2 . Waste not, Want not

Today, I live in Manhattan with my husband, Alex. I’m an IT specialist and Alex is a lawyer. Life’s good, but sometimes I look at the way we live it and think of Ellie, my grandmother. Her favorite saying was “Waste not, want not.”     1    . Ellie carefully folded the paper from parcels and washed glass jars to use again. Frank, my grandfather, used old socks and pullovers (套头毛衣) to protect the plants in winter. Nowadays, we go to a garden center to buy special felt for that purpose. Have we all gone mad?

Such economy seems strange, even ridiculous, in our modern throwaway society, where everything is sold in boxes.     2    , but as a selling feature to make us want to buy them. Ellie and Frank would have seen the very idea of a “gift pack” as a cheat.

    3    . The United States produces about 180 million metric tons of waste per year, 70% of which is packaging materials. The average American family uses up six trees’ worth of paper a year.     4    , they would reach to the moon and back twelve times. “We can’t go on like this,” I said to Alex. “Let’s start at home. If everybody starts at home, then this madness will stop.”

    5    . Of course, this meant that we produced a lot of waste, but I was shocked to find that this came to over six kilos per week. “Your grandma Ellie with her ‘Waste not, want not’ was really modern, wasn’t she?” “Not really,” I said. “Ellie and their neighbors were just ordinary, traditional New Englanders. We’ve all gone mad since then.”

A．Packaging is not only used to protect goods

B．My grandparents threw almost nothing away

C．In one week alone, we threw away five old magazines

D．We didn’t often go shopping and then cook meals at home

E．As young Manhattan professionals, we buy a lot of “convenience food”

F．But we pay a high financial and ecological price for our lovely packaging

G．If you placed all the cans used in the United States, in one year end to end

3 . 阅读下列短文，根据短文内容或括号内所给词的恰当形式填空。

When we’re solving a complicated problem, we often gather a group    1     (brainstorm). We’re looking to get the best ideas as quickly as possible. I love seeing it happen—except for one tiny wrinkle. Group brainstorming usually backfires.

Extensive evidence shows that when we generate    2     (idea) together, we’re unlikely to maximize collective intelligence. As the humourist John Smith said, “If you had to identify, in one word, the reason    3    the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be：‘meetings’. ” But the problem isn’t meetings    4     (they)—it’s how we run them.

4 . Women experience a “gender tenure gap”, lasting in CEO roles at publicly listed companies for shorter periods than men, according to new research which may support the idea that female leaders are subject to a “ glass cliff ” where they are set up to fail.

The concept of the glass cliff is that women are more likely to be appointed as leaders when an organization is in a time of crisis, so that their position is seen as more precarious than male counterparts.

Researchers at the University of Exeter found in 2005 that women were more likely to be appointed as board members after a company’s share price had performed badly. Professor Ryan told the Observer that the Russell Reynolds analysis was “ robust and added to the body of work in this area”.

“If women are more likely to take on leadership roles in times of crisis, then it follows that their time in office is likely to be stressful, more heavily scrutinised and shorter in tenure. This reduced tenure could be for a number of reasons—because there is often higher turnover in times of crisis, because they are judged as not performing well, even though poor performance was in train before their appointment, or because when things start to turn around, men come back into leadership roles.” she said.

Chief executive roles have a very low turnover, she said, which makes progress harder. “I think men can enjoy a greater followership—support within the organization. They can suffer big setbacks and rise again. Women who have been CEOs tend to go off to an alternative career.

However, she said that there was cause for optimism. The number of women on FTSE 350 boards is now 41%, up from 9.5% in 2011, and appointing women is “now the norm”. Russell Reynolds also found in a survey of 1,500 leaders worldwide that there were no significant differences in how women and men were perceived by the people who worked for them, showing that they were equally effective as leaders, although women were seen as being better at coaching and development.

1. What does the underlined word “precarious” probably mean?

A．Dangerous.

B．Profitable.

C．Essential.

D．Available.

2. Which of the following statements is correct?

A．“gender tenure gap” can be found in the majority of companies.

B．Male leaders are less likely to be appointed as board members.

C．Woman leaders in times of crisis tend to be shorter in tenure.

D．Female leaders are generally not performing well during their appointment.

3. What does the last paragraph indicate?

A．Women leaders are destined to eliminate glass cliff in the future.

B．Nowadays woman leaders differ hugely from man leaders in followership.

C．Man leaders are superior to woman leaders in every aspect.

D．Woman leaders are no less competent than man counterparts.

5 . I’ve been paralyzed (瘫痪的) since childhood and I started using a wheelchair in first grade. So I’ve had 30 years to learn just how______ I am and just how often people assume I’m helpless.

As a culture, Americans are ______ that disability is something they’ve figured out. Disability doesn’t define anyone; try to be ______; and the rule that guides them all: be kind.

Well, here’s the ______: we look through the eyes of nondisabled people so regularly that we ______ to ask even one of the many questions hovering (停留) around the disabled recipients of “help”. Did you want anyone’s help? Was it______ helpful?

“So how am I supposed to be helpful?” you might be asking. You have to______ the person in front of you. What signals are they giving you? What expression do you see on their face? If you really can’t ______, you can ask, but if someone says, “No thank you,” listen.

Like anyone else, disabled people are both capable and in need of some help. If you want to be genuinely, actively “______” to disabled people, invite them into your organizations, businesses and programs. Include disabled engineers and comedians and lawyers and teachers in your world. This kind of ______is a kindness for all of us, because listening to voices that are typically silenced brings to the table creativity, innovation and power.

1.

A．capable

B．desperate

C．friendly

D．responsible

2.

A．promised

B．convinced

C．trusted

D．questioned

3.

A．brave

B．honest

C．helpful

D．grateful

4.

A．test

B．change

C．reason

D．problem

5.

A．forget

B．refuse

C．continue

D．pretend

6.

A．still

B．also

C．even

D．already

7.

A．believe in

B．catch up with

C．smile at

D．pay attention to

8.

A．tell

B．answer

C．lie

D．focus

9.

A．kind

B．useful

C．faithful

D．polite

10.

A．guidance

B．profession

C．performance

D．inclusion

6 . 阅读下面短文，根据题目要求用英文回答问题。请在答题卡指定区域作答。

Children learn best when the significant adults in their lives—parents, teachers, and other family and community members—work together to encourage and support them. This basic fact should be a guiding principle as we think about how schools should be organized and how children should be taught. Schools alone cannot address all of a child’s developmental needs: the meaningful involvement of parents and support from the community are essential.

The need for a strong partnership between schools and families to educate children may seem like common sense. In simpler times, this relationship was natural and easy to maintain. Teachers and parents were often neighbors and found many occasions to discuss a child’s progress. Children heard the same messages from teachers and parents and understood that they were expected to uphold the same standards at home and at school.

As society has become more complex and demanding, though, these relationships have all too often fallen by the wayside. Neither educators nor parents have enough time to get to know one another and establish working relationships on behalf of children. In many communities, parents are discouraged from spending time in classrooms and educators are expected to consult with family members only when a child is in trouble. The result, in too many cases, is misunderstanding, mistrust, and a lack of respect, so that when a child falls behind, teachers blame the parents and parents blame the teachers.

At the same time，our society has created artificial distinctions （区别）of the roles that parents and teachers should play in a young person’s development. We tend to think that schools should stick to teaching academics and that home is the place where children’s moral and emotional development should take place.

Yet children don’t stop learning about values and relationships when they enter a classroom, nor do they cease learning academics— and attitudes about learning —when they are at home or elsewhere in their community.

These days, it can take extraordinary efforts to build strong relationships between families and educators. Schools have to reach out to families, making them feel welcome as full partners in the educational process. Families, in turn, have to make a commitment of time and energy to support their children both at home and at school.

1. What is important when it comes to children’s education?
__________________________________________________
2. Why is it hard for parents and teachers to build a strong partnership nowadays?
__________________________________________________
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
Families and schools should join hands to support students’ development, and they should be aware that there is a clear division of their responsibilities in the education of children.
__________________________________________________
4. What are your suggestions on how to get parents involved in school affairs?   
__________________________________________________

7 . 阅读下列短文，根据短文内容或括号内所给词的恰当形式填空。

Connected to each other like never before, young people today are becoming agents of change, increasingly     1    (contribute) to innovative solutions that improve people’s lives and the planet’s health.

The United Nations Institute for Training and Research     2     (be) therefore delighted to launch the Young Leaders Online Training Programme, a four-week e-Learning course, to provide participants     3     the knowledge and skills to fully unfold their potential as global leaders.