1 . Teaching and Learning can be more productive with the aid of today’s smartphone empowered education applications.
Vocabulary building is perhaps the single-most essential aspect of language learning. Conventional ways of language teaching and learning have usually relied on classroom teaching and textbook lessons. Video coaching and e-learning were later thrown into the mix. Education websites also grew to meet the needs of students. All these new additions were particularly helpful for language learners, since the domain of foreign language learning has found immense assistance in audio-visual aid. Language tutorial videos, flashcards, online dictionaries and other such material has made vocabulary building easier, more effective and hassle-free.
Then came the concept of smartphones. With the boom in the smartphone market, the domain of language learning got a facelift. Smartphone apps joined the fray (竞争).Teachers started making use of learning apps while instructing and students started using them as well. You can have an entire suite of applications to improve productivity while teaching.
Language Learning Apps
Language learning apps provide not only vocabulary databases, but also pronunciation guides, subtitled videos, podcasts, word cards and a range of audio-visual and other tools to enhance learning. These phone apps make for a learning system that not only strengthen vocabulary, but also ensure proper pronunciation and spelling skills.
Some of these apps are:
Busuu: Scott McGinn, an ESL teacher, swears by English learning apps to instruct his students. “They are a great way to make foreign students understand colloquialisms and phrases used by native English speakers”, he says. His favorite is Busuu, a popular app that uses rewards, achievements and trivia to put the spark back into learning. It offers a social feature that allows the student to interact with native speakers online.
Duolingo: Duolingo uses crowdsourcing to provide users with the option to translate content with their new learning. Gamification(游戏化) has been gaining popularity in the learning scene and Duolingo makes clever use of it. Higher scores unlock further lessons and progress is tracked.
Mental Case (iOS) and AnkiDroid (Android): Many new apps use flash cards to help students remember and practice lessons. In fact, there are whole flash card apps, such as Mental Case (iOS) and AnkiDroid (Android). Stacey O’Connell, who makes tutorial videos for language students, says, “I believe that flash cards go a long way as a teaching tool. The best thing about them is that they can be used independently by students as well.”
Classroom Managing Apps
Often, foreign language classrooms tend to turn chaotic and noisy owing to miscommunication and language barriers. Quite a few smartphone apps address this issue.
The following are two of these:
Socrative: This app is designed like an interactive whiteboard. Kevin Gladden, a high school level language teacher, has this to say about Socrative, “It allows me to run education games for the class. My students can answer multiple-choice, short-answer type and quiz questions.” The results are then displayed as bar graphs. Kevin exports the results as reports.
Teacherkit: Another handy app Kevin recommends is Teacherkit. This efficient classroom managing app is practically a personal organizer. Teachers can use it to create name rolls, take attendance, track behavior of students, and organize student data.
Lesson Planning and Organizing Apps
Then there are also smartphone apps that help teachers in building teaching modules, planning lessons and organizing notes, documents, student data, bookmarks and other teaching aid. Evernote is the juggernaut(巨头) in this range of apps. Not much needs to be said about what it does, since most smartphone users already know. Dropbox, another favorite, makes efficient use of cloud storage. It allows the user to save all documents, multimedia files, notes, and bookmarks in one place, and securely.
There is no end to the number of things you can do with smartphone apps. Start exploring (if you haven’t already) and make your students aware of the efficacy of these apps in learning. Language learning will therefore also turn into more of a fun activity and the boredom will take a backseat. What more could a teacher want?
1. According to the first two paragraphs, which of the following statement is True?| A．Vocabulary building is definitely most important aspect of language learning. |
| B．Traditional classroom teaching and textbook lessons are becoming less significant. |
| C．Foreign language learning has been greatly facilitated by audio-visual aids. |
| D．A variety of multimedia materials make vocabulary learning easy and free. |
| A．beautifies the image of language learning |
| B．helps improve the field of language learning |
| C．transforms the methods of language learning |
| D．lifts the confidence of language learners |
| A．4 | B．6 | C．8 | D．10 |
| A．flashcards can be very helpful for learners, especially for independent work |
| B．tutorial videos still has a long way to go before assisting independent study |
| C．running educational games in the class will be highly engaging for students |
| D．apps can facilitate classroom management, monitor and track performance |
| A．organizing documents and data |
| B．saving multimedia files and notes |
| C．building modules and lessons |
| D．designing multiple choice quizzes |
| A．endless smartphones apps will do everything for language learners |
| B．teachers are responsible to persuade learns to use effective apps |
| C．language learning will become more engaging thanks to these apps |
| D．teachers are supposed to ask for more in making good use of these apps |
2 . We all do it. We put off that dreaded task for five more minutes, then for thirty minutes, then for another hour, until it doesn’t get done at all. And the worst part is we still weren’t able to enjoy our day. We spend so much time stressing over that looming task that it deprives us from actually being able to focus on other tasks.
Why do we do it? We know it never ends well. The problem is that the cycle can feel nearly impossible to break. We get so caught up in the cycle of procrastination that we almost forget how to effectively tackle hard tasks.
Here are five tips for nipping procrastination in the bud and taking back control over your daily life.
Tackle the most difficult task first.
You’re probably thinking “Duh, I already knew that.” But you may not have realized that there’s scientific backing for this suggestion. We only have a limited supply of willpower. Once it’s been used up for the day, chances of us tackling hard tasks are pretty slim. Dive into your hardest task when your energy level is at its highest. This will ensure the best results.
When we push the hard tasks to the end of the day, it takes a toll on our energy all day long. In the end, stressing for hours over the task we’re procrastinating negatively affects all the other tasks on our list.
So next time you’re scheduling the items on your list, make sure to start out with worst one. It may not necessarily be the largest, but it should be the one you’re dreading the most. By accomplishing it so early in the day, you will feel energized and productive. You’ll know the rest of the day is all downhill and cruise through the list with remarkable speed.
Divide the task into smaller tasks.
We tend to get overwhelmed when a giant project looms ahead of us. We don’t know where to start or what to do first. Keep in mind that forests are made up of individual trees. Though you may not be able to take down a whole forest at once, you could certainly start with one tree (or even a branch).
If you need to organize your entire kitchen, start by working on just one cupboard. Organizing one cupboard is much more feasible than trying to get everything done in one swoop. Make a commitment to complete a small step each day, and you’ll find the task becoming less and less daunting with each new task that you accomplish.
Set a mid-day alarm.
There’s nothing more guilt-inducing than ending a day and realizing you haven’t accomplished a single task. We can avoid this rut by setting an alarm on our phone to ring every day around 1 p.m. When the ringer goes off, assess how many things on your list have been attended to.
Re-plan your schedule for the remainder of the afternoon and shift it around to take care of the most important item first. If necessary, you can indulge in a second cup of coffee to jumpstart your “second morning.” By doing this, you will avoid going to bed at night mulling over all the things you didn’t get done.
Dedicate yourself for a small period of time.
To stimulate productivity, there’s an old trick of setting a timer for ten minutes. By frantically racing the clock for that short period, you’ll likely find you become engrossed in your tasks and continue working.
The feeling of dread that has been on your mind will quickly be replaced with a sense of pride and satisfaction. Seeing what you can accomplish in ten minutes when you put your mind to it is quite motivating.
Schedule your tasks on the calendar.
Creating a game plan will help you move past the initial paralysis you feel. Instead of just writing the tasks down in a to-do list, take it a step further and identify when and how you’ll accomplish it.
For example, plan to go to the grocery store at 4:00 p.m. and start cooking dinner promptly at 4:30. By clearing up the anticipatory stress, you’ll avoid a large part of the dread that holds you back. Creating the plan is half the battle!
Though it feels impossible, you have it in you to accomplish everything that you need to every single day. With a fresh perspective, a little prodding (敦促), and a detailed plan, you’ll be well on your way to ending the procrastination cycle once and for all.
1. The word “procrastination” most likely means _______.| A．hesitation | B．delay | C．depression | D．avoidance |
| A．fully realize the importance and severity of the problem of procrastination |
| B．make an effort to keep the problem of procrastination well under control |
| C．take our time to identify the root problem of the habit of procrastination |
| D．prevent and cope with the issue of procrastination in the early stage |
| A．If we put off the hardest task to the end of the day, we can be more energetic. |
| B．It is of greater importance for us to see the “forest” than attend to the “tree”. |
| C．A small and steady step on the daily basis will make the task less overwhelming. |
| D．Having a second cup of coffee will help you compete morning commitment better. |
| A．trick you into being more anxious and desperate |
| B．keep you more concentrated and productive |
| C．help you move past the initial paralysis you feel |
| D．prevent you from feeling guilty when going to bed at night |
| A．it is quite impossible to completely get rid of procrastination circle |
| B．creating a good plan can help you win the battle against procrastination |
| C．everybody may tend to procrastinate and there is little need for guilt |
| D．with the advice listed, it is very hopeful to overcome procrastination |
3 . Population and climate
The human population on Earth has grown to the point that it is having an effect on Earth’s atmosphere and ecosystems. Burning of fossil fuels, deforestation, urbanization, and cultivation of rice and cattle are increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides and dust in the atmosphere. About 70 percent of the Sun’s energy passes through the atmosphere and strikes Earth’s surface. This radiation heats the surface of the land and ocean, and these surfaces then reradiate infrared radiation back into space. This allows Earth to avoid heating up too much. However, not all of the infrared radiation makes it into space; some is absorbed by gases in the atmosphere and is reradiated back to Earth’s surface. A greenhouse gas is one that absorbs infrared radiation and then reradiates some of this radiation back to Earth. Carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides are greenhouse gases. In fact, without greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, scientists calculate that Earth would be about 33℃ cooler than it currently is.
The current concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is about 360 parts per million. Human activities are having a major influence on atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, which are rising so fast that current predictions made by scientists are that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide will double in the next 50 to 100 years.
Some scientists predict that a doubling of carbon dioxide concentration will raise global temperatures anywhere between 1.4℃ and 4.5℃. The increase in temperature will not be uniform, with the smallest changes at the equator and changes two or three times as great at the poles. The local effects of these global changes are difficult to predict, but it is generally agreed that they may include alterations in ocean currents, increased winter flooding in some areas of the Northern Hemisphere, a higher incidence of summer drought in some areas, and rising sea levels, which may flood low-lying countries.
1. It can be inferred from the passage that one positive aspect of greenhouse gases is that they _______.| A．remove pollutants from Earth’s atmosphere and ecosystems |
| B．absorb 70 percent of the Sun’s energy |
| C．help keep Earth warm |
| D．double atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide |
| A．The rapid rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations is mostly caused by human activities. |
| B．Human activities will no longer have an influence on atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations in the next 50 to 100 years. |
| C．Some scientists predict that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations will not increase in the next 50 to 100 years. |
| D．Some scientists recently predict that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations that are largely influenced by human activities will double in the next 50 to 100 years. |
| A．different |
| B．identical |
| C．comparable |
| D．changeable |
| A．Sea levels will fall. |
| B．The effects will not occur in some regions of the world. |
| C．The local plants and forests will be permanently damaged. |
| D．It is hard to know exactly what form the local effects will take. |
| A．Raising livestock and growing rice are the actions of humans. |
| B．The surface of the land and ocean can help decrease the temperature of Earth. |
| C．Although carbon dioxide concentration may double in the future, temperatures at the North Pole and South Pole may not change. |
| D．Nitrogen oxides absorb infrared radiation that can increase the temperature of Earth. |
4 . Have you ever been stopped in your tracks by a stunning view, or gobsmacked by the vastness of the night sky? Have you been transported by soaring music, a grand scientific theory or a charismatic person? If so, you will understand US novelist John Steinbeck’s response to California’s giant redwood trees, which can soar more than a hundred metres towards the sky. “They leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always,” he wrote. “From them comes silence and awe.”
Philosophers and writers have long been fascinated by our response to the sublime, but until a few years ago, scientists had barely studied it. Now they are fast realising that Steinbeck was right about its profound effects. Feeling awestruck can dissolve our very sense of self, bringing a host of benefits from lowering stress and boosting creativity to making us nicer people.
But what exactly is awe and where does it come from? “It’s a subjective feeling rooted in the body,” according to psychologist and pioneering awe researcher Dacher Keltner at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2003, he and Jonathan Haidt, now at New York University, published the first scientific definition. They described awe as the feeling we get when confronted with something vast, that transcends our frame of reference and that we struggle to understand. It’s an emotion that combines amazement with an edge of fear. Wonder, by contrast, is more intellectual – a cognitive state in which you are trying to understand the mysterious.
You might think that investigating such a profound experience would be a challenge, but Keltner insists it’s not so hard. “We can reliably produce awe,” he says. “You can get people to go out to a beautiful scene in nature, or put them in a cathedral or in front of a dinosaur skeleton, and they’re gong to be pretty amazed.” Then, all you need is a numerical scale on which people can report how much awe they are feeling. Increasingly, studies are including a physiological measure too, such as the appearance of goosebumps (鸡皮疙瘩) – awe is the emotion most likely to cause them, and second only to cold as a source.
In this way, Keltner and others have found that even mild awe can change our attitudes and behaviour. For example, people who watched a nature video that elicited awe – rather than other positive emotions such as happiness or pride – were subsequently more ethical, more generous and described themselves as feeling more connected to people in general. Gazing up at tall eucalyptus trees left others more likely to help someone who stumbled in front of them. And after standing in front of a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, people were more likely to describe themselves as part of a group. It might seem counterintuitive that an emotion we often experience alone increases our focus on others. But Keltner thinks it’s because awe expands our attention to encompass a bigger picture, so reducing our sense of self.
“The desert is so huge, and the horizons so distant, that they make a person feel small,” wrote Paulo Coelho in The Alchemist. He was right. In a large study, Keltner found that after inspiring awe in people from the US and China, they signed their names smaller and drew themselves smaller, but with no drop in their sense of status or self-esteem. Similarly, neuroscientist Michiel van Elk at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, found that people who watched awe-inducing videos estimated their bodies to be physically smaller than those who watched funny or neutral videos.
The cause of this effect might lie in the brain. At the annual meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping in Vancouver, Canada, in June, van Elk presented functional MRI scans showing that awe quiets activity in the default mode network, which includes parts of the frontal lobes and cortex, and is thought to relate to the sense of self. “Awe produces a vanishing self,” says Keltner. “The voice in your head, self-interest, self consciousness, disappears. Here’s an emotion that knocks out a really important part of our identity.” As a result, he says, we feel more connected to bigger or collectives and groups.
1. The underlined word “transported” in Paragraph 1 is closest in meaning to ________.| A．taken in | B．fired up | C．carried away | D．tuned out |
| A．hold more respect for redwood trees | B．enhance our connectedness to humanity |
| C．increase our self-consciousness | D．enjoy a completely stress-free life |
| A．the former is beyond the range of our normal experiences while the latter of our intellect |
| B．the former involves a feeling of fright while the latter an element of puzzlement |
| C．the former has more to do with our body while the latter with our mind |
| D．the former is viewed as more personal while the latter more collective |
| A．It’s against our wish that awe makes us care more for others than for ourselves. |
| B．The feeling of awe automatically directs our focus to others from ourselves. |
| C．It’s common sense that awe, though felt alone, boosts our concern for others. |
| D．It seems odd that the emotion of awe tends to associate the individual with the world. |
| A．Getting close to something awesome makes us happier and nicer. |
| B．Awe can cause physical reactions in our body just as cold does. |
| C．The huge desert and distant horizons affect our attitudes and confidence. |
| D．MRI scans suggest that the emotion of awe has biological connections. |
5 . I was enjoying this afternoon more than I had expected. Often, the tryouts for the spring musical tested the limits of my patience and nerves, with one hopeful girl after another taking turns walking onto the wooden stage, delivering an adequate but uninspired version of some Rodgers & Hammerstein number, and then being politely excused by Mrs Dominguez as the next name on the list was called.
However, this was to be my third straight year in the musical, and the confidence that my seniority afforded me around the more nervous newcomers allowed me to take pleasure in radiance of my own balance.
I had already sung my audition (试唱) song an hour ago, starting the day’s ceremonies. This year, I used “God Bless the Child”, a choice I found to be quite sophisticated since Billie Holiday’s version of it was familiar mostly to adults, and even then, mostly to adults of the previous generation. More importantly, it required a reserved performance, which I felt showcased my maturity, especially because most of the other auditioners chose songs that would show their enthusiasm, even if it meant their technical mastery would not be on full display.
Normally, the first audition was feared by most. Mrs Dominguez would ask if anyone wanted to volunteer to “get it over with”, but no one would make a sound. Then, she would call the first name off her list and the room would drop into an uncomfortably serious silence as the first student walked nervously up to the stage. I often imagined during those moments that I was witness to a death-house liver taking his march toward a quick curtain.
But not this year. I had decided to make a show of my own self-confidence by volunteering to go first. Such a fearless act, I had figured, would probably instill even more fear into my competition because they would realize that I had something they clearly lacked. Mrs. Dominguez had seemed neither surprised nor charmed by my decision to go first. Although she was annoyed by my escalating pride, I also acknowledged that I was one of the more talents actors and was probably correct in assuming myself a winner.
At this late stage of the afternoon, I felt like a queen, sitting in the back of the auditorium with my royal court of friends and admirers. They took care to sit far enough away from Mrs Dominguez that they would not be caught in the act of belittling the other students’ auditions.
To me, the endless parade of the ambitious who sang their hearts out for three minutes each were like clowns performing for my amusement. As Mrs Dominguez read another name off her list, I prepared myself for a special treat.
1. What did the writer do one afternoon?| A．She enjoyed her time watching the audition. |
| B．She performed in the school spring musical. |
| C．She attended the selective trial of the school musical. |
| D．She helped Mrs Dominguez to select musical talents. |
| A．would be the most inspiring Rodgers and Hammerstein numbers |
| B．was the most sophisticated song in Billie Holiday’s versions |
| C．would likely be more recognizable to her parents than to her friends |
| D．would allow her to more effectively showcase her enthusiasm |
| A．offer a contrast created by the writer’s choice of audition |
| B．present reasons why this year’s audition was the strangest |
| C．suggest that the writer’s imagination no longer involved the same imagery |
| D．inform the reader that students’ fears of going first were something of the past |
| A．To guarantee her a part in the play. |
| B．To impress and charm Mrs Dominguez. |
| C．To add her confidence in her performance. |
| D．To make the others feel they could not compete with her. |
| A．concerned and nervous | B．arrogant and indifferent |
| C．friendly and inclusive | D．confused and surprised |
Interview: is evolution predictable?
4th August 2017
If we were to replay the tape of life here on Earth from scratch, would we as humans still evolve? That’s a key question new research in the area of experimental evolution is seeking to address. We speak to Jonathan Losos, professor in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and curator of herpetology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, ahead of publication of his first book Improbable Destinies: How Predictable is Evolution?
J:
P: In short, it’s new evidence. Stephen Jay Gould wrote in his seminal and highly influential book Wonderful Life that we were not fated to evolve the way we did; that if you could replay the tape of life and let evolution proceed from an early point, then the end result would not at all be the same. But Gould’s argument was based entirely on logic and thought experiments. Thirty years later, we have lots of data on how deterministic evolution is, how subject it is to the whims and flukes of history. We are finally in a position to re-assess whether Gould was right or not.
J:
P: The answer to that is somewhere in the middle, as with many debates. To some extent, if you put the same species in the same environment, experiencing the same selective pressures, they often do evolve in the same way. This is particularly common when you’re dealing with closely related species, and there’s a reason for that. Closely related species have the same genes and the same biology, so it’s very easy for them to evolve in the same way. Different species, however, have different ways of reacting to a given evolutionary pressure. So evolution is probably more deterministic than Gould was willing to recognize, but it’s not quite as pervasive as some others have argued. Where is the convergent duck-billed platypus, for example? If evolution is so convergent, why don’t we have this animal outside Australia? Evolution is often not predictable; it’s contingent on previous circumstances.
J:
P: I can’t really answer that question. What’s changed recently is our knowledge about how many Earth-like planets there may be, even within our own Milky Way galaxy. With the realization that these planets exist, many people think the likelihood that life has evolved on some of them is pretty high. We haven’t detected that yet, but it may be that we just haven’t figured out how to detect it yet.
J:
P: I have no evidence to argue that one way or the other. I do think, however, that if there are millions of moons and planets out there, the likelihood seems very high. If life has evolved, my expectation is that it would not look at all like life on Earth. Who knows what sort of chemical biology it might be based on, but the building blocks of life there would almost certainly be different to some extent from here on Earth. Even here on Earth, unrelated species react in different ways. My prediction would be that life evolved on other planets will not be at all recognisable with what we have here.
J:
P: Yes, I think we are. Our conception of life is biased by our own experience, but look at octopuses. We know they’re fairly intelligent, but their biology is completely different from ours. I’m not saying they have human-level intelligence, but they have a lot going on in their brains and they’re nothing like us.
| A．Given the time evolution takes, is that why – so far as we know – Earth is the only planet on which evolution has made progress? |
| B．Does the evolutionary convergence of DNA make it vital for intelligent life? |
| C．What are the next steps in your research? |
| D．Why have you decided to revisit convergent evolution? |
| E．Could evolution be happening elsewhere in the Universe and can you tell from your research what it might look like? |
| F．Are we constrained in our concept of intelligent life by our own large-brained, humanoid existence? |
| G．Is evolution a fixed programme, steered only by environment and accidents? |
7 . Plato, an ancient Greek philosopher, believed that men are divided into three classes: gold, silver and bronze. Vifredo Pateto, an Italian economist, argued that “the vital few” account for most progress. In the private sector, best companies struggle relentlessly to find and keep the vital few. They offer them fat pay packets, extra training, powerful mentors and more challenging assignments.
As the competition in business is getting increasingly fierce, companies are trying harder to nurture raw talent, or to poach it from their vitals. Private-equity firms rely heavily on a few stars. High-tech firms, for all their egalitarianism (平均主义), are ruthless about recruiting the brightest. Firms in emerging markets are desperate to find young high-flyers to cope with rapid growth and fast-changing environment.
Bill Conaty and Ram Charan’s recent book The Talent Masters provides a nice mix of portraits of well-known talent factories along with sketches of more recent converts to the cause. “Talent masters” are proud of their elitism. GE divides its employees into three groups based on their promise. Hindustan Unilever compiles a list of people who show innate leadership qualities. “Talent masters” all seem to agree on the importance of two things: measurement and differentiation. The best companies routinely subject employees to various “reviews” and “assessments.” But when it comes to high-flyers they make more effort to build up a three-dimensional picture of their personalities and to provide lots of feedback.
A powerful motivator is to single out high-flyers for special training. GE spends $1 billion a year on it. Novartis sends high-flyers to regular off-site training sessions. Many companies also embrace on-job training, speaking of “stretch” assignments or “baptisms by fire.” The most coveted are foreign postings: these can help young managers understand what it is like to run an entire company with a wide range of problems.
Successful companies make sure that senior managers are involved with “talent development.” Bosses of GE and P&G spent 40% of their time on personnel. Intel obliged senior managers to spend at least a week in a year teaching high-flyers. Involving the company’s top brass (高级职员) in the process prevents lower-level managers from monopolizing high-flyers and crates dialogues between established and future leaders. Successful companies also integrate talent development with their broader strategy to ensure that companies are more than the sum of their parts. P&G likes its managers to be both innovative and worldly. Goodyear replaced 23 of its 24 senior managers in two years as it shifted its target-consumers from carmakers to motorists.
Meanwhile, in their rush to classify people, companies can miss potential stars. Those who are singled out for special treatment can become too full of themselves. But the first problem can be fixed by flexibility; people who are average in one job can become stars in another. And people who become too smug can be discarded.
1. The author mentions the needs for talent of different firms in the second paragraph to show that _________.| A．the need for talent is universal |
| B．there is a cut-throat competition among them |
| C．the economy is more prosperous than before |
| D．the need for talent is confined to high-tech firms |
| A．How the well-known talent factories classify their staff. |
| B．How the talent factories and recent converts to the cause are like. |
| C．How to identify and recruit talent. |
| D．How to keep and foster elite employees. |
| A．checking and evaluating them frequently |
| B．compelling the senior managers to instruct the high-flyers |
| C．moving them into the positions that display their strengths |
| D．providing them with training or special mentoring classes |
| A．making sure that its senior managers spend enough time on personnel |
| B．changing the company’s strategy according to the status quo of talent |
| C．replacing most of the senior managers regularly to avoid monopoly |
| D．grooming future leaders from high-flyers rather than from lower-level managers |
| A．The importance of equality. |
| B．The necessity of flexibility. |
| C．The drawbacks of elitism. |
| D．The harm of self-conceit. |
8 . Green fingers
It never occurred to me when I was little that gardens were anything less than glamorous places. Granddad’s garden was on the bank of a river and sloped gently down towards the water. You couldn’t reach the river but you could hear the sound of the water and the birds that sang in the trees above. I imagined that all gardens were like this—a place of escape, peace and solitude. Granddad’s plot was nothing out of the ordinary when it came to features. He had nothing as grand as a greenhouse, unlike some of his neighbors. Not that they had proper “bought” greenhouses. Theirs were made from old window frames. Patches of plastic would be tacked in place where a carelessly wielded spade had smashed a pane of glass.
At home, his son, my father, could be quiet and withdrawn. I wouldn’t want to make him sound humorless. He wasn’t. Silly things would amuse him. He had phrases that he liked to use, “It’s immaterial to me” being one of them. “I don’t mind” would have done just as well but he liked the word “immaterial.” I realize that, deep down, he was probably disappointed that he hadn’t made more of his life. He left school without qualifications and became apprenticed to a plumber. Plumbing was not something he was passionate about. It was just what he did. He was never particularly ambitious, though there was a moment when he and Mum thought of emigrating to Canada, but it came to nothing. Where he came into his own was around the house. He had an “eye for the job.” Be it bookshelves or a cupboard—what he could achieve was astonishing.
My parents moved house only once in their entire married life. But my mother made up for this lack of daring when it came to furniture. You would just get used to the shape of one chair when another appeared, but the most dramatic change of all was the arrival of a piano. I always wanted to like it but it did its best to intimate me. The only thing I did like about it were the two brass candlesticks that jutted out from the front. “They’re too posh,” my mother said and they disappeared one day while I was at school. There was never any mention of my being allowed to play it. Instead lessons were booked for my sister. When I asked my mother in later life why I wasn’t given the opportunity, her reply was brief: “You’d never have practiced.”
Of the three options, moors, woods or river—the river was the one that usually got my vote. On a stretch of the river I was allowed to disappear with my imagination into another world. With a fishing net over my shoulder I could set off in sandals that were last year’s model, with the fronts cut out to accommodate toes that were now right to the end. I’d walk along the river bank looking for a suitable spot where I could take off the painful sandals and leave them with my picnic while I ventured out, tentatively, peering through the water for any fish that I could scoop up with the net and take home. After the first disastrous attempts to keep them alive in the back yard, they were tipped back into the water.
I wanted to leave school as soon as possible but that seemed an unlikely prospect until one day my father announced, “They’ve got a vacancy for an apprentice gardener in the Parks Department. I thought you might be interested.” In one brief moment Dad had gone against his better judgment. He might still have preferred it if I became a carpenter. But I like to feel that somewhere inside him was a feeling that things might just turn out for the best. Maybe I’m deceiving myself, but I prefer to believe that in his heart, although he hated gardening himself, he’d watched me doing it for long enough and noticed my unfailing passion for all things that grew and flowered and fruited.
1. When the writer describes his granddad’s garden, he is _______________.| A．proud that his granddad was such a good gardener |
| B．embarrassed that the garden was not as good as others nearby |
| C．indignant that items in the garden were often damaged |
| D．positive about the time he spent in the garden |
| A．He was regretful that his father had not achieved more. |
| B．He was irritated that his father used words he didn’t understand. |
| C．He was sympathetic to the reasons why his father behaved as he did. |
| D．He was grateful that his father had not taken the family to Canada. |
| A．was able to do something by himself |
| B．was able to show how talented he was |
| C．was able to continue his day job |
| D．was able to forget his failure |
| A．He was surprised when it suddenly appeared. |
| B．He was pleased at seeing it in the living room. |
| C．He was angry that only his sister would have piano lessons. |
| D．He was proud that his mother had listened to his advice. |
| A．how much free time he was given |
| B．how beautiful the river was |
| C．how good a fisherman he was |
| D．how carefree his childhood was |
| A．His father did not want his son to be a gardener. |
| B．His father was tired of disagreeing with his son. |
| C．His father had been impressed by his son’s love of gardening. |
| D．His father had been trying to find a job his son would enjoy. |
9 . The term “Iron Man” has many connotations, including references to a song, a comic book icon, even a movie. Yet only one definition of the term truly lives up to its name: the Ironman Triathlon held annually in Hawaii, a picturesque setting for a challenging race, which demands amazing physical prowess and the ability to swim, bike, and run a marathon, all in less than 12 hours with no break. Very few individuals are up to the task.
However, Gordon Haller is a notable exception. Growing up in the 1950s, Haller developed an interest in many sports categorized as endurance athletics and welcomed their physical demands. As he pursued a degree in physics he drove a taxi to pay the bills, but competitive training proved his passion. So when he heard about the race in 1978, the first year it was held, he immediately signed up.
The race originated in a somewhat amusing way. The members of the two popular sports clubs, the Mid-Pacific Road Runners of Honolulu and the Waikiki Swim Club of Oahu, had a long-standing and good-natured debate going over who made better athletes: runners or swimmers. However, some local bikes thought both clubs were wrong, claiming that they, in fact, deserved the title. Wanting to settle the dispute once and for all, they decided to combine three separate races already held annually on the island into one massive test of endurance. Thus, the Waikiki Roughwater Swim of 2.4 miles, the Around-Oahu Bike race of 112 miles, and the Honolulu Marathon of 26.2 miles were all put together to form the Ironman Triathlon.
Haller was one of only fifteen competitors to show up that February morning to start the race. He quickly scanned the few pages of rules and instructions, and on the last page he discovered a sentence that would become the race’s famous slogan: “Swim 2.4 miles! Bike 112 miles! Run 26.2 miles! Brag for the rest of your life!” Haller took that to heart, and at the end of the day, he became the first Ironman champion in history. ____
In the approximately thirty years since that very first race, the Ironman has become a tradition in Hawaii and now boasts approximately 1500 entrants every year. The competitors who complete the race don’t have to be the first across the finish line to claim success: just finishing is a victory onto itself.
1. The “Iron Man” in the passage above refers to ________.| A．a folk song | B．a theatre movie |
| C．a book icon | D．a sport event |
| A．He had a great interest in all kinds of sports. |
| B．He was a member of the Waikiki Swim Club of Oahu. |
| C．He became a taxi driver after he graduated from school. |
| D．He was a champion in the first Ironman Triathlon. |
| A．muscles | B．skills | C．balance | D．reaction |
| A．Twelve other people also finished the race that day. |
| B．No women raced this year, but that was soon to change. |
| C．There were points in the race when Haller thought he couldn’t possibly finish. |
| D．Haller’s physical strength enabled him to do what no one else in the past had accomplished. |
| A．The level of interest the race attracts in the present day. |
| B．The way the current race is different from the race that Haller ran in 1978. |
| C．How the victors respond when they cross the finish line. |
| D．Why 1500 people would be willing to compete in such a difficult race. |
Reviews of TV science documentary series
Paul Hansen looks at the latest science programmes.
| A Science for All Fortunately for me and non-scientists everywhere, the makers of Science for All are there to plug the gaps in our knowledge. The series is rather like a knowledgeable parent who doesn’t mind being pestered by wide-eyed and curious children: It takes the time to explain all those fascinating mysteries of nature in an entertaining and understandable way. The last series opened my eyes to all manner of interesting facts and demystified some of the problems faced by modern physics. And the new series show no lack of inspiration for subjects to tackle: everything from the existence of life on other planets to the odd properties of human memory are rightly considered suitable subjects. So, while it’s a shame that factual programs are getting increasingly scarce these days, it’s a comfort that Science for All shows no signs of dipping in quality or disappearing from public view. | B Out in Space Although I wasn’t expecting much from this series, I’m pleased that the producers of Out in Space persisted with their unpromising subject. In the course of the first program we learn about hurricanes, deserts, and even how the Moon was made; a bewildering mix of phenomena that, we were assured, were all caused by events beyond our planets’ atmosphere. That’s not to say the program explored them in any great detail, preferring to skip breathlessly from one to the next. The essential logic of the series seemed to be that if you take any natural phenomenon and ask “why?” enough times, the answer will eventually be that it’s something to do with space. The two presenters attempted to get it all to fit together, by taking part in exciting activities. Sadly, these only occasionally succeeded. |
| C Stars and Planets The second series of Stars and Planets is an attempt to take advantage of the success of the first, which unexpected gained a substantial general audience. Like its predecessor, this is big on amazing photography and fabulous graphics, most of which are much less successful at communicating the immensity of the ideas involved than one human being talking to you directly. This time the scope is given wider, astronomically speaking. What we are being introduced to here are ambitious ideas about time and space, and the presenter succeeds rather better than you might expect. It helps that he doesn’t go too deep, as once you start thinking about it this is tricky stuff to get your head around. The point of such programs is less to explain every detail than to arouse a generalized sense of amazement that might lead to further thinking, and Stars and Planets is certainly good at that. | D Robot Technology This ground-breaking science documentary series follows a group of experts as they attempt to build a complete artificial human from robotic body parts. The project sees scientists use the latest technology from the world’s most renowned research centers and manufacturers. It is the realization of a long-held dream to create a human from manufactured parts, using everything from bionic arms and mechanical hearts, eye implants and microchip brains. The series explores to what extent modern technology is capable of replacing body parts—or even improving their abilities. The presenter, very appropriately, has an artificial hand himself. This ambitious series gives us a guided tour of the wonders of modern technology. Though it can be a slightly upsetting journey at times, it engages the audience in a revolution that is changing the face of medicine. |
In which review does it say that:
1. an effort was made to connect a number of unrelated issues?
2. the topics covered are well chosen?
3. viewers are shown how science can occasionally do better than nature?
4. the series deals with something people have hoped to achieve for a while?
5. the series unfortunately didn’t spend a lot of time explaining the topics covered?
6. viewers are clearly informed?
7. it’s good that viewers are not required to consider all aspects of the subject carefully?
8. the series was worth making despite the topic not appearing very interesting at first?
9. viewers may not always find the series comfortable to watch?
10. the series achieves its aims by astonishing its viewers?
