Mr. Smith is almost on time for everything. How ________ it be that he was late for the meeting?
A.can B.should C.may D.must
He wrote lots of best-sellers throughout his life, the majority of translated into English
A.which B.what C.them D.whose
Do you consider it any good______ your eyes to your cellphone every day?
A.gluing B.to glue C.having glued D.to have glued
Standard Cognition, a startup company. in California, has developed technology that works like of Amazon Go, but it seeks to sell its artificial intelligence system to businesses for use in their own stores
A.the one B.those C.that D.one
In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand __a rock
A.with B.as C.by D.like
Directions: Read the following passage. Fill in each blank with a proper sentence given in the box. Each sentence can be used only once. Note that there are two more sentences than you need.
No one enjoys the moment. You are stuck at the back of a queue and as those in other lines move ahead and get served, the time to decide arrives. 1.
This question has now been solved by researchers at Harvard Business School. According to what they have found in a new study, they suggest people think twice before switching queues.
The research was led by Ryan Buell, an expert in service management. He looked into consumer queuing behavior after working with economists on what is known as “last-place aversion,” the discomfort people feel when they know they earn less than others or consider themselves at the bottom of the social pile for some other reason. As a result of this aversion to being the last, when a person finds himself at the end of a queue, he can make decisions that he will later regret.
Buell began by observing people at a multi-checkout grocery store and then set up an online survey. People who took part in the survey were told it would take about five minutes. In reality, it took only one minute, but when participants logged in for the survey, they were forced to wait in a virtual queue displayed on the screen. They started at the back and could wait, switch to a second queue or choose to leave.
2. On average, however, those who switched waited 10 percent longer than if they had stayed put. Those who switched twice ended up waiting 67 percent longer than if they had never moved.
“When we join a queue, we tend to make the most rational choice we can, which means joining the shortest queue. 3. Unfortunately, we can often get it wrong,” said Buell.
4. After that, the aversion fades. The researcher suggests people have a chat with the person in front so that they can pass the time more comfortably until someone else joins behind them. “Remember that the person in front of you was the last until you arrived, so someone will show up if you hang around long enough,” Buell said.
A. If we see a line moving faster, we might switch without having enough extra information.
B. About one in five people grew impatient at the back of the queue and switched to the other line in the hope of speeding things up.
C. Do you hold your nerve and stay put, switch to another line in the hope it moves faster, or give up altogether?
D. Based on his study, Buell says people should think hard about switching queues when they are the last in a line.
E. In an unpublished working paper on the research, Buell notes that people tend to feel unhappiest at the back of a queue for the first 10 seconds or so.
F. Although the number of people behind you has nothing to do with how long you are going to wait, it shapes your behavior.
