1 . Bitcoin and other so-called cryptocurrencies （加密货币）have been all over the news lately. Apparently, the idea of money that's not tied to a specific bank—or a specific country—is appealing to many. But it's worth remembering that the banking system that we now all live with is just that： A modern invention. Not so long ago, money was almost always created and used locally, and bartering was common. （In fact, it still is common among many online local networks, like the Buy Nothing Project.）.

In the past, money's makeup varied from place to place, depending on what was considered valuable there. So while some of the world's first coins were made from a naturally occurring hybrid of gold and silver called electrum （银金矿），objects other than coins have served as currency, including beads, ivory, livestock, and cowrie shells. In West Africa, bracelets of bronze or copper were used as cash, especially if the transaction was associated with the slave trade there. Throughout the colonial period, tobacco was used to replace coins or paper bills in Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina, even though it was used elsewhere in the colonies and extensively throughout Europe and the U. K.

Today, on an island in the Pacific, a specific type of shell still serves as currency—and some people there are even hoarding（贮存）it, just like Bitcoin moguls, convinced that one day, it will make them wealthy beyond imagination. On Malaita, the most-populated island that's part of the Solomon Islands, shells are accepted at most places in exchange for goods.

"How much tuna（金枪鱼）you can get for your shells depends on their color and shape," Mary Bruno, a shop owner from the small town of Auki, on Malaita, told Vice. "One strip of darker shells might get you about two cans of smaller tuna, but the red ones are worth more. For the red ones, one strip might get enough tuna to feed a big family for a long time."

Just like a mint that creates coins, there's only one place on the island where the shells, which are polished and strung together to form 3-foot-long ropes, are made. The strips of red, white, and black shells all come from Langa Langa Lagoon, where artificial islands were long-ago built by locals to escape from the island-dwelling cannibals. Once marooned（困住）out on their islands, locals needed a currency to use among themselves, and so the shell currency was born.

Using shells for money was common throughout the Pacific islands as late as the early 1900s, but Malaita is unique in that they are still used today. And just like cryptocurrencies, there are those who think the islanders are smart to invest in this type of money, which is reported to have risen in value over the last three decades. It might seem strange to hoard a bunch of processed, strung-together shells, but what is a pile of dollars? Just a specially printed piece of paper and hemp that we've assigned value to—and probably less durable over time than those shells.

1. According to the passage, which of the following is TRUE?

A．Money was created and was widely used in the world.

B．Tobacco was used as coins or paper bills in American in the past.

C．The ingredients of world’s first coins may be the combination of gold and silver.

D．Using shells for money has been out of date in the world.

2. The word "mint" in paragraph 5 is closest in the meaning to     .

A．a kind of money that can exchange

B．the leaves of a mint plant used fresh or candied

C．a place to produce and polish shells

D．a factory that produces currency

3. What's opinion of the author towards shells for money?

A．Reasonable.	B．Imaginary.
C．Convenient.	D．Inventive.

4. Which of the following might be the best title of the passage?

A．The History of Bitcoin

B．Shells Still Money

C．The Currency Is of Great Use

D．Some Shells

2 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

A comprehensive study of 4,500 children conducted by the National Institutes of Health in 2018 shows that children who spent more than seven hours a day staring at screens showed evidence of premature thinning of their brain's cortex一the outer layer that processes sensory information. "We don't know if it     1     (cause) by the screen time. We don't know yet if it's a bad thing. It won't be until we follow them over time     2     we will see if there are outcomes that are associated with the differences that we're seeing in this single snapshot, Dr. Gaya Dowling. ^uWhat we can say is that this is     3    the brains look like of kids who spend a lot of time on screens. And it's not just one pattern."

The problem isn't just screens     4    , but also the way screens tempt kids (and adults) away from something far more important: physical activity. More than 23 percent of adults and 80 percent of adolescents don't get enough physical activity, and according to a 2019 report from the World Health Organization (WHO) , these patterns of activity and rest arise     5    habits we develop early in life. ^uWhat we really need to do is     6     (bring) back play for children," says Dr. Juana Willumsen, a WHO specialist in childhood obesity and physical activity, in a statement about new WHO guidelines issued in April 2019. “ This is about making the shift from sedentary time to playtime, while       7     (protect) sleep. Of course, children aren't completely to blame for their screen addiction.

Sometimes, the parents     8    complain about the role of screens in family life are just as guilty of spending too much time in front of one. A 2016 study       9     (conduct) by Common Sense Media found that parents spend up to nine hours a day in front of screens, mostly not for work-related reasons. While 78 percent of parents said they believed they were good screen time role models, the study found a disconnect between their behavior and their perception of their behavior. Parents need to limit screen time for themselves and especially for their kids一       10     it means playing the bad guy. Our mental and physical health depends on it.

3 . For each blank in the following passage there are four words or phrases marked A, B, C and D.   Fill in each blank with the word or phrase that best fits the context.

The first attempt of even the most talented artists, musicians, and writers is seldom a masterpiece, If you consider your drafts as dress rehearsals (彩排), or tryouts, revising will seem a natural part of the writing _______.

What is the purpose of the dress rehearsals and the out-of-town previews that many Broadway shows go through? The answer is adding, deleting, replacing, reordering, _______ revising. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Phantom of the Opera underwent such a process.

When Lloyd Webber began writing in 1984, he had in mind a funny, exciting production. However, when Phantom opened in London in 1986, the audience saw a moving psychological love story set to music. The musical had _______ several revisions due, in part, to problems with costuming and makeup (戏服和化妆). For instance, Lloyd Webber _______ some of the music because the Phantom’s makeup prevented the actor from singing certain sounds.

When you revise, you change aspects of your work in _______ to your evolving purpose, or to include _______ ideas or newly discovered information.

Revision is not just an afterthought that gets only as much time as you have at the end of an assignment. _______, it is a major stage of the writing process, and writers revise every step of the way. Even your decision to _______ topics while prewriting is a type of revising. However, don’t make the mistake of skipping the revision stage that follows _______. Always make time to become your own ____________and view your dress rehearsal, so to speak. Reviewing your work in this way can give you ____________ new ideas.

Revising involves ____________ the effectiveness and appropriateness of all aspects of your writing, making your purpose more clearly, and refocusing or developing the facts and ideas you present. When you revise, ask yourself the following questions, keeping in mind the audience for whom you are writing: Is my main idea or purpose ____________ throughout my draft? Do I ever lose sight of my purpose? Have I given my readers all of the ____________ that is, facts, opinions, inferences — that they need in order to understand my main idea? Finally, have I included too many ____________ details that may confuse readers?

1.

A．technique

B． style

C．process

D．career

2.

A．in particular

B．as a result

C． for example

D．in other words

3.

A．undergone

B．skipped

C．rejected

D． replaced

4.

A．rewrote

B．released

C． recorded

D． reserved

5.

A．addition

B．response

C．opposition

D．contrast

6.

A．fixed

B．ambitious

C．familiar

D．fresh

7.

A．However

B．Moreover

C． Instead

D．Therefore

8.

A．discuss

B．switch

C． exhaust

D．cover

9.

A．drafting

B．rearranging

C．performing

D．training

10.

A．director

B．master

C．audience

D．visitor

11.

A．personal

B．valuable

C． basic

D．delicate

12.

A．mixing

B．weakening

C．maintaining

D．assessing

13.

A．amazing

B．bright

C．unique

D．clear

14.

A．angles

B．evidence

C． information

D．hints

15.

A．unnecessary

B．uninteresting

C．concrete

D．final

4 . II. Guided Writing
Directions: Write an English composition in 120 – 150 words according to the instructions given below in Chinese.
下图是小学新生的课堂一角，对照你当时的上课情况，作出比较并谈谈你的感受。你的作文必须包括：
●描述图片里学生上课的场景
●比较你同时期的上课情况
●简单谈谈你的感受

5 . More and more corporations are taking an interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR). CSR is made up of three broad layers. The most basic is traditional corporate charity work. Companies typically spend about 1% of pre-tax profits on worthy projects. But many feel that simply writing cheques to charities is no longer enough. In some companies, shareholders want to know that their money is being put to good use, and employees want to be actively involved in good works.

Money alone is not the answer when companies come under attack for their behavior. Hence the second layer of CSR, which is a branch of risk management. Starting in the 1980s, with environmental disasters such as the explosion at Bhopal and the Exxon Valdez oil spill, industry after industry has suffered blows to its reputation.

So, companies often responded by trying to manage the risks. They talk to non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and to governments, create codes of conduct and devote themselves to more transparency in their operations. Increasingly, too. they, along with their competitors, set common rules to spread risks.

All this is largely defensive, but there are also opportunities for those that get ahead of the game. The emphasis on opportunity is the third layer of CSR: the idea that it can help to create value. If approached in a strategic way, CSR could become part of a company’s competitive advantage. That is just the sort of thing chief executives like to hear. The idea of “doing well by doing good” has become popular.

Nevertheless, the business of trying to be good is bringing difficult questions to executives. Can you measure CSR performance? Should you be cooperating with NGOs and you’re your competitors? Is there any really competitive advantage to be had from a green strategy?

Corporate social responsibility is now seen as a mainstream. Big companies want to tell the world about their good citizenship with their devotion to social responsibilities. Done badly, CSR is often just window-dressing and can be positively harmful. Done well, though, it is not some separate activity that companies do on the side, a corner of corporate life reserved for virtue: it is just good business.

(Note: Answer the questions or complete the statements in NO MORE THAN TEN WORDS)
1. Both _________ in some companies find it no longer enough to simply donate money to charities.
2. Give one example of the defensive measures of risk management according to the passage.
3. With the emphasis on opportunity, the third layer of CSR is meant to_________.
4. According to the passage, “good business” (paragraph 6) means that corporations ________ while making profits.

6 .     1     The use of health supplements such as multivitamin tablets has increased greatly in the western world. People take these supplements because advertising suggests that they prevent a range of medical conditions from developing. However, there is concern that people are consuming worryingly high doses of these supplements and the European Union (EU) has issued a directive that will ban the sale of a wide range of them. This EU directive should be supported.

    2     Research suggests that people who take Vitamin C supplements of over 5000 milligrams a day are more likely to develop cancer. This shows how much damage these health supplements do to people’s health. A spokesman for the health supplement industry has argued that other research shows that Vitamin C supplements help prevent heart disease, but we can dismiss this evidence as it is from a biased source.

    3    Science fiction of the 1960s and 1970s predicted that pills would replace meals as the way in which people would get the fuel they needed. This, it was argued, would mean a more efficient use of time as people wouldn’t have to waste it preparing or eating meals. The EU directive would help prevent this nightmare of pills replacing food becoming a reality.

    4     People already take too many pills instead of adopting a healthier lifestyle. For example, the consumption of painkillers in Britain in 1998 was 21 tablets per year for every man, woman and child in the country. People do not need all these pills.

    5     Some might argue that the EU directive denies people’s right to freedom of choice. However, there are many legal examples for such intervention when it is in the individual’s best interests. We now make people wear seatbelts rather than allowing them to choose to do so. Opposing the EU directive would mean beneficial measures like this would be threatened.

A．Healthy way of life giving way to overuse of medicine

B．Different findings as to taking additional vitamin

C．EU’s response to overuse of health products

D．Worrying increase in multivitamin advertising

E．EU directive for the benefit of individuals

F．EU directive against prediction in novels

7 . Directions: Read the passage carefully. Then answer the questions or complete the statements in the fewest possible words.

Sociologists have long recognised that organisations of less than 200 individuals can operate through the free flow of information among the members. Once their size goes beyond this figure, the organizations are getting less flexible. So it seems necessary to prevent total disorder resulting from failures of communication.

One solution to this problem would, of course, be to structure large organisations into smaller units of a size that can act as a group. By allowing these groups to build reliance on each other, larger organizations can be built up. However, merely having groups of, say, 150 will never of itself be a complete solution to the problems of the organization. Something else is needed: the people involved must be able to build direct personal relationships. To allow free flow of information, they have to be able to communicate with each other in a casual way. Maintaining too formal a structure of relationships inevitably prevents the way a system works.

The importance of this was drawn to my attention two years ago by the case of a TV station. Whether by chance or by design, it so happened that there were almost exactly 150 people in the station. The whole process worked very smoothly as an organization for many years until they were moved into purpose-built accommodation. Then, for no apparent reason, the work seemed to be more difficult to do, not to say less satisfying.

It was some time before they work out what the problem was. It turns out that, when the architects were designing the new building, they decided that the coffee room where everyone ate their sandwiches at lunch times was an unnecessary luxury and so did away with it. And with that, they accidentally destroyed the close social networks that strengthened the whole organization. What had apparently been happening was that, as people gathered informally over their sandwiches in the coffee room, useful information was casually being exchanged.

(Note: Answer the questions or complete the statements in NO MORE THAN EIGHT WORDS.)
1. What size of an organization may lead to communication failures?
2. What are the two solutions to the communication problem within a large organization?
3. After the TV station moved into new accommodation, its operation ___________________________.
4. From the case of the TV station, we can conclude it is ____________________________________ that make(s) an organization more successful.

8 . Directions: Read the following text and choose the most suitable heading from A-F for each paragraph. There is one extra heading which you do not need.

A. Manufacturing industry in information economy B. News in the age of information C. Argument about individual accounts and their reliability D. Be your own investigative journalist E. Don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers. F. Information is presented in an entertaining way.

1. ______
   With the arrival of the age of “information economy”, intellectual work is becoming a more important source of wealth than manufacturing. Organizations in all walks of life are doing more to spread their information. So people of the Public Relations are hired to speak for them. A lot of our news is actually collected from press releases and reports of events intentionally staged for journalists. In the information age, journalists spend their time, not investigating, but passing on the words of a spokesperson.
2. ______
   There is a joke in the novel Scoop about the newspaper’s owner, Lord Copper. The editors can never disagree with him. When he’s right about something they answer “definitely”, and when he’s wrong they say “to some extent, Lord Copper.” It seems reasonable to suppose that, in the real world, the opinions of such powerful people still influence the journalists and editors who work for them.
3. ______
   In countries where the news is not officially controlled, it is likely to be provided by commercial organizations who depend on advertising. The news has to attract viewers and maintain its audience ratings. I suspect that some stories get air-time just because there happen to be exciting pictures to show. In Britain, we have the tabloid newspapers which millions of people read simply for entertainment. There is progressively less room for historical background, or statistics, which are harder to present as a sensational story.
4. ______
There is an argument that with spreading access to the internet and cheap technology for recording sound and images we will all be able to find exactly the information we want. People around the world will be able to publish their own eye-witness accounts and compete with the widely-accepted news-gatherers on equal terms. But what it will mean also is that we’ll be subjected to a still greater amount of nonsense and lies. Any web log may contain the latest information of the year, or equally, a made-up story that you will never be able to check.
5. ______
   Maybe the time has come to do something about it, and I don’t just mean changing your choice of TV channel or newspaper. In a world where everyone wants you to listen to their version, you only have two choices: switch off altogether or start looking for sources you can trust. The investigative journalist of the future is everyone who wants to know the truth.

9 . Everyone in business has been told that success is all about attracting and retaining (留住) customers. It sounds simple and achievable. But,_______, words of wisdom are soon forgotten. Once companies have attracted customers they often_______the second half of the story. In the excitement of beating off the competition, negotiating prices, securing orders, and delivering the product, managers tend to become carried away. They forget what they regard as the boring side of business—_______that the customer remains a customer._______to concentrate on retaining as well as attracting customers costs business huge amounts of money annually. It has been estimated that the average company loses between 10 and 30 per cent of its customers every years. In constantly changing_______, this is not surprising. What is surprising is the fact that few companies have any idea how many customers they have lost.

Only now are organizations beginning to wake up to those lost opportunities and calculate the_______implications. Cutting down the number of customers a company loses can make a big_______in its performance. Research in the US found that a five per cent decrease in the number of defecting (流失的) customers led to_______increases of between 25 and 85 per cent.

In the US, Domino’s Pizza estimates that a regular customer is worth more than $5,000 over ten years. A customer who receives a poor quality product or service on their first visit and_______never returns, is losing the company thousands of dollars in__________profits (more if you consider how many people they are likely to tell about their bad experience).

The logic behind cultivating customer__________is impossible to deny. “In practice most companies’ marketing effort is focused on getting customers, with little attention paid to__________them”, says Adrian Payne of Cornfield University’ School of Management. “Research suggests that there is a close relationship between retaining customers and making profits.__________customers tend to buy more, are predictable and usually cost less to service than new customers. Furthermore, they tend to be less price__________, and may provide free word-of-mouth advertising. Retaining customers also makes it__________for competitors to enter a market or increase their share of a market.

1.

A．in particular

B．in reality

C．at least

D．first of all

2.

A．emphasize

B．doubt

C．overlook

D．believe

3.

A．denying

B．ensuring

C．arguing

D．proving

4.

A．Moving

B．Hoping

C．Starting

D．Failing

5.

A．markets

B．tastes

C．prices

D．expenses

6.

A．culture

B．social

C．financial

D．economical

7.

A．promise

B．plan

C．mistake

D．difference

8.

A．cost

B．opportunity

C．profit

D．budget

9.

A．as a result

B．on the whole

C．in conclusion

D．on the contrary

10.

A．huge

B．potential

C．extra

D．reasonable

11.

A．beliefs

B．loyalty

C．habits

D．interest

12.

A．altering

B．understanding

C．keeping

D．attracting

13.

A．Assumed

B．Respected

C．Established

D．Unexpected

14.

A．agreeable

B．flexible

C．friendly

D．sensitive

15.

A．unfair

B．difficult

C．essential

D．convenient

10 .
How would you like to wear the same underwear (内衣裤) for weeks? Owing to the work that has gone into developing intelligent materials, this may not be as     1     as it sounds. Self-cleaning clothes have now been created, and these new materials provide     2     resistance to dirt as well as water. As a result, they require much less cleaning than traditional materials.
The creation of self-cleaning clothes provides an example of how nature helps scientists develop better products. This self-cleaning nature is known as the “lotus effect”. The name comes, of course, from the lotus leaves, which are famous for growing in muddy lakes and rivers while remaining almost     3    
clean. By observing nature, scientists are     4     the qualities of the lotus leaves to the materials they have engineered. Because of this, some remarkable new products have been     5    . Among them are special windows that are resistant to dirt and water. A special     6     on these windows not only prevents dirt from sticking to their surfaces, but also allows dust to be easily washed off by the rain. In fact, these new windows have already been     7     to some cars. Even when traveling at high speed through rain, these cars never have to use their windshield wipers (雨刮器).
Although we have already seen some practical applications, even more dramatic     8     will be made in the future, and they will, perhaps, change our world completely. Undoubtedly, technology is an important development, and it will have an even bigger     9     on our lives.