to permit firms and high-income employees to contract out of the unjustified dismissal regime. However, the mechanisms proposed were unwieldy and the Bill was voted down following the change in government later that year.

1. The personal grievance provisions of the ERA are intended to ________.

A．discipline dubious corporate practices	B．promote traditional hiring procedures
C．regulate the privileges of the employers	D．safeguard the rights of ordinary workers

2. It can be learned from paragraph 3 that the provisions may ________.

A．hinder business development	B．justify managers’ authority
C．affect the public image of the firms	D．worsen labor-management relations

3. Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?

A．ERA’s sensible approach corresponds with the international trend of democracy.

B．The society will see a rise in well-being with the ERA’s procedures carried out.

C．Non-proficient managerial capabilities make employees suffer from salary cuts.

D．High-income threshold in Australia is relatively beneficial to business owners.

4. What’s the author’s attitude towards the personal grievance provisions issued by ERA?

A．Appreciative

B．Skeptical

C．Optimistic

D．Contradictory

【推荐1】Zhang Guimei, a rural teacher in Huaping county, Lijiang, Yunnan province, breaking cycle of poverty in mountain areas realizes potential of students.

It was a chance meeting that revealed the reality of one life as it changed another. About 20 years ago, while on the way to visit a student’s house, Zhang Guimei noticed a girl sitting on the hillside. She was staring blankly into space. She was completely preoccupied. The girl, 13, told Zhang she was about to get married. It was arranged by her parents. “But I want to go to school,” the girl says. Zhang went to her house and tried to persuade her parents to let the girl return, to school and promised to pay for her tuition herself. However, they didn’t agree.

Zhang says she feels sorry not being able to help “We always say, each child should stand on the same starting line, but these girls didn’t even have a chance to get on the track,” she tells Xinhua News Agency.

That fateful encounter persuaded Zhang to build a free big school for girls, aiming to help break the cycle that saw women drop out of education, marry early and spend their whole life in the remote mountain. The priority of less well-off families was to spend whatever scarce resources they had on educating their sons.

After years trying to raise funds, in 2008, Huaping High School for Girls, a free public high school, was founded at the foot of the Shizi Mountain in Huaping, where Zhang is the principal.

Over the decades, the principal walked thousands of kilometers, visiting students’ families in the deep mountain, talking to villagers, persuading girls to go back to school. She donated her wages and bonus to support rural education and poor people. It has been worth it. More than 1. 800 graduates have been admitted to college, which is regarded a “miracle” in the remote area, as most students didn’t perform well in academic study before the school was established.

In early December. she was named a national outstanding member of the Communist Party of China for her dedication to education in rural China. She was also given the honor of the country’s “role model for teachers”, advanced worker “and” outstanding woman”. Her moving stories inspire thousands of people.

1. What does the underlined word “preoccupied” probably mean in paragraph 2？

A．Cautious.

B．Regretful.

C．Worried.

D．Merciful.

2. What’s the main reason for Zhang Guimei to build the school？

A．Women are poor in academic fields.	B．There are few women schools in China.
C．Few girls are admitted to universities.	D．Girls in rural areas receive little education.

3. What words can best describe Zhang Guimei？

A．Independent and tough.	B．Faithful and honest.
C．Inspirational and generous.	D．Determined and conventional.

4. What can we infer from the text？

A．Zhang Guimei helps change the life of girls from poor families.

B．Zhang Guimei creates a miracle in advanced technology.

C．Zhang Guimei is awarded as an international heroine.

D．Zhang Guimei devotes her life to fighting poverty.

【推荐1】Everything from essays to exams is threatened by advanced artificial intelligence like ChatGPT, which can produce clear answers to complex questions. Educators are particularly concerned about students turning to AI tools like ChatGPT with their homework. One suggested solution is to make students write exam essays using pen and paper.     1    

To stay competitive through their careers, students need to learn how to use AI writing tools properly to gain output.     2     As professionals working into the 2060s and beyond, they will need to learn how to deal with AI systems effectively.

In addition to the sound reasons for treating ChatGPT as an opportunity and not a threat, there are practical ones. It simply isn’t possible to effectively ban this technology. Many students can’t help using AI assistance while writing.     3     While there are tools aimed at judging text produced by AI, future versions of AI will get better at emulating (模仿) human writing-including the style of the particular person who is using it.

    4     Some students, who use ChatGPT despite the ban, would avoid being found cheating in their writing, through luck or thanks to careful editing. Worse still, some students would be falsely charged with using ChatGPT, causing great stress and even leading to wrong punishment.

Writing is a skill worthy of great respect. But most students don’t have the desire to become professional writers. Instead, they are preparing for careers where they will write to further goals beyond the production of writing. As we do today, they will write to communicate, explain, request and persuade.     5    

A．The ban of ChatGPT would also produce the injustice.

B．There is argument that the use of ChatGPT is good for education.

C．AI writing tools, when properly used, will help them do those things better.

D．Learning to write without AI does indeed promote focused, disciplined thinking.

E．But that’s wrong to ban students from using labor-saving and time-saving AI writing tools.

F．Besides, the AI writing tools will always be one step ahead of the tools to discover AI text.

G．They need to learn to compose well-organized essays using AI-produced text and traditional writing.

【推荐3】How Can We Trust AI If We Don’t Know How It Works

Alien minds, in the form of artificial intelligence (AI) systems, surround us in daily life, powering facial recognition, determining creditworthiness, and even creating poetry and code.     1    

Many AI systems, particularly those based on deep learning neural networks, have trillions of parameters (参数), making their decision-making processes opaque (不透明的) — a phenomenon known as the AI explainability problem.     2    

Unlike humans who can justify their decisions based on ethical principles, AI lacks the ability to explain its decision-making, failing the predictive requirement for trust. Consider situations like the “Trolley Problem,” where a self-driving car must make a difficult decision without the capacity to provide a human-like explanation.

Trust relies not only on explainability and predictability but also on ethical or moral motivations. Humans expect others to act not just as they assume they will, but also as they should.     3     It fails to adapt its behavior in line with ethical principles or human expectations, leading to the AI consistency and trust problem.

    4     However, the increasing adoption of AI suggests a future where nested AI systems may dominate, limiting human intervention opportunities in rapid decision-making scenarios. This emphasizes the pressing need to address and resolve issues related to explainability and ensuring that AI systems align with human values and goals.

The integration of AI into vital systems, such as electric grids and military operations, heightens the importance of trust.     5    

In conclusion, AI lacks the predictability and ethical elements that would make it inherently trustworthy. Addressing the challenges of explainability and alignment is essential to ensure that AI systems earn and maintain human trust in critical applications. Further research in this area is needed to pave the way for trustworthy AI systems in the future.

A．As a result, understanding why AI systems make specific decisions is challenging, raising concerns about their trustworthiness.

B．However, AI operates with a fixed way of thinking molded by training data.

C．Addressing and resolving the issue before it reaches a critical point becomes crucial.

D．These are contexts where undesirable behavior could lead to severe consequences.

E．To enhance trust, proposals have been made to involve humans in AI decision-making, either in the loop or on the loop.

F．Due to the lack of unpredictability, people find it impossible to interpret the specific factors influencing Al-driven decisions.

G．However, the trustworthiness of these AI systems faces significant challenges due to their limited explainability and unpredictability.