1 . Letters to customers
Letter 1Dear Mr Johnson,
Thanks for your long-term trust. We take great pleasure in announcing that our latest product, the 1000-watt home theater system, has come onto the market.
The device comes with five speakers. It is Bluetooth-enabled and has a USB port. The sound quality and picture quality are outstanding.
Grab yours today! Contact us at 999-999-999.
Helen
Letter 2Dear Miss Turner,
We are grateful for your good review of our printer. To express our thanks, we’d like to give you a special offer. In the upcoming three months, you will get one free cartridge (墨盒) for any three that you buy. It also applies to any paper you buy.
Please show this note to us when you visit our store. It will make sure you can get the offer and a significant discount on other products.
Call us at 333-555-999 if you have any questions.
Nicholas
Letter 3Dear Mr Davis,
We’d like to congratulate you on the ownership of the new mountain bike. This bike is the first to succeed in all the standard safety tests set by the Cycling Association of America. You can get a free bike repair service within the first month of your purchase.
We also trade in old and new bikes. For more information, call us at 223-334-445.
Bob
Letter 4Dear Miss Smith,
I am delighted that you are satisfied with the washer and dryer purchased from our store.
If you experience any damage within the first six months of your purchase, we will repair them at no cost. After that, we offer competitive rates to ensure your continued satisfaction.
Please feel free to contact us at 111-222-111 for any further information.
Amy
1. What’s Helen’s purpose in writing to Mr Johnson?| A．To show her trust. |
| B．To confirm an order. |
| C．To promote a new product. |
| D．To seek opinions on their product. |
| A．Give praise for the cartridge. |
| B．Bring the note to the store. |
| C．Buy at least four cartridges. |
| D．Recommend the printer to others. ‘ |
| A．Both offer free maintenance. |
| B．Both stress the safety of products. |
| C．Both display competitive product rates. |
| D．Both involve the trade of new and old products. |
2 . “Few articles change owners more frequently than clothes. They travel downwards from grade to grade in the social scale with remarkable regularity,” wrote the journalist Adolphe Smith in 1877 as he traced a coat’s journey in the last century: cleaned, repaired and resold repeatedly; cut down into a smaller item; eventually recycled into new fabric. But with the improvement in people’s living standards, that model is mind-boggling in the era of fast fashion. The average British customer buys four items a month. And it is reported that 350,000 tonnes of used but still wearable clothes go to landfills in the UK each year.
Yet the gradual revival of the second-hand trade has gathered pace in the past few years. At fashion website Asos, sales of vintage clothes (古董衫) have risen by 92%. Clothing was once worn out of necessity, and now it is simply a way of life. Busy families sell used items on eBay, teenagers trade on Depop and some fashion people offer designer labels on Vestiaire Collective. Strikingly, it has become big enough business that mainstream retailers (零售商) want a slice of the action.
For some buyers and sellers, the switch to the second-hand is born of financial difficulties. Only a few have become worried about the impact of their shopping habit on the planet. But the shift is only a partial solution. Some people worry that some mainstream brands may “greenwash” — using second-hand goods to improve their image, rather than engaging more seriously with sustainability.
However, the biggest concern may be that people keep buying because they know they can resell goods, still chasing the pleasure of the next purchase but with an eased conscience (愧疚). Boohoo, a powerful fast fashion company, has seen sales and profits rise, despite concerns about environmental problems in its supply chain that led to an investigation last year.
A new Netflix series, Worn Stories, documents the emotional meanings that clothes can have: Each old item is full of memories. Actually, a handbag from a grandmother and a scarf passed on by a father are both valuable for us. A love of style is not a bad or an unimportant thing. But a committed relationship is better than a quick flash. Can we learn to appreciate our own old clothes as well as others’?
1. What does the word “mind-boggling” underlined in paragraph 1 probably mean?| A．Unbelievable. | B．Popular. | C．Reasonable. | D．Influential. |
| A．old clothes are more popular than new pieces |
| B．the online second-hand markets are booming |
| C．the fashion world begins to favor vintage clothes |
| D．many clothing brands are innovative in their new products |
| A．It makes people feel free to pursue fast fashion. |
| B．It makes people more cautious about their budgets. |
| C．It encourages people to choose eco-friendly clothes. |
| D．It pushes people to be more engaged with sustainability. |
| A．Old items have lost favor with the public. |
| B．Old items are worthy of being long cherished. |
| C．Older generations attach great importance to old items. |
| D．Older generations care about the quality of their clothes. |
3 . Sending a package back is not easy. Repacking, printing labels and shipping it back up to the seller is an increasingly familiar experience for online shoppers. In America 21%of online orders, worth some $218bn, were returned in 2021, according to the National Retail Federation, up from 18%in 2020. For clothing and shoes it can reach around 40%.
The problem has its roots in the birth of e-commerce. To compete with bricks-and-mortar (实体的) sellers and make consumers comfortable with ordering online, e-commerce firms offered free returns. Consumers came to expect it.
Each step of the process is costly. Retailers have to pay for goods to be picked up or posted. Processing returns is labor-intensive (劳动密集型), explains Zac Rogers who worked as a returns manager at Amazon. A return must be opened and someone has to decide what to do with it. “A worker in an Amazon warehouse can pick 30 items in a minute, but a return can take ten minutes to process, ” says Mr. Rogers.
Once processed, only 5% of the returned goods can be resold immediately by retailers. Most go to liquidators at the lowest prices or are thrown away.
One solution involves adding friction (阻力). Last year, a Japanese fashion brand became one of the first retailers to charge a small fee for posted returns. Other firms are selling more refurbished (翻新的) goods as a way to cut losses.
Startups are getting in on the action. Using artificial intelligence to help retailers decide what to do with the returned goods is the brainchild of them. Happy Returns, another startup, helps with logistics (物流). It has 5, 000 drop-off points for returns across America, mostly in chain stores. The returns are collected and sent back to retailers all at once, saving up to 40% of postage costs.
Some are experimenting with virtual reality (VR). Over half of the items are returned because they are the wrong size. In June Walmart said it would buy Memomi, an augmented-reality (AR) startup that lets shoppers virtually try on glasses in real-time for a seamless, easy and fun omnichannel experience. Walmart also offers ways to try on clothes and arrange furniture in rooms using AR.
1. Why did e-commerce firms offer free returns at first?| A．To cut costs. | B．To develop logistics service. |
| C．To compete with physical stores. | D．To show the advantage of shopping online. |
| A．Efficient. | B．Automatic |
| C．Expensive. | D．Time-consuming. |
| A．By charging a fee. | B．By raising the price of goods. |
| C．By selling more returned goods. | D．By using advanced technologies. |
| A．Walmart has pioneered the use of AR. |
| B．Technology plays a role in reducing returns. |
| C．VR and AR will be used in more industries. |
| D．Cooperation among companies is important. |
4 . Danone Portugal introduced a new yogurt named Juntos. For every pack of yogurt that a person bought, he would donate yogurt to a family in need. Danone had done its research. Increasingly, people say they want to buy from brands that give them a sense of purpose. Surely a yogurt that helped the needy would be appealing. But Juntos was a failure. Despite sinking millions into a marketing campaign, Danone pulled Juntos from the market only months after it was launched. Now the same product is simply marketed as a tasty yogurt.
What happened? To find the reason behind Juntos’ failure, Lawrence Williams and his colleagues did an experiment where they showed people some products and asked these people to pick one option. They reminded some to focus on the “purposeful and valuable” aspect while others were told to “enjoy themselves” and focus on “delight and pleasure.” They found that participants who prioritized meaning preferred the less expensive product when compared with people who put pleasure in the first place.
So why were meaning-seekers cheaping out? Lawrence Williams asked participants to explain their decision-making to find out. He learned that meaning-oriented people were not thinking about how the product they might buy could bring meaning to their lives. Instead, they were occupied with what else they could do with their money.
I am all for people making wise and strategic financial choices. But cheap products can create many problems. Inexpensive options often do not last as long as the higher-end ones. As a result, we shop more often, which is ultimately worse for our wallets. Plus, that spending pattern can do a greater damage to the environment. Thanks in part to fast fashion, people buy 60 percent more clothing today than they did 15 years ago. The fashion industry alone emits more greenhouse gases than international flights and maritime (海洋的) shipping combined.
So before you dive into your wallet for some deals, try not to fix only on what you are spending or saving. Think carefully about what you are buying, too.
1. What is the main reason for the failure of Juntos?| A．It ignored marketing strategies. | B．It priced itself relatively high. |
| C．It lacked a particularly good taste. | D．It focused on delight and pleasure. |
| A．They frequent high-end stores. | B．They think products extend their lives. |
| C．They hesitate to make decisions. | D．They make more purchases with money. |
| A．By giving some examples. | B．By listing numbers and data. |
| C．By explaining reasons. | D．By making some comparisons. |
| A．Innovation: a Product’s Life | B．To Buy or not to Buy |
| C．Meaning seekers or Quality-pursuers | D．Fast Fashion: a Hit to Your Wallet |
5 . A study from 2010 said that raising prices by 1% without losing sales can increase profits by 8.7% on average. Getting the prices right can be difficult. Set them too high and you lose customers; set them too low and you leave money on the table.
To make more money, shopkeepers have been turning to price-optimization (优化) systems that predict how customers will respond to price changes. These systems are becoming cleverer thanks to advances in artificial intelligence (AI). While older systems used historical sales data to estimate (估计) price sensitivity for individual goods, the latest AI-powered systems can find relationships between multiple goods. These AI-powered systems use big data to estimate price sensitivity — how much demand increases as the price falls or how much demand decreases as the price goes up-for thousands of products. Price-sensitive (价格敏感的) goods can then be discounted and price-insensitive ones marked up.
All this makes pricing systems “much more three-dimensional”, observes Chad Yoes, the pricing official at Walmart, a supermarket. In February, Starbucks, a chain of coffee shops, expressed pride in its use of AI to price products “on an ongoing basis”. US Foods, a food company, says its pricing system can promote sales and profits.
Price-optimization may make prices change more. “Shopkeepers are pricing faster today than they ever have before,” says Matt Pavich of Revionics, a pricing-software firm. That is especially true in the fast-moving world of e-commerce. But even Walmart changes the prices of many items in its stores 2-4 times a year, says Mr Yoes. up from once or twice a few years ago.
Sysco, a food company, says the AI-powered system allows it to lower prices on “key value items” and raise prices on other products. It can thus increase profits by expanding sales while maintaining profits. That keeps investors content and shoppers sweet.
1. What can be learned from the first paragraph?| A．It is sometimes difficult to set the right prices. |
| B．Getting the prices right can make you lose customers. |
| C．Raising prices by 1% always leads to an 8.7% increase in profits. |
| D．The study from 2010 suggests that you leave money on the table. |
| A．They are more price-sensitive. |
| B．They make prices change more. |
| C．They can predict price sensitivity for individual goods. |
| D．They are able to identify links between various products. |
| A．Starbucks coffee. | B．Price-insensitive goods. |
| C．Walmart’s online goods. | D．Sysco’s “key value items”. |
| A．Apply AI to Set Prices | B．Raise Prices to Increase Profits |
| C．Reduce Prices to Promote Sales | D．Use AI to Predict Customer Response |
6 . The Problem with Online Returns
Online shopping is booming: In 2020, Americans spent $ 813 billion online, a 42% increase over 2019. This year, experts expect that figure to top $ 1 trillion for the first time. But millions of those purchases will eventually get sent back.
When shoppers can’t physically examine products before purchase, they’re more likely to buy clothes that don’t fit or items that don’t suit their needs. People return on average about 25% of what they buy online, compared with 8% of what they buy in stores. However, many items that get returned never go back on sale.
Although it’s unlikely that returned items will be sold as new, some items get sent to discount stores.
In some cases, giant companies like Amazon and Target have begun telling customers to just keep their unwanted items rather than send them back. Third-party logistics businesses have also popped up to help clean up the return process. But that’s not enough on its own.
| A．It sounds shocking, but it all boils down to cost. |
| B．The responsibility falls on us consumers as well. |
| C．Those returns can have a big environmental impact. |
| D．Things like electronics could get separated into parts. |
| E．That increase has accelerated rapidly during the pandemic. |
| F．Instead, they’re often thrown out, even if they’re still brand-new. |
| G．In response, France forbade the destruction of unsold consumer goods. |
7 . Livestreaming (直播) through channels such as Amazon Live and QVC is an increasingly popular way to sell goods online. It usually lasts between 5 and 10 minutes, and someone promotes a product. Viewers can then readily buy it by clicking on a link.
We analyzed 99,451 sales cases on a livestream selling platform and matched them with actual sales cases. In terms of time, that is equal to over 2 million 30-second television advertisements.
To determine the emotional (情绪的) expression of the salesperson, we used two deep learning models: a face model and an emotion model. The face model discovers the presence or absence of a face in a frame (镜头) of a video stream. The emotion model then determines the probability that a face is exhibiting any of the six basic human emotions: happiness, sadness, surprise, anger, fear or disgust. For example, smiling signals a high probability of happiness, while an off-putting expression usually points toward anger.
We wanted to see the effect of emotions expressed at different times in the sales cases so we counted probabilities for each emotion for all 62 million frames in our database. We then combined these probabilities with other possible aspects that might drive sales—such as price and product characteristics—to judge the effect of emotion.
We found that, perhaps unsurprisingly, when salespeople show more negative emotions-such as anger and disgust—the volume of sales went down. But we also found that a similar thing happened when the salespeople show high levels of positive emotions, such as happiness or surprise.
A likely explanation, based on our research, is that smiling can be unpleasant because it lacks true feelings and can reduce trust in the seller. A seller’s happiness may be taken as a sign that the seller is gaining interests at the customer’s expense.
1. What can we know about the livestreaming in the first paragraph?| A．It damages the physical economy. |
| B．It helps to sell the products abroad. |
| C．It helps big companies promote all goods. |
| D．It is very convenient for the buyers to buy goods. |
| A．By analyzing previous data. | B．By referring to a theory. |
| C．By giving some examples. | D．By concluding different views |
| A．Surprising. | B．Delighting. | C．Displeasing. | D．Embarrassing. |
| A．Livestreamers Sell Products Successfully |
| B．Expressions Affect Selling Products Online |
| C．Emotions and Faces: What’s the Difference |
| D．Smiling Can Increase the Sales in Reality |
8 . Our Favourite Tech Gifts of 2019
When it comes time for the holiday shopping season, we’re extra choosy about the countless technology products that we will buy and give to friends and family. Here’s what impressed editors, reporters and producers the most in 2019.
Lumos Matrix helmet
I recently bought a Lumos Matrix helmet(头盔)(﹩229)with built-in lights to make riding my bike at night a lot safer and less stressful. It’s a regular pain point for bikers like me to make sure careless drivers see you, especially when it’s dark. This does help.
-Matt Mcfarland, Writer
Goodreads app
Although this isn’t a gift, the free Goodreads app is a game changer. At the beginning of 2019, I promised myself I’d read at least one new book every month. I set a goal of 12 books on Goodreads and use it to track my progress, keep a list of books I’m interested in and check out what friends and others on the app were recommending. I read 35 books this year! (That’s up from five books last year.) Goodreads feels like one of the rare feel-good social networks.
-Kaya Yurieff, Tech Reporter
Ember coffee cup
I drink my coffee slowly, so it has routinely cooled by the time I get halfway through it. For my birthday, my mum bought me a cup (﹩99), which keeps my coffee warm until I finish it without reheating. I can also set the temperature I want. It makes my mornings so much easier.
-Millie Dent, Intern
1. What is the main advantage of Lumos Matrix helmet?| A．Helping drivers concentrate. | B．Managing the bad weather. |
| C．Making night riding safer. | D．Making bikers less painful. |
| A．It changes some readers’ reading rules. |
| B．It inspires readers to read more through communication. |
| C．It limits the number of books a reader can read. |
| D．It provides readers with free Internet games. |
| A．Simple. | B．Expensive. | C．Eco-friendly. | D．Convenient |
9 . Our Products and Services
Model 3Model 3 is a four-door mid-size sedan (轿车) that we designed with a base price for mass-market appeal, which we began delivering in July 2017. We currently build Model 3 at the Fremont Factory as well as at Gigafactory Shanghai. We currently offer Model 3 in Rear-wheel Drive (后轮驱动) and Dual Motor All-wheel Drive versions.
Model YModel Y is a sport utility vehicle (“SUV”) built on the Model 3 platform with the ability for seating for up to seven adults. We currently build Model Y at the Fremont Factory, and are further raising production there and making preparations for production next at Gigafactory Shanghai. We currently offer Model Y in some Dual Motor All-wheel Drive versions.
Model S and Model XModel S is a four-door full-size sedan that we began delivering in June 2012. Like Model 3, it introduced Tesla vehicle most basic features such as a large touchscreen driver interface, Auto-driving hardware, over-the-air software updates, and fast charging through our Supercharger network.
Model X is a mid-size SUV with seating for up to seven adults, which we began delivering in September 2015. Model X introduced features including unique falcon (鹰) wing doors for easy access to passenger seating and an all-glass panoramic (全景的) windshield (挡风玻璃).
Model S and Model X are equipped with a standard Dual Motor All-wheel Drive powertrain, and are also available in Performance versions. We build Model S and Model X at the Fremont Factory.
1. What can we know about Model 3 and Model S?| A．They are both a SUV. | B．They both have Rear-wheel Drive. |
| C．They both have Auto-driving hardware | D．Neither of them can be fast charged. |
| A．Model 3. | B．Model Y. | C．Model S. | D．Model X. |
| A．Dual Motor All-wheel Drive. | B．Falcon wing doors. |
| C．Having a factory in Shanghai. | D．Seating for up to seven people. |
10 . Are you searching for the latest device as a gift? Here, we offer a guide that will help you take a closer look at four of tech’s hottest categories.
Virtual reality
Virtual reality (VR), the most exciting tech development of recent times, has arrived. The Sony VR doesn’t require expensive phone and there are some devices you can purchase to enhance the experience. But if you’ve already got a PS4, you can enter the world of VR for just $400 (2780 yuan).
Wireless headphones
Combining ease of use with the ability to move around without limit, wireless headphones just make sense. The Bose QuietComfort 35 wireless headphones are worth a test drive. The headphones feature active noise cancellation. They can be easily purchased for less than $400 online.
Digital cameras
While your phone has more functions, there’s no substitute（替代品）for a real camera. As small as your smartphone, the smooth design of the Fujifilm X70, $699 (4850 yuan), makes it the perfect companion. In China, Xiaomi’s mirrorless Yi M1 offers a more affordable option, available for just 2199 yuan.
Smartwatches
Watches, thanks to the mobile phone, were becoming unnecessary. Now the pursuit for fitness has helped the watch industry push forward. FitBit has been a leader in the sporty wearable field, and its new swim-proof Fitbit Flex 2 ($130) represents the best in the way of today’s fitness bands.
1. With a budget of $300, which of the following can you buy?| A．Xiaomi Yi M1. | B．Fujifilm X70. | C．Fitbit Flex 2. | D．A Sony VR without a PS4. |
| A．Its design. | B．Its function. | C．Its quality. | D．Its price. |
| A．In a newspaper. | B．In a guide book. | C．In a research paper. | D．In a sports magazine. |
