1 . 听下面一段较长对话，回答以下小题。
1. What did the man use last weekend?

A．A shared bike.

B．A shared charger.

C．A shared umbrella.

2. What is the woman going to talk about next?

A．The proper ways to use the sharing product.

B．Her attitude towards the sharing economy.

C．The advantages of the sharing economy.

2 . Many industries are facing a shortage of labour. Warehousing has grown rapidly. And robots are now indispensable, picking items off shelves and helping people pack an exponentially rising numbers of boxes. They are even beginning to walk slowly along some pavements, delivering goods or food right to people’s doors. Having more robots to boost productivity would be a good thing.

And yet many people fear that robots will destroy jobs. A paper in 2013 by economists at Oxford University was widely misinterpreted as meaning that 47% of American jobs were at risk of being automated.

In fact, concerns about mass unemployment because of robots are overblown. The evidence suggests robots will be ultimately beneficial for labour markets. A Yale University study found that an increase of one robot unit per 1, 000 workers boosted a company’s employment in Japan. Another study, by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and colleagues elsewhere, looked at Finnish firms and concluded that their use of advanced technologies led to increases in hiring.

For all that, the march of the robots will bring big changes to workplaces. The skills and firms that are rewarded will shift, too. But that need not be the disaster many fear. One supposed example of “bad automation” is self-service checkouts in supermarkets because they displace human workers. Checkout staff who retrain to help customers pick items from aisles may well find that dealing with people in need is more rewarding than spending all day scanning barcodes.

Certainly, some people will be on the losing end of change even as the robots make society as a whole better off. One lesson from the freewheeling globalization of the 1990s and 2000s is that the growth in trade that was overwhelmingly beneficial contributed to a political backlash (强烈抵制) because the losers felt left behind. That’s one more reason why firms and governments would do well to recognize the value of retraining and lifelong learning. As jobs change, workers should be helped to acquire new skills, including how to work with and manage the robots that will increasingly be their colleagues.

The potential gains from the robot revolution have just started. It won’t be the plot in some films where the robots fight against their human masters and cause mass unemployment.

1. What does the underlined word “indispensable” mean in Paragraph 1?

A．Essential.

B．Spare.

C．Detective.

D．Complicated.

2. Why does the author mention the example of “bad automation” in Paragraph 4?

A．To prove that robots will not be a disaster.

B．To remind us of the big changes at workplaces.

C．To illustrate checkout staff will scan barcodes slowly.

D．To tell firms the value of retraining and lifelong learning.

3. According to the author, what will happen in the future?

A．It will push losers to leave behind.

B．Robots may lead to mass unemployment.

C．People will help robots to gain new skills.

D．Robots and people may become co-workers.

4. What does the author may agree in the text?

A．Jobs will be at risk due to robots.

B．No evidence shows that robots will destroy jobs.

C．Lifelong learning will quickly boost mass employment.

D．People have benefited a lot from the robot revolution.

8 . Inconvenient Truths

If doctors lie, it is surely inexcusable. One of the basic_________ the public have of doctors is honesty. But what would you think if I told you that research has shown that 70 per cent of doctors   _________ to lying to their patients? If I am honest, I have told lies to my patients.

Mrs Walton was in her eighties and _________ to see her husband. She would try to get up to find him, despite being at risk of falling. “He’s on his way, don’t worry,” the nurses would say this to calm her down. I said the same thing to her. But it was a lie. He died two years ago. The truth, if I can use that word, is that it is a _________ to lie sometimes.

Mrs Walton is one of the dementia (痴呆) sufferers, who lose their short-term memory and the memory of_________ events, but hold memories from the distant past. Sufferers are trapped forever in a confusing past that many realize bears little   _________ to the present, but are at a loss to explain. Those with dementia often feel upset, scared and confused that they are in a strange place, _________ by strange people, even when they are in their own homes with their family, because they have gone back to decades ago.

They look at their adult children   _________ and wonder who they could be because they think their children are still little kids. I have had countless families break down in tears, not knowing how to react as their loved one moves further away from them back into their distant past and they are   _________ in the present. And how, as the doctor or nurse caring for these patients, does one manage the anger and outbursts of distress that comes with having no   __________ of your life for the past ten or 20 years? The lies that doctors, nurses and families tell these patients are not big, elaborate lies — they are   __________ comforts intended to calm and allow the subject to be swiftly changed.

__________ with them about this false reality is not heartless or unprofessional — it is actually kind. That’s not to say that lying to patients with dementia__________ is right or defensible. But what kind-hearted person would put another human being through the unimaginable pain of learning, ________ again and again, that they have lost their beloved ones. It would be an unthinkable cruelness.

Sometimes honesty is __________ not the best policy.

1.

A．expressions

B．expectations

C．reputations

D．regulations

2.

A．objected

B．contributed

C．admitted

D．appealed

3.

A．ashamed

B．delighted

C．nervous

D．desperate

4.

A．cruelty

B．kindness

C．pain

D．pleasure

5.

A．recent

B．popular

C．distant

D．major

6.

A．opposition

B．connection

C．attention

D．similarity

7.

A．attacked

B．isolated

C．surrounded

D．attracted

8.

A．puzzled

B．satisfied

C．amused

D．motivated

9.

A．cut off

B．thrown away

C．put down

D．left behind

10.

A．knowledge

B．control

C．imagination

D．record

11.

A．brief

B．constant

C．permanent

D．secret

12.

A．Competing

B．Plotting

C．Matching

D．Mixing

13.

A．unnecessarily

B．inaccurately

C．impatiently

D．impolitely

14.

A．ahead of time

B．in no time

C．for the last time

D．for the first time

15.

A．mostly

B．informally

C．simply

D．finally