【推荐1】What’s the biggest online shopping day in the world? Not Valentine’s Day. Not Cyber Monday or Black Friday. The winner is China’s Singles’Day, celebrated on November11, or 11.11.

Singles’Day began as a day for unmarried or uncoupled people to celebrate their lives. Single students, looking for an excuse to buy themselves presents, started it on November11,1993, reported The Guardian. It is symbolized by the four number ones in the date of November11 and is also called Double Eleven, in reference to the day it was started, said the BBC. It became a major shopping day in 2009. The CEO of an online shopping site --Alibaba-- tried to increase sales at the e-commerce company. The CEO, Daniel Zhang, launched an annual online sale on that day, said Fortune. When it first began, “Sigles’Day was very much an offline comfort to actual single people,”noted the website atlas Obscura.”A small group of students at Nanjing University are said to have chosen 11.11 as a day that singles could do activities like karaoke together.”It quickly became a cultural phenomenon.

Last year, Alibaba sold more than $1 billion worth of products inthe first three minutes of the sales, reported Bloomberg News. Total sales on Singles’Day soared to $9 billion within 24 hours. That’s four times bigger than Cyber Monday in the U.S., which is the Monday after Thanksgiving and traditionally a big shopping day. By comparison, online sales in the U.S. last year on Black Friday were just $1.5                    billion, reported TechCrunch.

Today, Singles’Day is very successful. Analysts say that this year, sales on China’s Singles’Day will increase to a new high. In the U.S., Jennifer Wang, a co-founder of a company targeting Chinese-Americans, said, “We expect to have 3 million people coming to click Dealmoon for the Singles’Day launch.” Some observers think Singles’Day could catch on globally.

1. How did the author introduce the topic of the passage?

A．By describing a holiday.	B．By asking a question
C．By making a list.	D．By telling a story

2. What’s the second paragraph mainly about?

A．How Singles’Day came into being.	B．Why Singles’Day became popular.
C．When Singles’Day was started.	D．Who first celebrated Singles’Day.

3. Why did China’s Singles’Day become a major shopping day?

A．Because singles celebrated their happy lives on November11.

B．Because students at Nanjing university took part in activities together.

C．Because an annual online sale was started on that day by Alibaba.

D．Because single students chose that day to buy themselves gifts.

4. Which of the following can best replace the underlined word “soared”in Paragraph3?

A．Increased sharply.	B．Decreased quickly.
C．Returned gradually.	D．Appeared suddenly.

【推荐2】阅读短文，按照题目要求用英语回答问题。

Do social influencers affect our buying?

Have you ever been on social media and seen your favourite celebrity talking about a product? These endorsements might not be totally random, and are actually seen as a vital part of the marketing process. The question is: How do social media influencers ‘influence’ what you buy?

Human desire for status and making friends, combined with our need to belong to a group, make us easily impressed to being ‘socially influenced’. Companies often use that desire to have a similar lifestyle to a celebrity we admire to hawk or launch a product. So, what do these endorsements actually do?

Firstly, they can be used to build brand awareness. A social media influencer should have a strong understanding of the platform they operate on, and therefore can create engaging content that not only adheres to the brand image, but sparks their followers’ interest in a product they might never have seen before.

Secondly, influencers can improve a company or product’s relationship with their customer base. According to InMoment’s 2018 US Retail CX Trends Report on customer loyalty, 77% of buyers have been brand loyal for more than ten years. This is also true of 60% of millennials. A popular celebrity can target key demographics and talk or blog about a product, which can create an instant and lasting bond with the consumer.

Lastly, influencers can improve customer buying habits with seemingly ‘unbiased opinions’. We are more likely to respond to ‘peer recommendation’ than traditional ads, meaning the fact we see an influencer as a ‘friend’ can make us less likely to be sceptical about what we are seeing.

So, the next time you see a celebrity talking about a product, you might want to consider that this could be a carefully crafted marketing strategy designed to target your core needs. If you find yourself pursuing a product you’ve seen on social media, you may well have been influenced.

1. What factors make ‘social influence’ so effective?
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
2. What does an influencer do to make the brand he promotes well-known among his followers?
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement. Then underline it and explain why.
A popular celebrity makes his followers believe he is their friends, sharing with them his real opinions on the products.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
4. Would you buy a product because it is promoted by your favourite celebrity? Why? Why not?(In about 40 words)
_______________________________________________________________________________________________

【推荐3】You need some bread and milk. But half an hour later, you leave the supermarket with a trolley（推车）full of food. What games do supermarkets play to make us spend so much money?

The tricks usually start before you walk in. Outside the supermarket entrance, anybody who walks past can smell warm, fresh bread. That makes us hungry and ready to buy lots of food, not just bread.

Now you’re inside and, of course, a small basket would be fine, but all they have are trolleys. And of course the problem with a trolley is that it looks sad and lonely with just one or two goods inside. So we may fill it with something. In fact, supermarket trolleys are actually getting bigger so that we buy more.

Of course, many people shop in supermarkets because they think everything is cheaper than in other shops. So supermarkets offer very cheap prices on some things but then have higher prices for other goods. One new trick is to put red stickers（标签）on them. Customers usually connect red stickers with lower prices so the red stickers is

easy to be seen, even when there is no reduction! Interestingly, this trick appears to work more with men than with women.

There is a story behind the position of everything in the supermarket. The most expensive goods are usually at eye-level so you see these immediately. The exception is anything that children might like. These goods are on lower shelves so that kids see them.

Apart from what you see and smell in a supermarket, what about what you listen to? In most supermarkets they have soft, slow music. It’s so relaxing that you slow down and spend more time (and money) in the store. Experts suggest it’s better to shop when it’s quieter, on a Monday or a Tuesday for example. And be careful with queues at the checkouts（收银台）. These are sometimes on purpose, to make you buy something from the checkout shelves while you wait.

So, next time you go into your local supermarket, remember these tricks and see if you can come with just the things you went for.

1. There are no small baskets but trolleys in the supermarket because ______.

A．small baskets are not strong enough

B．people don’t like using baskets

C．it’s easy to go shopping with trolleys

D．trolleys are actually making people buy more goods

2. What does the underlined word “tricks” in paragraph 2 mean?

A．small jokes	B．clever methods
C．suggestions	D．advertisements

3. According to the text, supermarkets put red stickers on goods to ______.

A．make them look more beautiful

B．show these goods are worth buying

C．let people know they are for men

D．draw the customers’ attention

4. From the last two paragraphs we can learn that ______.

A．It is better to be careful with the tricks and shop reasonably

B．there is no good listening to the soft music in supermarkets

C．supermarkets usually close earlier on Monday and Tuesday

D．we should be more careful when waiting at the checkout