1 . Is Fairtrade fair?

Fairtrade Foundation, an international foundation committed to fair trade, does what it says on the bottle: it is about better prices for farmers and workers in developing countries. Fairtrade addresses the injustices of conventional trade, which too often leaves the poorest, weakest producers earning less than it costs them to grow their crops. It’s a bit like a national minimum wage for global trade.     1    

Free-market economists complain that Fairtrade benefits only a small number of farmers, disadvantaging those outside. This is plain wrong.     2     Research in Bolivia, for example, found that coffee producers outside Fairtrade were able to negotiate higher prices: Fairtrade had become a price setter. Fairtrade farmers also share their knowledge in trading. For those inside the system, our research shows that through the minimum price guarantee, farmers have more secure and stable incomes.

Other critics ask why we are working with retailers or big brands like Starbucks.     3    So we are unapologetic in our commitment to scale up. By doing so, moreover, we begin to affect all business behaviour.

    4    We recognise that many farmers in the UK face similar issues to farmers elsewhere, but Fairtrade was established specifically to support the most disadvantaged producers in the world—like the tea-growers of Malawi, who don’t even have drinking water in their villages. I always buy my cheese, pears and carrots from my local farmers’ market—and enjoy Fairtrade bananas, tea and coffee. It’s two sides of the same movement to put people back at the heart of trade. Surely, you cannot say fairer than that.

A．In fact, the evidence suggests the opposite is true.

B．It is not entirely perfect, but a step in the right direction.

C．A favourite question is why we don’t work with UK farmers.

D．Fairtrade is the way forward, one keeping poor producers like myself earning a living.

E．Our answer is that only by mainstreaming Fairtrade will we be able to reach more producers.

F．Fairtrade may do some good in some circumstances, but it does not deserve the unique status it claims for itself.

2 . Is loyalty in the workplace dead?

Just recently, Lynda Gratton, a workplace expert, proclaimed that it was. In The Financial Times, she said that it had been “killed off through _________ contracts, outsourcing, automation and multiple careers.”

It’s sad if this good virtue is now out of place in the business world. But the situation may be more _________. Depending on how you _________ it, loyalty may not be dead, but is just playing out differently.

Fifty years ago, an employee could stay at the same company for decades, said Tammy Erickson, an author and work-force consultant. Many were _________ longtime employment along with health care and a pension.

Now many companies cannot or will not hold up their end of the bargain, so why should the employees hold up theirs? Given the opportunity, they’ll take their skills and their portable retirement accounts elsewhere. These days, Ms. Gratton writes, _________ is more important than loyalty: “Loyalty is about the future - trust is about the present.”

Ms. Erickson says that the quid pro quo (交换物，报酬) of modern employment is more likely to be: As long as I work for you, I promise to have the relevant skills and _________ fully in my work; in return you’ll pay me _________, but I don’t expect you to care for me when I’m 110.

For some baby boomers, this _________ has been hard to accept. Many started their careers _________ that they would be rewarded based on tenure (任职).

A longtime employee who is also productive and motivated is of enormous value, said Cathy Benko, chief talent officer at Deloitte. On the other hand, she said, “You can be with a company a long time and not be highly committed.”

Ms. Benko has seen her company shift its ____________ to employees’ level of engagement - or “the level at which people are motivated to deliver their best work” - rather than length of tenure.

Then there are the effects of the recent recession. Many people - if they haven’t been ____________- have stayed in jobs because they feel they have no choice. Employers may need to prepare for disruptions and turnover when the job market improves.

If the pendulum(摇摆不定的事态或局面) shifts, how will businesses persuade their best employees to stay? ____________ may do the trick, but not always. Especially with younger people, “you’re not going to buy extra loyalty with extra money,” Ms. Erickson said. ____________, employers need to make jobs more challenging and give workers more creative space, she said.

Loyalty may not be what it once was, but most companies will still be better off with at least a core of people who stay with them across decades.

If loyalty is seen as a ____________ to keep workers of all ages fulfilled, productive and involved, it can continue to be cultivated in the workplace - to the ____________ of both employer and employee.

1.

A．tightening

B．lengthening

C．shortening

D．loosening

2.

A．complicated

B．confused

C．difficult

D．conservative

3.

A．confine

B．convince

C．identify

D．define

4.

A．guaranteed

B．provided

C．supplemented

D．rewarded

5.

A．belief

B．trust

C．confidence

D．tolerance

6.

A．occupy

B．engage

C．sacrifice

D．involve

7.

A．rightly

B．immediately

C．exactly

D．fairly

8.

A．difference

B．exchange

C．shift

D．modification

9.

A．assuming

B．ensuring

C．assuring

D．approving

10.

A．focus

B．mind

C．faith

D．importance

11.

A．laid off

B．employed

C．valued

D．supported

12.

A．Salary

B．Money

C．Loyalty

D．Credit

13.

A．However

B．Rather

C．Therefore

D．Otherwise

14.

A．promise

B．compliment

C．commitment

D．command

15.

A．interest

B．sake

C．disadvantage

D．benefit

3 . Why some brilliant ideas get overlooked?

In 1928, Karl Jansky, a young radio engineer at Bell Telephone Laboratories, began researching static interference that might obscure voice transmissions. Five years later, after building a large rotating antenna (天线) and investigating every possibility he could think of, he published his remarkable ________: some of the static was coming from the Milky Way.

Jansky’s theory was eye-catching enough to be published in The New York Times but scientists were ________. Radio signals from outer space? Surely they were too weak to detect. Jansky’s ideas were largely ________ for about a decade. He died at the age of 44. Thankfully, he lived long enough to see his ideas blossom into field of radio astronomy.

Jansky’s story resonates with us: we all like the idea of the researcher who is so far ahead of their ________ that it takes years for the rest of the world to catch up. Gregor Mendel’s research into plant genetics is a famous example — published in 1866, it was only verified and taken seriously in 1900.

The stories of Jansky and Mendel hold out some hope to anyone who feels that the world has not quite ________ their brilliance. There is even a name for such cases, coined by Anthony van Raan of Leiden University: “Sleeping Beauties”, scientific papers that receive almost no citations for years, before finding wide ________. (Some scholars argue that the term is sexist and prefer “delayed recognition”.)

So what is it about an idea that delays recognition? One view is that brilliant ideas are overlooked when delivered by obscure messengers. Jansky and Mendel were somewhat detached from (离开) the scientific ________. In 1970, the sociologist Stephen Cole published an analysis arguing that the obstacle tended to lie in the ________ of the idea itself, rather than the prestige of the scientist behind it. Ideas fell asleep for a hundred years because they were radical, or confusing, or both.

It is difficult to be sure. Two scholars of the field, Eugene Garfield and Wolfgand Glanzel, have argued that such ________ of delayed recognition are so rare as to be hard to analyse. Studying papers published in 1980 from the vantage (优势) point of 2004, they looked for articles that were barely cited for five years, then subsequently ________. They found just 60 examples in 450,000 cases. There are plenty of examples of research that is barely cited; what is rare is their subsequent popularity.

Why, then, is this myth such a compelling one? One explanation, of course, is that we all love a story of the underdog (黑马) who triumphs against ________. Immediate and sustained success is as boring as immediate and sustained failure.

Another is that scientists themselves are fond of the thought that their ideas are ________. In an essay on delayed recognition, Garfield notes mildly that one historian of science, Derek Price, believed one of his own papers was suffering delayed recognition. It is easy to chuckle, but it is also easy to empathise.

Delayed recognition is rare. Much more ________ is for people simply to reach their prime late in life. David Galenson is an economist who studies the creative output of musicians, artists, directors and others. Galenson has found that while it is quite possible to ________ as a radical young conceptual artist, there are many examples of “old masters” whose later works are more admired than their youthful ones.

We all need to be able to hold on to the idea that the best is yet to come. But it is too tempting to hope that what we have already produced will, one day, be recognized for its brilliance. Good things do not come to those who wait, if ________ is all they do. It is wiser to get back to work and make something better.

1.

A．conclusion

B．device

C．invention

D．paper

2.

A．unreliable

B．uncomfortable

C．unimpressed

D．unsatisfactory

3.

A．criticized

B．kept

C．ignored

D．inspected

4.

A．mission

B．goal

C．schedule

D．time

5.

A．caught up with

B．had a good command of

C．made good use of

D．taken advantage of

6.

A．attention

B．platform

C．space

D．vision

7.

A．data

B．kingdom

C．mainstream

D．proof

8.

A．content

B．origin

C．popularity

D．presence

9.

A．examples

B．letters

C．reports

D．supporters

10.

A．broke off

B．paid off

C．switched off

D．took off

11.

A．the authorities

B．the odds

C．the opposite

D．the wrong

12.

A．underappreciated

B．underdeveloped

C．underequipped

D．underperformed

13.

A．challenging

B．common

C．complicated

D．difficult

14.

A．break through

B．get through

C．make ends meet

D．make sense

15.

A．complaining

B．socializing

C．thinking

D．waiting

4 . Directions: Fill in the blanks with the proper form of the given verbs.

Technology Addiction

Tell me if this sounds familiar. You wake up in the morning and immediately reach for your phone. You check for new emails and texts despite having no urgency to do so.

    1    （satisfy）that you haven’t missed any important messages, you log onto Facebook. You check to see whether your friends posted any updates while you were sleeping.

Then it’s off to Tik Tok. You follow hundreds of friends, acquaintances, and celebrities. Surely someone has posted something worthy    2    （read）. Unfortunately, they haven’t.

With nothing of interest    3    （happen）on social media, you visit your favorite news media sites to find out what’s going on the world. After all, you don’t want to miss the day’s major headlines.

And so the morning    4    （progress）. From the moment you wake up    5     you’ve thrown the first cup of coffee down your throat, your attention is dominated by technology. Texts, emails, social media, games, news headlines, blogs, and YouTube videos hold you captive in a vice-like grip.

Worse, the rest of the day follows the same course. Your phone buzzes,     6    （signal）the arrival of a new text and you find yourself unable to resist checking it. You receive a notification in your browser that a new email has arrived and you immediately drop everything to read it. You visit Facebook, promising    7     that you’ll only spend a few minutes, only    8    （surf）aimlessly for an hour.

If you relate to the above circumstances, I have bad news. You    9    （addict）to technology. The good news is that you’re not alone. Millions of people experience and act upon the same compulsions every single day. These are the reasons why it’s so easy to develop an addiction to technology. First, you have the necessary tools at your disposal 24 hours a day. Second,     10     you use them, you stimulate your brain’s reward system over and over and over again. Under these circumstances, dependency and addiction are practically predictable conclusions.

5 . Summary Writing

Working Around

According to the latest statistics, young men and women from the UK are leaving their country in large numbers because they want to work abroad. Is the idea of working abroad fact or fiction and what is it like to work in another country?

In order to find answers to these questions, the Guardian newspaper recently interviewed British workers in France, Germany, Spain and Holland. What they discovered was that if you have a marketable skill and can speak the language of the country you are in, then you will have no problem finding work. Let’s take the following examples. Peter Tate moved to France in 1991. He had studied lighting design in England and had worked for eleven years in theatres around the country. He wanted a different lifestyle and certainly didn’t expect to get a job in his field immediately.

He did a number of different jobs until he was finally hired by Disneyland Paris in 1992. First he worked there as a lighting technician, then he eventually got a job in design. After all his experience, he says that you have to be realistic about finding exactly the kind of job you want abroad. “The theatre is a small world,” he explains. “Jobs are usually found through contracts. I had to get to know people first and I didn’t speak very good French when I first arrived.”

He admits that his poor level of French was a big problem. He did a three-month language course before he moved to France permanently, but this still was not enough. He says that if you want to get a good job in another country, you have to be able to speak the language well. A lack of language skills is the main problem when trying to find work in Europe.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

6 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Owning a Pet Is Good for Your Health

Pets in America are incredibly well loved: according to a 2015 Harris poll, 95% of owners think of their animal as a member of the family. About half buy     1     birthday presents. And it’s a two-way street. People who have pets tend to have lower blood pressure, heart rate and heart-disease risk than those who don’t. Those health benefits may come from the extra exercise that playing and walking     2     (require), and the stress relief of having a steady best friend on hand.

Scientists are now digging up evidence     3     animals can also help improve mental health, even for people with challenging disorders. Small     4     the studies are, the benefits are impressive enough that clinical settings are opening their doors to animal assisted interventions — pet therapy, in other words — used alongside conventional medicine. “    5     (think) of an animal in a hospital used to be one of the great no-no’s,” says Alan Beck, director of the Center for the Human-Animal Bond at Purdue University, citing the fear of causing infection. “Now, I don’t know of any major children’s hospital     6     at least some kind of animal program.”

The rise of animal therapy     7     (back) by increasingly serious science showing that social support — a proven antidote to anxiety and loneliness — can come on four legs, not just two. Animals of many types can help calm stress, fear and anxiety in young children, the elderly and everyone in between.

More research is needed     8     scientists know exactly why it works and how much animal interaction is needed for the best results. But     9     (publish) studies show that paws have a place in medicine and in mental well-being. “The data is strong,” Beck says. “If you look at     10     animals do for people and how we interact with them, it’s not surprising at all.”

8 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks ‘with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

On January 10, Uganda reopened schools after the longest closure in the world    1     the coronavirus pandemic. For most students, it was their first time back in the classroom in nearly two years.

When the buildings first shuttered, the Ministry ofEducation broadcast lessons on TV and radio stations, and some schools handed out printed materials. But this did not last for lack of funding. So the     2     (estimate) 15 million children affected by this closure put their studies on hold.        

Uganda’s National Planning Authority in August 2021 projected that 4.5 million of them will likely not return to school. The reasons for the dropouts are manifold. The teen pregnancy rate rose significantly. And many poor children in urban and rural areas    3     (force) to start working to help support their families.，“They turned children into laborers and that was a loss, especially for a family that has relied for almost two years on child labor,” says Munir Safieldin, the UNICEF Uganda representative.

Plus, in an economy pinched by the pandemic, many families cannot currently afford the fees,     4     start at about $135 per term for high school, and other costs (including academic materials and uniforms).

Children who are able to return school have been promoted one grade level, a decision made by the Ministry of Education to guarantee spots for newly     5     (enter) students. But many families and experts are concerned. Mary Goretti Nakabugo, the executive director of Uwezo Uganda, a nonprofit organization working    6     (promote) equitable quality education, argues that even before the closure, many of Uganda’s younger students had not yet acquired basic fundamentals, such as reading and understanding a text. “This is the time for us to rethink our curriculum, our teaching and learning,     7    students who are unprepared for classes will only end up even     8     (far) behind.”

Kusemererwa Jonathan Henry, a teenager living in Kamwokya, one of the largest slums in the capital of Kampala, had just started high school and made new friends     9     the lockdown started. “We were used to the short school breaks but this was too long. At first, all I would do is sit at home and sleep;, he says. Fortunately, his dad’s financial help combined with his personal savings allowed Jonathan to open a fruit and vegetable stall. ”Before the lockdown, I never knew how to fend for     10     , but now I don’t even need to ask for money to   buy clothes.“ Still, Jonathan longed to get back to class. ”The day a date was announced for us to resume school, I washed my uniforms, bags and polished my shoes, that’s how excited I was to get back.”

9 . Directions: After reading the passages below, fill in the blanks to make the passages coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fil in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Buzzwords (流行词) Capture How We Lived in 2023

While walking along Suzhou Creek to gather material for my latest “Shanghai Expression” column, I was wondering     1    Shanghai’s modern skylines match the historical aspects of the area so effortlessly. The old and the new create a unique ambience (格调) .

Near the creek, I encountered Uncle Chen, fishing in a tranquil spot.

“Nice day for fishing,” I said in greeting him.

He looked up with a smile. “Yes, it’s a break from the mobile phone world.”

It     2     (strike) me that American publisher Merriam-Webster included “authentic” on its list of the year 2023’s top words. It reflects a growing focus on genuineness in an era     3       (dominate) by AI, celebrity culture and social media.

As I talked with Uncle Chen, the bustle of the city     4     (continue) around us. Food deliverymen buzzed past. Online celebrities in dopamine dresses held selfie sticks for livestreaming,     5     (highlight) the rise of a breed of “new professionals.”

Tourists and locals alike strolled through the area, some engaged in     6     appeared to be a “citywalk” —a wander     7     a clear destination.

Office workers walked by holding fancy coffee cups, a sign of the evolving coffee trends     8     have swept the city, like the “Moutai-flavored latte.”

Watching Uncle Chen, tourists, online celebrities, office workers and delivery people, I saw a changing city in a realm of constant change, summarized by a variety of contemporary buzzwords.

    9     2023 winds down, it’s interesting to note that buzzwords aren’t just words. Rather, they are markers of the dynamic, ever-changing aspects of life.

Each buzzword has its own story. Each popular phrase offers a peek into the hearts and minds of people, especially the younger generation. Let’s pause     10     (look) at some of them more closely.

10 . In Favour of Simple Writing

Do you edit text messages carefully before sending them? If so, you may be the kind of person who takes pride in _______ even the simplest message. If you do not, you may see yourself as a go-getter, one who values excitement and speed over _______: get it done decently now rather than perfectly later.

People are constantly receiving messages, from the mailbox to the inbox to the text-message alert. What to read, what to skim (略读) and what to ignore are decisions that nearly everyone has to make dozens of times a day. A new book titled All Readers are Busy Nowadays makes the argument for being the careful kind of _______, even in informal lines. The authors also present well-established _______ that have long been prized in guides to writing.

Take “less is more”. Most books on writing well advocate the advice to _______ needless words. The authors, however, have _______ the idea. In an email to thousands of school-board members asking them to take a survey, cutting the count from127 to 49 words almost _______ the response rate.

Keeping messages to a _______ idea—or as few as absolutely needed—helps ensure that they will be read, remembered and acted on. _______ the number of the available options has the same effect, too. A link in an email, ________, attracted 50% more clicks when presented alone than when it was sent alongside a second additional link.

Syntax (句法) and ________ matter, too. It is more ________ to adopt short and active sentences, with common words familiar to everyone. From Facebook posts to online-travel reviews, even brief, informal pieces of writing that follow these rules get more likes and shares.

If everyone is a busy reader, everyone is a busy writer, too. That may make it tempting to sent as many messages as ________ as possible and hope for the best. But from essays to text messages organizing dinner plans, devoting time to the needs of readers has provable ________. If you are so busy that you write an undisciplined message which readers scan, ignore and delete, then you might as well have not ________ it at all.

1.

A．conveying

B．understanding

C．crafting

D．sending

2.

A．care

B．quantity

C．simplicity

D．technology

3.

A．reader

B．poster

C．learner

D．writer

4.

A．structures

B．principles

C．aims

D．alternatives

5.

A．remove

B．ignore

C．reconsider

D．interpret

6.

A．conveyed

B．translated

C．tested

D．shaped

7.

A．lowered

B．affected

C．doubled

D．maintained

8.

A．basic

B．positive

C．definite

D．single

9.

A．Recording

B．Reducing

C．Counting

D．Estimating

10.

A．in comparison

B．after all

C．for instance

D．in particular

11.

A．word-choice

B．pattern-design

C．target-setting

D．platform-selection

12.

A．difficult

B．suitable

C．challenging

D．common

13.

A．carefully

B．often

C．politely

D．quickly

14.

A．outcomes

B．points

C．figures

D．benefits

15.

A．received

B．written

C．read

D．answered