1 . Yesterday, a salesman called me by phone, on behalf of a telecom company, to sell his phone plans. I was at work and I usually didn't like telemarketing (电话销售), so I excused myself that I couldn't talk yet and said he could call me back one hour later, at 6:00 pm.
That's what he did. So we talked for 15 minutes. He explained to me his different phone plans, which he stated to be better than my current one. While listening to him, sometimes I was lost in my thoughts and I gave several “hmm hmm” as a sign of agreement to convince him that I was still there. Sometimes, I felt a bit impatient, especially as he had difficulty in correctly talking in French. But I stayed calm and polite until the end of the discussion.
At the end of the conversation, he revealed (袒露) the following to me:“Thank you, Linda. You are the first person in a long time with whom I had an enjoyable conversation. Usually, people shout at us, speak to us rudely, and treat us as thieves. Today, since 10:00 am, I hadn't had a conversation without an offense. I know you had a long day at work and you could have relaxed in front of your TV. Instead, you listened carefully to me. I sincerely thank you. I wanted to tell it to you.”
I thanked him for this revelation. I realized how much he could have been the subject of verbal violence, all through his working days. Unfortunately, the telephone enables the customers to have such aggressive behavior. Indeed, physical barriers do not exist in this situation and a kind of dehumanization (非人性化) seems to happen. I am also conscious that those people getting impatient could have been me. Yet, he was only doing his job and he shouldn't have suffered from the violence.
1. Why did the author let the salesman call back later?| A．She meant to refuse him at once. |
| B．She showed interest in his phone plans. |
| C．She hoped for more about telemarketing. |
| D．She wanted to use the way to discourage him. |
| A．Patient. | B．Careful. . |
| C．Kind of absent-minded. | D．Obviously impolite. |
| A．His deep apology. | B．His true appreciation. |
| C．His anger at misunderstanding. | D．His sufferings in telemarketing. |
| A．People say unkind words to him. | B．There are physical barriers. |
| C．Salesmen's impatience. | D．Customers' Humanization. |
2 . At first glance, there is nothing unusual about the BingoBox store—shelves stacked with snacks line the walls, tempting passers-by through the glass windows. But on closer inspection, BingoBox is no ordinary store. The door opens only after customers scan a QR code to enter, and there is no cashier to tally up purchases—just a lone checkout counter in a corner. The Shanghai-based company is one of many unmanned store operators opening outlets all over China, hoping to improve slim profit margins in the retail business by reducing staff costs.
“If capital costs rise quickly, that puts greater pressure on low-margin businesses like convenience stores and supermarkets,” said Andrew Song, an analyst at Guotai Junan Securities. “In China, manpower costs have been rising relatively quickly.”
However, the futuristic vision of shopping without a checkout person is still in progress. A reporter who visited a BingoBox store in Shanghai was briefly locked in when he was trying to exit without making a purchase. Although a sign near the exit stated that empty-handed customers can leave by scanning a QR code, no QR code was to be found. Repeated calls to the customer service hotline went unanswered.
Another unmanned operation in China, Take Go, only allows one customer in the shop at a time because of technology limitations in using multiple cameras for scanning customers’ faces.
The idea of unmanned stores first caught the world’s attention when the largest US online retailer announced its cashier-less store, which is only available to employees for now. Since then, some technology companies in China, including the e-commerce firm Alibaba Group, have launched their own versions of unmanned stores.
Embedded with technology such as RFID tags, mobile payment systems and facial recognition systems, such stores collect valuable data that give operators a better idea of consumers’ preference and buying habits, which can then be used to optimize the operation and make more efficient inventory decisions. For BingoBox, lower operating costs also mean it can afford to expand its reach to areas with less foot traffic, according to Chen Zilin, the founder and CEO of BingoBox.
1. What makes the BingoBox store look like an ordinary convenience store?| A．Shelves stacked with goods. | B．A lone checkout counter. |
| C．No cashier to check out. | D．Entering by scanning a QR code. |
| A．The customers prefer mobile payment systems. |
| B．The unmanned stores help improve profit with lower labor costs. |
| C．The employees focus on consumers’ preference and buying habits. |
| D．The operators care more about operations and inventory decisions. |
| A．Two. | B．Three. | C．Four. | D．Five. |
| A．Nowadays all stores should be equipped with advanced technology. |
| B．The operators collect data about consumers’ preference and buying habits. |
| C．BingoBox made wiser decisions based on the data collected in unmanned stores. |
| D．The operators can open unmanned supermarkets in more remote places with low costs. |
3 . For several months, Cara has been working up the courage to approach her mom about what she saw on Instagram. Not long ago, the 11-year-old girl, like all the other kids in this story, discovered that her mom had been posting her photos for much of her life.“I’ve wanted to bring it up.It’s strange to see myself up there, and sometimes there are pictures of myself I don't like,”she said.
Like most other modern kids, Cara grew up in social media. While many kids may not yet have accounts themselves, their parents, schools, sports teams, and other organizations have been organizing online presence for them since birth.The shock of realizing that details about your life have been shared online without your permission or knowledge has become an important experience in the lives of many teenagers. Recently a parenting blogger (博主) wrote in an essay of The Washington Post that despite (尽管)her 14-year-old daughter’s horror of discovering that her mother had shared years of highly personal stories and information about her online, she simply could not stop posting them on her blog and social media. The writer said that promising her daughter that she would stop posting things about her publicly on the Internet “would mean shutting down an important part of myself, which isn't necessarily good for me or her”.
But it’s not just crazy mommy bloggers who construct their children’s online identity; plenty of average parents do the same. There’s even a special word for it: sharenting (晒娃成癖). Almost a quarter of children begin their digital lives when parents upload their photos to the Internet, according to a study conducted by the Internet-security (安全)firm AVG. The study also found that 92 percent of kids under the age of 2 already have their own unique digital identity.
1. How does Cara probably feel about her mom’s behavior?| A．It’s aggressive. | B．It’s appropriate. |
| C．It’s annoying. | D．It’s favorable. |
| A．It filled up her blog. | B．It showed off her success. |
| C．It recorded her stories. | D．It meant a lot to her. |
| A．A quarter of students. | B．Many ordinary parents. |
| C．Kids under the age of 2. | D．Some crazy bloggers. |
| A．Children’s New Trouble |
| B．Social Media |
| C．Kids’ Online Performance |
| D．Mommy Bloggers |
4 . What do you want to be when you are growing up? A doctor, an engineer — or maybe a footballer or actor? We all have big plans for our futures and believe there is a dream job waiting for us — one that will pay well and give great job satisfaction. But how realistic is that?
Today, in the UK at least, young people are being warned that some of their career hopes and dreams don’t match the types of jobs available. Research by the charity Education and Employers suggests five times as many 17 and 18 year-olds in the UK want to work in art, culture, entertainment and sport than there are jobs.
The excitement of working in these employment sectors (部门) is obviously an attraction. But those looking for these types of job will be disappointed. That’s what the report, Disconnected: Career ambitions and jobs in the UK, says. Writing about this for the BBC, Katherine Sellgren points out that although young people are keen to work in art, entertainment, culture and sport, the economy is unlikely to need them all. At the same time, there is a shortfall of young people wanting to work in careers such as catering and retail(零售).
Previous research about the career ambitions of young people by the Office for National Statistics also found a “reality gap” between their dreams and the sometimes disappointing truth by the time they reached their early to late-20s. Apart from those who aimed to go into teaching, fewer than one in 50 were in the jobs they had wanted — such as a doctor, vet, firefighter or actor. Most were working as sales assistants, careers or in sales and marketing.
Although it’s good to have ambitions, the aims of young people need to be realistic. This latest report suggests that children need to be made more aware of a wider variety of occupations at a younger age. It also calls for improved career advice in secondary schools. A spokeswoman for the Department for Work and Pensions told the BBC that “early careers advice can help young people set out on the right path to the job that channels their interests and unlocks their potential.”
1. Which employment sector in the UK needs more people to work in?| A．Sport. | B．Service industry. |
| C．Art & culture. | D．Entertainment. |
| A．ambition and reality | B．males and females |
| C．theory and practice | D．the past and the present |
| A．They ought to be offered better career advice in secondary schools. |
| B．They should know more kinds of jobs at an early age. |
| C．The government should create more jobs for the young. |
| D．Their employment ambition should be realistic. |
| A．Unemployment Problems in Britain |
| B．Young People’s Lifestyles in Britain |
| C．Tips for Finding Dream Jobs in Britain |
| D．Unrealistic Career Ambitions in Britain |
5 . It’s often said of British people that they are very aware of each other’s social rank. Britons can usually work out a fellow countryman’s background from the way they speak or dress, and may even treat them differently based on this. But although this may have been truer in the past than it is today. Visitors to Britain say that they still notice it. The comic play Pygmalion by the Irish man George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), is a famous exploration of the importance of social rank in British society.
The main story of the play concerns a working class girl, Eliza Doolittle, a flower seller from London. Two upper class gentlemen try to see if they can get Doolittle to appear like an upper class lady after sending her for elocution lessons. Professor Henry Higgins, a language expert, says it can be done; his friend Colonel Pickering says that it’s impossible. Even so, Higgins sets out to teach Eliza how to “speak properly”.
Of course Eliza isn’t a lump of clay; she has her own will. She can see that it’s in her best interest to go along with Higgin’s plan to “improve herself”. She wants to be able to sell flowers in a shop rather than on the street. Still, Eliza’s willfulness means that it’s a bumpy（坎坷的）ride for everyone.
At the beginning of fourth act, the characters are at home after a ball（舞会）, at which Eliza proved that a flower girl can pass herself off as a lady after all. She was a triumph at the ball, and Higgins has won his bet.
But what happens next? Eliza has her future to worry about. She may be able to fool the upper class into thinking she’s one of them, but she isn’t really one of them.
Shaw seems to be telling us that social rank is about more than the someone talks---it’s about wealth and privilege. The whole experiment proves the idea that accents and classes are very superficial. The way one speaks and dresses are only markers of class. The class system itself, however, is something completely different.
1. According to the text, in Britain, the way a person speaks and dresses _____.| A．determines their social rank |
| B．used to have a strict code |
| C．is no longer cared about by other people |
| D．could affect other opinions of them |
| A．dance lessons | B．speech lessons |
| C．sales training | D． dress courses |
| A．She is forced to give up selling flowers on the street. |
| B．She is unwilling to participate in the experiment at first. |
| C．She is thought of as a respectable upper-class lady at the ball. |
| D．She is afraid that true background will be known by other people. |
| A．People should try to improve their accents. |
| B．One can enter the upper class after receiving training. |
| C．The way someone speaks makes a big difference to their social status. |
| D．A person’s social rank can’t truly be judged by the way they look and talk. |
6 . There have been many problems with our schools today, the biggest of which is closely related to our culture. In general, our culture, as represented in the media, gets excited by famous stars, and constantly stresses that it's what you have, not what you are, that counts. Parents are encouraged to be away from even very small children for most of the day. Too many voters go for politicians who would rather cut school funding (基金）than to get rid of tax cuts for the wealthy. All contribute greatly to the problems of educating our children.
Today's teachers have to deal with a culture that is vastly different than in the past. They report that there is, among more children than ever, a lack of motivation, no drive to succeed or even try. The role models that boys view in the media mostly consist of men in comedies and other shows who are rude and often extremely immature: self-centered overpaid athletes; men in movies, television dramas, video games, etc. who are preoccupied with violence and power. As Leonard Sax wrote in "Boys Adrift". "Teenage boys are looking for models of mature adulthood. but we no longer make any collective effort to provide such models. "Girls are attacked not only with such annoying images (形象）of males. .but also with women who are preoccupied with appearance and are extremely materialistic.
In such a cultural environment, it is more important than ever to have responsible, loving and caring parents who have enough time and motivation to devote to their children and see to it as their duty to model for them and raise them with high standards of honesty and responsibility along with tending to their physical needs. They need to care enough to see that their children are not attacked with the garbage that comes from movie, television and computer screens. In today s culture, they are basically alone in this effort since, unfortunately, so much is working against them.
Until we, as a culture, face the truth about ourselves-that we are not providing adequately for a great many of our children--the storm will continue to rage (肆虐）over our education system.
1. How is paragraph 1 mainly developed?| A．By analyzing causes. | B．By showing differences. |
| C．By describing a process. | D．By using time order. |
| A．Narrow access to entertainment. | B．Poor understanding abilities. |
| C．Few materialistic models. | D．Little desire for success. |
| A．devote more to their children |
| B．find honest models for their children |
| C．keep their children away from computers |
| D．help their children develop motivation |
| A．Positive. | B．Ambiguous. |
| C．Dissatisfied. | D．Approving. |
7 . Teens want structure in their lives, which means they want their lives well-planned. To begin building structure, teens need love and trust. They need to know their parents are there to give them needed love and support(支持).Teens want to be sure that nothing can prevent parents from shouldering their responsibility for them — not their growing maturity(成熟), misbehavior, nor anger at something they have done. Teens want parents to keep control while allowing them to make some decisions.
There are some ways you can help your teens create reasonable structure and remain close. One way is to spend time together. Parents often mistake their teens’ increased interest in friends for a disinterest in the family.
Teens would like to spend more time doing things with their parents, but watching TV is not counted as spending time together. As your teens mature, it is important for you and your teens spend time alone together, one to one. Your teens need time to talk to you alone without any other family member present.
Talk with your teens about their interests and concerns. Make sure you really show interest in what is happening. When talking with your teens, give full attention and do not stop them.
The way to help your teens become adults is to let your teens into your world. Sharing your emotions and concerns with your teens is important. Avoid causing needless worry.
Trust your teens. Don’t expect the worst. Hope for the best. Telling your teens you don’t like their friends will cause the teens not to bring their friends home. If something should go wrong, believe that your teens didn’t do it on purpose.
It is very important that you treat your teens with respect. Teens need the same respect adults show for total strangers. Don’t talk down to your teens.
You need to be supportive of your teens. What may be a small problem to you may be troubling to your teens. Teens don’t have the experiences that adults have had. Let the teens know that you understand how much it hurts when something happens that is upsetting or hurtful to them. As they mature, they can look back at some problems they had and laugh at having been upset by something that now seems unimportant.
The most important things to remember are: talk with your teens, listen to their worries and offer suggestions when needed. This will help your teens to live a well-organized life.
1. According to Paragraph 1, teens________.| A．can control themselves. |
| B．expect direction and freedom. |
| C．don’t know how to make decision. |
| D．don’t have responsibility for the family. |
| A．compared with | B．used as |
| C．connected with | D．regarded as |
| A．invite their teens’friends home. |
| B．leave their teens’problems alone. |
| C．share their feelings with their teens. |
| D．pay little attention to their teens’ daily lives. |
| A．Training Teens to Become Responsible Adults. |
| B．Helping Teens to Build Reasonable Structure. |
| C．Improving the Relationship with Your Teens. |
| D．Stepping into Your Teens’Secret Word. |
8 . Giving children music lessons won’t just introduce them to music―it could also greatly improve their language skills.
While many studies have shown that learning an instrument can affect things like the language ability, it isn’t understood if this is a side effect of a general improvement of cognitive (认知的) skills, or something that directly affects language processing.
Now, we are getting closer to an answer, thanks to a study of 74 Chinese kindergarten children, led by Robert Desimone from MIT. For the study, Desimone’s team chose children from the Chinese education system, with the support of education officials who wanted to see how it might improve their learning.
The 4-to-5-year-old Mandarin-speaking children in the study were divided into three groups. One group received a 45-minute piano lesson three times a week, while another received extra reading instruction classes. The third group acted as controls, taking no extra lessons beyond their usual classes.
The classes lasted for six months, after which the children were tested on their ability to tell words based on differences in tones, consonants (辅音), or vowels (元音). The test results showed that the children who had taken piano lessons performed better at telling the difference between words that differ by a single consonant, when compared with the children who took extra reading lessons. Compared to the control group, both the music learners and the extra reading group did better in telling the difference between words based on vowel differences.
“It looks like for recognising differences between sounds, including speech sounds, it’s better than extra reading. That means schools could pay more attention to music,” Desimone says. “It’s not worse than giving extra reading to the children, which is probably what many schools are trying to do―get rid of the art education and just have more reading.”
1. What does the underlined word “it” in Paragraph 3 refer to?| A．Learning a musical instrument. |
| B．A study of children’s schooling. |
| C．The Chinese education system. |
| D．Improvement of cognitive skills. |
| A．Ways to improve their study. |
| B．Three extra piano lessons a week. |
| C．Extra lessons about reading tips. |
| D．Nothing except their usual studies. |
| A．Learning music improved learners’ memory. |
| B．Children taking piano lessons didn’t perform well. |
| C．The extra reading group were good at telling vowels. |
| D．The piano turned out to be better than other instruments. |
| A．Children who learn music perform better at school. |
| B．It isn’t wise to cut back on music lessons. |
| C．Schools will increase reading classes. |
| D．Many schools value art education. |
9 . It’s important for children to take part in social activities during their summer holidays. “Kids should have a break during the summer. They’ve worked hard during the school year and this is their time to relax, but they should continue communicating with their friends and meeting new people,” said Dr. Jin Han. He’s a professor at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
Spending time with friends and meeting new people by doing fun and educational activities such as music, arts and sports programs in summer help with their development. “If children spend a lot of time alone on their electronic equipment, then they will fail to communicate with others,” Han said. “In today’s world, it’s very easy for kids to stay indoors all day and keep in touch with others, but that is not a good way to connect with others. Face-to-face communication is necessary and important. Parents should restrict the time their children spend on electronic equipment. For example, the time they spend on their phones cannot be more than one hour a day.”
It’s also important for children to spend quality time with their parents and sisters or brothers. “It’s not the length of time, but the quality of time that families spend together that is really valuable,” Han said. “This type of communication is not something that you can get from anywhere else. It doesn’t matter how old the child is, because family bonding (人与人之间的关系) experiences can happen at any time.”
Having children spend time with friends and families doesn’t have to spend money in the wallet, either. For example, going to the neighborhood swimming pool or having a picnic is a great way to spend quality time together.
1. What does Dr. Jin Han think about the summer holidays according to the first paragraph?| A．It is necessary for children to have a rest during summer holidays. |
| B．Children should relax as much as possible during summer holidays. |
| C．Making new friends in summer holidays is difficult for children. |
| D．Children should prepare for schoolwork in summer holidays. |
| A．Increase. | B．Control. | C．Spend. | D．Employ. |
| A．How long children spend with families matters. |
| B．What to do with families depends on the parents. |
| C．When to spend time with families makes a difference. |
| D．How to enjoy the time with families is of great importance. |
| A．The importance of friends and families. | B．The introduction of some social activities. |
| C．The suitable ways to spend summer holidays. | D．The necessity of face-to-face communication. |
10 . Music icon Bob Dylan will not attend the Nobel ceremony in December because he has “other commitments,”the Swedish Academy said on Wednesday.
“The Swedish Academy received a personal letter from Bob Dylan yesterday where he explained that he could not make himself available in December.”, it said in a statement.
“He wishes that he could accept the award personally,but other commitments make it unfortunately impossible. He underlined that he feels incredibly honored by the Nobel prize,” it added. The Swedish Academy said it respected Dylan’s decision, but that it was “unusual” for a Nobel laureate not to come to Stockholm to accept the award in person. Nobel laureates are honored every year on December 10--the death anniversary of the prize’s founder Alfred Nobel, a Swedish industrialist, inventor and philanthropist.
Several other literature prize winners have skipped the Nobel ceremony in the past for various reasons-British writer Doris Lessing on grounds of ill health,British playwright Harold Pinter because he was hospitalized and Austrian playwright and novelist Elfriede Jelinek due to social phobia.
“We look forward to Bob Dylan’s Nobel lecture, which he must carry out-it is the only requirement—within six months starting from December 10, 2016,”the academy said.
1. What does the underlined word “it”in paragraph two refer to?| A．receiving a personal letter | B．expressing himself in a statement |
| C．feeling horned by the award | D．accepting the award personally |
| A．supportive | B．opposite | C．tolerant | D．indifferent(漠不关心的) |
| A．Nobel Prize goes to Music icon Bob Dylan. |
| B．Bob Dylan is not to attend the Nobel Ceremony. |
| C．A Great Anniversary Event—the Nobel Ceremony |
| D．Bob Dylan—a Music Icon Who Won the Noble Prize |
| A．EIfriede skipped the Nobel ceremony because of physical illness. |
| B．The Nobel ceremony is in memory of the birth of the Prize’s founder. |
| C．Bob Dylan informed the Swedish Academy of his absence through telephone. |
| D．According to the Swedish Academy,the deadline of Dylan’s lecture is June 10,2017. |
