CAREFUL READING
Read the following passages carefully. Decide on the best answer and choose the corresponding letter.
    Nowadays, if you want to get employed in a prospective company, you need to be outstanding in order to withstand competition. Employers often promote standards to their would-be workers, even if their duties include only photocopying or sharpening pencils. One of the qualities crucial for any employee is multitasking, and it has become almost a priority throughout the recent decade. However, although it is believed that a multitasking person can complete more work within the same amount of time compared to a "regular" worker, in fact multitasking is not only ineffective, but also harmful for those who try to spread their energy on working on several projects at once.
    Multitasking is not what everyone thinks it is—simultaneous (同时的) work in several different directions. In fact, multitasking should be called "task switching." Our brains are not capable of maintaining constant attention towards several objects at once. So, a person has to constantly switch from one activity to another, without getting themselves fully engaged in at least one of them.
    Multitasking being bad for work is just half of the problem; the second half of it lies in the fact that spreading your energy on several tasks at once is harmful not just to your productivity, but to yourself as well. Over-stimulation caused by your brain being constantly bombarded (轰击) by incoming external stimulation puts you at risk of becoming unable to distinguish what is important and what is not. Last year, a group of researchers from Stanford University figured out that multitasking participants were distracted the most by unimportant information stored in their short-term memory. Multitasking people also tend to forget their tasks' details, thus becoming less able to perform them well. Besides, multitasking leads to the increase of stress levels, burnout, employee absences, disability, and so on. Therefore, sometimes it can be useful for office workers to turn off notifications (通知) on their smartphones, and pay all their attention to one task at a time.
    Efficient multitasking is a myth brought to life by employers' desire to have fewer workers who would do more work in the same amounts of time. Research shows that multitasking does not lead to an increase of productivity; on the contrary, it brings about some negative effects on multitasking workers themselves. Therefore, employers and employees should stop deceiving themselves, and return to the good old way of working: one task at a time.

SPEED READING
Skim or scan the following passages and then decide on the best answer.
    Do you dream of opening a bookstore amidst the hills of Scotland? If you do, you probably dismiss the fantasy as a daydream—but that's where The Open Book steps in. This unique vacation rental in Wigtown—Scotland's National Book Town—lets guests run their own bookstore by the sea.
    The Open Book is the brainchild of American writer Jessica Fox, who gave up her Californian lifestyle at the age of 24 after dreaming of another life in Scotland. Fox fell in love with Wigtown and its surplus of book shops. "It's a magical place, it has all the things you could hope for in a trip to Scotland," says Fox.
    The idea for The Open Book was sparked by Fox's own passionate love of Wigtown, which hosts the popular Wigtown Book Festival each September. "I'd never been to Scotland, I'd only seen it in films," recalls Fox. "I went from a very densely populated place with a car, and stuck in traffic a lot, to a place with hardly any people, amazing scenery, and absolutely no car. I absolutely loved it." Fox knew most people wouldn't want to give up their old life forever, but she was sure a week experiencing a slice of "Local Hero"-style small-town Scotland would appeal to many. So she decided to take over a closing bookshop and try out her idea. Five years later, The Open Book is a great success. It's booked up on the Internet until 2021, and there's an extensive waiting list. The Open Book's success has put Wigtown firmly on the map, with book-lovers travelling to this coastal corner of Scotland from across the globe.
    The Open Book is run by local volunteers. "Any profit that The Open Book makes goes right back into the community of Wigtown," explains Fox. Local people pick guests up from transport hubs (站点) and bake them homemade bread. Visitors become local celebrities for the week. "The town really makes sure they're comfortable and will invite them to dinner or the pub, so it's a community effort," says Fox. In return, guests look after the shop.
    "We suggest that people take the initiative and do events in the shop, even share the culture that they're coming from with Wigtown. People really do that. They do some imaginative, wonderful ideas," says Fox. "We've had Spanish wine tasting, book readings and game nights—so they bring a lot of life to the bookshops themselves."

CAREFUL READING
Read the following passages carefully. Decide on the best answer and choose the corresponding letter.

    Across age groups and countries, females tend to live a more eco-friendly lifestyle. Compared to men, women litter less and recycle more. Some researchers have suggested that personality differences may help to explain this gender gap in green behavior.
    Our own research suggests an additional possibility: men may avoid eco-friendly behavior because of what it conveys about their masculinity (男子气概). It's not that men don't care about the environment, but they worry that eco-friendly behaviors might brand them as feminine.
    The research showed that there is a psychological link between eco-friendliness and women. Due to this "green-feminine stereotype," both men and women judged eco-friendly products, behaviors, and consumers as more feminine than their non-green counterparts. In one experiment, participants of both sexes described an individual who brought a reusable canvas bag to the grocery store as more feminine than someone who used a plastic bag—regardless of whether the shopper was a male or female.
    Men may keep away from green products to avoid feeling feminine. In one study, we threatened the masculinity of male participants by showing them a pink gift card and asking them to imagine using the card to purchase three products (lamp, suitcase, and batteries). Compared to men shown a standard gift card, threatened men were more likely to choose the non-green rather than green version of each item. The idea that men try to reassert their masculinity through non-environmentally-friendly choices suggests that in addition to littering, wasting water, or using too much electricity, one could harm the environment merely by making men feel feminine.
    So what can marketers do to protect men against the threat posed by the green-feminine stereotype? Green products can be marketed with more masculine (有男子气概的) colors, words and images used in the branding. For example, men in one experiment were more likely to donate to a green non-profit organization with a masculine logo (徽标) (black and dark blue colors featuring a wolf, with the name "Wilderness Rangers" in bold letters) than one with a traditional logo (green and light tan colors featuring a tree, with the name "Friends of Nature" in colorful letters).
    These findings suggest that masculine affirmation and masculine branding may be effective in narrowing the gender gap in environmental protection. Make the man feel manly, and he's more likely to go green.

CAREFUL READING
Read the following passages carefully. Decide on the best answer and choose the corresponding letter.

    I rolled my eyes as I watched a mom help her five-year-old daughter out of the pool: "Honey, you're amazing. You'll be the next Olympian!" In reality, she swam more like a struggling pigeon than an elegant swan, but the daughter beamed with confidence. This example illustrates the problem with our know-it-all generation. We're programmed to enjoy compliments, and our gears break down when we encounter a new type of software: criticism.
    Praise can be necessary for boosting confidence. However, my generation is offered it to the point of overkill. The gold stars on papers with poor scores and the unspoken promise of ice cream after any "accomplishment" fuel a desire for meaningless compliments. Elders essentially worship children until we become condescending (目空一切的) persons; then students run home complaining about teachers who don't use sweet words, and their parents become verbal punching bags. It has become vicious cycle.
    Aside from the feeling of great satisfaction, this addiction invites arrogance. The teenage attitude—eye-rolling, attention-drawing—is a product of this cycle. Protected by flattery (谄媚), children develop a feeling of perfection.
    We're so self-involved that we don't believe criticism has a place in our lives. Even "constructive criticism" is often a code word for praise. It is vital that we become comfortable with the harsh comments others throw at us and take them at their face value. They aren't invisible weapons, but rather small doses of reality to help us better ourselves.
    Raised in a culture filled with constant praise, it is hard not to yield to the sense of self-worth. It is important to realize that self-esteem is dramatically different from ego. Psychologist Jean Twenge recommends humility (谦逊), self-evaluation, mindfulness, and thinking of others as a cure for this sense of entitlement. Cutting ourselves off from the constant praise will drastically change the way we perceive ourselves and those around us—an important step to reversing this epidemic.
    Before we can set goals for solving poverty, establishing peace, or eliminating any worldly troubles, we must first address the critical faults within ourselves. We are nothing close to the flawlessness we believe we represent, and we must embrace criticism. ​My generation is wearing horse blinders. Unless we reverse this vicious cycle, our world will still retain its false "perfection".

CAREFUL READING
Read the following passages carefully. Decide on the best answer and choose the corresponding letter.
    Many studies suggest that our personalities remain fairly stable, even over the course of decades. Yet a small but long-running study finds that traits related to dependability differ greatly between adolescence and late life. The findings raise new questions and highlight the challenges in trying to track a person's defining characteristics over many years.
    In the new research, published in December 2016 in Psychology and Aging, researchers in the U.K. reached out to a group of 635 77-year-olds from Scotland who had taken part in a study when they were 14. Back then, their teachers had rated them on six personality characteristics related to dependability: self-confidence, perseverance (坚定), mood stability, conscientiousness (认真), originality and desire to be better than others. Some 60 years later a total of 174 participants from the original study rated themselves on the same six traits and had a close friend or relative rate them as well.
    Lead author lan Deary, a psychologist at the University of Edinburgh, expected, based on earlier findings, that dependability scores might remain stable over time. In fact, he and his colleagues found no relation between ratings for dependability-related traits over the 63-year span studied. (Deary emphasizes that his findings apply only to these six traits—not overall personality.)
    One of the study's strengths is that it covers such a long period, but this characteristic also makes the research challenging. Nate Hudson, a social psychologist at Michigan State University who was not involved in the study, points out that the lack of personality stability could be the result of having different people rate the participants. Ideally, the same person would rate a subject's personality at both time points when assessments were made.
    In decades-spanning studies, many subjects go missing, die or choose not to participate in follow-up assessments. Deary and his colleagues had only 174 of the original participants, a number that makes it tough to find subtle, but real, correlations in sets of data. "It is difficult to know from their study alone whether there is truly zero stability in personality from age 14 to 77," Hudson says. "Deary's work moves the field forward—but more research is needed to get a full picture of how personality evolves throughout a lifetime."

CAREFUL READING
Read the following passages carefully. Decide on the best answer and choose the corresponding letter.
    When I was growing up we used to get American TV shows rebroadcast on our stations. Most of them were dubbed (配音) into African languages. ALF was in Afrikaans. Transformers was in Sotho. But if you wanted to watch them in English, the original American audio would be simulcast (同步播放) on the radio. You could mute your TV and listen to that. Watching those shows, I realized that whenever black people were on-screen speaking in African languages, they felt familiar to me. They sounded like they were supposed to sound. Then I'd listen to them in simulcast on the radio, and they would all have black American accents. My perception of them changed. They didn't feel familiar. They felt like foreigners.
    Language brings with it an identity and a culture, or at least the perception of it. A shared language says "We're the same." A language barrier says "We're different." The architects of apartheid understood this. Part of the effort to divide black people was to make sure we were separated not just physically but by language as well. In the Bantu schools, children were only taught in their home language. Zulu kids learned in Zulu. Tswana kids learned in Tswana. Because of this, we'd fall into the trap the government had set for us and fight among ourselves, believing that we were different.
    The great thing about language is that you can just as easily use it to do the opposite: convince people that they are the same. Racism teaches us that we are different because of the color of our skin. But because racism is stupid, it's easily tricked. If you're racist and you meet someone who doesn't look like you, the fact that he can't speak like you reinforces your racist preconceptions: He's different, less intelligent. A brilliant scientist can come over the border from Mexico to live in America, but if he speaks in broken English, people say, "Eh, I don't trust this guy."
    However, if the person who doesn't look like you speaks like you, your brain short-circuits because your racism program has none of those instructions in the code. "Wait, wait," your mind says, "the racism code says if he doesn't look like me he isn't like me, but the language code says if he speaks like me he... is like me? Something is off here. I can't figure this out."

CAREFUL READING
Read the following passages carefully. Decide on the best answer and choose the corresponding letter.
    During World War II, many American women joined the armed forces and served side by side with the men. More than 200,000 women volunteered to serve in the armed forces.
    The women did not go into battle with guns. But they did perform countless useful—and often dangerous—tasks, which freed the men for the fighting. And thousands of nurses risked—and sometimes lost—their lives treating the wounded while the enemy was attacking.
    One group of women performed a very special job. That was because they had a special skill. They were pilots.
    The United States had not yet entered the war in 1940. But Americans were selling airplanes to the British. Canada was supplying even more. The planes were vital to Britain's survival. They had to be gotten overseas as quickly as possible. What was the fastest way? By air, of course.
    Trained American and Canadian pilots were already flying for Britain's Royal Air Force. Every man who could fly a plane was already fighting in Europe. Someone had to fly the new planes across the ocean. Who could do it? The women!
    Jacqueline Cochran was one of America's best-known pilots when the war began. She described how the women pilots got involved in the war and what they did:
    "Late in 1940 General Arnold said they needed pilots desperately for ferrying airplanes from Canada to England, and he asked me if I could be of any help. I said I would be happy to volunteer, and my services were immediately accepted. It was a difficult task with a high death rate. I got shot at over the North Atlantic and others did too. We usually got to England with only about two and a half hours of fuel to spare, and that is hazardous (危险的)."
    Often, after a long trip—and just a few hours' sleep—the women were flown back to Canada to pick up more planes.
    When the United States entered the war, the women pilots were formed into a group called WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilots). Miss Cochran became their commanding officer. The women continued to serve until 1944.
    More than 1,000 women kept American and British pilots supplied with new planes during the war. They flew every type of plane that was built. And they won the admiration of thousands of combat pilots.

CAREFUL READING
Read the following passages carefully. Decide on the best answer and blacken the corresponding letter on the ANSWER SHEET.

     The world perceives people with rich vocabularies to be more creative, more intelligent. People with larger vocabularies get hired quicker and promoted faster. So big winners use rich, full words, but they never sound inappropriate.The phrases slide gracefully off their tongues to enrich their conversation. The words fit. Big players choose words to match their personalities and their points with the same care as they choose their ties or their blouses.
     The startling good news is that the difference between a respected vocabulary and a mundane one lies in only about fifty words! You don't need much to sound like a big winner. A mere few dozen wonderful words will give everyone the impression that you have an original and creative mind.
     Acquiring this super vocabulary is easy. All you need to do is to think of a few tired, overworked words you use every day——words like smart, nice, pretty, or good. Then grab a thesaurus or book of synonyms off the shelf. Look up that common word you are bored hearing yourself utter every day. Examine your long list of alternatives.
     For example, you've been at a party and it was wonderful. Don't tell the hosts it was wonderful. Everybody says that. Tell them it was a splendid party, a superb party, an extraordinary party. Hug the hosts and tell them you had a magnificent time, a remarkable time, a glorious time.
     Look up some common words you use every day in the thesaurus. Then, like slipping your feet into a new pair of shoes, slip your tongue into a few new words to see how they fit. If you like them, start making permanent replacements.
     Remember, only fifty words make the difference between a rich, creative vocabulary and an average, middle-of-the-road one. Substitute a word a day for two months and you'll be in the verbally elite.

CAREFUL READING
Read the following passages carefully. Decide on the best answer and choose the corresponding letter.

     Pronouncing a language is a skill. Every normal person is expert in the skill of pronouncing his own language; but few people are even moderately proficient at pronouncing foreign languages. Now there are many reasons for this, some obvious, some perhaps not so obvious. But I suggest that the fundamental reason why people in general do not speak foreign languages very much better than they do their own languages is that they fail to grasp the true nature of the problems of learning to pronounce, and consequently never set about tackling it in the right way. Far too many people fail to realize that pronouncing a foreign language is a skill——one that needs careful training of a special kind, and one that cannot be acquired by just leaving it to take care of itself.
     I think, even teachers of language, while recognizing the importance of a good accent, tend to neglect the branch of study concerned with speaking in their practical teaching. So, the first point I want to make here is that the teacher should be prepared to devote some of the lesson time to the teaching of English pronunciation. There should be occasions when other aspects of English, such as grammar or spelling, are allowed for the moment to take second place.
     Apart from this question of the time given to pronunciation, there are two other requirements for the teacher: the first, knowledge; the second, technique.
     It is important that the teacher should be in possession of the necessary information. This can generally be obtained from books. It is possible to get from books some idea of the mechanics of speech, and of what we call general phonetic theory. But the first and most important part of a language teacher’s technique is his own performance, his ability to demonstrate the spoken language, in every detail of articulation （发音）as well as in fluent speaking, so that the student’s talent capacity for imitation is given the fullest scope and encouragement.

SPEED READING
Skim or scan the following passages and then decide on the best answer.

    The vast majority of people believe children today go on fewer school expeditions and trips than when they were at school—with the cost highlighted as the main reason for the decline.
    The survey was commissioned by Bohunt Education Trust (BET) and was conducted by polling company Censuswide. It found that only 10% of people believe that children today have more outdoor education opportunities than they had in their school years, with nearly three-quarters of people (71%) blaming cost as the biggest factor stopping children experiencing outdoor education.
    Some 72% of those surveyed called for a greater focus on outdoor education in both primary and secondary schools—more than three-quarters of people (78%) said outdoor education was important for children's self-development, and more than two-thirds (68%) said it improved academic achievement.
    This agrees with a study by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) last month, which said that: "Overall, studies of adventure learning interventions consistently show positive benefits on academic learning. On average, pupils who participate in adventure learning interventions make approximately four additional months' progress over the course of a year. There is also evidence of an impact on non-cognitive outcomes such as self-confidence. The evidence suggests that the impact is greater for more vulnerable and older learners (teenagers), longer courses (more than a week), and those in a 'wilderness' setting, though other types of intervention still show some positive impacts."
    BET, one of the country's top-performing academy trusts, is a leading proponent of outdoor education. It champions an extensive outdoor education and outdoor learning programme for all its students, nurturing talents and providing opportunities both inside and outside the classroom. BET sees outdoor education as crucial to building well-rounded individuals, for resilience (适应力), character and teamwork, as well as beneficial for academic attainment.
    BET is a course provider for Mountain Training UK and students across their seven schools have in recent years gone on expeditions to Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Greenland and the Himalayas, with ones planned next year to Norway, Azerbaijan, the Himalayas and Lanka. At Bohunt School in Wokingham, climbing is incorporated into the curriculum.
    Crucially, BET also ensures that outdoor education is available for all its students, regardless of background. Better-off students are expected to fundraise, with the expeditions programme scheduled three years in advance, allowing families to plan. All students receiving the Pupil Premium are provided with grants, so that every student who wants to go on a trip can do so.

WORD FORMATIONS

Complete the following sentence with the proper form of the word in the bracket.

 (curious) She decided to call her ex-boyfriend out of.

Word Formation

Complete the following sentence with the proper form of the word in the bracket.

(deception) You are  yourself if you still believe that she will help you.

Word Formation

Complete the following sentence with the proper form of the word in the bracket.

(treat) First aid is emergency care for a victim of sudden illness or injury until more skillful medical  is available.

Word Formation

Complete the following sentence with the proper form of the word in the bracket.

(achieve) I felt a great sense of  when I reached the top of the mountain.

WORD FORMATIONS

Complete the following sentence with the proper form of the word in the bracket.

(short) Patients were dying because of an acuteof nurses.

WORD FORMATIONS

Complete the following sentence with the proper form of the word in the bracket.

(operation) There areadvantages in putting sales and admin in the same building.

WORD FORMATIONS

(familiar) The goal of the experiment was to  the people with the new laws.

WORD FORMATIONS

Complete the following sentence with the proper form of the word in the bracket.

 (increase) His hot temper was making it difficult for others to work with him.

WORD FORMATIONS

Complete the following sentence with the proper form of the word in the bracket.

(profit) Drug manufacturing is the most business in America.

Word Formations

Complete the following sentence with the proper form of the word in the bracket.

(doubt) Because of a long drought, the farmers areabout the prospect of a good yield.