Getting rid of dirt, in the opinion of most people, is a good thing. However, the attitudes to dirt are always changing.
In the early 16th century, people thought that dirt on the skin was a means to block out disease, and washing off dirt with hot water could open up the skin and let ills in. A particular danger was thought to lie in public baths. By 1538, the French king had closed the bath houses in his kingdom. The king of England did something similar in 1546. Thus began a long time when the rich and the poor in Europe lived with dirt in a friendly way. France’s Henry IV was famously dirty. Upon learning that a nobleman had taken a bath, the king ordered that, to avoid the attack of disease, the nobleman should not go out.
Though the belief above was long-lived, dirt has no longer been regarded as a nice neighbour ever since the 18th century. Scientifically speaking, cleaning away dirt is good to health. Clean water supply and hand washing are practical means of preventing disease. Yet, it seems that standards of cleanliness have moved beyond science since World War II. Advertisements repeatedly sell the idea; clothes need to be whiter than white, cloths ever softer, surfaces to shine. Has the hate for dirt, however, gone too far?
Attitudes to dirt still differ hugely nowadays. Many first-time parents nervously try to warn their children off touching dirt, which might be responsible for the spread of disease. On the contrary, Mary Ruebush, an American immunologist(免疫学家) , encourages children to play in the dirt to build up a strong immune system. And the latter position is gaining some ground.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________| A．to improving | B．improve | C．improving | D．to improve |
4 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once.
A. professional B. exclude C. consider D. restlessness E. incredible F. composition G. relatively H. assumption I. distraction J. hindered K. literally |
Do you ever draw? Most of us don’t, and the reason we usually leave drawing to the artists is because we’re not very good at it. Who wants to do something they’re bad at? But maybe we should rethink this
We should
“We have missed the significance of drawing because we see it as a
Here’s an example: You might enjoy eating at a restaurant that boasts an
Sitting (or standing!) with a pad and pencil, drawing something you see or imagine requires focus and a
6 . Increasingly, over the past few decades, people, especially young people, have become aware of the need to change their eating habits, because much of the food they eat, particularly processed food, is not good for health. Consequently, there has been a growing interest in natural foods. Foods which do not contain chemical additives and which have not been affected by chemical fertilizers, are widely used in farming today.
Natural foods, for example, are vegetables, fruit and grain which have been grown in soil that is rich in organic-matter. In simple terms, this means that the soil has been nourished by unused vegetable matter, which provides it with essential vitamins and minerals. This in itself is a natural process compared with the use ofchemicals and fertilizers, the main purpose of which is to increase the amount — but not the quality — of foods grown in commercial farming areas.
Natural foods also include animals which have been allowed to feed and movefreely in healthy pastures (牧场). Compare this with what happens in the massproduction of poultry (家禽): there are battery farms, for example, where thousands of chickens live crowded together in one building and are fed on food which is little better than rubbish. Chickens kept in this way are not only tasteless as food, they also lay eggs which lack important vitamins.
There are other aspects of healthy eating which are now receiving increasing attention from experts on diet. Take, for example, the question of sugar. This is actually a non-essential food! Although a natural alternative, such as honey, can be used to sweeten food if it is necessary, we can in fact do without it. It is not that sugar is harmful in itself. But it does seem to be addictive: the quantity we use has grown steadily over the last two centuries and in Britain today each personconsumes an average of 200 pounds a year! Yet all it does is to provide us with energy, in the form of calories. There are no vitamins in it, no minerals and no fiber.
It is significant that nowadays fiber is considered to be an important part of a healthy diet. In white bread, for example, the fiber has been removed. But it is present in unrefined flour and of course in vegetables. It is interesting to note that in countries where the national diet contains large quantities of unrefined flour and vegetables, certain diseases are comparatively rare. Hence the emphasis is placed on the eating of whole meal bread and more vegetables by modern experts on “healthyeating.”
1. People have become more interested in natural foods because__________.| A．they are more health conscious |
| B．they want to taste all kinds of foods |
| C．natural foods are more delicious than processed foods |
| D．they want to return to nature |
| A．has had chemicals and fertilizer added to it |
| B．contains vegetable matter that has not been consumed |
| C．has been nourished by fertilizer |
| D．contains no vitamins or minerals |
| A．people need sugar to give them energy |
| B．sugar is beneficial to health |
| C．the habit of eating sugar has grown over the past two hundred years |
| D．sugar only sweetens food, but provides us with nothing useful |
| A．Peopled Growing Interest in Natural Foods |
| B．Natural Foods and Health Diet |
| C．Harmful Effects of Sugar |
| D．The Importance of Fiber in Foods |
Four Hotels That Will Make Your Life Easier By John Brandon For the business traveler who’s all about efficiency: check out these hotels that will get you in and out with minimum trouble. When you’re pressed for time on a business trip, nothing can infuriate you more than a slow hotel check-in process. On your next trip, try these hotels that offer a speedier check-in process. Yotel New York The self-service kiosks （一体机）at this high-tech New York hotel are open 24x7 and work just like the ones you’d see at an airport. There are just five-steps to register and obtain your card key. There’s even a robotic luggage bellboy. You tap in the number of bags you’re carrying and sizes, then wait for a robot arm to swing down and store your luggage in a locker (say, for a day trip). This also speeds up the check-in process if the first thing you need to do, like me, is head to a series of meetings. Marriott Detroit Airport Another option for business travelers in a hurry: Marriott is rolling out its mobile check-in app to 325 hotels this year, including the Marriott Detroit Airport hotel. (I’ve tested the app itself but not for a real visit quite yet.) here is the basic idea: you download the iPhone or Android app. The night before, you can “check-in” virtually. When you arrive, you get an alert that the room is ready and your key, which is already tied to your reservation, is waiting for you at the desk. Hyatt Regency Minneapolis I happened to stay at this hotel recently and liked how fast the kiosk check-in works. Like the Yotel, the kiosk asks you to insert your credit card, similar to an airport terminal. The whole process took about three minutes. When I left, I was equally impressed with the fast check-out. An agent meets you in the lobby with an iPad and asks for an email to use for a receipt. The big advantage is you never have to wait in line. Radisson LaCrosse The Radisson is trying to make the kiosk process even faster. At a few select hotels like the Radisson Lacrosse in Wisconsin, you use a mobile app to register and then receive a barcode （条形码）by email or text. When you get to the kiosk, you can scan the barcode to get your key without any other steps required. It’s super fast. You can find this new check-in system at the Radisson hotels in Salt Lake City, Seattle, and Phoenix as well. |
| A．To annoy. | B．To remind. | C．To amuse. | D．To impress: |
| A．Yotel New York and Marriott Detroit Airport. |
| B．Marriott Detroit Airport and Radisson LaCrosse. |
| C．Marriott Detroit Airport and Hyatt Regency Minneapolis. |
| D．Hyatt Regency Minneapolis and Radisson LaCrosse. |
| A．Yotel New York. | B．Marriott Detroit Airport. ’ |
| C．Radisson LaCrosse. | D．Hyatt Regency Minneapolis. |
8 . Personality may play only a small part in leadership effectiveness, but there is no doubt that some leaders have a certain magic that leaves peers envious and followers entranced. If you could bottle this leadership X-factor—charisma—the queue of interested executives would be a long-one. But what qualities can these often highly successful leaders be said to possess?
As individuals, charismatic leaders have highly developed communication skills, including the ability to convey emotions easily and naturally to others, says Ronald Riggio, professor of leadership and organizational psychology. “They are able to inspire and arouse the emotions of followers through their emotional expressiveness and verbal skills.”
“They connect with followers because they seem to truly understand others’ feelings and concerns.”
“And they are great role models because they have the ability to engage others socially and display appropriate role-playing skills that allow them to walk the talk” Professor Riggio says.
“One quality we like in our leaders is if they are seen to really represent us. We think someone is more charismatic, the more they represent our collective identity,” Professor Van Knippenberg says. In this way, a charismatic leader is somehow a larger-than-life version of ourselves.
Academics say that charismatic leaders also manage to stand out from the crowd. They might do this by being unconventional or by taking a different approach to problem-solving, for example.
“They are up for new things, and they are not stuck in the status quo. They are open to out-of-the-box thinking, etc. An optimistic, energetic quality helps us to see leadership qualities in them and makes us open to their influence,” he says.
“A lot of charismatic leadership, and leadership in general, is very contextual. It’s really good in entrepreneurial firms. It’s also good for turnarounds if the organization is in a bad state because it inspires”, says Kai Peters, the chief executive of Ashridge Business School.
But not every organization needs a charismatic leader. Leaders loaded with the X-factor can be narcissistic (自恋的), self-glorifying, exploitative and authoritarian. As Peters says: “Where it is a problem is where you have ‘look at me, I’m a star.’’’
1. Which word is closest in meaning to “charisma” in the first paragraph?| A．Charm. | B．Character. | C．Gratitude. | D．Optimism. |
| A．proper role-playing skills | B．subtle emotional expressiveness |
| C．marvellous problem-solving ability | D．unconventionality in the crowds |
| A．The one who has a heroical image. |
| B．The one who can speak for us. |
| C．The one who is a collective version of us. |
| D．The one who resembles us in characteristic. |
| A．Critical. | B．Approved. | C．Neutral. | D．Suspicious. |
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