When Halloween arrives, you know there is bound to be some mischief (恶作剧). So I wasn’t
When we’re solving a complicated problem, we often gather a group
Extensive evidence shows that when we generate
3 . Women experience a “gender tenure gap”, lasting in CEO roles at publicly listed companies for shorter periods than men, according to new research which may support the idea that female leaders are subject to a “ glass cliff ” where they are set up to fail.
The concept of the glass cliff is that women are more likely to be appointed as leaders when an organization is in a time of crisis, so that their position is seen as more precarious than male counterparts.
Researchers at the University of Exeter found in 2005 that women were more likely to be appointed as board members after a company’s share price had performed badly. Professor Ryan told the Observer that the Russell Reynolds analysis was “ robust and added to the body of work in this area”.
“If women are more likely to take on leadership roles in times of crisis, then it follows that their time in office is likely to be stressful, more heavily scrutinised and shorter in tenure. This reduced tenure could be for a number of reasons—because there is often higher turnover in times of crisis, because they are judged as not performing well, even though poor performance was in train before their appointment, or because when things start to turn around, men come back into leadership roles.” she said.
Chief executive roles have a very low turnover, she said, which makes progress harder. “I think men can enjoy a greater followership—support within the organization. They can suffer big setbacks and rise again. Women who have been CEOs tend to go off to an alternative career.
However, she said that there was cause for optimism. The number of women on FTSE 350 boards is now 41%, up from 9.5% in 2011, and appointing women is “now the norm”. Russell Reynolds also found in a survey of 1,500 leaders worldwide that there were no significant differences in how women and men were perceived by the people who worked for them, showing that they were equally effective as leaders, although women were seen as being better at coaching and development.
1. What does the underlined word “precarious” probably mean?| A．Dangerous. |
| B．Profitable. |
| C．Essential. |
| D．Available. |
| A．“gender tenure gap” can be found in the majority of companies. |
| B．Male leaders are less likely to be appointed as board members. |
| C．Woman leaders in times of crisis tend to be shorter in tenure. |
| D．Female leaders are generally not performing well during their appointment. |
| A．Women leaders are destined to eliminate glass cliff in the future. |
| B．Nowadays woman leaders differ hugely from man leaders in followership. |
| C．Man leaders are superior to woman leaders in every aspect. |
| D．Woman leaders are no less competent than man counterparts. |
4 . I’ve been paralyzed (瘫痪的) since childhood and I started using a wheelchair in first grade. So I’ve had 30 years to learn just how
As a culture, Americans are
Well, here’s the
“So how am I supposed to be helpful?” you might be asking. You have to
Like anyone else, disabled people are both capable and in need of some help. If you want to be genuinely, actively “
| A．capable | B．desperate | C．friendly | D．responsible |
| A．promised | B．convinced | C．trusted | D．questioned |
| A．brave | B．honest | C．helpful | D．grateful |
| A．test | B．change | C．reason | D．problem |
| A．forget | B．refuse | C．continue | D．pretend |
| A．still | B．also | C．even | D．already |
| A．believe in | B．catch up with | C．smile at | D．pay attention to |
| A．tell | B．answer | C．lie | D．focus |
| A．kind | B．useful | C．faithful | D．polite |
| A．guidance | B．profession | C．performance | D．inclusion |
Children learn best when the significant adults in their lives—parents, teachers, and other family and community members—work together to encourage and support them. This basic fact should be a guiding principle as we think about how schools should be organized and how children should be taught. Schools alone cannot address all of a child’s developmental needs: the meaningful involvement of parents and support from the community are essential.
The need for a strong partnership between schools and families to educate children may seem like common sense. In simpler times, this relationship was natural and easy to maintain. Teachers and parents were often neighbors and found many occasions to discuss a child’s progress. Children heard the same messages from teachers and parents and understood that they were expected to uphold the same standards at home and at school.
As society has become more complex and demanding, though, these relationships have all too often fallen by the wayside. Neither educators nor parents have enough time to get to know one another and establish working relationships on behalf of children. In many communities, parents are discouraged from spending time in classrooms and educators are expected to consult with family members only when a child is in trouble. The result, in too many cases, is misunderstanding, mistrust, and a lack of respect, so that when a child falls behind, teachers blame the parents and parents blame the teachers.
At the same time，our society has created artificial distinctions （区别）of the roles that parents and teachers should play in a young person’s development. We tend to think that schools should stick to teaching academics and that home is the place where children’s moral and emotional development should take place.
Yet children don’t stop learning about values and relationships when they enter a classroom, nor do they cease learning academics— and attitudes about learning —when they are at home or elsewhere in their community.
These days, it can take extraordinary efforts to build strong relationships between families and educators. Schools have to reach out to families, making them feel welcome as full partners in the educational process. Families, in turn, have to make a commitment of time and energy to support their children both at home and at school.
1. What is important when it comes to children’s education?2. Why is it hard for parents and teachers to build a strong partnership nowadays?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
Families and schools should join hands to support students’ development, and they should be aware that there is a clear division of their responsibilities in the education of children.
4. What are your suggestions on how to get parents involved in school affairs?
6 . Lying is something that most of us are expert at. We lie at ease, in ways big and small, to strangers, co-workers, friends, and loved ones. Our capacity for dishonesty is as fundamental to us as our need to trust others, which ironically makes us terrible at detecting lies. Being deceitful is woven into our very fabric, so much so that it would be truthful to say that to lie is human.
The universality of lying was first documented systematically by Bella DePaulo, a social psychologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Two decades ago DePaulo and her colleagues asked 147 adults to write down for a week every instance they tried to mislead someone. The researchers found that the subjects lied on average one or two times a day. Most of these untruths were not offensive, intended to hide one’s inadequacies or to protect the feelings of others. Some lies were excuses—one subject blamed the failure to take out the garbage on not knowing where it needed to go. Yet other lies—such as a claim of being a diplomat’s son—were aimed at presenting a false image. While these were minor crimes, a later study by DePaulo and other colleagues involving a similar sample indicated that most people have, at some point, told one or more “serious lies”—making false claims on a college application, for example.
That human beings should universally possess a talent for deceiving one another shouldn’t surprise us. Researchers speculate that lying as a behavior arose not long after the emergence of language. The ability to control others without using physical force likely gave an advantage in the competition for resources and mates, similar to the evolution of deceptive strategies in the animal kingdom, such as camouflage (伪装).“Lying is so easy compared to other ways of gaining power,” notes Sissela Bok, an ethicist at Harvard University who’s one of the most prominent thinkers on the subject. “It’s much easier to lie in order to get somebody’s money or wealth than to hit them over the head or rob a bank.”
As lying has come to be recognized as a deeply-rooted human trait, social science researchers and neuro-scientists have sought to explain the nature and roots of the behavior. Researchers are learning that we tend to believe some lies even when they’re obviously contradicted by clear evidence. These insights suggest that our tendency to deceive others and our weakness to be deceived, are especially consequential in the age of social media. Our ability to separate truth from lies is under unprecedented threat.
1. What can we learn about the study by Bella DePaulo and her colleagues?| A．They made adults write the instances where they misled someone one or two times a day. |
| B．The subjects tended to lie to hide their own feelings and present a different image. |
| C．Lying was first documented systematically by Bella DePaulo and her colleagues. |
| D．Bella DePaulo and her colleagues made more than one study to show most people lied. |
| A．meaningless | B．useless | C．harmless | D．endless |
| A．most human beings possess a talent for deceiving because of the emergence of language |
| B．animals also use deceptive strategies in order to gain an advantage in the competition |
| C．human beings universally have both talents for deceiving others and detecting lies |
| D．social media will be able to help human beings to tell truth from lies in the future |
| A．A Surprising Discovery of Lies |
| B．Lying: A Deeply-rooted Human Trait |
| C．The Nature and Root of Deception |
| D．On Human Weakness in Spotting Lies |
Connected to each other like never before, young people today are becoming agents of change, increasingly
The United Nations Institute for Training and Research
8 . Abeid was born in a village of Tanzania and dreamt of flying a plane, soaring (翱翔) through the sky. Due to financial difficulties, he became a wildlife guide instead.
Abeid didn’t give up. He became a chief pilot of hot air ballooning at the age of 20. His passion for flying was matched by his skill both as a pilot and as a guide. Then, he came up with the idea of flying across the Serengeti from east to west, which would take four flights on successive days, taking off and landing where no one had ever seen a balloon before.
As a journalist, I was so lucky to make a journey with Abeid. We were up at 3 am. Abeid walked into the basket and checked the lines and the fastenings. Moments later, he was instructing me to get into it. With barely time to catch my breath, he gave a long blast (猛吹) on the burners and the basket tipped upright.
Over the following days, we gasped at the joy and wonder of the sky; at the beauty and complexity of the land beneath us. There was no fear, just a sense of being part of something fantastic as we floated in the silence of the African sky.
But not everything went entirely to Abeid’s carefully worked-out plan. The rains that had started to fall every afternoon slowed the air. On the final day, we landed 20km short of the destination. Luckily, we finally made the crossing the next morning.
When we were returning to the land, crowds of people shouted and waved. Many children looked up as we flew over them, and started to run. As Abeid brought the balloon down, people gathered around the balloon, pressing against the basket. Those children were also there, flushed and breathless, eyes wide with amazement. Abeid and I both looked at each other in silent agreement. Suddenly we were helping some children into the basket. Abeid lifted off and we flew just a few hundred metres with the excited crowd running alongside.
I realized that Abeid’s journey was more than just about flying. It was about hope, inspiration, and the joy of sharing one’s passion. And as I penned down the last words of this extraordinary experience, I knew that Abeid’s story would resonate (回荡) far beyond the Serengeti.
1. What did Abeid dream of?| A．Being a wildlife guide. | B．Being a journalist. |
| C．Flying a hot air balloon. | D．Flying a plane. |
| A．Smooth. | B．Pioneering. | C．Painful. | D．Eco-friendly. |
| A．Showing their technical skills. | B．Teaching the children to be a pilot. |
| C．Taking the children for a ride. | D．Attracting people to their show. |
| A．A Beautiful View: from East to West |
| B．A Balloon Adventure: the Dream Soaring High |
| C．Different Job Experiences: from a Guide to a Pilot |
| D．A Wildlife Exploration: the Unforgettable Experience |
A parent’s nightmare turned to relief in Florida as policemen swiftly rescued a missing five-year-old girl with autism. The local police launched a desperate search,
The Government’s sugar tax on soft drinks
