Text 1 Massive changes in all of the world's deeply cherished sporting habits are underway. Whether it's one of London's parks full of people playing softball, and Russians taking up rugby, or the Superbowl rivaling the British Football Cup Final as a televised spectator event in Britain, the patterns of players and spectators are changing beyond recognition. We are witnessing a globalization of our sporting culture. That annual bicycle race, the Tour de France, much loved by the French is a good case in point. Just a few years back it was a strictly continental affair with France, Belgium and Holland, Spain and Italy taking part. But in recent years it has been dominated by Colombian mountain climbers, and American and Irish riders. The people who really matter welcome the shift toward globalization. Peugeot, Michelin and Panasonic are multi-national corporations that want worldwide returns for the millions they invest in teams. So it does them literally a world of good to see this unofficial world championship become just that. This is undoubtedly an economic-based revolution we are witnessing here, one made possible by communications technology, but made to happen because of marketing considerations. Sell the game and you can sell Coca Cola or Budweiser as well. The skilful way in which American football has been sold to Europe is a good example of how all sports will develop. The aim of course is not really to spread the sport for its own sake, but to increase the number of people interested in the major money-making events. The economics of the Superbowl are already astronomical. With seats at US $125, gate receipts alone were a staggering $10,000,000. The most important statistic of the day, however, was the $100,000,000 in TV advertising fees. Imagine how much that becomes when the eyes of the world are watching. So it came as a terrible shock, but not really as a surprise, to learn that some people are now suggesting that soccer change from being a game of two 45-minute halves, to one of four 25-minute quarters. The idea is unashamedly to capture more advertising revenue, without giving any thought for the integrity of a sport which relies for its essence on the flowing nature of the action. Moreover, as sports expand into world markets, and as our choice of sports as consumers also grows, so we will demand to see them played at a higher and higher level. In boxing we have already seen numerous, dubious world title categories because people will not pay to see anything less than a "World Title" fight, and this means that the. title fights have to be held in different countries around the world!
1. Globalization of sporting culture means that ______
2. Which of the following is NOT related to the massive changes?
A.Good economic returns.
B.Revival of traditional games.
C.Communications technology.
D.Marketing strategies.
A B C D
B
[解析] A:第二段提到,那些重要人物(people who really matter)对全球化趋势持欢迎态度。Peugeot(汽车制造商)、Michelin(轮胎制造商)和Panasonic(电器制造商)都是跨国公司,它们都在球队身上投资数百万,想在世界范围内增加自己的收益。他们知道,这种非官方的世界锦标赛成为这样(指全球化)实际上对他们好处无穷(a world of good)。 C:第三段提到,我们所看到的无疑是一场以经济为基础的革命,是通信技术的发展使这场革命成为可能,但是这场革命的发生却有其促销方面的考虑。推广某种体育比赛就等于促销可口可乐或百威啤酒。
3. As is used in the passage, "globalization" comes closest in meaning to ______
A.commercialization
B.popularization
C.speculation
D.standardization
A B C D
A
[解析] 本文提到的体育文化的全球化实质上是一个商业化过程。作者在第三段称这个全球化过程为一场以经济为基础的革命,这场革命的发生有其销售方面的考虑。所谓economic based revolution实际上指通过体育比赛的全球化达到经济或赚钱的目的。在第四段作者举例说明了这个过程:将美国橄榄球推广到欧洲,目的不是为了发展这项运动,而是为了增加观众的人数,如果有很多的人对这项运动感兴趣,商人们挣到的钱也就越多,如门票收入、广告收入等。
4. What is the author's attitude towards the suggestion to change soccer into one of four 25-minute quarters?
A.Favorable.
B.Unclear.
C.Reserved.
D.Critical.
A B C D
D
[解析] 第五段提到,某些人正建议将45分钟为半场的足球比赛变成以25分钟为一个比赛单位的四个时段。这样做的目的毫不掩饰地是为了增加广告收入,根本不考虑这种比赛的整体性,而作为一场整体性的运动,足球比赛本质上强调的是运动的不间断性(flowing nature of the action)。可见,作者在这里对这种建议进行了批评,认为它破坏了足球运动的本质特征。
5. People want to see higher-level sports competitions mainly because ______
Text 2 Introspection is kind of a drag. It requires unpleasant acts like "thinking" and "talking about emotions," and it can rarely be done while watching TV. But like it or not, more and more workers are taking time to reflect on what they do for a living, seeking jobs that aren't just a means to a paycheck but the fulfilment of some form of calling. Can this supposedly enlightening feeling that your career is "a calling" be a bad thing? Teresa Cardador, an assistant professor in the school of labor and employment relations at the University of Illinois recently co-authored a paper in the Journal of Career Assessment that reviewed research on people who find meaning and a sense of purpose in their work. "There has become this idealized notion of work," Cardador said. "A lot of books and stories in the popular press capture this idea of an idealized orientation toward work. But there's increasing evidence that suggests that despite the perceived desirability, it's not always beneficial." In a nutshell, what Cardador found is that people who view their work as a calling can get too wrapped up in the job, to the point where it becomes counterproductive. Some people burn out—it's called "the fall from the call." Sometimes the person with the calling believes he or she is the only one qualified to handle the work, and that can cause strained relationships with co-workers. Also, the intense focus on work can be depleting, leaving a worker without enough energy to maintain good relationships outside the office. However, "callings can be healthy when individuals inspire and connect with others at work," Cardador said. Between constantly evolving technology and downsizing that requires more of individual workers, it's critical that a worker accept the fact that her or his job tasks may not always be the same. We have to be flexible nowadays, even if certain tasks don't fit our idealized vision of the job. The study said. "People with rigid work identities have a single way of viewing who they are and what they do at work and are unwilling or unable to bend this image to fit with the reality of their work situation. In so doing, they are less able to account for the needs and interests of others in the workplace." Just because you feel passionate about what you do doesn't mean you can't do other things that contribute to the greater good of your organization. You have to step back and examine how you're handling your work, making sure, in the simplest of terms, that you're not unwittingly being a selfish jerk. After all, we work, predominantly, because there are no money trees to harvest. The hope is that our labor lets us build the lives we want. If that comes with a feeling of fulfillment, fantastic.
1. A "calling" is different from a job in that it ______
A.gives the worker a sense of fulfillment
B.involves relationship with co-workers
C.gives enlightenment to the worker himself
D.requires more flexibility in handling tasks
A B C D
A
[解析] 第一段的大概意思是:人们需要经过反思才能找出一个calling,它不仅仅帮我们挣到维持生计所需要的薪酬,而且带给我们the fulfillment of some form of calling(成就某种事业的感觉)。全文最后三句照应了第一段,作者指出,我们工作毕竟是为了挣钱养活自己,我们希望工作能帮我们创造我们想要的生活。如果在此过程中我们获得一种成就感,那就更好了。言外之意,虽然我们不应该刻意地把工作看作一种calling,但是如果我们的工作像一种calling那样能给我们带来成就感,那就更好了。可见,calling与job的最大区别,在于前者侧重于精神上的满足。
2. Cardador and her co-author find that treating a job as calling ______
A.enables workers to find meaning and purpose in their work
B.has the bad effect of letting workers idealize their work
C.makes many workers less productive on their jobs
D.gives more flexibility to workers in handling their work
3. The writer seems to imply there is a direct connection between calling and ______
A.flexibility
B.downsizing
C.rigidity
D.identity
A B C D
C
[解析] 作者在第二段提到,把工作当作一种calling的人可能会get too wrapped up in the job,因此在第三段最后一句和第四、五段,作者似乎把缺乏灵活性和把工作当作一种calling联系在一起。他提醒人们,在技术不断演化的今天,人们更需要根据自己所处的工作环境来调整自己对工作的认识,而不能过于理想化地看待自己的工作。
4. In the last paragraph the readers are advised to ______
A.they become sources of inspiration and cooperation
B.they leave workers concentrated on their work
C.they are changed constantly during lifetime
D.they become the idealized notions of jobs
A B C D
A
[解析] 第三段提到,callings can be healthy when individuals inspire and connect with others at work,也就是说,只有当callings使工作者激励其他人并与其他人建立良好的关系时,它们才是有益的。相反,如果callings使工作者只专注于自己的事业,那么他就可能变成一个selfish jerk,不愿意或不善于同其他人合作。
Text 3 The simple act of surrendering a telephone number to a store clerk may seem innocuous—so much so that many consumers do it with no questions asked. Yet that one action can set in motion a cascade of silent events, as that data point is acquired, analyzed, categorized, stored and sold over and over again. Future attacks on your privacy may come from anywhere, from anyone with money to purchase that phone number you surrendered. If you doubt the multiplier effect, consider your e-mail inbox. If it's loaded with spam, it's undoubtedly because at some point in time you unknowingly surrendered your e-mail to the wrong Web site. Do you think your telephone number or address is handled differently? A cottage industry of small companies with names you've probably never heard of—like Acxiom or Merlin—buy and sell your personal information the way other commodities like corn or cattle futures are bartered. You may think your cell phone is unlisted, but if you've ever ordered a pizza, it might not be. Merlin is one of many commercial data brokers that advertises sale of unlisted phone numbers compiled from various sources—including pizza delivery companies. These unintended, unpredictable consequences that flow from simple actions make privacy issues difficult to grasp, and grapple with. In a larger sense, privacy also is often cast as a tale of "Big Brother" —the government is watching you or a big corporation is watching you. But privacy issues don't necessarily involve large faceless institutions. A spouse takes a casual glance at her husband's Blackberry, a co-worker looks at e-mail over your shoulder or a friend glances at a cell phone text message from the next seat on the bus. While very little of this is news to anyone—people are now well aware there are video cameras and Internet cookies everywhere—there is abundant evidence that people live their lives ignorant of the monitoring, assuming a mythical level of privacy. People write e-mails and type instant messages they never expect anyone to see. Just ask Mark Foley or even Bill Gates, whose e-mails were a cornerstone of the Justice Department's antitrust case against Microsoft. And polls and studies have repeatedly shown that Americans are indifferent to privacy concerns. The general defense for such indifference is summed up a single phrase. "I have nothing to hide." If you have nothing to hide, why shouldn't the government be able to peek at your phone records, your wife see your e-mail or a company send you junk mail? It's a powerful argument, one that privacy advocates spend considerable time discussing and strategizing over. It is hard to deny, however, that people behave different when they're being watched. And it is also impossible to deny that Americans are now being watched more than at any time in history.
1. The email example shows ______
A.email has become the predominant means of communication
B.careless surrendering of personal information can be harmful
C.the communication via email is replacing that via telephone
D.email will become an area for potential attacks on privacy
Text 4 The richest man in America stepped to the podium and declared war on the nation's school systems. High schools had become "obsolete" and were "limiting—even ruining—the lives of millions of Americans every year." The situation had become "almost shameful." Bill Gates, prep-school grad and college dropout, had come before the National Governors Association seeking converts to his plan to do something about it—a plan he would back with $2 billion of his own cash. Gates's speech, in February 2005, was a signature moment in what has become a decade-long campaign to improve test scores and graduation rates, waged by a loose alliance of wealthy CEOs who arrived with no particular background in education policy—a fact that has led critics to dismiss them as "the billionaire boys' club." Their bets on poor urban schools have been as big as their egos and their bank accounts. Has this big money made the big impact that they—as well as teachers, administrators, parents, and students—hoped for? The results, though mixed, are dispiriting proof that money alone can't repair the desperate state of urban education. For all the millions spent on reforms, nine of the 10 school districts studied substantially trailed their state's proficiency and graduation rates—often by 10 points or more. That's not to say that the urban districts didn't make gains. The good news is many did improve and at a rate faster than their states' 60 percent of the time—proof that the billionaires made some solid bets. But those spikes up weren't enough to erase the deep gulf between poor, inner-city schools, where the big givers focused, and their suburban and rural counterparts. The confidence that marked Gates's landmark speech to the governors' association in 2005 has given way to humility. The billionaires have not retreated. But they have improved their approach, and learned a valuable lesson about their limitations. "It's so hard in this country to spread good practice. When we started funding, we hoped it would spread more readily," acknowledges Vicki Phillips, the director of K-12 education at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. "What we learned is that the only things that spread well in school are kids' viruses." The business titans entered the education arena convinced that America's schools would benefit greatly from the tools of the boardroom. They sought to boost incentives for improving performance, deploy new technologies, and back innovators willing to shatter old orthodoxies. They pressed to close schools that were failing, and sought to launch new, smaller ones. They sent principals to boot camp. Battling the long-term worry that the best and brightest passed up the classroom for more lucrative professions, they opened their checkbooks to boost teacher pay. It was an impressive amount of industry. And in some places, it has worked out—but with unanticipated complications.
1. Bill Gates believes that the high school systems ______
A.have failed to develop proper education programs for students
B.are running well except that they need enormous investments
C.have not made students academically ready for college education
D.have converted brilliant young students into dull learners
A B C D
A
[解析] 其实,第一句中的the richest man in America即指Bill Gates,他在全国州长协会上发言,批评美国的学校制度,认为美国的中学教育已经“过时”,并限制甚至毁掉了美国人的生活,因此他想用投资改变美国中学的现状,提高学生的学习成绩和毕业率。
2. One of the important purposes of Bill Gates' speech was to ______
A.call on the rich people to sign contracts with schools
B.enlist the rich people's effort to save failing schools
C.call on the governors to make proper education policies
D.call attention to the nation's low test scores and graduation rates
A B C D
B
[解析] 第一段提到,Bill Gates去演讲的一个主要目的是seeking converts to his plan(为他的计划争取支持者或皈依者),他的计划是改变学校的现状(do something about it),具体来说就是提高学生的成绩和毕业率,他打算自掏腰包20亿美元来支持他的计划。从第二段我们了解到,过去10年来,富人们一直关心学校的教育问题,虽然他们的成功并没有依托特定教育政策背景,因此有些人称他们为“亿万富童俱乐部”,认为他们对城里的穷学校的赌注与他们的自负和他们的账户一样大。第二段最后一句充满幽默,意思是富人们热情很高,自以为是,自认为投很多钱就能改进中学的教育状况,但结果事与愿违。结合第二段来看,第一段中提到的Bill Gates的converts似乎应该包括愿意掏钱资助学校的其他富人。
3. The author thinks that the rich men's money ______
A.will fuel the nation's efforts to save urban schools
B.is not big enough for saving the failing school programs
C.has bet on the wrong target which could not possibly be met
D.could hardly transform failing classrooms as they hoped for
Text 5 Over the last decade, Dr. Benjamin Van Voorhees has been trying to find the best way to teach coping strategies to adolescents who are at risk of suffering from severe depression. The idea is to help them keep depression at bay so that it doesn't become a devastating part of their lives. The goal is to identify kids at risk and then use a combination of traditional counseling and Internet-based learning to keep off mental disorders and their accompanying medicines. Van Voorhees said he wants to change the way doctors, especially pediatricians, deal with mental illness by moving the focus, which is now so heavily trained on treatment, to prevention. He said, "We're trying to develop a type of behavioral vaccine that functions the same way vaccines work in fighting infections. We hope this approach will be simple, culturally acceptable, universally deployable—and inexpensive." He said that initial depressive episodes tend to strike between the ages of 13 and 17. Once an adolescent develops into severe depression, episodes can recur across his or her lifetime. Van Voorhees said young people establish patterns of coping in adolescence and young adulthood. "There's a period of plasticity in the brain during which it's developing the capacity for learning new coping skills," he said. "You want to make youths elastic against mental disorders, and you try to give them ways to cope so that they don't fall into substance abuse." His research has been testing the effectiveness of Internet use and other techniques to hone such skills. Project CATCH-IT is a multimillion-dollar study. CATCH-IT includes an initial motivational interview with a physician to get the young person to understand the importance of the program. It also has a self-contained learning component on the Internet that focuses on changing behavior and improving cognitive thinking and social skills. The website, which has evolved over time, teaches plasticity skills in part by allowing patients to read stories about other teens to learn how they overcame adversity and became more successful in school, their relationships or on the job. Van Voorhees said the goal is to reach as many young people as possible. They want to develop a model that will be embedded in primary care with pediatricians screening kids who are at risk for mental disorders and trying to prevent them ahead of time. Over the years CATCH-IT has shown some evidence of being effective. But in February a new study, called PATH, was begun to determine whether CATCH-IT does a better job of preventing depression than routine mental health care and health education that teens can find online. "With CATCH-IT alone, we saw depression dropping over the years, but we didn't have anything to compare it to," said Monika Marko-Holguin, PATH's project manager.
1. The expression "keep depression at bay" probably means ______
A.prevent depression from happening
B.minimize the effect of depression
C.stop treating depression as a mental disorder
D.using effective medicines to cure depression
A B C D
A
[解析] 词组keep at bay原意为prevent (an enemy,pursuers,etc.) from coming near即“不让(敌人、追逐者等)逼近”。在第一段中,对第二句的理解应该结合第三句的意思,因为这两句话说的都是Van Voorhees医生的研究想要达到的目标。因此keep at bay与下一句中的词组keep off意思相近,都有“防止某人或某物靠近”这样的含义,即“不让它发生”或“预防它的发生”。
2. The behavioral vaccine differs from traditional vaccines in that it ______
A.is a medicine culturally acceptable and inexpensive
B.can cure depression completely at its beginning stages
C.focuses on prevention rather than on medical treatment
D.is used for fighting infections in initial depressive episodes
4. High-risk young adolescents are interviewed to ______
A.evaluate the effectiveness of the project
B.test their cognitive thinking and social skills
C.diagnose the seriousness of their mental disorder
D.get them encouraged to participate in the project
A B C D
D
[解析] 第四段提到的interview是一种initial motivational interview with a physician,这说明,在参加项目的初期,医生要对可能患抑郁症的青少年进行动员,鼓励他们参加这个项目,让他们了解这个项目的重要性,并从中努力学会应对抑郁症的技能。
5. Project PATH ______
A.has enhanced the effectiveness of Project CATCH-IT
B.helps pediatricians to identify high-risk adolescents
C.evaluates CATCH-IT against the traditional approach
D.educates young people on how to prevent depression
A B C D
C
[解析] PATH项目与CATCH-IT项目最大的区别在于:后者通过教会年轻人应对技能来达到预防抑郁症的目的,而前者是对后者实施的效果进行评估,看一看CATCH-IT与传统的mental health care和health education相比哪一种更有效。CATCH-IT重在预防抑郁症,即从遗传的角度找出那些将来可能患抑郁症的青少年,教给他们一些应对精神紊乱的技能,以便当抑郁症来袭时,他们知道如何应对,从而不至于develop into severe depression。