1 . Like most of us, I try to be mindful of food that goes to waste. The arugula (芝麻菜)was to make a nice green salad, rounding out a roast chicken dinner. But I ended up working late. Then friends called with a dinner invitation. I stuck the chicken in the freezer. But as days passed, the arugula went bad. Even worse, I had unthinkingly bought way too much; I could have made six salads with what I threw out.
In a world where nearly 800 million people a year go hungry, “food waste goes against the moral grain,” as Elizabeth Royte writes in this month’s cover story. It’s jaw-dropping how much perfectly good food is thrown away — from “ugly” (but quite eatable) vegetables rejected by grocers to large amounts of uneaten dishes thrown into restaurant garbage cans.
Producing food that no one eats wastes the water, fuel, and other resources used to grow it. That makes food waste an environmental problem. In fact, Royte writes, “if food waste were a country, it would be the third largest producer of greenhouse gases in the world.”
If that’s hard to understand, let’s keep it as simple as the arugula at the back of my refrigerator. Mike Curtin sees my arugula story all the time — but for him, it's more like 12 bones of donated strawberries nearing their last days. Curtin is CEO of DC Central Kitchen in Washington, D.C., which recovers food and turns it into healthy meals. Last year it recovered more than 807,500 pounds of food by taking donations and collecting blemished (有瑕疵的) produce that otherwise would have rotted in fields. And the strawberries? Volunteers will wash, cut, and freeze or dry them for use in meals down the road.
Such methods seem obvious, yet so often we just don’t think. “Everyone can play a part in reducing waste, whether by not purchasing more food than necessary in your weekly shopping or by asking restaurants to not include the side dish you won’t eat,” Curtin says.
1. What does the author want to show by telling the arugula story?| A．We pay little attention to food waste. | B．We waste food unintentionally at times. |
| C．We waste more vegetables than meat. | D．We have good reasons for wasting food. |
| A．Moral decline. | B．Environmental harm. |
| C．Energy shortage. | D．Worldwide starvation. |
| A．It produces kitchen equipment. | B．It turns rotten arugula into clean fuel. |
| C．It helps local farmers grow fruits. | D．It makes meals out of unwanted food. |
| A．Buy only what is needed. | B．Reduce food consumption. |
| C．Go shopping once a week. | D．Eat in restaurants less often. |
[1]It is now possible to watch live sport on television on any day of the week, and the current amount of reporting will undoubtedly increase further in years to come. This is certainly having an influence on the live sports events themselves, and there are both benefits and shortcomings to this.
[2]Why has there been such growth in televised sport? For one thing, with digital broadcasting, there are now many more TV channels than there were even ten years ago. Moreover, sport has become an important form of entertainment, appealing to both men and women.
[3]When are the benefits of this state of affairs? One obvious advantage to the profession is the addition of money provided by television companies. Large football clubs benefit financially from TV income and the top players can command very large salaries. Less popular sports also receive money that can be used in training and awareness-raising. What’s more, there is a health benefit to some of the population, because through televised sport, more people have become interested in actually playing sport.
[4]However,________ if so much sport is on television. Considering football again, many small clubs have suffered financial losses recently, as they cannot compete with the large ones. There has been a general falling in ticket sales, especially among smaller clubs. Fewer people attend live matches nowadays, preferring to watch from the comfort of their living room. And ticket prices have risen greatly.
[5]To sum up, while televised sport has created many opportunities and benefited certain people and clubs very much, it has also been responsible for changing the nature of live sports events for ever.
1. What is the main idea of the text? (no more than 8 words)2. Complete the following statement with words from Paragraph 2. ( no more than 3 words)
There has been a great increase in TV channels in the past few years with the help of
3. Point out the advantage of televised sport which does not concern money in Paragraph3. (no more than 3 words)
4. Fill in the blank in Paragraph 4 with proper words. (no more than 6 words)
5. What does the word “it” (Line2, Paragraph5) probably refer to? (no more than 3 words)
3 . The pace of today's working life blurs (使模糊) the line between personal time and work time, and it increasingly mixes personal lifestyle and work style. And as companies are trying hard to attract and keep young people for their technical skills and enthusiasm for change, office culture is becoming an extension of youth culture. This may be no bad thing. For most of human history the middle-aged have ruled, but in the future, they will have to share power with fresh-faced youths.
There have been a number of reasons for this change and the most dramatic of these is technology. Children have always been more expert than their parents at something, but usually a game or a fashion, not the century's most important business tool. The Internet has started the first industrial revolution in history to be led by the young. Though there have been youth revolutions before, none of them made a big change the way the Internet has. Throughout the20th century, if a young person wanted to enter an American company they needed to leave their youth behind. They got a haircut, and probably a suit or at least a tie. Now the same hair, same clothes, even nearly the same hours apply to office and home.
If it had not been for the Internet, this change could not have happened. However, it did not happen because of the Internet only; the corporate restructurings (公司重组) of the 1980s and 90s broke down traditional hierarchies (等级制度). In many companies, seniority-based (基于资历的) hierarchies have been replaced by hierarchies based on performance. The abilities to please your superiors are no longer the most valued skills. Today's employees stay with companies only as long as they feel challenged and rewarded; moving from job to job is now a sign of ambition.
The rise of the young is a good thing, because it gives them more opportunity to put their ideas and energy into practice at their most creative stage in life. Nowadays youth and youth qualities seem to dominate, but the experience and maturity of older employees should be put to good use, too.
1. A company tries to attract young people for their________.| A．office culture | B．modern lifestyle |
| C．changing attitude | D．technical abilities |
| A．work in the office and at home | B．have an eye-catching hairstyle |
| C．dress in the business style | D．leave the business tool behind |
| A．achievements | B．age and experience |
| C．skills with the Internet | D．ability to please the boss |
| A．They become more energetic in life. |
| B．They have taken over the companies. |
| C．Their creativity can be put to good use. |
| D．Their ideas appeal to a great many people. |
| A．Young people will lead in fashion. |
| B．Young people will have more power. |
| C．Older people will step off the historical stage. |
| D．Older people will continue to be the main force. |
注意：
1.词数100左右；2.无需逐一说明数值；3.对突出的问题进行适当阐述。
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5 . In May 1987 the Golden Gate Bridge had a 50th birthday party. The bridge was closed to motor traffic so people could enjoy a walk across it. Organizers expected perhaps 50,000 people to show up. Instead, as many as 800, 000 crowded the roads to the bridge. By the time 250,000 were on the bridge, engineers noticed something terrible：the roadway was flattening under what turned out to be the heaviest load it had ever been asked to carry. Worse, it was beginning to sway（晃动）. The authorities closed access to the bridge and tens of thousands of people made their way back to land. A disaster was avoided.
The story is one of scores in To Forgive Design：Understanding Failure, a book that is at once a love letter to engineering and a paean（赞歌）to its breakdowns. Its author, Dr. Henry Petroski, has long been writing about disasters. In this book, he includes the loss of the space shuttles（航天飞机）Challenger and Columbia, and the sinking of the Titanic.
Though he acknowledges that engineering works can fail because the person who thought them up or engineered them simply got things wrong, in this book Dr. Petroski widens his view to consider the larger context in which such failures occur. Sometimes devices fail because a good design is constructed with low quality materials incompetently applied. Or perhaps a design works so well it is adopted elsewhere again and again, with seemingly harmless improvements, until, suddenly, it does not work at all anymore.
Readers will encounter not only stories they have heard before, but some new stories and a moving discussion of the responsibility of the engineer to the public and the ways young engineers can be helped to grasp them.
"Success is success but that is all that it is," Dr. Petroski writes. It is failure that brings improvement.
1. What happened to the Golden Gate Bridge on its 50th birthday?| A．It carried more weight than it could. |
| B．It swayed violently in a strong wind |
| C．Its roadway was damaged by vehicles |
| D．Its access was blocked by many people. |
| A．No design is well received everywhere |
| B．Construction is more important than design. |
| C．Not all disasters are caused by engineering design |
| D．Improvements on engineering works are necessary. |
| A．Failure can lead to progress. | B．Success results in overconfidence |
| C．Failure should be avoided. | D．Success comes from joint efforts. |
| A．A news report | B．A short story. |
| C．A book review | D．A research article. |
6 . With around 100 students scheduled to be in that 9:00 am Monday morning lecture, it is no surprise that almost 20 people actually make it to the class and only 10 of them are still awake after the first 15 minutes; it is not even a surprise that most of them are still in their pajama’s(睡衣). Obviously, students are terrible at adjusting their sleep cycles to their daily schedule.
All human beings possess a body clock. Along with other alerting systems, this governs the sleep/wake cycle and is therefore one of the main processes which govern sleep behaviour. Typically, the preferred sleep/wake cycle is delayed in adolescents, which leads to many students not feeling sleepy until much later in the evenings. This typical sleep pattern is usually referred to as the “night owl” schedule of sleep.
This is opposed to the “early bird” schedule, and is a kind of disorder where the individual tends to stay up much past midnight. Such a person has great difficulty in waking up in the mornings. Research suggests that night owls feel most alert and function best in the evenings and at night. Research findings have shown that about 20 percent of people can be classified as “night owls” and only 10 percent can be classified as “early birds” ------ the other 70 percent are in the middle. Although this is clearly not true for all students, for the ones who are true night owls, this gives them an excellent excuse for missing their lectures which unfortunately fall before midday.
1. What does the author stress in Paragraph 1?| A．Many students are absent from class. |
| B．Students are very tired on Monday mornings. |
| C．Students do not adjust their sleep patterns well. |
| D．Students are not well prepared for class on Mondays. |
| A．Most students prefer to get up late in the morning. |
| B．Students don’t sleep well because of alerting systems. |
| C．One’s body clock governs the sleep/wake cycle independently. |
| D．Adolescents’ delayed sleep/wake cycle isn’t the preferred pattern. |
| A．Criticized | B．Grouped | C．Organized | D．Named |
| A．Functions of the body clock. |
| B．The “night owl” phenomenon. |
| C．Human beings’ sleep behaviour. |
| D．The school schedule of “early birds”. |
7 . ＂Did you hear what happened to Adam last Friday?＂ Lindsey whispers to Tori.
With her eyes shining, Tori brags, ＂You bet I did. Sean told me two days ago.＂
Who are Lindsey and Tori talking about? It just happens to be yours truly, Adam Freedman. I can tell you that what they are saying is (a) not nice and (b) not even true. Still, Lindsey and Tori aren’t very different from most students here at Linton High School, including me. Many of our conversations are gossip(闲话). I have noticed three effects of gossip: it can hurt people, it can give gossipers a strange kind of satisfaction, and it can cause social pressures in a group.
An important negative effect of gossip is that it can hurt the person being talked about. Usually, gossip spreads information about a topic — breakups, trouble at home, even dropping out — that a person would rather keep secret. The more embarrassing or shameful the secret is, the juicier the gossip it makes. Probably the worst type of gossip is the absolute lie. People often think of gossipers as harmless, but cruel lies can cause pain.
If we know that gossip can be harmful, then why do so many of us do it? The answer lies in another effect of gossip: the satisfaction it gives us. Sharing the latest rumor(传言) can make a person feel important because he or she knows something that others don’t. Similarly, hearing the latest rumor can make a person feel like part of the ＂in group.＂ In other words, gossip is satisfying because it gives people a sense of belonging or even superiority(优越感).
Gossip also can have a third effect: it strengthens unwritten, unspoken rules about how people should act. Professor David Wilson explains that gossip is important in policing behaviors in a group. Translated into high school terms, this means that if everybody you hang around with is laughing at what John wore or what Jane said, then you can bet that wearing or saying something similar will get you the same kind of negative attention. The do’s and don’ts conveyed through gossip will never show up in any student handbook.
The effects of gossip vary depending on the situation. The next time you feel the urge to spread the latest news, think about why you want to gossip and what effects your ＂juicy story＂ might have.
1. The author uses a conversation at the beginning of the passage to __________.| A．introduce a topic | B．present an argument |
| C．describe the characters | D．clarify his writing purpose |
| A．breaks up relationships | B．embarrasses the listener |
| C．spreads information around | D．causes unpleasant experiences |
| A．gives them a feeling of pleasure |
| B．helps them to make more friends |
| C．makes them better at telling stories |
| D．enables them to meet important people |
| A．provide students with written rules |
| B．help people watch their own behaviors |
| C．force schools to improve student handbooks |
| D．attract the police’s attention to group behaviors |
| A．Never become a gossiper. | B．Stay away from gossipers. |
| C．Don’t let gossip turn into lies. | D．Think twice before you gossip. |
8 . For many parents, raising a teenager is like fighting a long war, but years go by without any clear winner. Like a border conflict between neighboring countries, the parent-teen war is about boundaries: Where is the line between what I control and what you do?
Both sides want peace, but neither feels it has any power to stop the conflict. In part, this is because neither is willing to admit any responsibility for starting it. From the parents’ point of view, the only cause of their fight is their adolescents’ complete unreasonableness. And of course, the teens see it in exactly the same way, except oppositely. Both feel trapped.
In this article, I’ll describe three no-win situations that commonly arise between teens and parents and then suggest some ways out of the trap. The first no-win situation is quarrels over unimportant things. Examples include the color of the teen’s hair, the cleanliness of the bedroom, the preferred style of clothing, the child’s failure to eat a good breakfast before school, or his tendency to sleep until noon on the weekends. Second, blaming. The goal of a blaming battle is to make the other admit that his bad attitude is the reason why everything goes wrong. Third, needing to be right. It doesn’t matter what the topic is—politics, the laws of physics, or the proper way to break an egg—the point of these arguments is to prove that you are right and the other person is wrong, for both wish to be considered an authority—someone who actually knows something—and therefore to command respect. Unfortunately, as long as parents and teens continue to assume that they know more than the other, they’ll continue to fight these battles forever and never make any real progress.
1. Why does the author compare the parent-teen war to a border conflict?| A．Both are about where to draw the line. |
| B．Both can continue for generations. |
| C．Neither has any clear winner. |
| D．Neither can be put to an end. |
| A．The teens tend to have a full understanding of their parents. |
| B．The teens agree with their parents on the cause of the conflict. |
| C．The teens cause their parents of misleading them. |
| D．The teens blame their parents for starting the conflict. |
| A．give orders to the other |
| B．know more than the other |
| C．gain respect from the other |
| D．get the other to behave properly |
| A．Solutions for the parent-teen problems. |
| B．Examples of the parent-teen war. |
| C．Causes for the parent-teen conflicts. |
| D．Future of the parent-teen relationship. |
9 . With the young unable to afford to leave home and the old at risk of isolation(孤独), more families are choosing to live together.
The doorway to peace and quiet, for Nick Bright at least, leads straight to his mother-in-law, she lives on the ground floor, while he lives upstairs with his wife and their two daughters.
Four years ago they all moved into a three-storey Victorian house in Bristol - one of a growing number of multigenerational families in the UK living together under the same roof. They share a front door and a washing machine, but Rita Whitehead has her own kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and living room on the ground floor.
“We floated the idea to my mum of sharing at a house,” says Kathryn Whitehead. Rita cuts in: “We spoke more with Nick because I think it’s a big thing for Nick to live with his mother-in-law.”
And what does Nick think? “From my standpoint, it all seems to work very well. Would I recommend it? Yes, I think I would.”
It’s hard to tell exactly how many people agree with him, but research indicates that the numbers have been rising for some time. Official reports suggest that the number of households with three generations living together had risen from 325,000 in 2001to 419,000 in 2013.
Other varieties of multigenerational family are more common. Some people live with their elderly parents; many more adult children are returning to the family home, if they ever left. It is said that about 20% of 25-34-year-olds live with their parents, compared with 16% in 1991.The total number of all multigenerational households in Britain is thought to be about 1.8 million.
Stories like that are more common in parts of the world where multigenerational living is more firmly rooted. In India, particularly outside cities, young women are expected to move in with their husband’s family when they get married.
1. Who mainly uses the ground floor in the Victorian house in Bristol?| A．Nick. | B．Rita. | C．Kathryn | D．The daughters. |
| A．Positive. | B．Carefree. | C．Tolerant. | D．Unwilling. |
| A．Family traditions. | B．Financial reports. | C．Published statistics. | D．Public opinions. |
| A．Lifestyles in different countries. | B．Conflicts between generations. |
| C．A housing problem in Britain. | D．A rising trend of living in the UK. |
10 . Most people aren’t good at creative problem solving for two reasons: (1) They are not trained in how to be creative. (2) They don’t understand group strength well enough to harness（驾驭）their power to maximize group creativity.
A key element of creativity is applying existing knowledge to a new problem. The more people getting involved in solving it, the more knowledge there is to work on it. Unfortunately, research shows that the traditional brainstorming methods fail to achieve that goal. When groups get together to exchange ideas, they actually come up with fewer ideas overall than if they each had worked alone.
To fix this problem, you should consider the two stages of group problem-solving: divergence（分散）and convergence（集中）. Divergence happens when the group considers as many different potential solutions as possible. Convergence happens when the various proposed solutions are evaluated and reduced to a smaller set of candidate solutions to the current problem.
The essential principle of group creativity is that individuals working alone diverge, whereas group members working together converge. In groups, once a member states a potential solution, that makes others think about the problem similarly. That is why groups working together diverge less than individuals working alone.
Therefore, be aware of when to diverge and when to converge. For example, early in the problem-solving process, have group members work alone to write down statements describing the problem. Then get them back to discuss their descriptions. The group discussion will lead everyone to accept one or a small number of these statements to work on—this is healthy convergence.
When starting to generate solutions, you again want divergence. Have people work alone to start. Then collect people’s initial ideas and send them around to others and allow the divergence to continue as everyone individually builds on the ideas of other members.
Finally, let the group discuss the resulting ideas. This discussion will gradually lead the group to converge on a small number of candidate solutions.
This simple method works effectively, because it respects what individuals and groups do best.
1. Research shows that the traditional brainstorming methods ______.| A．actually limit group creativity |
| B．greatly encourage group creativity |
| C．enable people to form more ideas together |
| D．prevent people’s involvement in the problems |
| A．think the other way round |
| B．follow his way of thinking |
| C．be more confident in their own ideas |
| D．be less willing to share their own ideas |
| A．Discuss the problem. | B．Simplify the problem. |
| C．Put down group statements together. | D．Write down their individual descriptions. |
| A．By adding in collected evidence. | B．By reorganizing his own words. |
| C．By drawing on others’ ideas. | D．By making his statement briefer. |
| A．To advocate a way to make group thinking more effective. |
| B．To demonstrate the difficulty in organizing group thinking. |
| C．To highlight the differences between divergence and convergence. |
| D．To show the advantage of group thinking over individual thinking. |
