The old-fashioned general store is fast disappearing. This is, perhaps, a pity, because shopping today seems to lack that personal contact which existed when the shopkeeper knew all his regular customers personally. He could, for instance, remember which brand of tea Mrs. Smith usually bought or what sort of washing-powder Mrs. Jones preferred. Not only was the shop a center of buying and selling, but also a social meeting place.
A prosperous general store might have employed four or five assistants, and so there were very few problems in management as far as the staff were concerned. But now that the supermarket has replaced the general store, the job of the manager has changed completely. The modern supermarket manager has to cope with a staff of as many as a hundred, apart from all the other everyday problems of running a large business.
Every morning the manager must, like the commander of an army division, carry out an inspection of his store to make sure that everything is ready for the business of the day. He must see that everything is running smoothly. He will have to give advice and make decisions as problems arise, and he must know how to get his huge staff to work efficiently with their respective responsibilities. No matter what he has to do throughout the day, however, the supermarket manager must be ready for any emergency that may arise. They say in the trade that you are not really an experienced supermarket manager until you have dealt with a flood, a fire, a birth and a death in your store. (Note: Answer the questions or complete the statements in NO MORE THAN TEN WORDS.)
1. Why is it a pity that there are fewer old-fashioned general stores now? _____________________________.
2. The shopkeeper was often the most well-informed person in the neighborhood because _____________________________.
3. The words “… a flood, a fire, a birth and a death …” in the last sentence refer to _____________________________.
4. What must the manager do every morning? ___________________________.
A.The reason why few mummies are left today.
B.The three most famous Egyptian mummies.
C.Mummy and mummification.
D.A safe passage to the afterlife
AB. The reason why Egyptians made and gave up making mummies.
AC. Different ways to make mummies.
When you think of a mummy what comes to mind? Most of us usually picture an Egyptian mummy wrapped in bandages and buried deep inside a pyramid. While the Egyptian ones are the most famous, mummies have been found in many places throughout the world, from Greenland to China to the Andes Mountains of South America.
__1. ____
A mummy is the body of a person that has been preserved after death. Normally when we die, bacteria and other germs eat away at the soft tissues (such as skin and muscles) leaving only the bones behind. Since bacteria need water in order to grow, mummification usually happens if the body dries out quickly after death. The body may then be so well preserved that we can even tell how the dead person may have looked in life.
__2. ____
Mummies are made naturally or by embalming（以香油涂尸防腐）, which is any process that people use to help preserve a dead body. Mummies can be dried out by extreme cold, by the sun, by smoke, or using chemicals such as natron（氧化钠）. Some bodies become mummies because there were favorable natural conditions when they died. Others were preserved and buried with great care.
__3. ____
The ancient Egyptians believed that mummifying a person's body after death was essential to ensure a safe passage to the afterlife. Over time almost all Egyptians who could afford to became mummies when they died -- a total of about 70 million mummies in 3,000 years. By the 4th century AD, many Egyptians had become Christians and no longer believed that mummification was necessary for life after death. Eventually, the Egyptians gave up the art and science of making mummies.
__4. ____
So where did all the mummies go? Sadly, most were grabbed in ancient times by robbers looking for treasures wrapped up in the bandages. Countless mummies were also destroyed during the Middle Ages, when they were ground into powders to make supposedly magical pills. Later on, modern treasure hunters rushed into their tombs carelessly looking for artifacts and souvenirs. Even industry aided the destruction by using mummies' bandages to make paper or burning their bodies for fuel.
__5. ____
The best preserved mummies are those of the pharoahs and their relatives. These mummies tended to be more carefully embalmed and protected from harm. The mummies that have survived allow us to look back into the past and know something of the ancient Egyptians and their time. Three of the most famous Egyptians mummies are Tutankhamen, Seti I and Rameses II (Ramses the Great).
Some nations think they must have more and more babies, more and more people, if they are to remain strong and free.
Actually, this is not so. Very often in history, small nations have conquered large ones. It’s not so much the size of the army as its organization and the technical level of its weapons. Thus, Greece took over Persia in the 300s B.C., Great Britain took over India in the 1700s, even though Persia and India had far bigger population than Greece and Great Britain.
If a nation wishes to avoid being dominated by its neighbors, its best chance is to raise its standard of living and its level of technology.This can be done best by not allowing its population to grow to such a point that it is sunk in misery and poverty. In fact, the worst way in which a nation can try to avoid being dominated by its neighbor is to increase its population to the point of misery and poverty.
If every nation tries to compete with its neighbors by raising its population, then the whole world will be sunk in misery and poverty. The nations will become weak in a disaster that will leave nothing behind that is worth dominating. No one will have gained anything. Everyone will have lost everything.
Once all this is understood, and people generally agree that population growth must not be allowed to continue, they must also come to understand how that growth can be stopped. Population grows because more people are being born than are dying. There are two ways, then, in which the growth can be stopped. You can increase the number of people who die until it matches the number of people who are being born. Or else you can decrease the number of people who are born until it matches the number of people who are dying.
The first method—increasing the death rate—is the usual way in which population is controlled in all species of living things other than ourselves, but we don’t want that, for disaster lies that way. The intelligent way is to reduce the birth rate. But how can the birth rate be reduced?
1. In paragraph 3, the word “This” refers to ______.
A．avoidance of poverty B．improvement of life and technology
C．growth of population D．enhancement of living standard and competition
2. It can be inferred from the passage that if a country had fewer people, ______.
A．it could still remain strong B．it would be defeated by a strong neighbour
C．its standard of living could be high D．its people would live misery
3. What might the author be further discussing after the passage?
A．Needs to balance population. B．Problems involved in birth control.
C．Methods of decreasing population. D．Opposition from some nations.
4. The passage mainly focuses on ______.
A．why we must control population B．where we can find a solution
C．how to stop population growth D．how to become a strong nation
The modern Olympic Games, founded in 1896, began as contests between individuals, rather than among nations, with the hope of promoting world peace through sportsmanship. In the beginning, the games were open only to amateurs. An amateur is a person whose involvement in an activity---from sports to science or the arts---is purely for pleasure. Amateurs, whatever their contributions to a field, expect to receive no form of compensation ; professionals, in contrast, perform their work in order to earn a living.
From the perspective of many athletes, however, the Olympic playing field has been far from level. Restricting the Olympics to amateurs has precluded（妨碍） the participation of many who could not afford to be unpaid. Countries have always desired to send their best athletes, not their wealthiest ones, to the Olympic Games.
A slender and imprecise line separates what we call “financial support” from “earning money.” Do athletes “earn money” if they are reimbursed（补偿） for travel expenses? What if they are paid for time lost at work or if they accept free clothing from a manufacturer or if they teach sports for a living? The runner Eric Liddell was the son of poor missionaries; in 1924 the British Olympic Committee financed his trip to the Olympics, where he won a gold and a bronze medal. College scholarships and support from the United States Olympic Committee made it possible for American track stars Jesse Owens and Wilma Rudolph and speed skater Dan Jansen to train and compete. When the Soviet Union and its allies joined the games in 1952, the definition of amateur became still muddier. Their athletes did not have to balance jobs and training because as citizens in communist regimes, their government financial support was not considered payment for jobs.
In 1971 the International Olympic Committee(IOC) removed the word amateur from the rules, making it easier for athletes to find the support necessary to train and compete. In 1986 the IOC allowed professional athletes into the games.
There are those who regret the disappearance of amateurism from the Olympic Games. For them the games lost something special when they became just another way for athletes to earn money. Others say that the designation of amateurism was always questionable; they argue that all competitors receive so much financial support as to make them paid professionals. Most agree, however, that the debate over what constitutes an “amateur” will continue for a long time.
1. One might infer that _______________________.
A．developing Olympic-level skills in athletes is costly
B．professional athletes are mostly interested in financial rewards
C．amateurs does not expect to earn money at the sport that is played
D．amateurs have a better attitude than professionals do
2. The statement “the Olympic playing field has been far from level” means that__________.
A．the ground the athletes played on was in bad condition
B．the poorer players were given some advantages
C．the rules did not work the same way for everyone
D．amateurs were inferior to the professionals in many ways
3. The financial support given to athletes by the Soviet government can best be compared to ________________.
A．a gift received on a special occasion, such as a birthday
B．money received from a winning lottery ticket
C．an allowance paid to a child
D．money from charity organization
4. One can conclude that the Olympic Organizing Committee _________________.
A．has held firm to its original vision of the Olympic games
B．has struggled with the definition of amateur over the years
C．regards itself as an organization for professional athletes only
D．did nothing but stop allowing communists to participate
I once had my Chinese MBA students brainstorming on “two-hour business plans”. I separated them into six groups and gave them an example: a restaurant chain. The more original their idea, the better, I said. Finally, five of the six groups presented plans for restaurant chains. The sixth proposed a catering service. Though I admitted the time limit had been difficult, I expressed my disappointment.
My students were middle managers, financial analysts and financiers from state owned enterprises and global companies. They were not without talent or opinions, but they had been shaped by an educational system that rarely stressed or rewarded critical thinking or inventiveness. The scene I just described came in different forms during my two years’ teaching at the school. Papers were often copied from the Web and the Harvard Business Review. Case study debates were written up and just memorized. Students frequently said that copying is a superior business strategy, better than inventing and creating.
In China, every product you can imagine has been made and sold. But so few well developed marketing and management minds have been raised that it will be a long time before most people in the world can name a Chinese brand.
With this problem in mind, partnerships with institutions like Yale and MIT have been established. And then there’s the “thousand talent scheme”: this new government program is intended to improve technological modernization by attracting top foreign trained scientists to the mainland with big money. But there are worries about China’s research environment. It’s hardly known for producing independent thinking and openness, and even big salary offers may not be attractive enough to overcome this.
At last, for China, becoming a major world creator is not just about setting up partnerships with top Western universities. Nor is it about gathering a group of well-educated people and telling them to think creatively. It’s about establishing a rich learning environment for young minds. It’s not that simple.
1. Why does the author feel disappointed at his students?
A．Because there is one group presenting a catering service.
B．Because the six groups made projects for restaurant chains.
C．Because all the students copied a case for the difficult topic.
D．Because the students’ ideas were lacking in creativeness.
2. We can infer from the passage that ________.
A．China can make and sell any product all over the world
B．high pay may not solve the problem of China’s research environment
C．cooperation with institutions has been set up to make a Chinese brand
D．the new government program are aimed at encouraging imagination
3. Which is the best title of the passage?
A．Look for a New Way of Learning. B．Reward Creative Thinking.
C．How to Become a Creator. D．Establish a technical Environment.
Directions: For each blank in the passage there are four words or phrases marked A, B, C and D. Fill in each blank with the word or phrase that best fits the context.
Many years ago I was on a bicycle trip through some exceedingly picturesque (如画的) countryside. Suddenly, dark clouds piled up overhead and rain began to fall, but strange to ___50___, several hundred yards ahead of me the sun shone brilliantly. Riding, however, as rapidly as I could, I found it ___51___ to get into the clear. The clouds with their rain kept advancing faster than I could race forward. I continued this unequal contest for an exhausting half hour, ___52___ realizing that I could not win my way to the bright area ahead of me.
Then it dawned upon me that I was wasting my strength in unimportant hurry, while paying no attention whatsoever to the landscape ___53___ which I was making the trip. The storm could not last forever and the discomfort was not unendurable. Indeed, there was much to look at which might ___54___ have escaped me. As I gazed about with sharpened ___55___, I saw colours and lines and shapes that would have appeared differently under brilliant light. The rain mists (薄雾) which now ___56___ the wooded hills and the fresh clearness of the different greens were entrancing (迷人的). My annoyance at the rain was gone and my eagerness to ___57___ it disappeared. It had provided me with a new view and helped me understand that the ___58___ of beauty and satisfaction may be found close at hand within the ___59___ of one’s own sensibilities.
It made me think, then and later, about other matters to which this incident was related. It helped me realize that there is no sense in my ___60___ ever to flee from circumstances and conditions which cannot be avoided but which I might bravely ___61___ and frequently mend and often turn to good account. I know that half the battle is won if I can face trouble with courage, __62__ with spirit, and triumph with humility. It has become ever clearer to me that danger is far from disaster, that defeat may be the forerunner of final ___63___, and that, in the last analysis, all achievement is dangerously weak ___64___ based on enduring principles of moral conduct.
1. A．ask B．relate C．understand D．call
2. A．easy B．likely C．impossible D．comfortable
3. A．before B．after C．as D．while
4. A．in front of B．on account of
C．for the sake of D．atthe convenience of
5. A．therefore B．consequently C．accordingly D．otherwise
6. A．puzzle B．appreciation C．wisdom D．shock
7. A．crowned B．covered C．swept D．floated
8. A．enjoy B．embrace C．surround D．escape
9. A．resources B．sources C．causes D．courses
10. A．distance B．help C．range D．comprehension
11. A．requesting B．waiting C．attempting D．expecting
12. A．meet B．avoid C．decline D．change
13. A．happiness B．joy C．disappointment D．surprise
14. A．failure B．victory C．relief D．decision
15. A．if B．though C．until D．unless
