Nowadays, many people have more than one job, or a slash career. For people
2 . Automation and job replacement will be one of the most significant challenges for the global economy of the coming decades. A 2017 Mckinsey report established that 375 million workers will need to switch occupational categories by 2030. The World Economic Forum suggests that by 2022, automation will replace 75 million jobs globally — but create 133 million new ones.
Research into the likelihood that a job will be impacted by digitization has largely focused on the “automatability” of the role and the following economic regional and political effects of this. What this research doesn’t take into account is something more important for the millions of taxi drivers and retail workers across the globe: their likelihood of being able to change to another job that isn’t automatable. Recent research suggests that the answer to this may be that the skills that enable workers to move up the ladder to more complex foles within their current areas might be less important than broader skills that will enable workers to change across divisions.
In July, Amazon announced that it would spend $700 million retraining around 30%of its 300, 000 US workforce. While praiseworthy, it will be interesting to see the outcome. In the UK, the National Retraining Scheme has largely been led by employers, meaning that those on zero-hours contracts and part-time workers — often low-skilled — will miss out. Governance will be a crucial element of ensuring that such schemes focus on individuals and life-long learning, rather than upskilling workers into roles that will soon also face automation.
According to the Mckinsey report, “growing awareness of the scale of the task ahead has yet to translate into action. Public spending on labor-force training and support has fallen for years in most member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development,” which impacts more than just the low-skilled and poorly compensated.
The global impact of automation is also put into relief by research demonstrating that, between 1988 and 2015, income inequality increased throughout the world. Billions of people do not have the essentials of life as defined by the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Alongside climate change, automation is arguably tech’s biggest challenge. As with globalization, governments and employers — and us workers — ignore its potential consequences at risk to ourselves.
1. What is the author’s attitude towards retraining programs for upskilling?| A．Supportive. | B．Critical. | C．Skeptical. | D．Sympathetic. |
| A．Less spending on training. | B．Social unrest and instability. |
| C．A slowdown of globalization. | D．An increase in income inequality. |
| A．To stress the importance of enabling workers. | B．To analyze the automatability of certain jobs. |
| C．To compare globalization with automation. | D．To argue the urgency of creating new jobs. |
3 . Why Does Norm Matter? Simply put, a norm is a rule that guides behavior among members of a society or group. Norms are social facts: things which exist in society independent of individuals, and that shape our thoughts and behavior.
While we can understand norms simply as rules that tell us what we should or shouldn’t do, there’s much more to them that sociologists find interesting and worthy of study. For example, sociological focus is often directed at how norms are disseminated — how we come to learn them. The process of socialization is guided by norms and taught to us by those around us, including our families, teachers, and authority figures from religion, politics, law, and popular culture.
As knowledge of how to operate in the world, norms are an important part of the cultural capital that each of us possesses and embodies. They are, in fact, cultural products and are culturally contextual, and they only exist if we realize them in our thought and behavior. For the most part, norms are things that we take for granted and spend little time thinking about, but they become highly visible and conscious when they are broken.
Because they guide our behavior, and when broken, they enlist a reaction that is meant to reaffirm them and their cultural importance. They allow us to live our lives with an understanding of what we can expect from those around us.
| A．This would be a form of social approval. |
| B．As such, they have a forcing power over us. |
| C．Some norms can lead to serious social problems. |
| D．The everyday enforcement of them though is mostly unseen. |
| E．In many cases they allow us to feel safe and secure, and to operate at ease. |
| F．We learn them through spoken and written directive, but also through observing those around us. |
| G．They operate in our subconscious, and we don’t think consciously about them unless they are broken. |
Food insecurity is defined by the United States Department of Agriculture as the lack of access to enough food for an active, healthy life. It is associated with negative social and health outcomes and
5 . We have been defending humanities for many decades now, but the crisis of the humanities only grows. In the face of declining student interest and mounting political scrutiny (审查), universities and colleges are increasingly putting humanities departments on the chopping block.
As a humanist, I am prepared to admit that I do not know what the value of the humanities is. I once asked the best teacher I ever had why she no longer taught her favorite novel, and she said that she stopped teaching a book when she found she was no longer curious about it. The humanistic spirit is, fundamentally, an inquisitive one.
In contrast, defenses of the humanities are not — and cannot be — conducted in an inquisitive spirit, because a defensive spirit is inimical to an inquisitive one. Defensiveness is, it must be admitted, an understandable response when the chopping block is brought out and you need to explain why you shouldn’t be on it, which requires their participants to pretend to know things that they do not actually know.
Nonetheless, we should be alert to the danger of becoming accustomed to putting our worst foot forward. An atmosphere of urgency and calls for immediate action are hostile to fields of study like literature and philosophy that require a reflective mood, and the pretense (假装) of knowing what one doesn’t actually know is hostile to forms of inquiry that demand an open mind.
A defensive mindset also encourages politicization. If the study of literature or philosophy helps to fight sexism or to promote democracy—and everyone agrees that sexism is bad, and democracy is good — then you have your answer as to why we shouldn’t cut funding for the study of literature or philosophy. Politicization is a way of arming the humanities for its political battles, but it comes at an intellectual cost. Why is sexism so bad? Why is democracy so good? Politicization silences these and other questions, whereas the function of the humanities is to raise them.
Humanists are not alone in their ignorance about the purpose of their disciplines. But scientists are under a lot less pressure to explain why they exist because the society at large believes itself to already have the answer to that question. If at some point I am called on to defend the study of Homer or Descartes at some official hearing, I will do my best, but I will not run to battle; the battle will have to come to me.
The task of humanists is to invite, to welcome, to excite, to engage. And when we let ourselves be ourselves, when we allow the humanistic spirit that animates us to flow out not only into our classrooms but also in our public-self presentation, we find we don’t need to defend or prove anything: We are irresistible.
1. What is the author’s main concern regarding the crisis in humanities?| A．The pressure on humanists to argue for the value of their disciplines. |
| B．The mounting political scrutiny faced by humanities departments. |
| C．People’s little knowledge regarding the purpose of humanities. |
| D．Students’ lack of interest in studying humanities courses. |
| A．immune. | B．relevant. | C．sensitive. | D．contrary. |
| A．It brings about a lower chance of survival for humanities. |
| B．It requires a reflective mood on the study of humanities. |
| C．It leads to a compromise on human’s intellectual depth. |
| D．It is the worst action to take in the face of the crisis. |
| A．The battle of humanities is a hard one to fight. |
| B．The future of humanities remains cloudy. |
| C．Science is more useful than humanities. |
| D．Humanities may not need any defense. |
6 . If you want to disturb the car industry, you’d better have a few billion dollars: Mom-and-pop carmakers are unlikely to beat the biggest car companies. But in agriculture, small farmers can get the best of the major players. By connecting directly with customers, and by responding quickly to changes in the markets as well as in the ecosystems, small farmers can keep one step ahead of the big guys. As the co-founder of the National Young Farmers Coalition (美国青年农会) and a family farmer myself. I have a front-row seat to the innovations among small farmers that are transforming the industry.
For example, take the Quick Cut Greens Harvester, a tool developed just a couple of years ago by a young farmer, Jonathan Dysinger, in Tennessee, with a small loan from a local Slow Money group. It enables small-scale farmers to harvest 175 pounds of green vegetables per hour — a huge improvement over harvesting just a few dozen pounds by hand-suddenly making it possible for the little guys to compete with large farms of California. Before the tool came out, small farmers couldn’t touch the price per pound offered by California farms. But now, with the combination of a litter price point and a generally fresher product, they can stay in business.
The sustainable success of small farmers, though, won’t happen without fundamental changes to the industry. One crucial factor is secure access to land. Competition from investors, developers, and established large farmers makes owning one’s own land unattainable for many new farmers. From 2004 to 2013, agricultural land values doubled, and they continue to rise in many regions.
Another challenge for more than a million of the most qualified farm workers and managers is a non-existent path to citizenship — the greatest barrier to building a farm of their own. With farmers over the age of 65 outnumbering farmers younger than 35 by six to one, and with two-thirds of the nation’s farmland in need of a new farmer, we must clear the path for talented people willing to grow the nation’s food.
There are solutions that could light a path toward a more sustainable and fairer farm economy, but farmers can’t clumsily put them together before us. We at the NYFC need broad support as we urge Congress to increase farmland conservation, as we push for immigration reform, and as we seek policies that will ensure the success of a diverse and ambitious next generation of farms from all backgrounds. With a new farm bill to be debated in Congress, consumers must take a stand with young farmers.
1. The author mentions car industry at the beginning of the passage to introduce .| A．a trend of development in agriculture | B．the importance of investing in car industry |
| C．the progress made in car industry | D．a special feature of agriculture |
| A．Small farmers may gain some advantages over big ones. |
| B．Competition between small and big farms is herce. |
| C．Technology is vital for agricultural development. |
| D．Loans to small local farmers are necessary. |
| A．To gain more financial aid. | B．To have farms of their own. |
| C．To hire good farm managers. | D．To win old farmers’ support. |
| A．Become members of NYFC. | B．Seek support beyond NYFC. |
| C．Expand farmland conservation. | D．Invest more to improve technology. |
Globalization is the connection of different parts of the world. The process of globalization is very controversial. Many people say globalization will help people communicate. Aid agencies can respond more quickly
The endless choice gives birth to anxiety in people’s lives. Buying something as
9 . We are a social animal. Indeed, it is our sociality — such as the ability to make sense of each other, to communicate, to work cooperatively and, finally, to create culture — that marks us off from other animal species.
But then why are we everywhere striving to increase our isolation and limit our contact with others? As musician David Byrn e argues in an essay published last month, it is a striking fact about the new technologies that have so come to shape our lives, that they have precisely this effect: they limit our need for human contact. Online shopping? Check. Automated checkout? Check. Ride hail apps? Check.
Efficiency is the key. We purchase efficiency by limiting the human aspect, known as “autonomous operation”. This is perhaps even more pronounced with new technologies on the horizon. Take the MOOC, the teacher-less virtual classroom. As Byrn e notes, this is meant to deliver the values of a learning environment without, well, without the environment — you get to stay at home — no teacher, but also, no fellow students.
Byrne isn’t claiming we are consciously choosing to isolate ourselves. We shop online because it is convenient. The absence of contact with others is a side-effect. Maybe even an unavoidable one, as one of the things that makes online shopping so easy is precisely the absence of contact with other people.
But Bryne’s thought is that whatever our intention, the tendency of our tech to isolate us may be a feature, not a bug. His hypothesis is that we actually, at some level, crave (渴望) the increased isolation and we are actually making technologies to satisfy impulses that, in some way, go beyond or against our social nature. But I wonder, is this really new?
Even if we are social by nature, and do everything we can to embed ourselves socially, the need to find ways to be alone is, well, nothing new. It’s also striking that the very activities that risk separating us — in the old days, books, newspapers, TV; nowadays, the latest apps also connect us. We read about each other. What we read gives us information to share with each other.
I am well aware of the data that shows the more time you spend on social media, the sadder and more isolated and envious you feel of others. But how novel is the isolating effect of social media? Being there reminds me a lot of what it was like to be social in high school — you have a vivid sense of your status and your standing in relation to others, and you have to deal with that.
This may be isolating, sure. But it’s the isolating face of the social lives we’ve always had. It is isolating because of the ways technology brings us into real contact with others, not because it removes that contact.
I wonder whether more isolation is a real option, after all.
1. Which of the following best reflects “autonomous operation”?| A．Getting a toothbrush via a hotel delivery robot. |
| B．Teaching mom how to establish a smart home. |
| C．Seeking help by calling human customer services. |
| D．Having an online meeting at home with colleagues. |
| A．Technology offers fresh insights into our social status. |
| B．Actions seemingly isolating can bond people. |
| C．Social platforms help bring people closer. |
| D．Social media has come to define our life. |
| A．What Technologies Do to Human Nature | B．Do Technologies Shape Our Lives? |
| C．How Isolation Changes with Connection | D．Can We Erase Human Element? |
10 . 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
