1 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. adaptable B. capacity C. complicated D. decline E. demand F. evaluating G. highlighted H. impacts I. occurs J. pursuing K. survive

Economics survive by continually responding to the world around them. This means employing new technologies or exploiting new international markets when     1     growth. Today, these global shifts — dramatic shocks to economies — occur more frequently, are more     2     and, in knowledge-based economies are more dependent on talent than ever. In countries where a workforce lacks the skills that are suddenly in     3    , we see a skills gap emerge. This leads to higher unemployment rates while vacancies increase and productivity and growth decline.

So how can economies     4    ? By adapting. However, unlike the macro-strategies of the last century, people — not just policy — must drive today’s adaptability. Employers and policymakers have long     5     the importance of a flexible workforce, but until now it has been difficult to isolate the human element — the willingness and ability of employees to seek out and find opportunities across multiple employers, locations and industries. Our new ability to measure it and analyse talent adaptability — and to start to understand what drives it — are crucial steps forward.

The     6     of a market to match supply and demand efficiently depends on the ability and willingness of employers and employees to adapt to changing circumstances and align (使一致) skills with available opportunities. If this alignment is less than perfect, a mismatch     7     and optimum productivity can’t be reached.

Adapt to Survive for the first time brings together the two most comprehensive sources of talent data in the world: the real-time behaviours drawn from LinkedIn’s 277 million members and employer information from PwC’s Saratoga database of people and performance metrics (指标) which covers more than 2,600 employers across the globe. This report sets a new benchmark for     8     a country’s ability to match talent with opportunity and the movement of people between industries — the Talent Adaptability Score. This score is given to 11 countries. For each country, we evaluate how the Score     9     economic performance. Our recommendations are organised around four groups:

● Individuals — Prove your adaptability.

● Employers — Seek out, nurture and reward talents who can adapt.

● Educators — Offer courses and job training that produce     10     people.

● Governments — Create a climate of adaptability.

3 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. adulthood     B. betting     C. alternative     D. direct     E. drown     F. opting G. place     H. tearing     I. engage     J. sense     K. state

The post millennial generation best known as Gen Z — individuals now in their teens and early 20s — looked on as their parents lost jobs during the Great Recession. They’ve seen older millennial siblings     1     in student debt. Since they could eat solid food, they’ve watched on promising techonology displace another, and, along with older generations, have questioned everything from the gig economy to the     2     of democracy. Now they’re entering     3     with a willingness to experiment.

“The old systems we used to rely on aren’t working anymore, but new systems haven’t necessarily been put in     4    ,” says Melissa Lavigne-Delville, founder of the trends and research firm Culture Co-op, which specializes in generational attitudes. “Parents aren’t even sure about how to     5     their children, because too much is up in the air.”

According to a survey by her firm, 78% of Gen Z-ers say getting a four-year degree no longer makes economic     6    , and hundreds of programs, from apprenticeships to boot camps, have cropped up to offer a(n)     7     path. New types of work are possible too. Research has found that teenagers are getting their driver’s licenses later and doing less traditional work-for-pay than previous generations. But while they might not be     8     tickets at the local cineplex, they may be starting a popular YouTube channel from their bedroom. Culture Co-op found that nearly 60% of Gen Z-ers, ages 13 to 22, say they are doing some form of freelancing. Dew, for one, didn’t have a job in high school but did teach himself to code and is building websites on the side while he attends MissionU.

Jumping into the freelance economy means taking an uncertain path, as is     9     one’s future earnings on an educational program no one has tried before. Almost $2 billion has been invested in “last mile training” efforts like MissionU, but many young people are still     10     for college.

5 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. monitors       B. risen       C. nonprofit       D. mostly E. alarms       F. recovered       G. nonexistent       H. amazingly I. corresponding       J. responded       K. remote

US schools struggle to deal with hoax (恶作剧) shootings

More and more US schools are confiscating (没收) guns from students and having to deal with calls falsely reporting school shootings.

The number of guns found on students in schools during the first two months of this school year has    1     compared with the same time in the past two years, says the nonprofit group Gun Violence Archive, which     2     gun activity.

At least 220 guns were seized last month and in August in 35 states, compared with 128 at the same time last year. In the     3     period in 2019, 132 guns were confiscated. The number of guns found in 2020 is likely to have been lower because it was amid the pandemic, when classes were     4    .

At least 15 guns were    5     from schools in Baltimore, Maryland, last year, said Sergeant Clyde Boatwright of the Baltimore City School Police Force. It was higher than in any recent year. This school year the department has recovered two guns. One was used when a high-school student was shot dead outside a school.

The increasing prevalence of guns comes with an increase in what has come to be known as swatting. This is a hoax in which someone calls emergency services and reports a    6     crime to get law enforcement officials, generally a SWAT team, to go to an address.

On Wednesday many San Francisco Bay Area high schools received active shooter hoax calls, a day after police in Florida     7     to swatting calls at several high schools.

Since early last month about 117 hoaxes have been reported at schools in 17 states and the District of Columbia, said the National Association of School Resource Officers, a     8     group for school-based law enforcement professionals.

“These false     9     are far from harmless,” said Mo Canady, the associations’ executive director. “They also distract limited public safety resources from other community needs and increase anxiety among students and others.”

The calls have been made     10     from high schools, but also middle and elementary schools, according to local news reports. Some of the calls are hard to trace because they are made from internet phone numbers, law enforcement experts said.

6 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. present        B. features        C. concerned        D. reportedly        E. commercial             F. stretches       G. overwhelming H. exceptionally        I. routinely        J. spared             K. broadcasts

Modern media is awash in advertising clutter(杂乱), and who’s to blame? Modern audiences that hate conventional full-length and full-size ads.

Today’s consumers don’t like to pay for content, which ought to create a rich environment for advertisers. Yet these same consumers are prone to click or turn away when a conventional ad appears. The result is ad clutter.

YouTube     1    a combination of full-length ads, skippable ads, lower-screen banners and display ads on the page alongside each video. Newspapers that once considered the front page important now     2    run ads there.

Advertisers integrate plugs(推销) into content to frustrate digital video recorders, which allow viewers to watch programs on a delay and skip regular commercials. If you watch regional telecasts of baseball games, the commercial clutter is so     3    . Ads are visible on the stadium wall behind the home-plate umpire(裁判). On-screen graphics include sponsor logos. And everything is a paid plug--“This call to the coach’s zone is brought to you by Verizon.”

According to the showbiz paper Variety, several streaming services are about to introduce a new twist: commercials that start running whenever a viewer pauses a program. Hulu intends to launch such ads this year. AT&T’s DirecTV and U-verse units will     4    use similar technology to trigger full-motion commercials whenever a viewer tries to take a break.

There’s a lot at stake. According to Variety, National Football League(NFL) TV broadcasts generate an estimated $4.35 billion in ad revenue during the 17-week regular season. NFL     5    are now loaded with mini commercials that pop up when there is a brief pause in the action, often in “double boxes” that show a view of the field in one frame and a(n)    6    in the other.

Interestingly, with no “screen” to work with, radio is one medium that has tried for some time to buck the trend. Many commercial stations trade clutter for clusters--that is, a solid block of commercials running five minutes or more, followed by lengthy commercial-free     7    of time.

But wherever a screen is involved, or a printed page, ad clutter is     8    everywhere. Programmers and advertisers can’t really be expected to limit this; it’s a fact of business. Consumers, on the other hand, can opt for commercial-free content--if they’re willing to pay for it.

But getting limitless content without paying while also being     9    heavy advertising intrusions is impossible. As media environment is permanently cluttered, audiences should be     10    with what they wish for.

7 . Directions: Complete the following passages by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Do note that there is one word more than you need in each passage.

A. guarantee     B. boost        C. barely       D. distractions     E. literally     F. spare G. towering       H. critical     I. excessive     J. packing          K. available

It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work

How often have you heard someone say “It’s crazy at work”? Maybe you’ve even said it yourself. For many, “It’s crazy at work” has become their normal. But why so crazy?

There are two primary reasons: (1) The workday is being sliced into tiny, fleeting work moments by an onslaught of physical and virtual     1    .   (2)And an unhealthy obsession with growth at any cost set     2    , unrealistic expectations that stress people out.

It’s no wonder people are working longer, earlier, later, on weekends, and whenever they have a(n)     3     moment. That turns life into work’s left-overs. The doggie bag.

What’s worse is that long hours,     4     busyness, and lack of sleep have become a badge of honor for many people these days. Sustained exhaustion is not a badge of honor. Instead, it’s a(n)     5     of a physical and mental breakdown.

Besides, everyone’s talking about how to     6     productivity these days. There’s an endless stream of methodologies and tools promising to make people more productive. But more productive at what?

Productivity is for machines, not for people. There’s nothing meaningful about     7     some number of work units into some amount of time or squeezing more into less. Machines can     8     work 24/7, but humans can’t.

When people focus on productivity, they end up focusing on being busy. Filling every moment with something to do. And there’s always more to do!

But we should not believe in busyness. We should believe in effectiveness. How little can we do? How much can we cut out? Instead of adding to-dos, we add to-don’ts.

Being productive is about occupying your time - filling your schedule to the brim and getting as much done as you can. Being effective is about finding more of your time unoccupied and     9     for other things besides work. Time for leisure, time for family and friends. Or time for doing absolutely nothing.

Yes, it is perfectly acceptable to have nothing to do. Or, better yet, nothing worth doing. If you’ve only got three hours of work to do on a given day, then stop. Don’t fill your day with five more just to stay busy or feel productive. Not doing something that is     10     worth doing is a wonderful way to spend your time.

9 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. wound     B. fundamentally   C. argues     D. virtue     E. mirrors   F. universally G. judged       H. simply        I. adopted       J. fascination       K. similarly

Jenny Carter an NHS coordinator is an “extreme night owl,” one of an estimated 8.2% of the population whose natural inclination(倾向)is to fall asleep well after midnight. Left to her own devices, she’d prefer to go to bed around 3 a.m. and wake up about noon.

Why do night owls exist? There is no single     1     accepted theory, but evolutionary biologists think that communities with more variation in chronotypes(睡眠类型)may have been more likely to survive.

Another theory is that variation is     2     how genetics works. Right from birth, our personal biological clocks are already     3    . Genetics establishes a person’s chronotype. Colin Espie, professor of sleep medicine at the University of Oxford, says this     4     differences in hair eye and skin color or height.

Natural night owls are     5     different from insomniacs or people who stay up until the early hours because of family or work circumstances. Being a night owl isn’t a problem.

But this isn’t always well understood. Jessica Batchelor is a medical writer who feels most productive at 11 p.m. “I can’t tell anyone when I went to sleep, woke up, showered or ate a meal without being     6    ,” she says “I struggle with feelings of guilt and shame.”

This mentality is rooted in our agrarian(耕地的)past when farm work had to begin at dawn.

Our culture mistakenly associates sleeping little and rising early with     7    . It is often extolled(颂扬)as a habit of successful people: for instance in the     8     with Margaret Thatcher’s four-hour rest, or articles about “sleepless-elite” CEOs who start their days with a 4 a.m. jog.

Actually, there is nothing wrong with staying up late as long as you’re getting a good amount of sleep every night;     9    , early risers have no special biological advantage. What research has not disproved, however, is that morning people tend to get more done.

The productivity expert Laura Vanderkam     10     that people should consider switching their schedule not because it’s necessarily better but because it’s practical.

Waking up earlier to work out, make headway on a creative project or enjoy a stress-free cup of coffee can help make it easier to accomplish more without sacrificing time for yourself.

10 . Directions: Complete the following passages by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. handful               B. relieved        C. contributor        D. subsistence        E. knowledge F. academically        G. relevance       H. additional          I. denied               J. inevitably         K. prosperous

There are a lot of factors that stop children from getting an education. For example, if a country is at war or going through a period of political problems, school attendance will     1    drop. In such circumstances, children often get caught up in their nation’s conflict. Currently, about 300, 000 children in the world are child soldiers. Economic factors are also a key     2    to low school attendance. According to UNESCO figures, 215 million children are already working and their incomes are often essential for their families. In the developing world, it’s much more likely that girls are     3    a good education. Sometimes cultural and religious factors may prohibit girls from going to school. But more often than not, the reasons are economic. Adult males have more opportunities to earn money if they have an education. Consequently, for poor families, it makes more sense to send their boys to school.

It is reasonable to ask what     4     education has for children and their families in poverty-stricken countries. For people living in remote communities who bring up their children in harsh conditions and often rely on     5    farming to survive, education may not seem important. However, this is not true. Education is vital to people who live in low-income countries where there are only a mere     6    of employment opportunities. In the next few decades, jobs in technology and communications, which require literacy and numeracy skills. will replace manual jobs more and more. Experts estimate that every     7    year of education will increase the income of a person in a low-income country by 10 percent.

It is important that governments around the world take action and there are a lot of things they can do. For example, more     8     countries can cancel or reduce low-income countries debt. If     9     from debt, low-income countries can spend more money on education. Policymakers in these countries can also make a difference by investing resources in education, in the     10     that having a well-educated population is a way of improving a country’s economy.