1 . It’s time to reevaluate how women handle conflict at work. Being overworked or over-committed at home and on the job will not get you where you want to be in life. It will only slow you down and hinder your career goals.
Did you know women are more likely than men to feel exhausted? Nearly twice as many women than men aged 18—44 reported feeling “very tired” or “exhausted”, according to a recent study.
This may not be surprising given that this is the age range when women have children. It’s also the age range when many women are trying to balance careers and home. One reason women may feel exhausted is that they have a hard time saying “no”. Women want to be able to do it all—volunteer for school parties or cook delicious meals—and so their answer to any request is often “Yes, I can.”
Women struggle to say “no” in the workplace for similar reasons, including the desire to be liked by their colleagues. Unfortunately, this inability to say “no” may be hurting women’s heath as well as their career.
At the workplace, men use conflict as a way to position themselves, while women often avoid conflict or strive to be the peacemaker, because they don’t want to be viewed as aggressive or disruptive at work. For example, there’s a problem that needs to be addressed immediately, resulting in a dispute over who should be the one to fix it. Men are more likely to face that dispute from the perspective of what benefits them most, whereas women may approach the same dispute from the perspective of what’s the easiest and quickest way to resolve the problem—even if that means doing the boring work themselves.
This difference in handling conflict could be the deciding factor on who gets promoted to a leadership position and who does not. Leaders have to be able to assign and manage resources wisely—including staff expertise. Shouldering more of the workload may not earn you that promotion. Instead, it may highlight your inability to assign effectively.
1. What does the underlined word “hinder” in Paragraph 1 mean?| A．set | B．block | C．stimulate | D．achieve |
| A．They are too devoted to work and unable to relax as a result. |
| B．They are obliged to take up too many responsibilities. |
| C．They do their best to cooperate with their workmates. |
| D．They struggle to satisfy the demands of both work and home. |
| A．women tend to be easily content |
| B．men are generally more persuasive |
| C．men tend to put their personal interests first |
| D．women are much more ready to compromise |
| A．The ability to allocate work. |
| B．The courage to admit failure. |
| C．A dominant personality. |
| D．A strong sense of responsibility. |
2 . Vaccines(疫苗) are required for entry into school in most places in the United States,the government does allow for exceptions, like religious reasons.
In the last few years,the rates of vaccine-preventable illness have been on the rise. In most cases, these outbreaks began with children who were unvaccinated. To deal with this threat,some schools in New York have been refusing to allow unvaccinated children to attend school.Several parents thought this was unfair and charged. Just recently, though, a court ruled in favor of the city schools.
The court made the right decision.Vaccine policy depends not only on the added protection that vaccines provide for those who get shots,but also on the decreased probability that anyone will come into contact with the disease. This is known as community immunity(免疫力).It refers to the fact that when enough people are immunized,then there really can’t be an outbreak.And if there can’t be an outbreak,then everyone is protected.
This is important because there are people who cannot be given immunizations for various reasons.For example,small babies can’t be given all vaccines.In 1995,the chickenpox(水痘)vaccine was introduced in the United States.Over time,more and more children received it. In 2011.a study looked at how the program affected the number of children who died from the disease.
The first thing noted in the paper was that death from chickenpox went down considerably after the vaccine was introduced.From 2001 through 2007,the rates of death remained much lower.with just a few children dying from chickenpox nationally each year.
What’s more,from 2004 through 2007,not one child less than 1 year of age died in the United States from chickenpox,This is important because we cannot give the chickenpox vaccine to babies.In other words,all those babies were saved not because we vaccinated them against this illness,but because older children were vaccinated. Therefore,people who refuse to vaccinate their children aren’t just putting themselves at risk-they’re putting everyone else in danger,too.
1. Whose benefit did the judges take into consideration?| A．School leaders’. |
| B．Students’. |
| C．Several parents’. |
| D．Unvaccinated kids’. |
| A．Requiring everyone to be immunized. |
| B．Vaccinating babies as early as possible. |
| C．Making sure enough people are vaccinate. |
| D．Separating unvaccinated people from the vaccinated. |
| A．The vaccine is safe for every kid. |
| B．No deaths have been found since 2004. |
| C．The vaccine has decreased the death rate. |
| D．The vaccine is even more effective for babies. |
| A．No vaccine,no risk. |
| B．No vaccine.no school. |
| C．Vaccination is a personal choice. |
| D．Vaccine-preventable illness is dropping. |
Cycling isn’t always easy. Busy streets, honking horns, and inadequate bike lanes can make it an uphill battle. But not even these difficulties can stop Europeans’ passion for cycling. According to BBC, bicycles outsold cars in most of the European Union’s states last year.
There are traditional bicycle capitals”, such as Amsterdam in the Netherlands and Copenhagen in Denmark. But in many other traditionally car-made countries, the shift to bikes is striking. Italians, for instance, bought 1.6 million bikes against 1.4 million cars in 2012.
So what has led to cycling’s growing popularity in Europe?
The economic crisis has played an important role in the issue. “The economic crisis has had an effect on all areas of people’s lives, including on transport,” Giulietta Pagliaccio, head of the Italian cycling federation FIAB, told the Australian Associated Press.
Since the European debt crisis broke out in 2009, more people lost their jobs while the cost of living, including fuel costs, continued to rise. It forced many people to give up driving to save money, the Guangzhou-based New Express commented. Take Greece, a country seriously hit by the crisis, for example. It sold 320,000 bikes last year against 58,000 cars.
More importantly, people have changed their views toward cars and bikes. Cars are losing their appeal as status symbols. Yet, cycling is now seen as “a safe, clean, healthy, inexpensive way to get around town”, the Daily Star concluded. “It not only reduces traffic jam and pollution, but also contributes to public health.”
However, with more and more people turning to cycling, questions remain about traffic and safety problems.
To ease people’s worries, dozens of cities have joined a European Union to make bicycles equal to cars as a form of urban transport. Quite a few cities now offer well-marked bike lanes, such as the cycling super-highway marked in blue in London. It runs all over the city, from the center to the suburbs.
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4 . A diet to save humankind
When I was a child, my family would always sit down together for meals. My favourite was among the simplest: pasta in tomato sauce. We ate fresh vegetables and fruit, and, starting in our teenage years, sipped a glass of red wine. We ate together. I indulged with a few slices of Italian ham and practised a wide variety of outdoor sports. This centuries - old Mediterranean diet kept me fit and trim - and turned out to be good not just for my personal well-being, but for the planet’s health too.
In 2021 we will celebrate the tenth anniversary of UNESCO’s designation of this Mediterranean diet as a ”Cultural Heritage of Humanity“.
Poor nutrition is a global problem, not just an Italian one. The fact that it’s hitting Italy, the land where the Mediterranean diet originated, represents a dangerous paradox(矛盾)- one of many troubling the world of food. After years of decline, hunger is back on the rise. Globally, some 821 m people still do not have enough to eat. Yet while the poor south starves, the rich north gorges: some 2bn people are overweight or obese. We waste one-third of global food production.
The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals can show us the way. They aim to ”end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.“ These goals are ambitious but achievable.
Governments must provide incentives to support sustainable agriculture, slash food waste and meet nutritional challenges. This does not just mean taxing unhealthy foods.
We must change our diet. A food and environment pyramid which highlights the close links between food’s nutritional value and environmental impact has been devised. This ”double pyramid“ is based on the traditional Mediterranean diet of my childhood. Everyone can and must continue to have fun at the dinner table - while eating what is good for our health and our planet.
| A．Without a change in our diets, this disastrous cycle will worsen. |
| B．Farmers should use fertilizers more efficiently and reduce costs. |
| C．It is a diet full of vegetables, fruits and whole grains, with only occasional meat. |
| D．Farm animals consume an estimated two-thirds of all the land dedicated to agriculture and contribute about half of farming-related greenhouse-gas emissions. |
| E．Unfortunately, Italians have been turning away from their traditional healthy diet. |
| F．A more effective policy is to make healthy food, accessible and affordable for consumers and profitable for farmers. |
5 . Over the last 25 years, British society has changed a great deal. In some ways, however, very little has changed. Ideas about social class whether a person is “working-class” or “middle-class” are one area in which changes have been extremely slow.
In the past, the working-class tended to be paid less than middle-class people, such as teachers and doctors. As a result of this and also of the fact that workers’ jobs were generally much less secure, distinct differences in life-styles and attitudes came into existence. The typical working man would collect his wages on Friday evening and then give them to his wife, leaving a little for drinking or betting.
The type of what a middle-class man did with his money was perhaps nearer the truth. He was and still is likely to take a longer-term view. Not only did he regard buying a house to provide him and his family with security. Only in very few cases did workers have the opportunity (or the education and training) to make such long-term plans.
Nowadays, much has changed. In a large number of cases factory workers earn as much. Social security and laws have made it less necessary than before to worry about “tomorrow”. Working-class people seem slowly to be losing the feeling of inferiority (自卑感) they had in the past. In fact there has been a growing tendency in the past few years for the middle-classes to feel slightly ashamed of their position.
The changes in both life-styles and attitudes are probably most easily seen among younger people. They generally tend to share very similar tastes in music and clothes. They spend their money enjoying themselves, and save for holidays or longer-term plans when necessary. There seems to be much less difference than in previous generations. Nevertheless, we still have a wide gap between the well-paid and the low-paid. As long as this gap exists, there will always be a possibility that new problems will appear between different groups.
1. Which of the following is seen as the main cause of class differences in the past?| A．Life style and occupation. | B．Attitude and income. |
| C．Income and job security. | D．Job security and hobbies. |
| A．the description of middle-class ways of spending money is quite real |
| B．working-class ways of spending the weekend remain the same |
| C．working-class drinking habits differ from the past |
| D．middle-class attitudes towards their positions have changed greatly |
| A．They had to save money for security. |
| B．They couldn’t make long-term plans. |
| C．They could make as much money as they do now. |
| D．They didn’t have the sense of inferiority. |
| A．they are provided with social security |
| B．they can get much income |
| C．better jobs are available for all of them |
| D．the government offers legal protection |
| A．Changes are slowly taking place in all aspects of the British society. |
| B．The difference between working-class and middle-class young people is narrowing. |
| C．The gap in income between the two classes will still remain. |
| D．Middle-class people may sometimes feel a little inferior. |
6 . The sound that woke Damian Languell at 8:15 in the morning was so loud he assumed it came from inside his house in Wade, Maine. As he got up to investigate, he heard another sound, this one coming most definitely from outside. Looking out of his bedroom window, he noticed a tree enveloped in smoke about 500 yards away. A car wrapped around the tree’s base, its engine on fire.
Grabbing buckets of water, he and his wife ran to the crash site. Up close, the accident looked worse. The car was split nearly in two, and the tree was where the driver’s seat ought to have been, as if planted there. No one should have survived this crash, and yet there was 20-year-old Quintin Thompson, his terrified face pressed against the driver’s side window, in visible pain.
Languell tried putting out the fire with his buckets of water but failed. When the flames got into the front seats, he knew he had to get the young man out. So Languell opened the car’s back door and climbed in. Using a pocket knife he’d brought with him, he cut through Thompson’s seat belt. Now that Thompson was free, Languell pulled him out, and dragged him to safety before the entire car was in flames.
It is empathy that drove Languell to help, just as he said, “My heart goes out to Thompson. When you are that close to that level of hurt, you feel it so directly.” For his heroic action, Languell was added to the list of real-life heroes changing the world.
1. What do we know about Quintin Thompson?| A．He was successfully rescued. |
| B．He was capable of helping himself out. |
| C．He saved his car from fire. |
| D．He remained calm all the time. |
| A．Wisdom. | B．Sympathy. | C．Honesty. | D．Humor. |
| A．Caring and thankful. | B．Careless and generous. |
| C．Creative and hard-working. | D．Courageous and helpful. |
“Don’t judge
However, there
8 . Schools are not just a microcosm (缩影) of society; they mediate it too. The best
Trips that many adults would consider the
Probing the rock pools of a local beach or practicing French on a language exchange can fire children's passions, boost their skills and open their eyes to life's possibilities. The Sutton Trust, which focuses on improving social mobility, says educational outings help bright but
But £3,000 trips cannot be
The Department for Education's guidance says schools can charge only for board and lodging if the trip is part of the syllabus, and that students receiving government aid are exempt from these costs. However, many schools seem to ignore the advice；and it does not cover the kind of glamorous, exotic trips, which are becoming increasingly
| A．pretend | B．forget | C．seek | D．fail |
| A．examples | B．connections | C．extremes | D．ideals |
| A．encounter | B．adventure | C．invitation | D．advantage |
| A．profit | B．escape | C．suffer | D．choose |
| A．Furthermore | B．Therefore | C．Meanwhile | D．Thus |
| A．Introducing | B．Fulfilling | C．Relaxing | D．Rejecting |
| A．disabled | B．disciplined | C．distinguished | D．disadvantaged |
| A．case | B．prospect | C．performance | D．chance |
| A．claiming | B．ensuring | C．expecting | D．foreseeing |
| A．scolded | B．applauded | C．inspected | D．exposed |
| A．pooled | B．invested | C．sold | D．spent |
| A．booked | B．taken | C．enjoyed | D．justified |
| A．business | B．field | C．gift | D．conch |
| A．gratitude | B．satisfaction | C．guilt | D．relief |
| A．rare | B．unique | C．common | D．special |
9 . The Internet, E-commerce and globalization are making a new economic era possible. In the future, capitalist markets will largely be replaced by a new kind of economic system based on networked relationships, contractual (契约的) arrangements and access rights.
Has the quality of our lives at work, at home and in our communities increased in direct proportion (比例) to all the new Internet and business-to-business Internet services being introduced into our lives? I have asked this question of hundreds of CEOs and corporate executives in Europe and the United States. Surprisingly, virtually everyone has said, “No, quite contrary.” The very people responsible for showing in what some have called a “technological renaissance” say they are working longer hours, feel more stressed, are more impatient, and are even less civil (礼貌的) in their dealings with colleagues and friends—not to mention strangers. And what’s more revealing, they place much of the blame on the very same technologies they are so aggressively championing (捍卫).
We are told that access would make life more convenient and give us more time. Instead, the very technological wonders that were supposed to liberate us have begun to enslave us in a web of connections from which there seems to be no easy escape.
If an earlier generation was concerned about the goal to enclose a vast geographic frontier, the generation to come, it seems, is more caught up in the colonization (殖民) of time. Every spare moment of our time is being filled with some form of commercial connection, making time itself the scarcest of all resources. Our e-mail, voice mail and cell phones, our 24-hour Interact news and entertainment all seize for our attention.
While we have created every kind of labor-and-time-saving device to serve our needs, we are beginning to feel like we have less time available to us than any other humans in history. That is because the wide spread of labor-and-time-saving services only increases the diversity, pace and flow of common day activity around us. For example, e-mail is a great convenience. However, we now find ourselves spending much of our day anxiously responding to each other’s electronic messages. The cell phone is a great time-saver, except now we are always likely to reach someone else who wants our attention.
Social conservatives talk about the decline in civility and blame it on the loss of a morality and religious values. Has anyone bothered to ask whether the fast speed culture is making all of us less patient and less willing to listen, consider and reflect?
Maybe we need to ask what kinds of connections really count and what types of access really matter in the e-economy era. If this new technology revolution is only about efficiency, then we risk losing something even more precious than time—our sense of what it means to be a caring human being.
1. According to the passage, a large number of CEOs think that________.| A．technology has a great impact on their lives |
| B．technology should be aggressively championed |
| C．technology renaissance should be pushed forward |
| D．technology actually results in a decline in their life quality |
| A．Time available. | B．Time saving devices. |
| C．Access to information. | D．Technological wonders. |
| A．Cell phones can save time as they help us reach those who want our attention. |
| B．Social conservatives blame the loss of morality on the decline in civility. |
| C．High efficiency is even more precious than being a caring human being. |
| D．It is difficult for us to avoid the influence of technology wonders. |
| A．The New Internet Life | B．The Declining Quality of Life |
| C．The Disadvantages of Too Much Access | D．The Failure of Technological Renaissance |
10 . There are times when murder is not committed because of cruelty. People may kill for other reasons such as anger, misunderstanding, and fear. Everyone has made mistakes because of such feeling. For society, it is a serious mistake to take the life of someone who has killed because it teaches everyone that forgiveness is unnecessary.
The government has the difficult job of deciding who is innocent and who is guilty, and this job can never be done perfectly. If capital punishment(死刑)is allowed, there always exists the possibility that an innocent person will be executed by mistake. When that happens, an even worse crime has been committed—the killing of an innocent person by the government. Then there is the fact that the poor and minorities get the death penalty more often than whites do. Furthermore, the idea that capital punishment stops criminals from committing murder is doubtful; studies have been unable to show that the fear of capital punishment stops someone from committing murder more than other punishments. And let us not forget that murdering the murderer is a violent act in itself; it is revenge(复仇).
The U.S. government once followed the example of Germany, Britain, France, and other nations that no longer execute their citizens-however, since 1977, our society has been allowing capital punishment again, at a high cost. We cannot imagine the pain of family members who have been waiting for years for the government’s decision to execute or not execute their loved ones. It also costs the taxpayer millions of dollars more to execute a criminal than to imprison that criminal for life. Prison is a better form of punishment because it protects society and punishes criminals by taking away their freedom.
People can change, even people who have made terrible mistakes. Life in prison gives people the chance to change. Caryl Chessman is an example of someone who became a better person in prison. He taught other prisoners how to read, and he wrote several books. Before his execution, he wrote that he had finally learned not to hate.
Chessman learned this important lesson in prison. But a dead man learns nothing, and an executed person will never change. When a government kills, it is murdering hope.
1. According to the passage, all the followings are the results of the capital punishment EXCEPT that________.| A．capital punishment doesn’t necessarily put an end to crimes |
| B．execution may cause an innocent person to die |
| C．the blacks get executed more often than the whites do |
| D．capital punishment may arouse a desire for revenge |
| A．Execution will cause the pain of the criminal’s family members. |
| B．Life imprisonment is more expensive than execution. |
| C．Some murders are mistakes, caused by anger or fear. |
| D．America used to be among the nations which abandoned execution. |
| A．everyone can become a better person in prison |
| B．everyone can make terrible mistakes |
| C．execution robs people of the chance to change |
| D．It is always a good thing to learn not to hate |
| A．Not all people who kill are cruel. | B．Capital punishment is revenge. |
| C．Prison can sometimes improve a person. | D．Execution is not a better form of punishment. |
