【推荐1】Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A．clearing	B．commercial	C．cut	D．effectively	E．exhausting	F．likewise
G．range	H．restoring	I．scarcity	J．surprisingly	K．underestimated

The best bosses know how to subtract work

Companies are used to celebrating addition. Profits, customers and share prices should go up rather than fall. Innovation is the adding of new products. Larger numbers are a measure of career success.

Firms are not always opposed to subtraction. There are good kinds of cuts. Reducing costs is a necessary part of management, though not a welcome one. But the value of doing less is     1    . The best bosses are those who take things away as well as add them on.

That means     2     time for employees to get work done. Meetings are almost always called by bosses. Some are useful; many of them are not.

Shopify, an e-commerce firm, began the year by deleting 12,000 meeting s from corporate calendars, and asking everyone to think carefully before     3     them. The company reports a rise in productivity as a result of the     4    .

The only thing worse than having too many meetings is not being invited to them at all. So whenever meetings take place,     5     large numbers of people can turn up. Minus-minded managers will give employees permission not to attend if they are not needed.

Good bosses,     6    , will send messages when necessary, not every time a bright idea pops into their head. They will reduce the tempo of work, by leaving employees time to concentrate. They will be clear if something is urgent or not.

Subtraction is not just about removing day-to-day distractions. It’s also about taking decisions to kill off projects and products that are going nowhere, and to focus efforts on the most important bits of the business.

In “The Case for Good Jobs”, a new book, Zeynep Ton of MIT Sloan School of Management argues that doing less can often make     7     sense. Costco, a well-regarded American retailer has a deliberately limited product     8    . That means it can focus its buying power more effectively, forecast demand more accurately and use its employees’ time more productively.

Less may not sound like a great outcome for customers, but at some point choice is deeply     9    . When you have spent more time trying to decide what to watch on a streaming service than it takes to go to the cinema and watch “Oppenheimer” twice,     10     seems pretty attractive.

【推荐2】Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Do note that there is one word more than you need in each passage.

A. nesting       B. signals       C. accessible     D. overnight       AB. decisively       AC. illiterates AD. literally       BC. unaware       BD. motivated       CD. accused     ABC. terrifying

The good news is that today’s teenagers are greedy readers and productive writers. The bad news is that what they are reading and writing are text messages.

It’s an unmissable trend. Even if you don’t have teenage kids, you’ll still see other people’s offspring wandering around, their eyes averted, tapping away, totally     1     of their surroundings. Take a group of teenagers to see the eight wonders of the world. Chances are that they’ll     2     be texting all the way, even if it means missing all those awe-inspiring moments. Show a teenager Jan Vermeer’s The Girl with a Pearl Earring. You might get a quick glance before a buzz     3     the arrival of the latest SMS.

Now before I am     4     of throwing stones in a glass house, let me confess. I probably send about 50 texts a day, and I receive what seem like 200. But there is difference, I also read books. It’s a quaint old habit I picked up as a kid, in the days before cellphones began     5     in the palms of the young.

According to a survey carried about in 2019, half of today’s teenagers don’t read books except when they’re made to. What is more     6     to me as a high school teacher is the fact that almost two-thirds of high school freshmen read for pleasure for less than an hour per week. Nearly half of seniors don’t read for pleasure at all.

Why does this matter? Because, to some extent, this texting craze can and will produce a large number of cultural    7     who are cut off from the civilization of their ancestors if we don’t take some necessary measures.

So how can we encourage our teenagers to read books? Whether in the classroom or at home, one of the best ways to promote reading is by reading together. Another way to encourage reading is to help teenagers set a goal to read a certain number of books or read books from a certain genre. This will help them stay focused and     8     to read. For instance, if your child loves playing football, read the storybook related to football. Or if your child loves going on walks, take along some picture books to read along the way. By making reading more     9     and fun, we can foster a love of reading in them.

But don’t expect children to fall in love with reading     10    . When it comes to reading, trust the process.