| International Museum Day falls on May 18. The debate over whether museums should be free is a big one right now. Some people share their opinions. |
| Li Jiang I think art exhibits should be free to the public. I do, however, think twice a year the museums should host a fund-raising event to help pay for the cost of upkeep. They do it all the time. Wealthy buyers pay $100 for a plate and the proceeds are given to the museum. If you decide you want to buy the art, the proceeds should go to the artist, with a fee going to the museum. |
| Su Hua Free entrance does not attract people, nor does it encourage them to appreciate it. Sure, there are exceptions to this, but by and large human beings tend to look up to things that are difficult or costly to access. A better option is to charge fees for regular visitors but provide free tickets as prizes for high-achieving students and others who are likely to appreciate the reward. |
【写作内容】
1. 用约30个词概括上述信息的主要内容；
2. 你认为博物馆应该免费吗？请说明理由 (不少于两点)。
【写作要求】
1. 写作过程中不能直接引用原文语句；
2. 作文中不能出现真实姓名和学校名称；
3. 不必写标题。
【评分标准】
内容完整，语言规范，语篇连贯，词数适当。
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2 . eXp Realty is one of the world's fastest-growing and most successful real estate （房地产） companies. It has become famous not for investing in actual real estate, but for focusing on
virtual reality offices that allow its agents and brokers （中间商）to interact and socialize from anywhere around the globe.
Glenn Sanford, eXp Realty's founder and CEO, founded the company a decade ago, soon after the real estate market collapse of 2007. He couldn't afford to buy or rent office space. What's more important, he figured that focusing on a system that allowed his team to work remotely would help the company avoid possible real estate crises in the future. So eXp Realty relied on services like Google Docs, project management solutions like Trello, and communications app Slack to help its workforce work together in virtual reality. "The virtual campus is a big part of our growth engine. If we were limited to actual offices, the growth we've had simply wouldn't be possible," Scott Petronis, chief technology officer of eXp Realty said.
Having a virtual campus in the virtual world rather than in the real one apparently has several major advantages. For the most important one, eXp Realty can hire whatever talent they like, no matter where they are. As long as they have Internet connection, they can interact with their colleagues and the company management like avatars （虚拟人）because they can walk around the campus, enter various virtual facilities, and interact with each other. While the main focus is on work and brainstorming, eXp Realty is constantly adding fun stuff as well, like riding on a virtual lake and enjoying a drink at the bar.
At the beginning of 2018, eXp Realty had around 6,500 brokers, but till today that number has increased to over 12,000. They are operating in 300 markets across the US and Canada. If that isn't enough to convince you, the company was recently listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market, with first-day market capitalization of over $1 billion. But it doesn't own or lease any more physical space than what is required by law.
1. What do we know about eXp Realty?| A．It relies much on technology. |
| B．It was founded by accident. |
| C．It's famous for its large offices. |
| D．It's a branch company of Google. |
| A．He could work closely with famous online services. |
| B．He is quite professional in the field of information technology. |
| C．Virtual offices can enable him to avoid potential real estate crises. |
| D．The starting base for the virtual real estate market was low at that time. |
| A．Agents and brokers can communicate timely. |
| B．It helps attract talents regardless of their location. |
| C．Companies can cooperate with high-tech avatars. |
| D．Employees can have a relaxing work environment. |
| A．is really a success |
| B．has some illegal businesses |
| C．is expanding its business worldwide |
| D．has poor performance in the stock market |
| A．Why Does Real Estate Industry Grow So Quickly? |
| B．Billion Dollar Real Estate Company一eXp Realty |
| C．Virtual Reality Office Vs. Physical Office Space |
| D．What Can Virtual Reality Do to Our Business? |
3 . The true purpose of a business, Peter Drucker said, is to create and keep customers. “Customer value” has several definitions. I use the
Companies can
Given the importance of customer value, leaders should track it as much as they track other key assets (资产), such as buildings, machinery, and marketable securities. They also should reveal it in their quarterly and annual earnings releases so that investors can make
As investors wake up to the importance of customer value, however, many growth-stage companies now direct investors’ attention to
This is a start, but because there are no customer-value reporting standards or requirements, investors still have a(n)
| A．item | B．version | C．term | D．definition |
| A．persuading | B．consulting | C．acquiring | D．inspecting |
| A．Considerate | B．Visionary | C．Determined | D．Powerful |
| A．resist | B．relieve | C．intensify | D．maintain |
| A．raise | B．adopt | C．calculate | D．destroy |
| A．income | B．experience | C．productivity | D．demand |
| A．separate | B．substitute | C．forbid | D．combine |
| A．appeal to | B．rely on | C．put down | D．scare off |
| A．informed | B．subjective | C．definitive | D．independent |
| A．fully | B．hardly | C．readily | D．wrongly |
| A．suspicion | B．extension | C．literacy | D．visibility |
| A．sacrifice | B．success | C．prejudice | D．expense |
| A．as a result | B．for example | C．on the contrary | D．in general |
| A．incomplete | B．depressing | C．convincing | D．vivid |
| A．Instead | B．Further | C．Otherwise | D．Therefore |
4 . Your first big-screen experience is likely to have been Disney productions --- whether we are talking about Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or Frozen --- that have long been considered safe, healthy choices for kids, and pictures that parents can feel they don’t need to screen in advance.
When you are a big person, a movie seen in a theatre is much larger than life; when you're a little person, it can be like a new entry opening in the universe. Those experiences matter, and Disney knows the power --- and the profit potential --- of what's in its values, which helps explain the studio's ongoing strategy of remaking its most popular animated films, often in live-action versions.
How do you feel about director's interpretation of these movies, a combination of live-action filmmaking techniques, virtual-reality methods and computer-generated imaginary, depends largely on how you feel about the original. The stories, even with a gently updated script, are roughly the same. If you've seen the original, you know how the rest of them go.
In the following years, we'll also watch other Disney’s remakes such as Mulan. Any children raised by Disney films would think that this is a great time to be alive. Right?
But judging by critics’ ratings of some live-action movies, it seems that the powerful studio has been unable to wow audiences.
So why more live actions?
The money
Let's face it: Walt Disney Pictures is all about generating more revenue. Even though it did not manage to capture critics, it still managed to catch the audience's hearts. And that is more than enough. After all, films are not made to entertain critics; it's all about creating an ultimate cinematic experience for casual moviegoers. And as long as they're entertained with new interpretations of beloved stories, why stop making live-action films?
Inclusion
When you spend your entire childhood dancing and singing along to these characters, it's beyond magical to see them again when you’re an adult and are the same age as them. That's one of the few magical effects of movies. Not to mention, Aladdin's South Asian cast is also a strong statement for the world. Perhaps this is also the reason why Disney wants Mulan to have an all Asian cast. Let's hope they're not the only ones and Disney is bringing more diverse stories to be told.
Nostalgia (怀旧)
All of these Disney remakes are designed to fuel the nostalgia of boomers, Gen X-ers and millennials, and many of the moviegoers who grew up with these movies, in particular, now have young kids of their own. Little wonder the studio is seeing big dollar signs in them.
1. Disney productions are parents' first choice for kids because they _______.| A．promote children's overall health |
| B．don't need booking in advance |
| C．don't need a screen to enjoy them |
| D．have been enjoying a good reputation |
| A．the film-making technology |
| B．the popularity of the films |
| C．the familiarity with the story line |
| D．the computer-generated imaginary |
| A．It's trying its best to satisfy both critics and audience. |
| B．It's sparing no efforts to earn as much revenue as possible. |
| C．It's seeking and adding global elements to make diverse stories. |
| D．It's bringing back those sweet memories to its loyal aging fans. |
5 . It’s a rainy spring morning in May, but a steady flow of people from various age groups and cultural backgrounds could already be seen going in and out of the Ioe Fortes Branch of the Vancouver Public Library on Denman Street. One such regular of this branch is Richard Bisson, who lives just across the street. Convenience is a key for the retired court interpreter, as well as access to a wide variety of books in English, French and German.
Still, other community engagement plans involve programs aimed at getting youth to read more and use the library. At the Renfrew Branch, which is close to residential areas and surrounded by a beautiful park, the library partnered with the Renfrew Community Centre to design a camp for teens last year. This year, they’re focusing on elementary kids, with similar programs such as the summer reading club.
Susan Everall, Neighbourhood Services Manager for the Vancouver Public Library, believes that libraries are social, educational and recreational places, where everybody has access.
“A lot of people come in with their laptops, and they spend hours in the library and it’s not necessarily because they don’t have Internet access at home. Sometimes it’s just due to the social feeling,” Everall says.
When it comes to smaller community branches, Everall suggests that some people prefer the smaller space, where they don't feel overwhelmed.
And just like going to your neighbourhood grocery store, Everall believes that community libraries also provide a sense of familiarity, where friends and neighbours can bump into each other.
For a regular like Bisson, the library is a place that keeps us informed because reading shapes our ideas, our culture and our way of thinking. Although he doesn’t participate in library events, he thinks that the Joe Fortes Branch serves the community well, and he’s happy if it provides events for the community.
1. From Paragraph 2 we can know the programs this year is .| A．founded by Richard Bisson |
| B．surrounded by residential buildings |
| C．designing summer activities for primary children |
| D．planning summer camps with the Renfrew Community Centre |
| A．they want to be around people |
| B．they want to save some money |
| C．they don’t want to lose their laptops |
| D．none of them have Internet access at home |
| A．it was set up for youth living nearby |
| B．it often organizes reading activities |
| C．it makes people feel overwhelmed |
| D．it creates a family atmosphere |
| A．To introduce community libraries and their advantages. |
| B．To make the Joe Fortes Branch known to more people. |
| C．To encourage people to visit libraries in their free time. |
| D．To show differences between public and communitv libraries. |
6 . “Without trust,” writes Rachel Botsman, “society cannot survive, and it certainly cannot thrive."
Clearly, we are in trouble. Two-thirds of people surveyed last year in 28 countries expressed low levels of trust in "mainstream institutions" of business, government and media.
In “Who Can You Trust?” Botsman, an Oxford lecturer offers a timely and accessible framework for understanding what trust is, how it works, why it matters and how it is evolving. It is an important guidance to the obstacles and opportunities we face as a society if we are to repair and redefine trust.
Through human history, trust has evolved in three basic stages: Local trust was enough when people lived in small communities and everybody knew everybody else; industrialization and urbanization required institutional trust so that people could trust complete strangers running governments, corporations, and standards for international trade, commerce and finance. We are now living through a massive global .shift of trust from institutions to individuals: distributed trust facilitated by high-tech platforms, many of which are run by the private sector.
This shift is caused by several factors. First, accountability is unequal. Rich, powerful and well-connected individuals have been able to accumulate vast quantities of often undocumented wealth by avoiding tax and anti-bribery laws, while ordinary people are likely to be caught and punished for lawbreaking. Second, people in power are no longer seen to deserve greater respect as the details of their lives are exposed.
Botsman does not prescribe how we deal with that. But if the old ways of giving and cancelling trust such as voting, markets and consumer choice are no longer functioning, then we must change or replace them. Systems must be "driven democratically and rationally," become more "transparent, inclusive, and accountable" and, most important, be designed to "put people first," which profit-driven platforms have failed to do sufficiently.
Tech executives are responding to the trust crisis mainly with promises of more and better technology. But Batsman warns that the responsibility for ensuring that the robots being used are trustworthy lies with the human beings who design and use them. We have not thought through how we hold those people accountable, let alone their robots. She warns against a natural tendency "to become over-reliant on machines." Ideally machines should be programmed to "understand" their own limitations and even seek human help or intervention.
A growing number of people hope that new trust mechanisms can be established through the use of exciting new technologies such as the blockchain（区块链）. In essence, blockchains are digital public ledgers of transactions that cannot be changed, thereby creating greater transparency and accountability and making corruption much harder.
However, Botsman warns that the blockchain is no panacea for human trust. Whether blockchain systems lead to more accountable governance and a more just global economy will depend on their design and the intentions of those who build them. There is no app for fixing trust.
"Who Can You Trust?" does make a clear case for why it is important for the companies, governments and other institutions to be much more transparent and subject themselves to new mechanisms that can credibly hold them accountable. It is the only way they can hope to earn and maintain trust in the future.
1. Which of the following orders of trust evolution is right?| A．institutional trust→ industrialized trust→ individual trust |
| B．urbanized trust→ local trust→ institutional trust |
| C．local trust→ institutional trust→ distributed trust |
| D．local trust→ urbanized trust →individual trust |
| A．Profit-driven platforms pay no attention to the importance of people. |
| B．It is the people who design and use technology that count in restoring trust. |
| C．New technologies, such as the blockchain can prevent corruption from happening. |
| D．People should rely on new technologies to create transparency and accountability. |
| A．not a Herculean task | B．a hard nut |
| C．not a cure-all medicine | D．a catch -22 |
| A．Supportive | B．Negative |
| C．Indifferent | D．Skeptical |
7 . A British hospital director told me he was hunting for staff to replace the foreign doctors and nurses leaving because of Brexit(脱欧). He hadn’t found many qualified Britons queuing to replace them.
In an age when the “war for talent” is a global business trend, the UK is fighting a war against talent. But if I were a Brexiter, I’d say: Brexit Should be the prompt for Britain to finally start training enough of its own talent. If UK wants to avoid economic decline, it will need to train far more of its own nurses, construction workers, architects, etc. For a country whose policy has always been not to educate the working class, that would be a reversal of history.
Before Brexit, high-skilled immigrants staffed world-class British sectors such as the City of London and the creative economy. In healthcare, the UK developed a brilliant way: let a poor country like Romania fund a nurse’s education, then underpay her to look after sick Brits. Low-skilled immigrants eager to work all hours for little money gave the UK cafes and corner shops that seldom closed. Low-skilled Britons could have done these jobs, but mostly didn’t.
The coming wave of British talent is largely immigrant too: the kids who have made London’s state schools the UK’s best, plus the offspring of Russian, Chinese and other foreign elites(精英)who fill private schools. Many of these would love to stay and make the UK richer.
But Brexiters want to cut immigration. The obvious solution: equip working-class Brits to do jobs from nursing to banking. Jonathan Portes, economics professor at King’s College London said: “The problem of UK vocational education has been known for at least a century. We’ve always neglected it.” In fact, in August the UK removed the state bursary(助学金)for people training to be nurses, midwives and speech therapists. Students now have to fund courses themselves, then earn a low salary for a lifetime.
If Britain doesn’t upskill its workers fast, it will lose skilled jobs. It will continue to have the world’s best universities per capita only if it can find enough Britons to replace foreign academics who leave the UK. Much the same applies to finance or design. Meanwhile, low-skilled foreign fruit pickers have already melted away since the pound plunged. With few Britons queuing to replace them, much of this year’s produce rotted in the fields. So the likely post-Brexit outcome is a UK that cannot keep itself in the style to which it has become accustomed. The war against talent will probably leave Britain looking a bit more like today’s English seaside towns, or most of the country in the 1970s: culturally homogeneous(同种类的), relatively poor and under-serviced.
1. The UK is fighting a war against talent because______.| A．skilled immigrants leave the country after Brexit |
| B．it doesn’t have enough fund to train its own citizens |
| C．too many qualified Britons are queuing for creative jobs |
| D．it is trying a different approach to attracting talent |
| A．Hospitals employed many immigrant nurses. |
| B．Much attention was paid to the nurse training. |
| C．Many Brits were unwilling to do low-paid jobs |
| D．Immigrant elites could find creative and decent jobs |
| A．Most well-educated immigrants had no plan to stay in the UK |
| B．The government now gives nurses-to-be some financial support |
| C．A lot of fruits rotted in the fields for the lack of skilled fruit pickers. |
| D．The outflow of talent only existed in the field of education and healthcare |
| A．be as rich and powerful as it used to be |
| B．be as convenient as it was before Brexit |
| C．be different in style but the same in essence |
| D．go backward in economy and social service. |
8 . Time for a Brainstorm
A brainstorm is a session where a small group of people come together to solve a problem. People voice spontaneous ideas, sometimes just shouting, and a note-taker writes them all down.
Brainstorming has become one of the most popular ways to solve problems and hold discussion in schools and businesses. Many students brainstorm for a group assignment or even for a personal essay. Sarah Grace, 24, is an Australian marketing analyst and uses brainstorming during all her creative duties. She thinks brainstorming is the best way to work as a team. The sessions get everyone on the same page, everyone moving together and with a clear understanding about the foundations of an event or idea.
However, a big problem with brainstorming is creating a mess that leads people further away from a solution.
You need to move past brainstorming as soon as you have something workable.
| A．The ideas can be smart, strange or crazy. |
| B．It is caused by a lack of direction from a leader. |
| C．Brainstorming really helps her organize her thoughts. |
| D．Brainstorming really is the best way to build team spirit. |
| E．It can open too many doors and not suggest a clear direction. |
| F．Brainstorms were popularized in the 1940s by American advertising boss Alex Osborn. |
| G．They can be words; phrases, paragraphs and anything that can help answer the question. |
