【推荐1】How to Reduce Food Waste

Food waste is a huge problem in many countries.     1     . Here are four simple ways to start reducing your food waste at home today.

Make a plane. Before you shop for groceries, think about exactly what you need for the week, make a list and then stick to it.     2     .-we throw things in the shopping cart that sound good or look novel, and then we let them sit in the back of the fridge for a few weeks. When food does go bad, take stock. What are you already buying too much of? What are you always throwing away? Then you can use that information to be a more conscious shopper during your next trip to the grocery store.

    3     . Once you know what you'll still need to buy, write the items down with exact numbers, like “enough for three lunches.” It's also helpful to think about whether you'll be eating out during the coming week and, if so, how many times. So be realistic about your schedule for the week as you're doing your planning, and cut down accordingly on the amount you buy.

Your fridge is your friend. If you realize that you won't be able to use food before it's too late, turn to the trusty fridge.     4     . Besides, Freezing food helps lock in its flavor and nutrients, so the next time you find those perfect strawberries for your summer picnic, don't throw the leftovers. Bag it, date it and put in the fridge before it's too late.

Try Ye compost(堆肥)food. No matter how careful you are, you'll always hive a few vegetable wastes，apple cores and eggshells. Even organic matter breaks down very slowly. The result is a whole lot of methane, which warms the earth even more than carbon dioxide. A great way to reduce food waste impact is lo compost items instead of   throwing them in the trash.     5     .

A．Limit the quantities.

B．Cut down the food intake.

C．But many of us are “emotional consumers”.

D．The good news: Each of us, can help solve it.

E．People are starving for being short of enough food.

F．Think of this as an approach of recycling your food waste.

G．No one would throw away anything that had a two hundred dollar value to it.

【推荐3】My kids sit in Gee’s living room and respectfully lift antique Christmas ornaments (装饰品) out of a cardboard box. They giggle at Ann, who is a foreign character to them. Gee stands beside them, quietly explaining each treasure. She tells me that she and Tom built their ornament collection piece by piece. She smiles as we leave with the box.

We first met Tom and Gee in the early days of our marriage. Someone had been returning our garbage cans to the garage each garbage day, and Jim and I had wondered who. Then one day we spotted him: an elderly man who lived across the street.

I baked cookies and left them outside with a thank-you note. When we got home that day, a typed letter had replaced the gift. The letter was from Tom and explained back when he’d been fighting a war, neighbors had taken the time to handle the garbage cans for his young wife, Gee, and he never forgot. Now he paid it forward by doing the same for all of us.

A few years after we’d moved in, Tom died. We photocopied that letter and attached it to one of our own for Gee. We told her how special Tom had been to us. She wrote back and told us she still talked to Tom every day.

These days, we’re piling up boxes of our own. We’re planning a move. We know it’s time to go, and yet we can’t seem to stick the For Sale sign up on the lawn. It’s not just Gee. It’s the man who lets our kids pick peaches off the tree in his front yard. It’s the ladies who leave overflowing baskets for our kids on Easter.

Jim and I agree to wait until January. This Christmas, we’ll decorate our tree with Gee’s ornaments, out of the box labeled in Tom’s handwriting. Maybe I’ll talk to him just as Gee still does. Thank you, I’ll say. For teaching us what it means to be a neighbor.

1. What can we infer from the first paragraph?

A．The kids thought little of these antique Christmas ornaments.

B．The kids were fond of these antique Christmas ornaments.

C．The kids were afraid of these antique Christmas ornaments.

D．The kids had no interest in these antique Christmas ornaments.

2. Which of the following is true about Tom?

A．He fought a war from which the author suffered a lot.

B．He first met the author at her wedding.

C．He was an elderly man whose job was handling garbage cans.

D．He helped to handle his neighbors’ garbage cans secretly.

3. What could be the best title of this passage?

A．This is what Tom did for us.

B．This is why we didn’t want to move.

C．This is what it really means to be a neighbor.

D．This is how neighbors help each other.

【推荐1】Put five, eight, twelve or more people together in a room, and it’s a game of luck as to how well they’ll function as a team. The larger the group, the more difficult it becomes. It’s a lot like dining out with a bunch of friends. Where to go? Italian? Vegetarian? Steakhouse? Each person has their own appetite, which can make creating a “shared-interest” extremely challenging.

Shared-interest is the lifeblood of teams, and only the most successful companies know how to foster it. But how?

“Project Aristotle”, an experiment led by Abeer Dubey, a manager in Google’s People Analytics division was conducted in 2012 to discover how to build the “perfect team.” After years of analyzing data and interviews from more than 180 teams across the company, Google found that the individual personalities in a team are not so relevant.

“We had lots of data, but there was nothing showing that a mix of specific personality types or skills or backgrounds made any difference. The ‘who’ part of the equation didn’t seem to matter,” Dubey said in an interview with The New York Times. Instead, the researchers found that there were five key characteristics of enhanced teams:

Psychological safety: Everyone feels safe in taking risks, and that they won’t be embarrassed or punished for doing so.

Dependability: Everyone completes quality work on time.

Structure and clarity: Everyone knows what their specific expectations are. These expectations must be challenging yet attainable.

Meaning: Everyone has a sense of purpose in their work, for example, supporting family.

Impact: Everyone sees that the result of their work actually contributes to the organization’s overall goals.

While Google’s findings may be true to some extent, a large number of scientific studies have caused researchers outside of Google’s lab to shockingly disagree. Thomas Chamorro-Premuzic, a professor of business psychology at Columbia University and author of the book “Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?” and psychologist Dave Winsborough are among them. They both claim that personality, in particular, heavily affects the role of an individual within a team and is indeed a significant factor in what makes a team successful.

Researchers found that the poorest-performing teams were 100 percent “pragmatic” (讲求实效的 ) and had 0 percent ‘relationship-building’ traits. “Too often, organizations focus merely on the functional role and hope that good team performance somehow follows,” Chamorro-Premuzic and Winsborough co-wrote in a Harvard Business Review article. “This is why even the most expensive professional sports teams often fail to perform according to the individual talents of each player: There is no psychological synergy (协作). A more effective approach focuses as much on people’s personalities as on their skills.”

1. Why does the author mention the example of “dining out”?

A．To emphasize the challenges of creating a common interest.

B．To cater for the different tastes of people from all walks of life.

C．To stress the importance of different individuals in teams.

D．To get more different people involved in building a team.

2. What might be the least deciding factor of a perfect team according to Google’s lab?

A．Dependability.	B．A sense of purpose.
C．Psychological safety.	D．Individual personalities.

3. According to the last paragraph, why do the most expensive professional sports teams fail to perform?

A．Because they care more about the result.	B．Because they are not talented enough.
C．Because they lack relationship building.	D．Because they are vague about their roles.

4. How is the passage mainly developed?

A．By making basic assumptions.	B．By giving a lot of detailed examples.
C．By analyzing causes and effects.	D．By presenting contradictory findings.

【推荐2】I had to knock on the taxi to get his attention. Finally, the driver, a man about 60, looked up from behind the wheel and apologised, “I’m sorry, but I was reading a letter.” He sounded as if he had a cold or a cough.

Since I was in no hurry, I told him to finish his letter. He shook his head, explaining that he had already read it several times and almost knew it by heart. Curious, I asked whether it was from a child or maybe a grandchild. “This isn’t family,” he replied, “though he might just as well have been are regular member of the family. Old Ed and I grew up together.”

They were always friends. But since he moved away from the neighbourhood 30 years ago, it’d generally just been postcards at Christmas time between them. A couple of weeks ago, Ed died. “I should have kept in touch.” He repeated this, more to himself than to me. To comfort him, I said sometimes we just didn’t seem to find the time. “But we used to find the time,” he said. “Take a look.” He handed the letter over to me.

The first sentence “I’ve been meaning to write for some time, but I’ve always delayed it.” reminded me of myself. It went on to say that he often thought about the good times they had had together. When I read the part where it said “Your friendship really means a lot to me, more than I can say because I’m not good at saying things like that”, I found myself nodding in agreement.

We had gone several kilometres and were almost at my hotel, so I read the last paragraph: “So I thought you’d like to know that I was thinking of you.” And it was ended with “Your Old Friend, Tom.”

“I thought your friend’s name was Ed,” I said.

“I’m Tom,” he explained. “It’s a letter I wrote to Ed before I knew he’d died. I never put it in the mailbox. I guess I should have written it sooner.” His face was pale as he wiped his eyes with a handkerchief.

When I got to my hotel room I didn’t unpack right away, I had to write a letter and post it.

1. Who wrote the letter?

A．Tom.	B．Old Ed.
C．The author.	D．The driver’s grandchild.

2. What can be inferred from the passage about the driver?

A．The driver regretted missing Ed’s funeral.

B．The driver regretted moving away from his neighbourhood.

C．The driver regretted forgetting to send Ed Christmas cards.

D．The driver regretted not being able to keep in touch with Ed.

3. What can learn about the author from Paragraph 4?

A．The author often failed to write to his friends.

B．The author had no intention to write to his friends.

C．The author had many great moments with his friends.

D．The author was good at expressing feelings to his friends.

4. What message does the passage probably try to convey?

A．Comfort your friends when they are feeling down.

B．Life is unpredictable, so live each day as if it were your last.

C．Remember to always mail your letters after expressing your words.

D．Always make time to value and experience your lasting friendships.

【推荐3】When a friend approaches you in the heat of a moment, it can be hard to know what to say. There’ no blanket approach for every person through every crisis (危急), but a few guidelines could help you offer the best support.

Friends going through a crisis often just need someone to talk to and explore their feelings with, but the trick is to listen without sounding like you’re judging. Reorganize “why” questions, which can imply you’re questioning their judgment, but ‘how’ and ‘what’ questions, and ‘who’ and ‘when’ seem caring and sincere.

Open-ended questions that can’t be answered with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ will also help friends dig into their deepest feelings during a crisis. While your loved ones talk through their replies, practice active listening by focusing on their answers. After all, your friends probably just need someone to listen and prove them, rather than hearing you offer potentially unhelpful advice.

When you do respond，avoid telling friends in crisis how they “should” be feeling. “ ‘Should’ is not a valid term, saying it’s not OK for you to feel these societally ‘weak’ feelings,” says Michelle Kuchuk, director of training for Crisis Text Line. “If you’re only hearing ‘you should feel great’, you’re never going to speak again or get that weight off your chest if you think other people will judge you.”

On the other hand, tying those positive feelings to a specific action can feel more sincere. If friends hear “you’re so strong” without an example to back it up, they might never believe it. But if they’ve been explaining how hard it was to talk to someone else, praise them for taking that brave step.

Finally, it’s more important for a friend to know you’re there for support than stressing about saying the right thing during a crisis. Just be a friend and really listen to that person, not with your own agenda but “what is this person really going through?”

1. Who is this passage intended for?

A．People to be consultants.	B．People in need of support.
C．People going through a crisis.	D．People supporting friends in crisis.

2. What is your most suitable question to ask one talking to you?

A．Who did that1?	B．When did you start it?
C．How did you feel about it1?	D．Why did you feel that way?

3. What does the underlined part mean in the 4th paragraph?

A．Tell the truth out.	B．Relieve their pressure.
C．Keep everything secret.	D．Leave your baggage behind.

4. What is suggested to respond to your friends’ talking?

A．Preparing your questions beforehand.

B．Giving them as many instructions as possible.

C．Praising them constantly by encouraging words.

D．Expressing your appreciation for a small behavior.