1 . In this entry to my blog series about successful multinational companies, I will check out the furniture chain IKEA. IKEA has been the world’s dominant furniture chain since 2008, according to Forbes magazine.
Swedish entrepreneur Ingvar Kamprad was only 17 years old when he started the company in 1943. These days, the chain has about 400 stores selling appliances, furniture and other household items in over 40 countries around the world. So how have they managed to become such a global hit, to me it seems that three features of the chain stand out: their dedication to research, their affordable prices and their eco-friendly reputation.
The executives of IKEA have long understood the need to research other markets in order to succeed globally. The company is constantly conducting research on how people use their furniture and what they are looking for. They recently conducted research in eight cities worldwide. This is how they learned, for example, that Korean customers want a special kimchif refrigerator.
But in order to sell at discount prices, they need to make and sell a lot of the same thing to keep costs low. This way, they can get low prices from suppliers, and charge super-low prices to their customers. As a result, they can keep their prices economical even during periods of inflation. This is why they will show the same products in different ways in their stores, depending on the local culture. A British bedroom display might have a British flag bedspread on it, whereas one in Tokyo may have a traditional mat on the floor. In China, IKEA’s fastest-growing market, domestic manufacturers make most of the products they sell in order to keep transport costs low.
A final selling point of the company is eco-friendly. A company representative recently said that they are working on creating new products out of materials we currently throw away, such as recycled plastic and foil. In some markets, they plan to market an electric bicycle, and in Seoul, they recently planted a tree to celebrate the opening of a new store.
Next week, I’ll look at other multinational companies which specialize in household goods and automobile production.
1. What’s one of the following reasons contributing to IKEA popularity in the world?| A．The fashionable feature. | B．The variety of furniture. |
| C．The devotion to study. | D．The automobile design. |
| A．By making all the products in China. |
| B．By adjusting the price in different periods. |
| C．By showing different products in the same way. |
| D．By producing and setting large amounts of the same products. |
| A．It has made some electric bicycles. |
| B．It has planted some trees. |
| C．New products out of recycled materials are created. |
| D．It keeps transport cost low for most of the products. |
| A．A blogger. | B．A reporter. | C．A teacher. | D．A salesman. |
2 . Recently turning 25, Amazon is undergoing great changes. One thing is sure: Amazon has big plans for you, your money and your data.
The main site and shopping experience are unlikely to change much over the next few years unless the company is forced to by the EU or US authorities. Instead, Amazon is looking to get into the physical world. However, there are still some things that people prefer to test in person rather than buy blind online. Aside from the main site, the future of retail (零售) for Amazon looks to be using abandoned department stores. According to The Wall Street Journal, Amazon will make some stores into fulfilment centres (仓储中心) while turning others into Amazon Department Store.
Food delivery is also an area that Amazon is interested in, and it currently owns roughly 16 per cent of the food delivery company Deliveroo. Many of its stores will soon begin using fingerprint scans to pay for goods. If anyone can compete with supermarkets Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose, it’s Amazon.
The largest area of investment for Amazon is in the field of health, because it’s one of a few industries that offer it the large amounts of money needed when it comes to growth. Soon to offer services from telemedicine to insurance widely, Amazon has already offered some medicines. What’s more, from cameras outside your home to keyless entry, Amazon wants to deliver its packages more securely and directly.
These services mean Amazon will be in charge of more of your home than ever before. Amazon is thinking globally, too, planning to send several satellites into space to supply fast and affordable broadband services to tens of millions of people who do not have reliable Internet.
The next few years are important for Amazon’s continued success. The company needs your money and data to make that happen. While it was a huge force during the pandemic, Amazon’s next moves see them in new fields where success is important but not guaranteed. Time will tell whether you, and others, trust Amazon with their health and even more access to their homes.
1. What does Amazon intend to do, based on paragraph 2?| A．It will make big changes to its main site later. | B．It will focus on making use of physical stores. |
| C．It will be controlled by the EU to a great extent. | D．It will continue to focus on the virtual world. |
| A．Few enterprises have developed in this field. |
| B．The company has related industries which can offer help. |
| C．It offers the economic benefits required for enterprise expansion. |
| D．Offering medication has a bright future and can bring in big money. |
| A．It will set up reliable Internet for online shopping. |
| B．It will offer broadband for free to people in remote areas. |
| C．It will support the aerospace industry by launching satellites. |
| D．It will provide various services including door to door delivery. |
| A．To make a brief summary of Amazon’s plan. |
| B．To say Amazon needs people’s trust to succeed. |
| C．To state the social background that Amazon faces. |
| D．To describe the important role Amazon plays in daily life. |
I blame it all on my dad’s good intentions. You see, my writing career started when I was in elementary school, where there were various writing contests throughout the years. I’m assuming it was in the hopes of trying to get our young, little minds excited about the possibilities that writing could offer us in our lives. Then I’d come home, show my parents and my dad would say, “You did such a great job, honey! Wow, you must be a great writer!” I was probably a better writer in 5th grade than my average students at the time. I even went to the special advanced classes for the “gifted” kids for a few years.
And as I grew older, I remembered those experiences and what my dad was always telling me, and it just sort of stuck with me, and became part of my subconscious (潜意识) —that I was a great writer. I always did well in all my classes because I had this confidence. I didn’t like all subjects particularly, but I got good grades. I was pretty self-assured in my abilities as a student. Then, fast forward to my freshman year of high school. By this time, I had started to even out (相等) with the rest of my peers, in terms of intellect. And then, it happened, the day that I was shattered.
It was all because of my English teacher Ms. Moon. The year started out like any other. Jexpected to do well; I worked hard and knew that my dedication would pay off, like it always had in the past. But something started happening. I started getting Cs on my papers! I don’t think I’d ever even seen that letter, except in the spelling of my first name. And, not only was I not getting good grades in her class, but her comments were off the charts shocking. My papers were full of red marks, and I was being asked to re-do many assignments to even get a passing grade.
注意：
1．所续写短文的词数应为150左右；
2．请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
One day, Ms. Moon handed my paper to me and whispered, “It’s still not good enough.”
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Very soon it was time for my final exam result.
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We moved here a few days ago, and I don’t know anyone, not one person, at the new place. Dad says things will get better. He says I’ll take to city living just like I took to climbing trees and playing ball. I look out the window of our new apartment.
“This was a good move for us, Sonny,” Dad says, “You’ll see.”
“I miss the guys,” I say. “I miss Michigan. I miss” — I gaze up and down the street — “trees.”
“Los Angeles isn’t a bad place,” he says. Then he tells me about a park he saw down the street. “It has a couple of basketball courts. Get out there and sweat today. You’ve kept yourself inside too long.” I nod.
That afternoon, I grab my basketball and head down the street to find the courts. Dad was right about being kept inside too long. It’s about time to shake the cobwebs(蜘蛛网)off my basketball legs, see if I can still dribble(运球)with both hands, and remain a good shooter. I walk past all the shops with bars on their windows. This is home?
When I get to the courts, I see three guys shooting around. They’re playing some kind of one-on-one, taking turns with the third guy in. Two of them are taller than me, but one is about my size. I can tell that the short kid knows how to play by the way he handles the ball, dribbling well with either hand. But the other guys are too tall for him. One-on-one isn’t his game. He needs someone to pass to.
I go down to the other basket to shoot around. I’m pretty cold at first. But after I warm up, the old feelings come back — the proper knee bend, the feel of releasing the ball just right.
“Hi, there.”
注意：1. 续写词数应为150左右；2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
I stop and turn around, catching sight of the short kid.
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Without hesitation I accept his invitation to play in the upcoming League Cup.
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5 . Cycling has become more than a habit for “Granny Mave,” as Mavis Paterson is known. It has become essential for her very being, her very reason for living after all three of her adult children passed away within four years of each other — Sandy in 2012, Katie in 2013 and Bob in 2016.
It was in memory of her children that the 85-year-old grandmother set out on her latest endurance challenge in May, cycling 1,000 miles around Scotland, beginning from the Mull of Galloway, before heading north, tracing the outline of the country until she reached the Mull of Galloway again.
“If I didn’t have my bicycle, and this is terrible to say, I don’t think I would want to live,” she told CNN Sport.
Paterson cycled every day for a month around Scotland, navigating its undulating (起伏的) landscape, exposed roads and unpredictable weather. Every day, she woke up early and set out riding — covering up to 50 miles a day — and raising money for British-based charity Macmillan Cancer Support.
Cycling has provided some comfort, some way for her to cope with unimaginable loss. All along the route, Paterson recalled other cyclists coming out to keep her company, offering “terrific support,” some of them riding with her for several days at a time. Such support was a constant throughout Paterson’s odyssey (跋涉) across Scotland, ending in a crowd at the finish line who had gathered to cheer her on.
“I know people have got on their bikes and thought, ‘If that old lady can do it, I can do it.’ And also people who have been a bit depressed and thought, ‘Oh gosh, I shouldn’t be like this. Look at poor Mave, she’s lost all her children.’ So a lot of people have taken up cycling because of my cycle rides and just inspired people apparently,” she said.
1. Why did Paterson start her cycling around Scotland?| A．To keep exercise and improve her health. |
| B．To take up the hobby of her three children. |
| C．To recover from the death of her children. |
| D．To be the oldest lady to ride around Scotland. |
| A．It is highly profitable and well-received. |
| B．It requires great effort and determination. |
| C．It needs professional training and equipment. |
| D．It aims to raise money for the disabled people. |
| A．The support Paterson asked others for. |
| B．Some achievements Paterson achieved. |
| C．The challenges Paterson set for herself. |
| D．The friendship Paterson got along the way. |
| A．A cyclist. | B．A sponsor. | C．A hopeless mother. | D．An inspiration. |
6 . The secret to stress relief: Why rest isn’t a waste of time
Stress is a modern epidemic, but among all the stress management strategies we are forgetting one essential remedy (疗法) — taking time for rest. For a long time, psychologists focused almost exclusively on what went on between our ears.
The most recent insights have revealed that our mental health is determined to a large extent by our physical condition. Studies have shown that our brain processes “psychological” pain — such as the kind that arises out of social exclusion — the same way it does physical pain.
It’s apparent that there is no clear division between body and mind in the case of stress. You suffer more from stress when you are suffering from a flu. If you have a bad night’s sleep, everything is more stressful the next day. But good news is that you can combat it by looking after your body.
When you decide to do something about your stress levels, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to turn your whole life upside down — quit your job, move to another country and so forth.
| A．The body was not their responsibility. |
| B．The first step is to take better care of your body, instead. |
| C．In fact, you can even take an aspirin for that kind of pain. |
| D．For example, physical exercise helps to relieve depression. |
| E．You should ask if the health problems are caused by stress. |
| F．They all concentrate only on anxiety, depression and as such. |
| G．Getting enough rest is not just something we should do when we are exhausted. |
7 . Vitamin C for a cold? A good dose of Vitamin D on a sunny day? We all know that vitamins are critical for our health, but how did they get their names and when were they discovered in the first place?
American nutrition scientist Elmer McCullum conducted a variety of feed experiments with different animal populations and discovered that an “accessory” substance contained in some fats was essential to growth. That fat-soluble (脂溶的) substance became known as Vitamin “A” for “accessory.”
McCollum and others also conducted further experiments with rice-bran-derived nutrient, naming it Vitamin “B” after beriberi, which can cause heart failure and a loss of sensation in the legs and feet. Eventually, it turned out that the substance known as Vitamin B was a complex of eight water-soluble vitamins, which were each given individual names and numbered in order of discovery.
The custom of naming vitamins alphabetically in order of discovery continued. Today, four fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, and K) and nine water-soluble vitamins (Vitamin C and the eight B vitamins) are considered essential to human growth and health. Only one vitamin bucked the oh-so-logical naming system: Vitamin K, discovered by Danish researcher Carl Peter Henrik Dam in 1929. The substance should have been in line to be called Vitamin F given its discovery date. But Dam’s research revealed that the vitamin is essential for blood coagulation (凝固) — known as Koagulation in the German journal that published his research — and his abbreviation for the vitamin somehow stuck.
It’s been decades since the last essential vitamin — Vitamin B12 — was discovered in 1948. It now appears unlikely that scientists will ever discover a new essential vitamin. But even if there’s no Vitamin F or G in our future, that doesn’t mean nutritional discovery has stopped completely. If the golden age of vitamin discovery was an appetizer (开胃菜) of sorts, scientists are devoted to the main course — a rapidly evolving understanding of the ways food shapes our lives, one microscopic substance at a time.
1. What can we learn from paragraph 2 and paragraph 3?| A．Vitamin A is a water-soluble substance. |
| B．Vitamin B was named after a kind of disease. |
| C．The eight B vitamins got names from their functions. |
| D．The subjects of McCullum’s experiments are home. |
| A．Created. | B．Destroyed. | C．Broke. | D．Followed. |
| A．Indifferent. | B．Unclear. | C．Doubtful. | D．Confident. |
| A．How Do Vitamins Influence Our Health? |
| B．Who Discovered Various Vitamins for Us? |
| C．Why Is There a Vitamin K but No Vitamin F? |
| D．How Many Vitamins Are Still Left to Be Discovered? |
8 . Over the past decade, more and more travelers have been embracing the idea of slow travel. One of the most popular methods of slow travel, if you have the time, is by rail. Here are our picks for some of the best train rides in the world.
The Glacier Express
The Glacier Express takes more than eight hours to cross the 180-mile journey between Zermatt and St. Moritz in Switzerland at an average of 18 mph. The classic red train journey brings you to Europe’s mountains at their very best — with views of snow-covered forests and peaks included!
The Nilgiri Mountain Railway
Running through Tamil Nadu State, the train is the slowest in India due to an extremely steep gradient on the route. It takes nearly five hours to cover a distance of 46 km. Clearly nobody uses the NMR to get from A to B, but for the sheer joy of riding in a train that passes through 16 tunnels, 250 bridges and 208 steep curves on the richly biodiverse Western Ghats mountain range.
No. 6063/6064
With a length of 257 kilometers, the highly popular “small-and-slow train” route winds through the Qinling Mountains, linking 13 stations at the highest cost of 39.5 yuan. Villagers take the train to sell their vegetables in nearby counties to add to their families’ income. Helping poverty alleviation and carrying students to schools, the rail line, running for over 60 years, is a guarantee of and witness to the wish for a better life of the people along its route.
Royal Scotsman
With the full length of 1930 kilometers, the Royal Scotsman marries Edwardian elegance with the comforts of a five-star country house. The train includes elegant lounges, comfortable suites, and an open observation deck. The 9-coach train carries a just 36 passengers maximum with a passenger to staff ratio of 1:3. One of the coaches is the amazing Bamford Spa offering something of a palace on wheels.
1. Why do people choose the Nilgiri Mountain Railway?| A．To view the snow-covered forests. |
| B．To travel from one place to another. |
| C．To experience the amusement of riding. |
| D．To study the geography of the Western Ghats. |
| A．The Glacier Express. | B．No. 6063/6064. |
| C．The Nilgiri Mountain Railway. | D．Royal Scotsman. |
| A．Its luxury. | B．Its route. | C．Its history. | D．Its convenience. |
9 . One night two millennia ago, a Han Dynasty general sent a square-shaped collection of bamboo and cloth into the air above enemy territory in central China. He was trying to measure how much earth his men would need to tunnel through to tear their enemies’ defense line.
It is one of the most famous early stories of kite-flying. Similar devices were later used by other Chinese armies; they launched them after dark in whipping winds in hopes that the noise would scare off enemies, and used them to deliver threats via missives (信函) tied to the kites’ tails.
Today, of course, these delicate aircraft — built from light wood or plastic frames shaped to create lift, covered in a thin material such as paper or silk, and piloted via long strings — are considered as toys. In the 1990s and early 2000s, kite-flying experienced a boom in the American West and parts of Europe, due in part to the popularization of kites surfing. Groups of kiters began to take interest in its lore (知识).
Thus a wave of younger artists have been inspired to pioneer new forms. In Austria, Anna Rubin, often employs ancient methods for her art, including hand-splitting the bamboo for the frames and using hand-pressed natural fibres to cover them. She wants to carry on traditions she fears may be lost by a culture fixated on the future, but she’s equally inspired by the joy of work. “Everyone should, once in their life, make a kite and fly it,” she says.
And in New York, visual artists Jacob Hashimoto, assembles massive installations from dozens of palm-size kites to hang from the ceiling of his studio or gallery. He inherited (继承) his interest in kite-making from his father. “The kite-making is a pan-cultural practice that makes it a beautiful, democratic thing,” he says. “In many ways, it’s a global property — we all own the relationship between us and the sky.”
Their work is a reminder that kites offer us a means to defy gravity. In the hands a willing flier, they give us a way up and out.
1. What was the kite used for in ancient China?| A．A tool of warfare. | B．A kind of recreation. |
| C．A sign of good luck. | D．A way of communication. |
| A．They are lightly structured. | B．They are widely used in Europe. |
| C．They are less popular in China. | D．They are considered as a science. |
| A．The popularity of kites in Austria. |
| B．Her enthusiasm in Chinese culture. |
| C．Her father’s encouragement and support. |
| D．Its pleasure and her sense of responsibility. |
| A．To remind us that kites will lose their cultural value in the future. |
| B．To tell us some young artists are taking kite-making to new heights. |
| C．To list some examples of the difficulties promoting kites in the world. |
| D．To show that only a few people consider kites worthy of preservation. |
10 . Templer was a tour guide in Zimbabwe, leading a canoe (皮划艇) safari down the Zambezi River. During the expedition, Templer’s canoe
Things were going the way they were supposed to go. Everyone was having a pretty good time. Eventually, they
Templer tried to steer (率领) the group safely around them. However, the third canoe was off the planned
Despite the unpleasant experience, Templer
| A．made | B．found | C．led | D．wound |
| A．encountered | B．interrupted | C．saved | D．killed |
| A．unfortunate | B．unexpected | C．uncertain | D．unnecessary |
| A．speed | B．angle | C．vision | D．distance |
| A．line | B．control | C．course | D．duty |
| A．watch | B．comfort | C．stop | D．rescue |
| A．leaning over | B．turning away | C．looking up | D．calming down |
| A．hearts | B．fingers | C．heads | D．thoughts |
| A．appeared | B．flowed | C．froze | D．erupted |
| A．free | B．empty | C．hurt | D．skinny |
| A．risk | B．avoid | C．permit | D．finish |
| A．surface | B．bottom | C．bank | D．sky |
| A．hoped | B．continued | C．refused | D．hesitated |
| A．habitat | B．safety | C．conservation | D．suffering |
| A．readily | B．finally | C．casually | D．simply |
