1 . In recent years, much of my life as a consumer has shifted to what I like to call background. As I’ve subscribed to more apps and streaming platforms, significant sums of my money tend to slip away each month without my ever thinking about it.
Think of it as an automated trade. Spending without the trouble of spending. Acquaint ion without action. Or thought.
But while this flood of subscriptions was sold to me on the condition that it would make my life more trouble-free, there was a certain shock I felt upon discovering how much I was spending without realizing each month ($179.45).
You see, the thing about background spending is that it tends to happen, well, in the background without your full attention. And there lies the point.
“Hand over your credit card details and let us take care of the rest,” these companies promote. But by again sing their name, we’ve become lazy, positive consumers. And this laziness breeds (导致) more laziness because most of us can’t be bothered with conducting regular reviews of our subscription spending. We’re too lazy to even notice or cancel it!
I know it’s not just me who is suddenly living life as a smart-braised subscriber. The average consumer spends $273 per month on subscriptions, according to a 2021 study of 2,500 by digital services firm West Morose. Not a single person surveyed knew what his actually monthly spending was.
It’s understandable why this model is so attractive to businesses. As companies questioned traditional advertising models, subscription offered the promise of “selling once and earning forever.” And while subscription services have been around for decades (think Wine of the Month Club), more customers have been willing to sign up thanks to the widespread availability of smartphones and the increasing ease of home delivery.
While these subscription promise ease and happiness, not all of us are satisfied. Last year, the Kameny Institute found 40 percent of consumer believe they have too many subscriptions. Almost half of us also think we pay too much for streaming video-on-demand subscriptions.
1. What can we know about background spending in paragraph 2?A.Its purpose. | B.Its feature. | C.Its procedure. | D.Its requirement. |
A.Its attractive price. | B.Some people’s poor habit. |
C.Its secure service. | D.Some people’s addiction to it. |
A.It offers good home delivery services. |
B.It is like traditional advertising models. |
C.It is popular among smartphone producers. |
D.It brings repeated profits through a single sale. |
A.Supportive. | B.Doubtful. | C.Critical. | D.Unclear. |
2 . The number of universities has grown very fast in recent decades. Higher-education institutions across the world now employ 15 million researchers, up from 4 million in 1980. Governments are also happy to spend on higher education because it is supposed to produce scientific breakthroughs that can be available to all. In theory, therefore, universities should be an excellent source of productivity growth.
In practice, however, the productivity has slowed down during the last decades. In the 1950s and 1960s, workers’ output per hour across the rich world rose by 4% a year. But in the last decade, 1% a year was the norm. Even with the wave of innovation in artificial intelligence (AI), productivity growth remains weak — less than 1% a year, which is bad news for economic growth.
A new paper by Ashish Arora and his team suggests that universities’ rapid growth and the rich world’s slowdown productivity could be two sides of the same coin. The paper suggests that scientific breakthroughs from public institutions “caused little or no response from businesses” over a number of years. A scientist in a university lab might publish brilliant paper after brilliant paper. Often, however, this has no impact on corporations’ own patents, with life sciences being the exception. And this, in turn, points to a small impact on the overall productivity.
Why do companies struggle to use ideas produced by universities?
The paper says that, free from the demands of the market, researchers in university labs focus more on satisfying their curiosity than finding breakthroughs that will change the world or make money. “To some degree, such kind of research is not a bad thing; some breakthrough technologies, such as penicillin, were discovered almost by accident,” it writes, “But if everyone is doing that, the economy suffers.”
Perhaps, with time, universities and the business world will work together more tightly. Tougher competition could force businesses to beef up their internal research. In fact, researchers in companies’ labs, rather than universities, are driving the current AI innovations. At some point, governments will need to ask themselves hard questions. In a world of weak economic growth, huge spending on universities may come to seem an unjustifiable luxury.
1. What are the statistics in paragraph 2 mainly about?A.The weak economy around the globe. | B.Universities’ contribution to employment. |
C.Governments’ spending on higher education. | D.The slow productivity growth in the rich world. |
A.The investors. | B.The workers. | C.Life sciences. | D.AI industries. |
A.They are very eager to make more money. | B.They are less concerned about applications. |
C.They usually find breakthroughs by accident. | D.They should be left alone to do their research. |
A.A Study Suggests Universities Fail to Increase Productivity |
B.Universities and the Business World May Work Together Soon |
C.It Is Important for Companies’ Labs to Lead the AI Innovation |
D.It Is a Big Waste to Spend So Much Money on Higher Education |
3 . Keith Payne realized he was poor for the first time when he was in the fourth grade. The awareness came to him when a new lunch lady in the cafeteria asked him to pay for his lunch.
“Previously, the lunch lady had just waved me on because I’d always been on free lunch,” he says. “But this new lady didn’t know how things worked, and it was the first time that I had been asked to pay for my lunch.”
It was an agonizing moment and all of a sudden, he realized why he got free lunch while many of his classmates were paying for their meals every day.
“It’s not like I was poorer the day after that than I was before. Nothing objective had changed. But because of that subjective awareness, I began constantly comparing myself with my classmates and felt really unhappy,” he says.
Keith Payne is now a social psychologist at the University of North Carolina and shares how the awareness of inequality affects the way that both our minds and our bodies respond.
“As we walk through the world, it is very natural for us to compare our lives with those of others. We think about ourselves in terms of being on a certain ladder (梯子) with some people above us and it can cause serious psychological consequences,” he says.
One is that it makes us more willing to seek out risks and engage in high-risk, high-reward sort of behaviors. It affects us in ways that are similar to physical threats.
“But I think there are wiser and less wise ways to make those social comparisons,” he says. “Upward social comparisons feel terrible, but they can be motivating. Downward social comparisons feel great, and yet they can be demotivating. So one of the things I recommend is that we can be more strategic in making upward and download social comparisons, Neither one is good in itself. It just depends on what your goal is.”
1. Which of the following best explains “agonizing” underlined in paragraph 3?A.Painful. | B.Brief. | C.Important. | D.Happy. |
A.Poor people should be treated equally. |
B.He wants to blame the new lunch lady. |
C.There were a lot of poor people in his country. |
D.We can be influenced by the awareness of inequality. |
A.Unimportant. | B.Acceptable. | C.Annoying. | D.Unnecessary. |
A.Talk to psychologists immediately. | B.Hang out with top performers. |
C.Compare with less successful persons. | D.Stay alone and enjoy ourselves. |
4 . My colleagues and I, who have been teaching powerful communication skills, talk about the power of words all the time. We think the words we use are at the heart of
Over the last twenty years, I have
There are lots of ways we can make someone feel excluded and
So, the next time you are in a
A.success | B.friendship | C.inclusion | D.sympathy |
A.praised | B.employed | C.criticized | D.coached |
A.assumptions | B.options | C.questions | D.suggestions |
A.treat | B.rescue | C.admire | D.follow |
A.competitors | B.outsiders | C.researchers | D.professionals |
A.gradually | B.rarely | C.temporarily | D.constantly |
A.hesitant | B.unlikely | C.afraid | D.unwilling |
A.unwelcome | B.regretful | C.envious | D.disappointed |
A.factor | B.result | C.change | D.dream |
A.sought for | B.tested out | C.cared for | D.left out |
A.contest | B.gathering | C.camp | D.classroom |
A.confident | B.courageous | C.thoughtful | D.patient |
A.imagine | B.consider | C.avoid | D.miss |
A.worried | B.curious | C.pleased | D.sure |
A.element | B.day | C.person | D.party |
5 . If you’ve been on BookTok, an online community where readers recommend, review and theorize about their favorite books, authors and genres, you’ve probably heard of Rebecca Yarros’ Fourth Wing. On BookTok, the release of Fourth Wing came with hype (炒作) around a mix between romance and fantasy. The novel was published last May and its sequel (续集) followed just six months later.
But questions came: Are publishers and authors publishing books too quickly, and does this affect the quality of writing?
On the day of the sequel’s release, Yarros and her publisher, Red Tower Books, were met with much criticism about her misuse of a language’s grammar in the novel. Many argued that the mistakes could have been avoided if the publishers had hired someone to proofread (校对) the language.
So what does BookTok have to do with this? It was one of the reasons why within the first week of Fourth Wing being published, the book quickly shot up to the top of the New York Times Best Sellers list despite criticism.
With the rising readers, it isn’t uncommon for both publishers and authors to use that hype to their advantage. This was likely a reason why the series, originally including three books, was dragged into a five-book series.
This is kind of what fast fashion is all about. Fast fashion refers to the process of clothing manufacturing that moves from production/design to stores quickly to keep up with current trends. These pieces are often cheap and low-quality and sent to stores with the hope of selling out quickly. The same approach used in the publishing world, thanks to BookTok to some degree, could lead to decreasing book quality when writing and editing aren’t able to reach their maximum potential.
This isn’t to say that books like Fourth Wing are bad just because they’re hyped. But abandoning developed work for crowd-pleasers doesn’t do all readers justice. These worries about the quick turnover in the publishing industry aren’t directed towards independent authors who carefully write, edit and publish themselves, but rather towards those who overlook the importance of everything that goes into the writing process.
1. Why does the author raise questions in the text?A.To doubt readers’ judgment. | B.To keep the text developing. |
C.To highlight BookTok’s advantages. | D.To provide background information. |
A.It enjoyed popularity. | B.It faced little criticism. |
C.It was publicly rejected. | D.It didn’t sell well in stores. |
A.Book quality is vital in the publishing industry. |
B.Books like Fourth Wing are not good ones. |
C.Authors should avoid doing too many duties. |
D.BookTok shouldn’t be to blame for fast fashion. |
A.BookTok Is Misleading Consumers in Reading. |
B.Are Those Books Posted Online Worth Reading? |
C.Fast Fashion Emerges in the Publishing Industry. |
D.Can the Publishing Industry Adapt to Challenges? |
BYD (比亚迪) claimed the title of World’s Best-Selling EV maker in
Both companies
How did BYD overtake Tesla before the year-end finish line? Partly it is the price war which
While BYD has high-end types of its own, it also has cheaper ones. A cheaper car, which requires a smaller loan from the bank, can look a lot
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8 . The good news is that more people bought electric vehicles (EVs) in 2020. The bad news is that sport utility (多用途的) vehicles (SUVs) continued to grow in popularity, too. “The fall in oil consumption due to the first trend was completely canceled out by the second,” said Laura Cozzi, an officer at the International Energy Agency (JEA).
Between 2010 and 2020, global carbon dioxide emissions (排放) from conventional cars fell by nearly 35 billion tons, due to reasons such as fuel efficiency improvements as well as the switch to electric cars. Emissions from SUVs rose by more than 50 billion tons. “While the growth in EVs is encouraging, the boom in SUVs is heart-breaking,” says Peters at the Cicero Climate Research Centre in Norway.
There are many reasons for the growing popularity of SUVs. For example, rising economic boom in many countries means more people are able to afford them. Some people see them as status symbols. Also, SUVs are heavily advertised by car-makers, whose profit is higher on these vehicles. Some countries, including France, have introduced plans under which more taxes are paid on heavier cars. But Peters thinks that people who are rich enough to afford SUVs won’t be deterred by slightly higher taxes. “There are now some electric SUVs available, but I hope one day you will see more electric vehicles brought to the SUV market,” says Peters.
Even if it happens, switching to electric SUVs isn’t a good solution. Due to their size and bigger batteries, it takes more resources to build electric SUVs, and they consume around 15 percent more electricity. That means higher emissions unless the electricity comes entirely from renewable sources, and higher electricity demand makes it harder to green the electricity supply.
1. What can we infer from Paragraph 2?A.Scientists should devote themselves to improving fuel efficiency. |
B.The popularity of SUVs destroys some efforts to protect the environment. |
C.Electric vehicles will certainly take the place of sport utility vehicles. |
D.The emission of carbon dioxide of motor vehicles has hit a new low. |
A.Encouraged. | B.Removed. |
C.Discouraged | D.Connected. |
A.SUVs are discounted heavily. |
B.SUVs consume fewer resources than other vehicles. |
C.SUVs are often advertised by car producers. |
D.SUVs are taxed at a lower rate in some countries. |
A.More electric SUVs don’t necessarily mean “environment-friendly” . |
B.The electric SUVs are a good guarantee for less pollution. |
C.The electric SUVs should be made smaller and lighter. |
D.Future electric SUVs will be powered with completely green energy. |
9 . As you shop online, you may be drawn to digital ads with curvy(圆角)designs without even realizing it. According to a new study from the University of South Florida, consumers click on curvy call-to-action buttons, such as “Shop Now” or “Add to Cart”, at a significantly higher rate than those with sharp angles.
“It’s actually rooted in natural instincts(本能),” says Dipayan Biswas, professor of marketing. “According to research from different disciplines, our natural instincts send us signals that sharp angles usually indicate danger and that we’re more likely to get hurt. In contrast, curvy designs are perceived as friendlier and more approachable.”
This feeling leads people to subconsciously prefer things, including digital ad designs, which are soft-edged and curvy. As published in the Journal of Consumer Research, Biswas tested this concept through click rates and eye movement studies in the Muma College of Business Customer Experience Lab. The novel findings reveal how the shapes of virtual elements can subconsciously influence click-through rates.
“We studied a hotel search button and we consistently found the click rate was higher when the elements were curved,” Biswas says. “It translated to an increase of nearly 15percent in total revenue(收入).” According to Biswas, this means companies can potentially manipulate consumers as they will unconsciously click and spend more through the use of curved call-to-action buttons. For companies that put little thought or reasoning behind their design element choices, this study could be eye-opening for them.
For shoppers, this means when they’re surfing the web around a holiday shopping season, they are subject to the marketing practice, such as design elements, which can lead to more unplanned purchases. Biswas encourages online shoppers to set a budget to balance such digital influence. “Having a budget will give you a benchmark to keep things more conscious-oriented and you’re less likely to be influenced by variables like these.”
1. Why do people tend to click curvy buttons when shopping online?A.They make shopping convenient. | B.They give us a sense of security. |
C.They often mean trade discounts. | D.They offer various easy options. |
A.Respect. | B.Block. | C.Track. | D.Affect. |
A.They have been used by all businesses. | B.They stop us making decisions quickly. |
C.They are a powerful tool for companies. | D.They enable websites to function well. |
A.Be reasonable consumers. | B.Frequent physical stores. |
C.Become aware of their right. | D.Avoid surfing the Internet. |
10 . Text message acronyms (缩略词) caused plenty of confusion for the older generations when mobile phones became commonplace — now emojis are making the embarrassment become more serious.
Slack, a workplace messaging service, surveyed 9,400 office workers worldwide including 1,000 in the UK. It found the biggest emoji socially embarrassing action or mistake at work was pictures of lips. Most older workers did not realize the double meaning of the peach emoji, which for younger users means hips. Olivia Grace, a director at Slack, said, “The findings of our research are very clear — be careful when communicating with emojis across generations. Emojis offer a great way to communicate emotion, whether it’s a joke, support or something else, but it’s good to be aware that different meanings may exist to avoid any awkward interpretations.”
The simple smiling face was also a source of misunderstanding — 60 percent of over-40s used it to show happiness or pleasure but a significant number of younger workers used it to convey “deep anger”. An image of someone painting their nails was the most confusing — it meant nothing to the older generation, while the under-25s said they used it to say “there is gossip”, and the 25 to 40-year-olds used it to communicate making themselves more beautiful. However, all ages agreed on the meaning of some emojis, such as a face with tears of laughter and a crying emoji.
Speaking about its reasons for conducting the survey, Slack said, “Are there certain emojis that should restrict your boss from using them? Have your international colleagues ever misunderstood an emoji? And do you usually wait to build a relationship before sending emojis at work?” It added that with thousands of emojis at users’ treatment, “there’s a lot of potential” to communicate by mistake.
Emojis are not technically a form of language, as they lack grammar. The original user of a particular emoji has no copyright on how it is to be understood. The significance of emojis belongs to those who use them, and they have a truly valuable role in written communication.
1. What did Slack find about emojis?A.Acronyms cause more confusion than them. | B.People understand some of them differently. |
C.It’s popular for office workers to use them. | D.They can avoid many awkward situations. |
A.By analyzing causes. | B.By raising questions. |
C.By following time order. | D.By making comparisons. |
A.To help people use emojis properly. | B.To find original emojis. |
C.To prove the convenience of emojis. | D.To explain some special emojis. |
A.Unclear. | B.Dismissive. | C.Doubtful. | D.Approving. |