1 . Despite the fact that American companies have been “global” for a very long time now, many people today inside companies still misunderstand cultural differences. They misperceive potential foreign-born workers, for example, as too “shy” or not “confident” enough.     1    

In many cultures, it is just not appropriate to make small talk with someone you don’t know, especially someone above you in the corporate level.     2     For example, if you express your loyalty to a particular team without knowing that of your colleagues, you might put them in the uncomfortable position of having to either conceal their own preference or express something that conflicts with yours. So, you can imagine how challenging it can be for someone from a non-small talk culture to try to fit into a US corporate setting.

In addition, the US is basically a “straight-shooter (坦率的人)” style culture, where it is cultural valued to tell it like it is. But this isn’t necessarily true worldwide. For example, in Japan, people prefer to communicate indirectly, especially when it comes to a sensitive topic. To avoid accidentally damaging a relationship, people approach problems through subtle hints or general statements. If someone were to directly state a problem, it would make them look ungraceful, immature, and untrustworthy.     3    

Americans tend to be relatively informal in a business context.     4     Many cultures are quite formal, especially when interacting with superiors. In general, Indian culture, for example, is very formal. Indians typically greet their elders and superiors by title (Sir, Mr. , Dr. , Professor) and never by their first name. This is also the case at the university, where students act with extreme levels of respect towards their professors.

The above discussion just hits the tip of the iceberg of the different cultural misinterpretations in corporate America. For American employers to succeed in selecting, training, inspiring and keeping their top foreign-born talent, it is high time that they started taking account of these cultural differences in their leadership selection process.

A．There is a significant problem in corporate America today with foreign workers.

B．In fact, many people are quite surprised at the level of informality in American businesses.

C．Someone who avoids making small talk can be seen as unfriendly or not a team player.

D．However, in reality, with a moderate amount of training, these high-performing individuals could be corporate leaders of tomorrow.

E．It can also be impolite and even dangerous to openly express your opinion.

F．But from the perspective of American culture, this more indirect style appears as if someone is “hiding” the truth.

2 . 听下面一段独白，回答以下小题。1.

A．Because the manager asked him to do so.

B．Because the elderly were respected in his hometown culture.

C．Because the couple wanted him to do so.

D．Because he wanted more pay.

2.

A．He lost his job in the restaurant.

B．He made friends with the couple.

C．He no longer respected the elderly.

D．He changed his way with older people.

3.

A．The more the speaker explained, the angrier the couple got.

B．The manager went back to the table and apologized to the couple.

C．From this experience, the speaker learned more about American culture.

D．The speaker wanted to show his feelings through words after his experience.

5 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

It is said that Chinese New Year started in ancient times,     1     the Chinese people were hounded by a mythical beast called the ‘Nian’. The Nian would visit every New Year day to gobble up all their livestock, crops and even people!

    2     (scare) and tormented, the villagers left food     3     their houses for the Nian, in the hope that it would leave them be once it had been fed.

One day, the villagers noticed that the Nian was afraid of     4     but a small child wearing     5     color red. From that day on, red lanterns, firecrackers and scrolls were used     6    (frighten) the Nian away and it never came back!

Each Chinese year    7     (name) after one of the 12 animals on the Chinese Zodiac. The zodiac is a repeating 12-year cycle and is shown as a wheel, split into12 sections, each     8     (contain) an animal. The Chinese Zodiac and its 12 animals all link to certain years of the Lunar calendar. The year 2020 was the year of the rat, 2021 was the year of the ox and 2022 the year of the tiger.

These animals all came to be ranked by a legendary race     9    they all took part in by crossing a river. The rat won the race through trickery and people who are born in the year of the rat     10     (say) to be very cunning.

From first to last, the animals finished in this order: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog and pig.

6 . “The worst gift is a fruitcake,” said Johnny Carson once in his popular TV show. “There’s only one fruitcake in the entire world, and people keep sending it to each other.” Most Chinese have never heard of Carson, a beloved American television host who died in 2005.     1    

Mooncakes are often dense, cloyingly sweet — and, as Carson suggested, re-gifted. Chinese people usually eat them with their family members. They play a central role in celebrations of the traditional midautumn festival, a popular Chinese holiday that falls on September 10^th.     2    

Despite the outbreak of the pandemic, this year China is expected to produce 437,000 tones of mooncakes, according to iiMedia Research, a consultancy. Sales are likely to reach 24bn yuan ($3.5bn), up by 11.8% compared with last year. As most industries are gradually accustomed to functioning along with the pandemic, the mooncake industry, likewise, is now bouncing back to its pre-pandemic norms.

Most bakeries and restaurants offer mooncakes in their traditional form, with a heavy crust that puts in fillings such as red-bean paste, egg yolks or lotus seed. But expensive fillings, such as shark’s fin and edible bird’s nest, are sometimes added.     3     Some people use these luxurious mooncake packages as a clever bribing way to buy themselves up the ladder towards fame and power. That has led to new concerns over corruption and is out of step with the government’s drive to reduce inequality and control ostentatious (炫耀的) wealth.

Officials, therefore, have been inspecting mooncakes for sale in malls, supermarkets, hotels and restaurants.     4     Whoever sells a mooncake gift set for over 500 yuan must store the transaction data for 2 years in case of investigation.

A．The media have published photos of stuff wearing uniforms on the hunt for overpackaged and overpriced mooncakes.

B．However, the American host expressed his love for mooncakes on his show many times.

C．The expensive materials, however, come from the animals under strict protection by law.

D．But in the months leading up to the celebration, mooncakes have become the object of intense government inspection.

E．Luxury hotels and designer brands have packaged these fancy mooncakes together with gold leaf, jade and expensive tea or liquor.

F．Yet many would get his joke. China has its own fruitcake equivalent: mooncake.

7 . Day of the Dead

Here’s one thing we know: Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, is not a Mexican version of Halloween.

    1     Whereas Halloween embraces terror and mischief on the last night of October, Day of the Dead festivities unfold over the first two days of November in an explosion of color and life-affirming joy. Sure, the theme is death, but the point is to demonstrate love and respect for deceased family members. In towns and cities throughout Mexico, revelers(狂欢者) don(穿上) funky makeup and costumes, hold parades and parties, sing and dance, and make offerings to lost loved ones.

Day of the Dead originated several thousand years ago with the Aztec, Toltec, and other Nahua people, who considered mourning the dead disrespectful.     2     The dead were still members of the community, kept alive in memory and spirit—and during Día de los Muertos, they temporarily returned to Earth.

Today’s Día de los Muertos celebration is a mash-up(混聚) of pre-Hispanic religious rites and Christian feasts. It takes place on November 1 and 2—All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day on the Catholic calendar—around the time of the fall maize harvest.

Cultural heritage is not just monuments and collections of objects. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) says that cultural heritage also includes living expressions of culture—traditions—passed down from generation to generation.     3     Today Mexicans from all religious and ethnic backgrounds celebrate Día de los Muertos, but at its core, the holiday is a reaffirmation of Indigenous(本土的) life.

Day of the Dead is an extremely social holiday that spills into streets and public squares at all hours of the day and night. Dressing up as skeletons is part of the fun. People of all ages have their faces artfully painted to resemble skulls, and, mimicking the Calavera Catrina, they don suits and fancy dresses.     4    

A．In 2008, UNESCO recognized the importance of Día de los Muertos by adding the holiday to its list of Intangible(无形的) Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

B．Some families place their dead loved one’s favorite meal on the altar(祭坛).

C．Though related, the two annual events differ greatly in traditions and tone.

D．Many revelers wear shells or other noisemakers to fuel the excitement—and also possibly to rouse the dead and keep them close during the fun.

E．Today, the calavera Catrina, or elegant skull, is the Day of the Dead’s most ubiquitous symbol.

F．For these pre-Hispanic(前西班牙时期的) cultures, death was a natural phase in life’s long continuum.

8 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.
“Party Cries” In Ireland
Mark Twain

Belfast is a peculiarly religious community. This may be said of the whole of the North of Ireland. About one-half of the people are convinced Protestants (清教徒) and the other half Catholics (天主教徒). Each party does all it can     1    (make) its own doctrines (信条) popular and draw the affections of the irreligious toward them.    2    hears constantly of the most touching instances of this passion. A week ago a vast crowd of Catholics assembled at Armagh to dedicate a new church; and when they started home again the roadways     3     (line) with groups of meek and lowly Protestants who stoned them     4    all the region round about was marked with blood. I thought that only Catholics argued in that way,    5    it seems to be a mistake.

Every man in the community acts like a minister and carries a brick to argue against     6    holds different ideas. The law has tried to break this up, but not with perfect success. The law says that persons uttering (说) irritating “party cries”    7    be fined forty shillings (先令) and costs. And so, in the police court reports every day, one sees these fines     8     (record). Last week a girl of twelve years old was fined the usual forty shillings and costs     9    claiming in the public streets that she was “a Protestant.” The usual cry is, “To hell with the Pope!” or “To hell with the Protestants!” according to the utterer's system of salvation.

One of Belfast's local jokes was very good. It referred to the uniform and inevitable fine of forty shillings and costs for uttering a party cry--and it is no economical fine for a poor man, either, by the way. They say that a policeman found a drunken man lying on the ground, up a dark alley,    10     (amuse) himself with shouting, “To hell with! To hell with!” The officer smelt a fine--informers get half.

“What’s that you say?”

“To hell with!”

“To hell with who? To hell with what?”

“Ah, ye can finish it yourself--it's too expensive for me!”

I think the seditious disposition (倾向), restrained by the economical instinct, is finely put in that.

9 . In the film Inside Out, 11-year-old Riley’s emotions are personified as brightly colored internal figures that drive her behaviors. The same five emotions—anger, fear, disgust (憎恶), sadness, and joy—appear in every other character’s head as well, functioning in much the same way in each individual. In Western cultures, this is the case, argues psychologist Batja Mesquita in Between Us. Emotions in such contexts, she writes, are considered “MINE,” or “Mental, INside the person, and Essentialist,” the latter defined in the book as always having the same properties.

This conception of emotion is not universal, however. Emotions elsewhere, she argues, are thought of as “OURS”—“OUtside   the   person,   Relational,   and   Situated.”   Using   this   distinction,   Mesquita   sets   about contrasting emotions in “the West,” where the individual is the top concern, with “the Rest,” where community is prioritized.

Mesquita describes amae as a central emotion in Japanese culture, where it builds interdependence by encouraging tolerance in parenting process. She describes hasham—which includes shame, embarrassment, and   social   respectability—as   a   fundamental   emotion   for   Egyptian Bedouins   (游牧人).   Such   observations provide a background for her to explore a range of issues, including childhood socialization, the nature of friendship, the role of language in shaping emotions, and cross-cultural communication in a globalized world.

Despite   Mesquita’s   emphasis   on   cross-cultural   emotions,   there   is   little   discussion   of whether   the MINE-OURS dichotomy (二分法) accurately explains global cultural variation. Other scholars have noted, for example, that hunter-gatherer societies at the same time emphasize both individual self-government and social cooperation. And in an apparent contradiction to her earlier arguments, Mesquita herself ultimately concludes that Westerners have OURS emotions.

Taken as a whole, however, the book contributes much to the discussion of the origins of emotions, presenting a remarkable collection of cross-cultural studies intermixed with personal stories about foreign residents’ struggles to reunite   diverse   emotional   and   social worlds.   In   chapter   8,   for   example,   Mesquita describes   an   incident   where   she—a   Dutch   native   living   in   the   United   States—bumped   into   the   famous American   psychologist   Hazel   Markus   at   a   conference   Markus   helped   organize.   Wishing   to   express understanding of Markus’s workload, Mesquita declared “You look a little tired.” The remark appeared to make Markus nervous and confused but was intended as an expression of sympathy—to sympathize in Dutch is to acknowledge suffering, not offer comfort as in the US.

The book’s take-home message is fundamental: There are no natural emotions, no inborn emotions, no universal emotions. Mesquita argues that emotions are “meaning making” and “a preparation for action” and that the idea of “emotions as inner states” is a Western construct. Instead, she suggests that emotions are a “dance” cocreated between people who live in a specific cultural context at a particular historical moment.

1. In Between Us, Mesquita indicates that ______.

A．the Japanese build kids’ emotion of shame in parenting

B．MINE-OURS dichotomy is the very cause of cross-cultural emotions

C．emotions outside “the West” are considered community-centred

D．hunter-gatherers have both emotions of “OURS” and “MINE”

2. We can infer from the incident in paragraph 5 that ______.

A．the emotion of sympathy is to offer help in Dutch culture

B．foreign residents from different cultures usually unite as one

C．as Dutch Mesquita shows her personality of warmth and caring

D．cross-cultural emotional exchanges probably cause misunderstanding

3. What is Mesquita’s main argument about emotions in her book?

A．Family education hardly influences one’s emotions.

B．Sociocultural contexts largely contribute to emotions.

C．Western people’s emotions have no properties of OURS.

D．Internal factors play a vital role in shaping how we feel.

4. Which of the following is the best title of the passage?

A．The cultural landscape of emotions	B．The cultural origin of emotions
C．The cultural convention of emotions	D．The cultural shock of emotions

10 . At the top of a hill called Mount Lee in Los Angeles on the west coast of the USA is a very famous sign, recognizable to people around the world. My job is to look after this sign.     1     The first film was made there in 1907 and by 1912, at least 15 independent studios could be found making films around town.

In the 1940s, TV started to become popular and some Hollywood film studios closed, but then TV companies moved in and took them over. Modern Hollywood was born.     2     If one of them ever fell down I would have to put it back up at exactly the same angle. They follow the shape of Mount Lee and this is part of their fame.

I am responsible for maintaining and protecting the sign.     3     When I first arrived in 1989, security was pretty low-tech-we put up a fence around the sign to stop people messing with it. But people just jumped over the fence. The back of the sign was black with graffiti(涂鸦)there was wire across it, but they still got through. So I decided to improve the effectiveness of the security.

Now we have motion-detectors and cameras. Everything goes via the internet to a dedicated surveillance(监控)team watching various structures around the city. Even so, people still try to climb over the barrier, mostly innocent tourists surprised that you can’t walk right up to the sign. But they can get a closer look on one of my regular tours.

    4     They want to light the sign, paint it pink, or cover it in something to promote their product. You’ll get a really enthusiastic marketing executive call up, terribly excited because they think they’re the first person to think of this or that idea. They mostly get turned down. That’s because we don’t like to change the image and we hope it will have the same significance for generations to come.

A．The letters in the sign weren’t straight and still aren’t.

B．I have been working there for nearly 30 years.

C．People call up with the most ridiculous ideas.

D．It says Hollywood and that’s of course the place where films have been made for over a hundred years.

E．We used to have real problems.

F．Payment must be made for those ideas for commercial purposes.