4 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. estimates       B. lack       C. potential       D. crucial       E. transforms       F. rejected                   G. anxiety          H. unemployed        I. routine        J. impact        K. affects

Joblessness is far more than an economic misfortune. It can be psychological disaster for the     1     and their families. It can cause illness, divide families and create a downward spiral (螺旋式下降) of feelings of worthlessness and     2     of self-esteem. According to research done by M. Harvery Brenner, associate professor of health at Johns Hopkins University, every 1% increase in the unemployment rate     3     37,000 deaths over the next 6 years, including over 20,000 deaths from heart attacks, 900 suicides and nearly 500 deaths from cirrhosis of the liver (肝硬化). In addition, Brenner     4     that 7,500 unemployed or their families will be admitted to prison after committing a crime or to a mental hospital. “The     5     goes well beyond the individual who loses a job,” said Brenner. “Stress caused by economic factors     6     our national life at every level.” Men who have been socialized as the family breadwinner are especially hard hit by unemployment. They suffer greater depression and     7     and have a higher possibility of psychotic behavior than men who are employed. “Nine month on this seems to be a     8     point when hope and patience give out,” said a leading psychologist. “After that illness, suicide, alcoholism, divorce, and even crime grow at an epidemic (流行的) rate.” Left without a job, many workers feel they have nothing to look forward to. They miss their co-workers and the     9     of going to work. For many, the sense of hopelessness grows worse every time they are     10     for a new job. When this happens often enough, the rejection unemployed workers feel may be exacerbated (恶化) if some friends and neighbors avoid them as if they had a contagious disease (传染病).

5 . 听下面一段独白，回答以下小题。1.

A．To encourage its people to retire later.	B．To import more goods from abroad.
C．To give its people additional social welfare.	D．To change the long-held Western prejudice.

2.

A．Small companies.

B．Industrialists.

C．Trade unions.

D．Young people.

3.

A．They know how to spend money.	B．They are forced out of their class.
C．The hold the same belief as the retired.	D．They support their hardworking parents.

6 . Direction: 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. addressing       B. adoption       C. attend       D. budgeting       E. cautions F. correspond       G. extended       H. hesitancy       I. packages       J. regardless K. rigid

Top work-life balance benefits for 2023

“Flexibility is the gold standard of work-life balance benefits,” says Jonathan Pas, health care leader at consulting firm Mercer.

It’s no surprise then that two years after the pandemic forced most office workers to perform their jobs remotely. 78% of employers say they’ll allow employees to continue doing so regularly in 2023, according to a Mercer survey. But there’s still some     1    : only 9% say they will allow employees to work remotely daily.

    2    , flexibility around when employees work is just as important as where. In the survey, 66% of employers said they would offer flexible work schedules over the course of a typical work day, such as specific times during the week to     3     to personal matters and four-day work weeks. Employees no longer want to organize their personal life around a(n)     4     work schedule but instead want the two interwoven, so they can decide what to prioritize and when.

Pas     5     against making hollow promises about a company’s commitment to work-life balance. “If employees feel a disconnection between programs that are rolled out and what senior leaders really expect, credibility is questioned, and the goodwill created through the program is denied.” He cites paid time off to volunteer, which almost half (45%) of companies say they will add to their benefits     6     next year.

Other benefits requiring a broader organizational buy-in are sabbaticals(公休假) and unlimited vacation days. Both benefits encourage employees to pursue interests outside of work with     7     periods off. Still, if they feel a dishonour associated with taking advantage of them, they’ll be hesitant to do so. The relatively low     8     rates for 2023, though—only 12% for sabbaticals and 15% for unlimited vacation—indicate that employers are still against paying employees not to work.

Instead, they prefer to find new ways to give employees more money, with the rise of employer-funded lifestyle accounts, which are often reserved for big-ticket items that might otherwise require some     9    . Nevertheless, only 12% of employers said they would add lifestyle accounts in 2023, and 70% said they are considering them, which could indicate a trend on the horizon.

But perhaps the most telling statistic about the importance of     10     work-life balance is the number of companies that said they don’t plan to offer any additional benefits to support work-life balance: a mere 5%.

7 . In December, 43-year-old doctoral researcher Nina Jane Patel put on a headset and entered Meta’s virtual world to see what was happening that day. “Within seconds of being there, there were three avatars (虚拟替身) near me,” she says. “Suddenly they were taking selfies … I couldn’t see at first that they were touching the avatar’s upper body … They were yelling at me, ‘Don’t _______ you don’t like it, this is what you came for.’”

The incident took place in the metaverse (元宇宙) — an immersive virtual world accessed via wearable technology — in which tech groups expect us to spend a far greater proportion of time in the future, both playing and, _______, working.

When it comes to_______, however, it is unclear what rules of engagement apply in a universal digital realm. What counts as harassment (骚扰) in the metaverse? Can an avatar be_______ against, or worse? Will national legislation protect employees or does working in the metaverse require a(n)_______ rule book altogether?

The global workforce has grown far more accustomed to working _______ in the past two years because of the Covid-19 pandemic and companies have already started experimenting with virtual reality in the workplace. Hilton hotel group, for example, uses it to train staff on how to handle guests. And last year Microsoft, in its first step towards _______ the physical and digital worlds of work, began rolling out a plan to enable workers to appear on its Teams collaboration software as avatars.

But the metaverse takes hybrid working a step further, and brings with it a host of tricky employment law issues. These range from practical challenges, such as how are employees paid, to more _______ ones, like whether avatars have a legal identity.

The physical world of work is regulated by _______ legal frameworks. In California, for example, workers can be fired with no notice, while in Holland, employees generally cannot be sacked without ________ from the court or Dutch employment agency. In the metaverse, ________, the national employment law that applies is not immediately obvious.

“In one sense, the metaverse is just another platform. And the fundamental principles of an employment relationship ________ regardless of platform,” says Jonathan Chamberlain, a partner at Gowling WLG. “Arguably, in the era of Teams and Zoom, many of us are already in it. But the employment relationship has until relatively recently been largely geographically ________; employment law is still largely country or state specific. You often cannot ________ your country’s statutory (法定的) employment protection system even if you — or your boss — wanted to.”

So far, no one has decided what legal framework should apply to a decentralised digital workspace, in which workers may be mobile, and geographically ________ from each other and the company they work for.

1.

A．decide

B．pretend

C．reject

D．hesitate

2.

A．crucially

B．expectedly

C．relatively

D．deliberately

3.

A．corporate images

B．virtual interactions

C．employment laws

D．public regulations

4.

A．voted

B．prejudiced

C．fought

D．weighed

5.

A．outdated

B．universal

C．justified

D．new

6.

A．diligently

B．efficiently

C．cooperatively

D．remotely

7.

A．integrating

B．distinguishing

C．restoring

D．eliminating

8.

A．concrete

B．philosophical

C．academic

D．emotional

9.

A．national

B．comprehensive

C．flexible

D．global

10.

A．grant

B．protest

C．approval

D．support

11.

A．therefore

B．however

C．moreover

D．otherwise

12.

A．fade away

B．remain hollow

C．come up

D．hold true

13.

A．fixed

B．labelled

C．agreed

D．signed

14.

A．come up with

B．opt out of

C．get away with

D．go in for

15.

A．oriented

B．dependent

C．joined

D．disconnected

8 . 选词填空

A. minerals     B. agriculture     C. profitable     D. available     E. shortages     F. celebrations G. immigrants     H. increased     I. population     J. fashionable     K. opened

Chinese traders were recorded as making voyages to the north coast of Australia from the 1750s, but were probably visiting Australia long before. Chinese men arrived in Australia in small numbers after the 1788 British settlement as free settlers and criminals. A small population grew rapidly after 1848 under a system of indentured (契约的) labor, after China had     1     its ports to foreign trade in 1842. They worked in rural New South Wales as cooks, farm laborers and etc.

Indentured Chinese     2     worked in all colonies variously as station hands, plantation workers, miners, on public works, cabinet makers, personal servants and in laundries. Most came from the south-eastern provinces of Guangdong and Fujian.

Due to labor     3     in West Australia, the Colonial Government organized Chinese contract labor between 1847 and 1898, most working as laborers, cooks and gardeners. Many Chinese people came from rural backgrounds and brought with them     4     and water management skills. By 1885, there were 54 Chinese market gardens in Sydney. By 1901, 67% of New South Wales market gardeners were Chinese.

Gold rushes in Victoria in the 1850s and New South Wales in the 1860s significantly     5     the population of Chinese immigrants in Australia; about 45,000 prospectors arrived in Victoria alone in 1854-58. Numbers continued to increase as gold and other     6     were discovered in Queensland, Northern Territory and Tasmania.

When mining became less     7    , many Chinese people worked successfully to provide goods and services such as furniture making, market gardening, fishing and, particularly, store-keeping including the import and export of goods from overseas. Chinese goods, especially tea, silk, vegetables, herbs and other spices were highly sought-after items of trade by non-Chinese people. Tea rooms, importing and selling many varieties of tea, were very popular. Chinese silk was turned into     8     evening wear and cloaks by Chinese tailors and seamstresses.

Today there is a culturally diverse Chinese     9     in Australia with links to south-eastern China as well as Vietnam and Hong Kong. The Chinese communities in Australia are brought together every year by     10     of Lunar New Year.

9 .

A．Hiring more temporary staff.

B．Finding a consultant to get more advice.

C．Hiring more workers during the summer holidays.

D．Hiring more workers during the year-end holidays.

10 . Directions: Read the following passage. Summarize the main idea and the main point(s) of the passage in no more than 60 words. Use your own words as far as possible.

Graduates Turn to Teaching

China has witnessed a 66-fold increase in the number of applicants for teaching qualification tests over the past decade, and experts say the popularity has mainly been driven by more graduates chasing stable jobs. According to the latest figures from the Ministry of Education, the number of applicants for teaching exams each year has grown from 172,000 to 11.44 million in the past decade.

Experts said the sharp increase corresponds with the increase in teachers’ salaries and status within society, and it is expected to bring about an overall improvement in quality teaching. However, another big reason for the enthusiasm for teaching posts is that the challenging and complicated employment situation is driving graduates toward stable jobs such as working as teachers and government officials.

Chu Zhaohui, a senior researcher at the National Institute of Education Sciences, said the popularity of teaching posts is closely associated with people’s changing perception of the economic situation, job stability and security, which are major concerns for graduates.

In view of the coronavirus epidemic in recent years, many college graduates just want a stable job, so teaching suddenly becomes a very popular profession, and many students from well-known universities have joined the competition. Of course, everyone has their own ideas. Take Wang Lin for example. Wang Lin, who graduated from a famous university, said she had wanted to be a history teacher since middle school, inspired by her own history teacher. She added she had a good impression of her teachers from an early age and was grateful to those who had taught her. In fact, there are many such cases.

While passing the teaching qualification test is the first step to becoming a teacher in China, landing a post at schools in big cities can be very competitive.

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