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中等

Directions:
Read the following text and answer the questions by choosing the most suitable subheading from the list A-G for each of the numbered paragraphs. There are two extra subheadings.

​     No matter how formal or informal the work environment, the way you present yourself has an impact. This is especially true in first impressions. According to research from Princeton University, people assess your competence, trustworthiness, and likeability in just a tenth of a second, solely based on the way you look.
     The difference between today’s workplace and the “dress for success” era is that the range of options is so much broader. Norms have evolved and fragmented. In some settings, red sneakers or dress T-shirts can convey status; in others not so much. Plus, whatever image we present is magnified by social-media services like LinkedIn. Chances are, your headshots are seen much more often now than a decade or two ago. Millennials, it seems, face the paradox of being the least formal generation yet the most conscious of style and personal branding. It can be confusing.
     So how do we navigate this? How do we know when to invest in an upgrade? And what’s the best way to pull off one that enhances our goals? Here are some tips: 

     
     As an executive coach, I’ve seen image upgrades be particularly helpful during transitions—when looking for a new job, stepping into a new or more public role, or changing work environments. If you’re in a period of change or just feeling stuck and in a rut, now may be a good time. If you’re not sure, ask for honest feedback from trusted friends, colleagues and professionals. Look for cues about how others perceive you. Maybe there’s no need for an upgrade and that’s OK. 

     
     Get clear on what impact you’re hoping to have. Are you looking to refresh your image or pivot it? For one person, the goal may be to be taken more seriously and enhance their professional image. For another, it may be to be perceived as more approachable, or more modern and stylish. For someone moving from finance to advertising, maybe they want to look more “SoHo.” (It’s OK to use characterizations like that.)
     

     Look at your work environment like an anthropologist. What are the norms of your environment? What conveys status? Who are your most important audiences? How do the people you respect and look up to present themselves? The better you understand the cultural context, the more control you can have over your impact.
     

     Enlist the support of professionals and share with them your goals and context. Hire a personal stylist, or use the free styling service of a store like J. Crew. Try a hair stylist instead of a barber. Work with a professional photographer instead of your spouse or friend. It’s not as expensive as you might think.
     

     The point of a style upgrade isn’t to become more vain or to spend more time fussing over what to wear. Instead, use it as an opportunity to reduce decision fatigue. Pick a standard work uniform or a few go-to options. Buy all your clothes at once with a stylist instead of shopping alone, one article of clothing at a time. 

中等

Directions: Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese. 
     There is a marked difference between the education which every one gets from living with others, and the deliberate educating of the young. In the former case the education is incidental; it is natural and important, but it is not the express reason of the association. It may be said that the measure of the worth of any social institution is its effect in enlarging and improving experience, but this effect is not a part of its original motive. Religious associations began, for example, in the desire to secure the favor of overruling powers and to ward off evil influences; family life in the desire to gratify appetites and secure family perpetuity; systematic labor, for the most part, because of enslavement to others, etc. Only gradually was the by-product of the institution noted, and only more gradually still was this effect considered as a directive factor in the conduct of the institution. Even today, in our industrial life, apart from certain values of industriousness and thrift, the intellectual and emotional reaction of the forms of human association under which the world's work is carried on receives little attention as compared with physical output.
     But in dealing with the young, the fact of association itself as an immediate human fact, gains in importance. While it is easy to ignore in our contact with them the effect of our acts upon their disposition, it is not so easy as in dealing with adults. The need of training is too evident and the pressure to accomplish a change in their attitude and habits is too urgent to leave these consequences wholly out of account. Since our chief business with them is to enable them to share in a common life we cannot help considering whether or not we are forming the powers which will secure this ability. If humanity has made some headway in realizing that the ultimate value of every institution is its distinctively human effect we may well believe that this lesson has been learned largely through dealings with the young.
     We are thus led to distinguish, within the broad educational process which we have been so far considering, a more formal kind of education—that of direct tuition or schooling. In undeveloped social groups, we find very little formal teaching and training. These groups mainly rely for instilling needed dispositions into the young upon the same sort of association which keeps adults loyal to their group.

中等

Directions: Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese.
     The relation of language and mind has interested philosophers for many centuries. The Greeks assumed that the structure of language had some connection with the process of thought, which took root in Europe long before people realized how diverse languages could be.
     Only recently did linguists begin the serious study of languages that were very different from their own. Two anthropologist-linguists, Franz Boas and Edward Sapir, were pioneers in describing many native languages of North and South America during the first half of the twentieth century. We are obliged to them because some of these languages have since vanished, as the peoples who spoke them died out or became assimilated and lost their native languages. Other linguists in the earlier part of this century, however, who were less eager to deal with bizarre data from "exotic" language, were not always so grateful. The newly described languages were often so strikingly different from the well-studied languages of Europe and Southeast Asia that some scholars even accused Boas and Sapir of fabricating their data. Native American languages are indeed different, so much so in fact that Navajo could be used by the US military as a code during World War II to send secret messages.
     Sapir’s pupil, Benjamin Lee Whorf, continued the study of American Indian languages. Being interested in the relationship of language and thought, Whorf developed the idea that the structure of language determines the structure of habitual thought in a society. He reasoned that because it is easier to formulate certain concepts and not others in a given language, the speakers of that language think along one track and not along another. Whorf came to believe in a sort of linguistic determinism which, in its strongest form, states that language imprisons the mind, and that the grammatical patterns in a language can produce far-reaching consequences for the culture of a society. Later, this idea became to be known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, but this term is somewhat inappropriate. Although both Sapir and Whorf emphasized the diversity of languages, Sapir himself never explicitly supported the notion of linguistic determinism. 

中等

Directions: Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese.

     It is not easy to talk about the role of the mass media in this overwhelmingly significant phase in European history. History and news become confused, and one’s impressions tend to be a mixture of skepticism and optimism. Television is one of the means by which these feelings are created and conveyed—and perhaps never before has it served so much to connect different peoples and nations as in the recent events in Europe. The Europe that is now forming cannot be anything other than its peoples, their cultures and national identities. With this in mind we can begin to analyze the European television scene. In Europe, as elsewhere, multi-media groups have been increasingly successful: groups which bring together television, radio, newspapers, magazines and publishing houses that work in relation to one another. One Italian example would be the Berlusconi group, while abroad Maxwell and Murdoch come to mind. 
     Clearly, only the biggest and most flexible television companies are going to be able to compete in such a rich and hotly-contested market. This alone demonstrates that the television business is not an easy world to survive in, a fact underlined by statistics that show that out of eighty European television networks, no less than 50% took a loss in 1989. 
     Moreover, the integration of the European community will oblige television companies to cooperate more closely in terms of both production and distribution. 
     Creating a "European identity" that respects the different cultures and traditions which go to make up the connecting fabric of the Old Continent is no easy task and demands a strategic choice—that of producing programs in Europe for Europe. This entails reducing our dependence on the North American market, whose programs relate to experiences and cultural traditions which are different from our own. 
     In order to achieve these objectives, we must concentrate more on co-productions, the exchange of news, documentary services and training. This also involves the agreements between European countries for the creation of a European bank for Television Production which, on the model of the European Investments Bank, will handle the finances necessary for production costs. In dealing with a challenge on such a scale, it is no exaggeration to say, "United we stand, divided we fall"—and if I had to choose a slogan it would be "Unity in our diversity." A unity of objectives that nonetheless respect the varied peculiarities of each country. 

中等

Directions:
Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese. Your translation should be written neatly on the ANSWER SHEET.

The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes—Mark Urban
     Between 1807 and 1814 the Iberian Peninsula (comprising Spain and Portugal) was the scene of a titanic and merciless struggle. It took place on many different planes: between Napoleon’s French army and the angry inhabitants; between the British, ever keen to exacerbate the emperor’s difficulties, and the marshals sent from Paris to try to keep them in check; between new forces of science and meritocracy and old ones of conservatism and birth. It was also, and this is unknown even to many people well read about the period, a battle between those who made codes and those who broke them.
     I first discovered the Napoleonic cryptographic battle a few years ago when I was reading Sir Charles Oman’s epic History of the Peninsular War. In volume V he had attached an appendix, The Scovell Ciphers. It listed many documents in code that had been captured from the French army of Spain, and whose secrets had been revealed by the work of one George Scovell, an officer in British headquarters. Oman rated Scovell’s significance highly, but at the same time, the general nature of his History meant that he could not analyze carefully what this obscure officer may or may not have contributed to that great struggle between nations or indeed tell us anything much about the man himself. I was keen to read more, but was surprised to find that Oman’s appendix, published in 1914, was the only considered thing that had been written about this secret war.
     I became convinced that this story was every bit as exciting and significant as that of Enigma and the breaking of German codes in the Second World War. The question was, could it be told?
     Studying Scovell’s papers at the Public Record Office, London, I found that he had left an extensive journal and copious notes about his work in the Peninsula. What was more, many original French dispatches had been preserved in this collection, which I realized was priceless. There may have been many spies and intelligence officers during the Napoleonic Wars, but it is usually extremely difficult to find the material they actually provided or worked on.
     As I researched Scovell’s story I found far more of piterest besides of his intelligence work. His status in Lord Wellington’s headquarters and the recognition given to him for his work were all bound up with the class politics of the army at the time. His tale of self-improvement and hard work would make a fascinating biography in its own right, but represents something more than that. Just as the code breaking has its wider relevance in the struggle for Spain, so his attempts to make his way up the promotion ladder speak volumes about British society.

中等

Directions: Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese.
     One basic weakness in a conservation system based wholly on economic motives is that most members of the land community have no economic value. Yet these creatures are members of the biotic community and, if its stability depends on its integrity, they are entitled to continuance.
     When one of these noneconomic categories is threatened and, if we happen to love it. We invert excuses to give it economic importance. At the beginning of century songbirds were supposed to be disappearing. (1) Scientists jumped to the rescue with some distinctly shaky evidence to the effect that insects would eat us up if birds failed to control them. The evidence had to be economic in order to be valid.
     It is painful to read these round about accounts today. We have no land ethic yet, (2) but we have at least drawn near the point of admitting that birds should continue as a matter of intrinsic right, regardless of the presence or absence of economic advantage to us.
     A parallel situation exists in respect of predatory mammals and fish-eating birds. (3) Time was when biologists somewhat overworked the evidence that these creatures preserve the health of game by killing the physically weak, or that they prey only on "worthless" species. Here again, the evidence had to be economic in order to be valid. It is only in recent years that we hear the more honest argument that predators are members of the community, and that no special interest has the right to exterminate them for the sake of benefit, real or fancied, to itself.
     Some species of tree have been read out of the party by economics-minded foresters because they grow too slowly, or have too low a sale vale to pay as timber crops. (4) In Europe, where forestry is ecologically more advanced, the non-commercial tree species are recognized as members of native forest community, to be preserved as such, within reason. Moreover, some have been found to have a valuable function in building up soil fertility. The interdependence of the forest and its constituent tree species, ground flora, and fauna is taken for granted.
     To sum up: a system of conservation based solely on economic self-interest is hopelessly lopsided. (5) It tends to ignore, and thus eventually to eliminate, many elements in the land community that lack commercial value, but that are essential to its healthy functioning. It assumes, falsely, I think, that the economic parts of the biotic clock will function without the uneconomic parts. 

中等

Directions: Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese.
     Is it true that the American intellectual is rejected and considered of no account in his society? I am going to suggest that it is not true. Father Bruckberger told part of the story when he observed that it is the intellectuals who have rejected America. But they have done more than that. They have grown dissatisfied with the role of the intellectual. It is they, not America, who have become anti-intellectual.
     First, the object of our study pleads for definition. What is an intellectual? I shall define him as an individual who has elected as his primary duty and pleasure in life the activity of thinking in a Socratic(苏格拉底) way about moral problems. He explores such problems consciously, articulately, and frankly, first by asking factual questions, then by asking moral questions, finally by suggesting action which seems appropriate in the light of the factual and moral information which he has obtained. His function is analogous to that of a judge, who must accept the obligation of revealing in as obvious a manner as possible the course of reasoning which led him to his decision.
     ​This definition excludes many individuals usually referred to as intellectuals—the average scientist, for one. I have excluded him because, while his accomplishments may contribute to the solution of moral problems, he has not been charged with the task of approaching any but the factual aspects of those problems. Like other human beings, he encounters moral issues even in the everyday performance of his routine duties—he is not supposed to cook his experiments, manufacture evidence, or doctor his reports. But his primary task is not to think about the moral code which governs his activity, any more than a businessman is expected to dedicate his energies to an exploration of rules of conduct in business. During most of his waking life he will take his code for granted, as the businessman takes his ethics.
     The definition also excludes the majority of teachers, despite the fact that teaching has traditionally been the method whereby many intellectuals earn their living. They may teach very well, and more than earn their salaries, but most of them make little or no independent reflections on human problems which involve moral judgment. This description even fits the majority of eminent scholars. Being learned in some branch of human knowledge is one thing; living in “public and illustrious thoughts,” as Emerson would say, is something else.

中等

Directions:
Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese. Your translation should be written neatly on the ANSWER SHEET.

     It was only after I started to write a weekly column about the medical journals, and began to read scientific papers from beginning to end, that I realised just how bad much of the medical literature frequently was. I came to recognise various signs of a bad paper: the kind of paper that purports to show that people who eat more than one kilo of broccoli a week were 1.17 times more likely than those who eat less to suffer late in life from pernicious anaemia.  There is a great deal of this kind of nonsense in the medical journals which, when taken up by broadcasters and the lay press, generates both health scares and short-lived dietary enthusiasms.
     Why is so much bad science published? A recent paper, titled “The Natural Selection of Bad Science”, published on the Royal Society’s open science website, attempts to answer this intriguing and important question. It says that the problem is not merely that people do bad science, but that our current system of career advancement positively encourages it. What is important is not truth, but publication, which has become almost an end in itself. There has been a kind of inflationary process at work:  nowadays anyone applying for a research post has to have published twice the number of papers that would have been required for the same post only 10 years ago. Never mind the quality, then, count the number.
     Attempts have been made to curb this tendency, for example, by trying to incorporate some measure of quality as well as quantity into the assessment of an applicant’s papers. This is the famed citation index, that is to say the number of times a paper has been quoted elsewhere in the scientific literature, the assumption being that an important paper will be cited more often than one of small account. This would be reasonable if it were not for the fact that scientists can easily arrange to cite themselves in their future publications, or get associates to do so for them in return for similar favours.
     Boiling down an individual’s output to simple metrics, such as number of publications or journal impacts, entails considerable savings in time, energy and ambiguity. Unfortunately, the long-term costs of using simple quantitative metrics to assess researcher merit are likely to be quite great. If we are serious about ensuring that our science is both meaningful and reproducible, we must ensure that our institutions encourage that kind of science.

中等

Directions: Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese. 

     Within the span of a hundred years, in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, a tide of emigration - one of the great folk wanderings of history—swept from Europe to America.(1)This movement, driven by powerful and diverse motivations, built a nation out of a wilderness and, by its nature, shaped the character and destiny of an uncharted continent.

​     (2)The United States is the product of two principal forces — the immigration of European peoples with their varied ideas, customs, and national characteristics and the impact of a new country which modified these traits. Of necessity, colonial America was a projection of Europe. Across the Atlantic came successive groups of Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Scots, Irishmen, Dutchmen, Swedes, and many others who attempted to transplant their habits and traditions to the new world.(3)But the force of geographic conditions peculiar to America, the interplay of the varied national groups upon one another, and the sheer difficulty of maintaining old-world ways in a raw, new continent caused significant changes. These changes were gradual and at first scarcely visible. But the result was a new social pattern which, although it resembled European society in many ways, had a character that was distinctly American.

    (4)The first shiploads of immigrants bound for the territory which is now the United States crossed the Atlantic more than a hundred years after the 15th-and 16th-century explorations of North America. In the meantime, thriving Spanish colonies had been established in Mexico, the West Indies, and South America. These travelers to North America came in small, unmercifully overcrowded craft. During their six- to twelve-week voyage, they survived on barely enough food allotted to them. Many of the ship were lost in storms, many passengers died of disease, and infants rarely survived the journey. Sometimes storms blew the vessels far off their course, and often calm brought unbearably long delay.

     To the anxious travelers the sight of the American shore brought almost inexpressible relief. Said one recorder of events, “The air at twelve leagues’ distance smelt as sweet as a new-blown garden.” The colonists’ first glimpse of the new land was a sight of dense woods. (5)The virgin forest with its richness and variety of trees was a real treasure-house which extended from Maine all the way down to Georgia. Here was abundant fuel and lumber. Here was the raw material of houses and furniture, ships and potash, dyes and naval stores.

中等

Directions: Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese.
    WWII was the watershed event for higher education in modern democratic societies. (1) Those societies came out of the war with levels of enrollment that had been roughly constant at 3%-5% of the relevant age groups during the decades before the war. But after the war, great social and political changes arising out of the successful war against Fascism created a growing demand in European and American economies for increasing numbers of graduates with more than a secondary school education. (2) And the demand that rose in those societies of entry to higher education extended to groups and social classes that had not thought of attending a university before the war. These demands resulted in a very rapid expansion of the systems of higher education, beginning in the 1960s and developing very rapidly though unevenly in the 70s and 80s. The growth of higher education manifests itself in at least three quite different ways, and these in turn have given rise to different sets of problems. (3) There was first the rate of growth: in many countries of western Europe, the numbers of student in higher education doubled within five-years periods during the 1960s and double again in seven, eight, or 10 years by the middle of 1970s. Second, growth obviously affected the absolute size both of systems and individual institutions. And third, growth was reflected in changes in the proportion of the relevant age group enrolled in institutions of higher education. Each of these manifestations of growth carried its own peculiar problems in its wake. For example a high growth rate placed great strains on the existing structures of governance, of administration, and above all of socialization. When a very large proportion of all the members of an institution are new recruits, they threaten to overwhelm the processes whereby recruits to a more slowly growing system are inducted into its value system and learn its norms and forms. When a faculty or department grows from, say, 5 to 20 members within three or four years, (4) and when the new staff are predominantly young men and women fresh from post graduate study, they largely define the norms of academic life in that faculty. And if the postgraduate student population also grows rapidly and there is loss of a close apprenticeship relationship between faculty members and students, then the student culture becomes the chief socializing force for new postgraduate students, with consequences for the intellectual and academic life of the institution—this was seen in America as well as in France, Italy, West Germany, and Japan. (5) High growth rates increased the chances for academic innovation; they also weakened the forms and processes by which teachers and students are inducted into a community of scholars during periods of stability or slow growth. In the sixties and seventies of the last century, European universities saw marked changes in their governance arrangements, with the empowerment of junior faculty and to some degree of students as well. They also saw higher levels of student discontent, reflecting the weakening of traditional forms of academic communities.

中等

Directions: Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese.

     ​Shakespeare's lifetime was coincident with a period of extraordinary activity and achievement in the drama. By the date of his birth Europe was witnessing the passing of the religious drama, and the creation of new forms under the incentive of classical tragedy and comedy. These new forms were at first mainly written by scholars and performed by amateurs, but in England, as everywhere else in western Europe, the growth of a class of professional actors was threatening to make the drama popular, whether it should be new or old, classical or medieval, literary or farcical. Court, school, organizations of amateurs, and the traveling actors were all rivals in supplying a widespread desire for dramatic entertainment; and no boy who went to a grammar school could be ignorant that the drama was a form of literature which gave glory to Greece and Rome and might yet bring honor to England. 

      When Shakespeare was twelve years old the first public playhouse was built in London. For a time literature showed no interest in this public stage. Plays aiming at literary distinction were written for schools or court, or for the choir boys of St. Paul's and the royal chapel, who however, gave plays in public as well as at court.  But the professional companies prospered in their permanent theaters, and university men with literary ambitions were quick to turn to these theaters as offering a means of livelihood. By the time that Shakespeare was twenty-five, Lyly, Peele, and Greene had made comedies that were at once popular and literary; Kyd had written a tragedy that crowded the pit; and Marlowe had brought poetry and genius to triumph on the common stage-where they had played no part since the death of Euripides. A native literary drama had been created, its alliance with the public playhouses established, and at least some of its great traditions had been begun.
     The development of the Elizabethan drama for the next twenty-five years is of exceptional interest to students of literary history, for in this brief period we may trace the beginning, growth, blossoming and decay of many kinds of plays, and of many great careers. We are amazed today at the mere number of plays produced, as well as by the number of dramatists writing at the same time for this London of two hundred thousand inhabitants. To realize how great was the dramatic activity, we must remember further that hosts of plays have been lost, and that probably there is no author of note whose entire work has survived. 

中等

Directions:
Read the following text. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. 

     Americans no longer expect public figures, whether in speech or in writing, to command the English language with skill and gift. Nor do they aspire to such command themselves. In his latest book, Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care, John McWhorter, a linguist and controversialist of mixed liberal and conservative views, sees the triumph of 1960s counter-culture as responsible for the decline of formal English.
     Blaming the permissive 1960s is nothing new, but this is not yet another criticism against the decline in education. Mr. McWhorter’s academic speciality is language history and change, and he sees the gradual disappearance of "whom," for example, to be natural and no more regrettable than the loss of the case-endings of Old English.
     But the cult of the authentic and the personal, “doing our own thing,” has spelt the death of formal speech, writing, poetry and music. While even the modestly educated sought an elevated tone when they put pen to paper before the 1960s, even the most well regarded writing since then has sought to capture spoken English on the page. Equally, in poetry, the highly personal, performative genre is the only form that could claim real liveliness. In both oral and written English, talking is triumphing over speaking, spontaneity over craft.
     Illustrated with an entertaining array of examples from both high and low culture, the trend that Mr. McWhorter documents is unmistakable. But it is less clear, to take the question of his subtitle, why we should, like, care. As a linguist, he acknowledges that all varieties of human language, including non-standard ones like Black English, can be powerfully expressive—there exists no language or dialect in the world that cannot convey complex ideas. He is not arguing, as many do, that we can no longer think straight because we do not talk proper.
     Russians have a deep love for their own language and carry large chunks of memorized poetry in their heads, while Italian politicians tend to elaborate speech that would seem old-fashioned to most English-speakers. Mr. McWhorter acknowledges that formal language is not strictly necessary, and proposes no radical education reforms—he is really grieving over the loss of something beautiful more than useful. We now take our English “on paper plates instead of china.” A shame, perhaps, but probably an inevitable one. 

中等

Directions: Read the following text. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D.
     When Liam McGee departed as president of Bank of America in August, his explanation was surprisingly straight up. Rather than cloaking his exit in the usual vague excuses, he came right out and said he was leaving "to pursue my goal of running a company." Broadcasting his ambition was "very much my decision," McGee says. Within two weeks, he was talking for the first time with the board of Hartford Financial Services Group, which named him CEO and chairman on September 29.
     McGee says leaving without a position lined up gave him time to reflect on what kind of company he wanted to run. It also sent a clear message to the outside world about his aspirations. And McGee isn’t alone. In recent weeks the No.2 executives at Avon and American Express quit with the explanation that they were looking for a CEO post. As boards scrutinize succession plans in response to shareholder pressure, executives who don’t get the nod also may wish to move on. A turbulent business environment also has senior managers cautious of letting vague pronouncements cloud their reputations.
     As the first signs of recovery begin to take hold, deputy chiefs may be more willing to make the jump without a net. In the third quarter, CEO turnover was down 23% from a year ago as nervous boards stuck with the leaders they had, according to Liberum Research. As the economy picks up, opportunities will abound for aspiring leaders.
     The decision to quit a senior position to look for a better one is unconventional. For years executives and headhunters have adhered to the rule that the most attractive CEO candidates are the ones who must be poached. Says Korn/Ferry senior partner Dennis Carey:"I can’t think of a single search I’ve done where a board has not instructed me to look at sitting CEOs first."
     Those who jumped without a job haven’t always landed in top positions quickly. Ellen Marram quit as chief of Tropicana a decade age, saying she wanted to be a CEO. It was a year before she became head of a tiny Internet-based commodities exchange. Robert Willumstad left Citigroup in 2005 with ambitions to be a CEO. He finally took that post at a major financial institution three years later.
     Many recruiters say the old disgrace is fading for top performers. The financial crisis has made it more acceptable to be between jobs or to leave a bad one. "The traditional rule was it’s safer to stay where you are, but that’s been fundamentally inverted," says one headhunter. "The people who’ve been hurt the worst are those who’ve stayed too long."

中等

Directions: Read the following texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D.

      “There is one and only one social responsibility of business,” wrote Milton Friedman,a Nobel Prize-winning economist, “That is, to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits.” But even if you accept Friedman’s premise and regard corporate social responsibility(CSR) policies as a waste of shareholders’ money,things may not be absolutely clear-cut. New research suggests that CSR may create monetary value for companies— at least when they are prosecuted for corruption. 

     The largest firms in America and Britain together spend more than $15 billion a year on CSR,according to an estimate by EPG,a consulting firm.This could add value to their businesses in three ways. First,consumers may take CSR spending as a “signal” that a company’s products are of high quality. Second,customers may be willing to buy a company’s products as an indirect way to donate to the good causes it helps. And third,through a more diffuse “halo effect” whereby its good deeds earn it greater consideration from consumers and others. 

     Previous studies on CSR have had trouble differentiating these effects because consumers can be affected by all three. A recent study attempts to separate them by looking at bribery prosecutions under American’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act(FCPA). It argues that since prosecutors do not consume a company’s products as part of their investigations,they could be influenced only by the halo effect.
     The study found that,among prosecuted firms,those with the most comprehensive CSR programmes tended to get more lenient penalties. Their analysis ruled out the possibility that it was firm’s political influence,rather than their CSR stand,that accounted for the leniency:Companies that contributed more to political campaigns did not receive lower fines.
     In all, the study concludes that whereas prosecutors should only evaluate a case based on its merits,they do seem to be influenced by a company’s record in CSR. “We estimate that either eliminating a substantial labour-rights concern,such as child labour,or increasing corporate giving by about 20% result in fines that generally are 40% lower than the typical punishment for bribing foreign officials,” says one researcher.
     Researchers admit that their study does not answer the question of how much businesses ought to spend on CSR. Nor does it reveal how much companies are banking on the halo effect,rather than the other possible benefits,when they decide their do-gooding policies. But at least they have demonstrated that when companies get into trouble with the law,evidence of good character can win them a less costly punishment. 

中等

Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D.

     A new survey by Harvard University finds more than two-thirds of young Americans disapprove of President Trump's use of Twitter. The implication is that Millennials prefer news from the White House to be filtered through other source, not a president's social media platform.
     Most Americans rely on social media to check daily headlines. Yet as distrust has risen toward all media, people may be starting to beef up their media literacy skills. Such a trend is badly needed. During the 2016 presidential campaign, nearly a quarter of web content shared by Twitter users in the politically critical state of Michigan was fake news, according to the University of Oxford. And a survey conducted for Buzz Feed News found 44 percent of Facebook users rarely or never trust news from the media giant.
     Young people who are digital natives are indeed becoming more skillful at separating fact from fiction in cyberspace. A Knight Foundation focus-group survey of young people between ages 14 and 24 found they use “distributed trust” to verify stories. They cross-check sources and prefer news from different perspectives — especially those that are open about any bias. “Many young people assume a great deal of personal responsibility for educating themselves and actively seeking out opposing viewpoints,” the survey concluded.
     Such active research can have another effect. A 2014 survey conducted in Australia, Britain, and the United States by the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that young people's reliance on social media led to greater political engagement.
     Social media allows users to experience news events more intimately and immediately while also permitting them to re-share news as a projection of their values and interests. This forces users to be more conscious of their role in passing along information. A survey by Barna research group found the top reason given by Americans for the fake news phenomenon is “reader error,” more so than made-up stories or factual mistakes in reporting. About a third say the problem of fake news lies in “misinterpretation or exaggeration of actual news” via social media. In other words, the choice to share news on social media may be the heart of the issue. “This indicates there is a real personal responsibility in counteracting this problem,” says Roxanne Stone, editor in chief at Barna Group.
     So when young people are critical of an over-tweeting president, they reveal a mental discipline in thinking skills – and in their choices on when to share on social media.

中等

Directions:
Read the following text. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. 

     In a rare unanimous ruling, the US Supreme Court has overturned the corruption conviction of a former Virginia governor, Robert McDonnell. But it did so while holding its nose at the ethics of his conduct, which included accepting gifts such as a Rolex watch and a Ferrari Automobile from a company seeking access to government.
     The high court’s decision said the judge in Mr. McDonnell’s trail failed to tell a jury that it must look only at his “official acts,” or the former governor’s decisions on “specific” and “unsettled” issues related to his duties.
     Merely helping a gift-giver gain access to other officials, unless done with clear intent to pressure those officials, is not corruption, the justices found.
     The court did suggest that accepting favors in return for opening doors is “distasteful” and “nasty.” But under anti-bribery laws, proof must be made of concrete benefits, such as approval of a contract or regulation. Simply arranging a meeting, making a phone call, or hosting an event is not an “official act.”
     The court’s ruling is legally sound in defining a kind of favoritism that is not criminal. Elected leaders must be allowed to help supporters deal with bureaucratic problems without fear of prosecution of bribery. “The basic compact underlying representative government,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts for the court, “assumes that public officials will hear from their constituents and act on their concerns.”
     But the ruling reinforces the need for citizens and their elected representatives, not the courts, to ensure equality of access to government. Officials must not be allowed to play favorites in providing information or in arranging meetings simply because an individual or group provides a campaign donation or a personal gift. This type of integrity requires will-enforced laws in government transparency, such as records of official meetings, rules on lobbying, and information about each elected leader’s source of wealth.
     Favoritism in official access can fan public perceptions of corruption. But it is not always corruption. Rather officials must avoid double standards, or different types of access for average people and the wealthy. If connections can be bought, a basic premise of democratic society – that all are equal in treatment by government- is undermined. Good government rests on an understanding of the inherent worth of each individual.
     The court’s ruling is a step forward in the struggle against both corruption and official favoritism.

中等

Directions:
Read the following text. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. 

     “The ancient Hawaiians were astronomers,” wrote Queen Liliuokalani, Hawaii's last reigning monarch, in 1897. Star watchers were among the most esteemed members of Hawaiian society. Sadly, all is not well with astronomy in Hawaii today. Protests have erupted over construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope(TMT), a giant observatory that promises to revolutionize humanity's view of the cosmos.
     At issue is the TMT's planned location on Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano worshiped by some Hawaiians as the piko, that connects the Hawaiian Islands to the heavens. But Mauna Kea is also home to some of the world's most powerful telescopes. Rested in the Pacific Ocean, Mauna Kea's peak rises above the bulk of our planet's dense atmosphere, where conditions allow telescopes to obtain images of unsurpassed clarity.
     Opposition to telescopes on Mauna Kea is nothing new. A small but vocal group of Hawaiians and environmentalists have long viewed their presence as disrespect far sacred land and a painful reminder of the occupation of what was once a sovereign nation.
     Some blame for the current controversy belongs to astronomers. In their eagerness to build bigger telescopes, they forgot that science is not the only way of understanding the world. They did not always prioritize the protection of Mauna Kea's fragile ecosystems or its holiness to the islands' inhabitants. Hawaiian culture is not a relic of the past; it is a living culture undergoing a renaissance today.
     Yet science has a cultural history, too, with roots going back to the dawn of civilization. The same curiosity to find what lies beyond the horizon that first brought early Polynesians to Hawaii's shores inspires astronomers today to explore the heavens. Calls to disassemble all telescopes on Mauna Kea or to ban future development there ignore the reality that astronomy and Hawaiian culture both seek to answer big questions about who we are, where we come from and where we are going. Perhaps that is why we explore the starry skies, as if answering a primal calling to know ourselves and our true ancestral homes.
     The astronomy community is making compromises to change its use of Mauna Kea. The TMT site was chosen to minimize the telescope’s visibility around the island and to avoid archaeological and environmental impact. To limit the number of telescopes on Mauna Kea, old ones will be removed at the end of their lifetimes and their sites returned to a natural state. There is no reason why everyone cannot be welcomed on Mauna Kea to embrace their cultural heritage and to study the stars.

中等

Directions:
Read the following text. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D.

     Just how much does the Constitution protect your digital data? The Supreme Court will now consider whether police can search the contents of a mobile phone without a warrant if the phone is on or around a person during an arrest. 

     California has asked the justices to refrain from a sweeping ruling, particularly one that upsets the old assumption that authorities may search through the possessions of suspects at the time of their arrest. It is hard, the state argues, for judges to assess the implications of new and rapidly changing technologies.
     The court would be recklessly modest if it followed California’s advice. Enough of the implications are discernable, even obvious, so that the justices can and should provide updated guidelines to police, lawyers and defendants.
     They should start by discarding California’s lame argument that exploring the contents of a smart phone — a vast storehouse of digital information — is similar to, say, going through a suspect’s purse. The court has ruled that police don’t violate the Fourth Amendment when they go through the wallet or pocketbook of an arrestee without a warrant. But exploring one’s smart phone is more like entering his or her home. A smart phone may contain an arrestee’s reading history, financial history, medical history and comprehensive records of recent correspondence. The development of “cloud computing”, meanwhile, has made that exploration so much the easier.
     Americans should take steps to protect their digital privacy. But keeping sensitive information on these devices is increasingly a requirement of normal life. Citizens still have a right to expect private documents to remain private and protected by the Constitution’s prohibition on unreasonable searches.
     As so often is the case, stating that principle doesn’t ease the challenge of line-drawing. In many cases, it would not be overly bur burdensome for authorities to obtain a warrant to search through phone contents. They could still invalidate Fourth Amendment protections when facing severe, urgent circumstances, and they could take reasonable measures to ensure that phone data are not erased or altered while waiting for a warrant. The court, though, may want to allow room for police to cite situations where they are entitled to more freedom.
     But the justices should not swallow California’s argument whole. New, disruptive technology sometimes demands novel applications of the Constitution’s protections. Orin Kerr, a law professor, compares the explosion and accessibility of digital information in the 21st century with the establishment of automobile use as a virtual necessity of life in the 20th: The justices had to specify novel rules for the new personal domain of the passenger car then; they must sort out how the Fourth Amendment applies to digital information now.

中等

Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D.

​     The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) continues to bleed red ink. It reported a net loss of $5.6 billion for fiscal 2016, the 10th straight year its expenses have exceeded revenue. Meanwhile, it has more than $120 billion in unfunded liabilities, mostly for employee health and retirement costs. There are many bankruptcies. Fundamentally, the USPS is in a historic squeeze between technological change that has permanently decreased demand for its bread-and-butter product, first-class mail, and a regulatory structure that denies management the flexibility to adjust its operations to the new reality 

     And interest groups ranging from postal unions to greeting-card makers exert self-interested pressure on the USPS’s ultimate overseer-Congress-insisting that whatever else happens to the Postal Service, aspects of the status quo they depend on get protected. This is why repeated attempts at reform legislation have failed in recent years, leaving the Postal Service unable to pay its bills except by deferring vital modernization.
     Now comes word that everyone involved---Democrats, Republicans, the Postal Service, the unions and the system's heaviest users—has finally agreed on a plan to fix the system. Legislation is moving through the House that would save USPS an estimated $28.6 billion over five years, which could help pay for new vehicles, among other survival measures. Most of the money would come from a penny-per-letter permanent rate increase and from shifting postal retirees into Medicare. The latter step would largely offset the financial burden of annually pre-funding retiree health care, thus addressing a long-standing complaint by the USPS and its union.
     If it clears the House, this measure would still have to get through the Senate – where someone is bound to point out that it amounts to the bare, bare minimum necessary to keep the Postal Service afloat, not comprehensive reform. There’s no change to collective bargaining at the USPS, a major omission considering that personnel accounts for 80 percent of the agency’s costs. Also missing is any discussion of eliminating Saturday letter delivery. That common-sense change enjoys wide public support and would save the USPS $2 billion per year. But postal special-interest groups seem to have killed it, at least in the House. The emerging consensus around the bill is a sign that legislators are getting frightened about a politically embarrassing short-term collapse at the USPS. It is not, however, a sign that they’re getting serious about transforming the postal system for the 21st century.

中等

Directions:
Read the following four texts. answer the question after each text by choosing A, B, C or D. 

    A group of labour MPs, among them Yvette Cooper, are bringing in the new year with a call to institute a UK "town of culture" award. The proposal is that it should sit alongside the existing city of culture title, which was held by Hull in 2017 and has been awarded to Coventry for 2021. Cooper and her colleagues argue that the success of the crown for Hull, where it brought in £220m of investment and an avalanche of arts, out not to be confined to cities. Britain's town, it is true are not prevented from applying, but they generally lack the resources to put together a bit to beat their bigger competitions. A town of culture award could, it is argued, become an annual event, attracting funding and creating jobs.

    Some might see the proposal as a booby prize for the fact that Britain is no longer be able to apply for the much more prestigious title of European capital of culture, a sought-after award bagged by Glasgow in 1990 and Liverpool in 2008. A cynic might speculate that the UK is on the verge of disappearing into an endless fever of self-celebration in its desperation to reinvent itself for the post-Brexit world: after town of culture, who knows what will follow—village of culture? Suburb of culture? Hamlet of culture?
    It is also wise to recall that such titles are not a cure-all. A badly run "year of culture" washes in and out of a place like the tide, bringing prominence for a spell but leaving no lasting benefits to the community. The really successful holders of such titles are those that do a great deal more than fill hotel bedrooms and bring in high-profile arts events and good press for a year. They transform the aspirations of the people who live there; they nudge the self-image of the city into a bolder and more optimistic light. It is hard to get right, and requires a remarkable degree of vision, as well as cooperation between city authorities, the private sector, community groups and cultural organisations. But it can be done: Glasgow's year as European capital of culture can certainly be seen as one of complex series of factors that have turned the city into the power of art, music and theatre that it remains today.
    A "town of culture" could be not just about the arts but about honouring a town's peculiarities—helping sustain its high street, supporting local facilities and above all celebrating its people and turn it into action.