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The concept of man versus machine is at least as old as the industrial revolution, but this phenomenon tends to be most acutely felt during economic downturns and fragile recoveries. And yet, it would be a mistake to think we are right now simply experiencing the painful side of a boom and bust cycle. Certain jobs have gone away for good, outmoded by machines. Since technology has such an insatiable appetite for eating up human jobs, this phenomenon will continue to restructure our economy in ways we can’t immediately foresee.When there is rapid improvement in the price and performance of technology, jobs that were once thought to be immune from automation suddenly become threatened. This argument has attracted a lot of attention, via the success of the book Race Against the Machine, by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, who both hail from MIT’s Center for Digital Business.This is a powerful argument, and a scary one. And yet, John Hagel, author of The Power of Pull and other books,says Brynjolfsson and McAfee miss the reason why these jobs are so vulnerable to technology in the first place.Hagel says we have designed jobs in the U. S. that tend to be “tightly scripted” and “highly standardized” ones that leave no room for individual initiative or creativity. "In short, these are the types of jobs that machines can perform much better at than human beings. That is how we have put a giant target sign on the backs of American workers," Hagel says.It’s time to reinvent the formula for how work is conducted, since we are still relying on a very 20th century notion of work, Hagel says. In our rapidly changing economy, we more than ever need people in the workplace who can take initiative and exercise their imagination “to respond to unexpected events. That’s not something machines are good at. They are designed to perform very predictable activities.As Hagel notes, Brynjolfsson and McAfee indeed touched on this point in their book. We need to reframe race against the machine as race with the machine. In other works, we need to look at the ways in which machines can augment human labor rather than replace it. So then the problem is not really about technology, but rather, “how do we innovate our institutions and our work practices?”1.According to the first paragraph, economic downturns would(  ).2.The authors of Race Against the Machine argue that (  ).  3.Hagel argues that jobs in the U. S. are often (  ).  4.According to the last paragraph, Brynjolfsson and McAfee discussed (  ).  5.Which of the following could be the most appropriate title for the text?

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The decline in American manufacturing is a common refrain, particularly from Donald Trump. "We don't make anything anymore," he told Fox News, while defending his own made-in-Mexico clothing line.Without question, manufacturing has taken a significant hit during recent decades, and further trade deals raise questions about whether new shocks could hit manufacturing.But there is also a different way to look at the data.Across the country, factory owners are now grappling with a new challenge: instead of having too many workers, they may end up with too few. Despite trade competition and outsourcing, American manufacturing still needs to replace tens of thousands of retiring boomers every years. Millennials may not be that interested in taking their place, other industries are recruiting them with similar or better pay.For factory owners, it all adds up to stiff competition for workers-and upward pressure on wages. "They're harder to find and they have job offers," says Jay Dunwell, president of Wolverine Coil Spring, a family-owned firm, "They may be coming [into the workforce], but they've been plucked by other industries that are also doing an well as manufacturing," Mr. Dunwell has begun bringing high school juniors to the factory so they can get exposed to its culture.At RoMan Manufacturing, a maker of electrical transformers and welding equipment that his father cofounded in 1980, Robert Roth keep a close eye on the age of his nearly 200 workers, five are retiring this year. Mr. Roth has three community-college students enrolled in a work-placement program, with a starting wage of $13 an hour that rises to $17 after two years.At a worktable inside the transformer plant, young Jason Stenquist looks flustered by the copper coils he's trying to assemble and the arrival of two visitors. It's his first week on the job. Asked about his choice of career, he says at high school he considered medical school before switching to electrical engineering. "I love working with tools. I love creating." he says.But to win over these young workers, manufacturers have to clear another major hurdle: parents, who lived through the worst US economic downturn since the Great Depression, telling them to avoid the factory. Millennials "remember their father and mother both were laid off. They blame it on the manufacturing recession," says Birgit Klohs, chief executive of The Right Place, a business development agency for western Michigan.These concerns aren't misplaced: Employment in manufacturing has fallen from 17 million in 1970 to 12 million in 2013. When the recovery began, worker shortages first appeared in the high-skilled trades. Now shortages are appearing at the mid-skill levels."The gap is between the jobs that take to skills and those that require a lot of skill," says Rob Spohr, a business professor at Montcalm Community College. "There're enough people to fill the jobs at McDonalds and other places where you don't need to have much skill. It's that gap in between, and that's where the problem is."Julie Parks of Grand Rapids Community points to another key to luring Millennials into manufacturing: a work/life balance. While their parents were content to work long hours, young people value flexibility. "Overtime is not attractive to this generation. They really want to live their lives," she says.1.Jay Dumwell(  )2.Jason Stenquist (  )  3.Birgit Klohs (  )  4.Rob Spohr (  )  5.Julie Parks (  )

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As adults, it seems that we are constantly pursuing happiness, often with mixed results. Yet children appear to have it down to an art-and for the most part they don't need self-help books or therapy. Instead, they look after their wellbeing instinctively, and usually more effectively than we do as grownups. Perhaps it's time to learn a few lessons from them.1.____________            __What does a child do when he's sad? He cries. When he's angry? He shouts. Scared? Probably a bit of both. As we grow up, we learn to control our emotions so they are manageable and don't dictate our behaviours, which is in many ways a good thing. But too often we take this process too far and end up suppressing emotions, especially negative ones. That’s about as effective as brushing dirt under a carpet and can even make us ill. What we need to do is find a way to acknowledge and express what we feel appropriately, and then-again ,like children-move on.2._______               ___ __A couple of Christmases ago, my youngest stepdaughter, who was nine years old at the time, got a Superman T-shirt for Christmas. It cost less than a fiver but she was overjoyed, and couldn't stop talking about it. Too often we believe that a new job, bigger house or better car will be the magic silver bullet that will allow us to finally be content, but the reality is these things have very little lasting impact on our happiness levels. Instead, being grateful for small things every day is a much better way to improve wellbeing.3.______________________Have you ever noticed how much children laugh? If we adults could indulge in a bit of silliness and giggling, we would reduce the stress hormones in our bodies, increase good hormones like endorphins, improve blood flow to our hearts and even have a greater chance of fighting off infection. All of which, of course, have a positive effect on happiness levels.4._____________        _____The problem with being a grown up is that there's an awful lot of serious stuff to deal with---work, mortgage payments, figuring out what to cook for dinner. But as adults we also have the luxury of being able to control our own diaries and it's important that we schedule in time to enjoy the things we love. Those things might be social, sporting, creative or completely random (dancing around the living room, anyone?)--it doesn't matter, so long as they're enjoyable, and not likely to have negative side effects, such as drinking too much alcohol or going on a wild spending spree if you're on a tight budget.5._____________  __  ____Having said all of the above, it's important to add that we shouldn't try too hard to be happy. Scientists tell us this can backfire and actually have a negative impact on our wellbeing. As the Chinese philosopher Chuang Tzu is reported to have said: “Happiness is the absence of striving for happiness. “And in that, once more, we need to look to the example of our children, to whom happiness is not a goal but a natural byproduct of the way they live.

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In an essay entitled "Making It in America”, the author Adam Davidson relates a joke from cotton country about just how much a modern textile mill has been automated: The average mill has only two employees today, “a man and a dog. The man is there to feed the dog, and the dog is there to keep the man away from the machines.”Davidson’s article is one of a number of pieces that have recently appeared making the point that the reason we have such stubbornly high unemployment and declining middle-class incomes today is largely because of the big drop in demand because of the Great Recession, but it is also because of the advances in both globalization and the information technology revolution, which are more rapidly than ever replacing labor with machines or foreign workers.In the past, workers with average skills, doing an average job, could earn an average lifestyle. But, today, average is officially over. Being average just won’t earn you what it used to. It can’t when so many more employers have so much more access to so much more above average cheap foreign labor, cheap robotics, cheap software, cheap automation and cheap genius. Therefore, everyone needs to find their extra——their unique value contribution that makes them stand out in whatever is their field of employment.Yes, new technology has been eating jobs forever, and always will. But there’s been an acceleration. As Davidson notes, “In the 10 years ending in 2009, [ U. S. ] factories shed workers so fast that they erased almost all the gains of the previous 70 years; roughly one out of every three manufacturing jobs—about 6 million in total—disappeared.”There will always be change—new jobs, new products, new services. But the one thing we know for sure is that with each advance in globalization and the I. T. revolution, the best jobs will require workers to have more and better education to make themselves above average.In a world where average is officially over, there are many things we need to do to support employment, but nothing would be more important than passing some kind of G. I. Bill for the 21st century that ensures that every American has access to poet-high school education.1.The joke in Paragraph 1 is used to illustrate (  ).2.According to Paragraph 3, to be a successful employee, one has to (  ).  3.The quotation in Paragraph 4 explains that (  ).  4.According to the author, to reduce unemployment, the most important is  (  ).  5.Which of the following would be the most appropriate title for the text?

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Emerging in the late Sixties and reaching a peak in the Seventies, Land Art was one of a range of new forms, including Body Art, Performance Art, Action Art and Installation Art, which pushed art beyond the traditional confines of the studio and gallery. Rather than portraying landscape, land artists used the physical substance of the land itself as their medium.The British land art, typified by Richard Long’s piece, was not only more domestically scaled, but a lot quirkier than its American counterpart. Indeed, while you might assume that an exhibition of Land Art would consist only of records of works rather than the works themselves, Long’s photograph of his work is the work. Since his “action” is in the past, the photograph is its sole embodiment.That might seem rather an obscure point, but it sets the tone for an exhibition that contains a lot of black- and-white photographs and relatively few natural objects.Long is Britain’s best-known Land Artist and his Stone Circle, a perfect ring of purplish rocks from Portis- head beach laid out on the gallery floor, represents the elegant, rarefied side of the form. The Boyle Family, on the other hand, stands for its dirty, urban aspect. Comprising artists Mark Boyle and Joan Hills and their children, they recreated random sections of the British landscape on gallery walls. Their Olaf Street Study, a square of brick-strewn waste ground, is one of the few works here to embrace the commonplaceness that characterises most of our experience of the landscape most of the time.Parks feature, particularly in the earlier works, such as John Hilliard’s very funny Across the Park, in which a long-haired stroller is variously smiled at by a pretty girl arid unwittingly assaulted in a sequence of images that turn out to be different parts of the same photograph.Generally however British land artists preferred to get away from towns, gravitating towards landscapes that are traditionally considered beautiful such as the Lake District or the Wiltshire Downs. While it probably wasn’t apparent at the time, much of this work is permeated by a spirit of romantic escapism that the likes of Wordsworth would have readily understood. Derek Jarman’s yellow-tinted film Towards Avebury, a collection of long, mostly still shots of the Wiltshire landscape, evokes a tradition of English landscape painting stretching fromSamuel Palmer to Paul Nash.In the case of Hamish Fulton, you can’t help feeling that the Scottish artist has simply found a way of making his love of walking pay. A typical work, such as Seven Days, consists of a single beautiful black-and-white photograph taken on an epic walk, with the mileage and number of days taken listed beneath. British Land Art as shown in this well selected, but relatively modestly scaled exhibition wasn’t about imposing on the landscape, more a kind of landscape-orientated light conceptual art created passing through. It had its origins in the great outdoors, but the results were as gallery-bound as the paintings of Turner and Constable.1.Stone Circle (  )2.Olaf Street Study (  )  3.Across the Park (  )  4.Towards Avebury (  )  5.Seven Days (  )

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Five ways to make conversation with anyoneConversations are links, which means when you have a conversation with a new person, a link gets formed and every conversation you have after that moment will strengthen the link. You meet new people every day: the grocery worker, the cab driver, new people at work or the security guard at the door. Simply starting a conversation with them will form a link. Here are five simple ways that you can make the fit move and start a conversation with strangers.1.                                               Suppose you are in a room with someone you don't know and something within you says “I want to talk with this person”-this is something that mostly happens with all of us. You wanted to say something-the first word-but it just won't come out, it feels like it is stuck somewhere. I know the feeling and here is my advice: just get it out. Just think: what is the worst that could happen? They won't talk with you? Well, they are not talking you now! I truly believe that once you get that first word out everything will just flow. I truly believe that once you get that first word out everything else will just flow. So keep it simple "hi", "hey" or "hello"-do the best you can to gather all of the enthusiasm and energy you can, put on a big smile and say "hi".2.                                               It's a problem all of us face; you have limited time with the person that you want to talk with and you want to make this talk memorable. Honestly, if we got stuck in the rut of “hi”, “hello”, “how are you?” and “what's going on?”, you will fail to give the initial jolt to the conversation that can make it so memorable.So don't be afraid to ask more personal questions. Trust me, you'll be surprised to see how much people are willing to share if you just ask.3.                                                When you meet a person for the first time, make an effort to find the things which you and that person have in common so that you can build the conversation from that point. When you start conversation from there and then move outwards, you'll find all of a sudden that the conversation becomes a lot easier.4.                                                     Imagine you are pouring your heart out to someone and they are just busy on their phone, and if you ask for their attention you get the response “I can multitask”. So when someone tries to communicate with you, just be in that communication wholeheartedly. Make eye contact. Trust me, eye contact is where all the magic happens. When you make eye contact, you can feel the conversation.5.                                               You all came into a conversation where you first met the person, but after some time you may have met again and have forgotten their name. Isn't that awkward! So, remember the little details of the people you met or you talked with; perhaps the places they have been to, the places they want to go, the things they like, the things they hate-whatever you talk about. When you remember such things you can automatically become investor in their well being. So they feel a responsibility to you to keep that relationship going.That's it. Five amazing ways that you can make conversation with almost anyone. Every person is a really good book to read, or to have a conversation with!

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American farmers have been complaining of labor shortages for several years now. Given a multi-year decline in illegal immigration, and a similarly sustained pickup in the U.S. job market, the complaints are unlikely to stop without an overhaul of immigration rules for farm workers.Efforts to create a more straightforward agricultural-workers visa that would enable foreign workers to stay longer in the U.S. and change jobs within the industry have so far failed in Congress. If this doesn’t change, American businesses, communities and consumers will be the losers.Perhaps half of U.S. farm laborers are undocumented immigrants. As fewer such workers enter the U.S., the characteristics of the agricultural workforce are changing. Today’s farm laborers, while still predominantly born in Mexico, are more likely to be settled, rather than migrating, and more likely to be married than single. They are also aging. At the start of this century, about one-third of crop workers were over the age of 35. Now, more than half are. And crop picking is hard on older bodies.One of the debated cure for this labor shortage remains as implausible as it has been all along: Native U.S. workers won’t be returning to the farm.Mechanization is not the answer either—not yet at least. Production of com, cotton, rice, soybeans and wheat have been largely mechanized, but many high-value, labor-intensive crops, such as strawberries, need labor. Even dairy farms, where robots currently do only a small share of milking, have a long way to go before they are automated.As a result, farms have grown increasingly reliant on temporary guest workers using the H-2A visa to fill the gaps in the agricultural workforce. Starting around 2012, requests for the visas rose sharply; from 2011 to 2016 the number of visas issued more than doubled.The H-2A visa has no numerical cap, unlike the H-2B visa for non-agricultural work, which is limited to 66,000 annually. Even so, employers frequently complain that they aren’t allotted all the workers they need. The process is cumbersome, expensive and unreliable. One survey found that bureaucratic delays led H-2A workers to arrive on the job an average of 22 days late. And the shortage is compounded by federal immigration raids, which remove some workers and drive others underground.In effect, the U.S. can import food or it can import the workers who pick it. The U.S. needs a simpler, streamlined, multi-year visa for agricultural workers, accompanied by measures to guard against exploitation and a viable path to U.S. residency for workers who meet the requirements. Otherwise growers will continue to struggle with shortages and uncertainty, and the country as a whole will lose out.1.What problem should be addressed according to the first two paragraphs?2.One trouble with U.S. agricultural workforce is(  ).3.What is the much-argued solution to the labor shortage in U.S. farming?4.Agricultural employers complain about the H-2A visa for its (  ).  5.Which of the following could be the best title for this text?

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Here’s a common scenario that any number of entrepreneurs face today: you’re the CEO of a small business, and though you’re making a nice __1__, you need to find a way to take it to the next level. What you need to do is __2__ growth by establishing a growth team. A growth team is made up of members from different departments within your company, and it harnesses the power of collaboration to focus __3__ on finding ways to grow. Let’s look at a real-world __4__. Prior to forming a growth team, the software company BitTorrent had 50 employees working in the __5__ departments of engineering, marketing and product development. This brought them good results until 2012, when their growth plateaued. The __6__ was that too many customers were using the basic, free version of their product. And __7__ improvements to the premium, paid version, few people were making the upgrade. Things changed, __8__, when an innovative project-marketing manager came aboard, __9__ a growth team and sparked the kind of __10__ perspective they needed. By looking at engineering issues from a marketing point of view, it became clear that the __11__ of upgrades wasn’t due to a quality issue. Most customers were simply unaware of the premium version and what it offered. Armed with this __12__ the marketing and engineering teams joined forces to raise awareness by prominently __13__ the premium version to users of the free version. __14__, upgrades skyrocketed, and revenue increased by 92 percent. But in order for your growth team to succeed, it needs to have a strong leader. It needs someone who can __15__ the interdisciplinary team and keep them on course for improvement. This leader will __16__ the target area, set clear goals and establish a time frame for the __17__ of these goals. The growth leader is also __18__ for keeping the team focused on moving forward and steering them clear of distractions. __19__ attractive new ideas can be distracting, the team leader must recognize when these ideas don’t __20__ the current goal and need to be put on the back burner.

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Many Americans regard the jury system as a concrete expression of crucial democratic values, including the principles that all citizens who meet minimal qualifications of age and literacy are equally competent to serve on juries; that jurors should be selected randomly from a representative cross section of the community; that no citizen should be denied the right to serve on a jury on account of race, religion, sex, or national origin; that defendants are entitled to trial by their peers; and that verdicts should represent the conscience of the community and not just the letter of the law. The jury is also said to be the best surviving example of direct rather than repre¬sentative democracy. In a direct democracy, citizens take turns governing themselves, rather than electing representatives to govern for them.But as recently as in 1968, jury selection procedures conflicted with these democratic ideals. In some states, for example, jury duty was limited to persons of supposedly superior intelligence, education, and moral character. Although the Supreme Court of the United States had prohibited intentional racial discrimination in jury selection as early as the 1880 case of Strauder v. West Virginia, the practice of selecting so-called elite or blue-ribbon juries provided a convenient way around this and other antidiscrimination laws.The system also failed to regularly include women on juries until the mid-20th century. Although women first served on state juries in Utah in 1898, it was not until the 1940s that a majority of states made women eligible for jury duty. Even then several states automatically exempted women from jury duty unless they personally asked to have their names included on the jury list. This practice was justified by the claim that women were needed at home, and it kept juries unrepresentative of women through the 1960s.In 1968, the Congress of the United States passed the Jury Selection and Service Act, ushering in a new era of democratic reforms for the jury. This law abolished special educational requirements for federal jurors and required them to be selected at random from a cross section of the entire community. In the landmark 1975 decision Taylor v. Louisiana, the Supreme Court extended the requirement that juries be representative of all parts of the community to the state level. The Taylor decision also declared sex discrimination in jury selection to be unconsti¬tutional and ordered states to use the same procedures for selecting male and female jurors. (405 words)1.From the principles of the U. S. jury system, we learn that (  ).2.The practice of selecting so-called elite jurors prior to 1968 showed (  ).  3.Even in the 1960s,women were seldom on the jury list in some states because (  ).  4.After the Jury Selection and Service Act was passed, (  ).  5.In discussing the U. S. jury system, the text centers on(  ).

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People have speculated for centuries about a future without work. Today is no different, with academics, writers, and activists once again(1)that technology is replacing human workers. Some imagine that the coming work-free world will be defined by (2) . A few wealthy people will own all the capital, and the masses will struggle in an impoverished wasteland.A different and not mutually exclusive (3) holds that the future will be a wasteland of a different sort, one (4) by purposelessness: Without jobs to give their lives (5) , people will simply become lazy and depressed. (6) today’s unemployed don’t seem to be having a great time. One Gallup poll found that 20 percent of Americans who have been unemployed for at least a year report having depression, double the rate for (7) Americans. Also, some research suggests that the (8) for rising rates of mortality, mental-health problems, and addicting (9)poorly-educated middle-aged people is shortage of well-paid jobs. Perhaps this is why many (10) the agonizing dullness of a jobless future.But it doesn’t (11) follow from findings like these that a world without work would be filled with unease. Such visions are based on the (12) of being unemployed in a society built on the concept of employment. In the (13) of work, a society designed with other ends in mind could (14) strikingly different circumstances for the future of labor and leisure. Today, the (15) of work may be a bit overblown. “Many jobs are boring, degrading, unhealthy, and a waste of human potential,” says John Danaher, a lecturer at the National University of Ireland in Galway.These days, because leisure time is relatively (16) for most workers, people use their free time to counterbalance the intellectual and emotional (17) of their jobs. “When I come home from a hard day’s work, I often feel (18) ,” Danaher says, adding, “In a world in which I don’t have to work, I might feel rather different”—perhaps different enough to throw himself (19) a hobby or a passion project with the intensity usually reserved for (20) matters.

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Whatever happened to the death of newspaper? A year ago the end seemed near. The recession threatened to remove the advertising and readers that had not already fled to the internet. Newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle were chronicling their own doom. America’s Federal Trade Commission launched a round of talks about how to save newspapers. Should they become charitable corporations? Should the state subsidize them? It will hold another meeting soon. But the discussions now seem out of date.In much of the world there is little sign of crisis. German and Brazilian papers have shrugged off the recession. Even American newspapers, which inhabit the most troubled comer of the global industry, have not only survived but often returned to profit. Not the 20% profit margins that were routine a few years ago, but profit all the same.It has not been much fun. Many papers stayed afloat by pushing journalists overboard. The American Society of News Editors reckons that 13, 500 newsroom jobs have gone since 2007. Readers are paying more for slimmer products. Some papers even had the nerve to refuse delivery to distant suburbs. Yet these desperate measures have proved the right ones and, sadly for many journalists, they can be pushed further.Newspapers are becoming more balanced businesses,with a healthier mix of revenues from readers and ad-vertisers. American papers have long been highly unusual in their reliance on ads. Fully 87% of their revenues came from advertising in 2008, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD). In Japan the proportion is 35%. Not surprisingly, Japanese newspapers are much more stable.The whirlwind that swept through newsrooms harmed everybody, but much of the damage has been concen-trated in areas where newspapers are least distinctive. Car and film reviewers have gone. So have science and general business reporters. Foreign bureaus have been savagely cut off. Newspapers are less complete as a result. But completeness is no longer a virtue in the newspaper business. (329 words)1.By saying “Newspapers like", their own doom” (Para. 1), the author indicates that newspaper (  ).2.Some newspapers refused delivery to distant suburbs probably because (  ).  3.Compared with their American counterparts, Japanese newspapers are much more stable because they (  ).  4.What can be inferred from the last paragraph about the current newspaper business?5.The most appropriate title for this text would be(  ).

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In 1999, the price of oil hovered around $16 a barrel. By 2008, it had( 1 )the $100 a barrel mark. The reasons for the surge(2) from the dramatic growth of the economies of China and India to widespread(3 )in oil-producing regions, including Iraq and Nigeria’s delta region. Triple-digit oil prices have(4)the economic and political map of the world, (5)some old notions of power. Oil-rich nations are enjoying historic gains and opportunities, (6)major importers—including China and India, home to a third of the world’s population—(7)rising economic and social costs. Managing this new order is fast becoming a central (8)of global politics. Countries that need oil are clawing at each other to(9)  scarce supplies, and are willing to deal with any government, (10)how unpleasant, to do it.In many poor nations with oil, the profits are being lost to corruption, (11)these countries of their best hope for development. And oil is fueling enormous investment funds run by foreign governments,(12)some in the West see as a new threat.Countries like Russia, Venezuela and Iran are well supplied with rising oil(13), a change reflected in newly aggressive foreign policies. But some unexpected countries are reaping benefits, (14)costs, from higher prices. Consider Germany.  (15)it imports virtually all its oil, it has prospered from extensive trade with a booming Russia and the Middle East. German exports to Russia(16)128 percent from 2001 to 2006.In the United States, as already high gas prices rose(17)higher in the spring of 2008, the issue cropped up in the presidential campaign, with Senators McCain and Obama(18)for a federal gas tax holiday during the peak summer driving months. And driving habits began to(19), as sales of small cars jumped and mass transport systems(20)the country reported a sharp increase in riders.

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A century ago, the immigrants from across the Atlantic included settlers and sojourners. Along with the many folks looking to make a permanent home in the United States came those who had no intention to stay, and who would make some money and them go home. Between 1908 and 1915, about 7 million people arrived while about 2 million departed. About a quarter of all Italian immigrants, for example, eventually returned to Italy for good. They even had an affectionate nickname, “uccelli di passaggio”, birds of passage.Today, we are much more rigid about immigrants. We divide newcomers into two categories: legal or illegal, good or bad. We hail them as Americans in the making, or brand them as aliens to be kicked out. That framework has contributed mightily to our broken immigration system and the long political paralysis over how to fix it. We don’t need more categories, but we need to change the way we think about categories. We need to look beyond strict definitions of legal and illegal. To start, we can recognize the new birds of passage, those living and thriving in the gray areas. We might then begin to solve our immigration challenges.Crop pickers, violinists, construction workers, entrepreneurs, engineers, home health-care aides and physicists are among today’s birds of passage. They are energetic participants in a global economy driven by the flow of work, money and ideas. They prefer to come and go as opportunity calls them. They can manage to have a job in one place and a family in another.With or without permission, they straddle laws, jurisdictions and identities with ease. We need them to imagine the United States as a place where they can be productive for a while without committing themselves to staying forever. We need them to feel that home can be both here and there and that they can belong to two nations honorably.Accommodating this new world of people in motion will require new attitudes on both sides of the immigration battle. Looking beyond the culture war logic of right or wrong means opening up the middle ground and understanding that managing immigration today requires multiple paths and multiple outcomes, including some that are not easy to accomplish legally in the existing system.1.“Birds of passage” refers to those who (  ).2.It is implied in Paragraph 2 that the current immigration system in the U. S.  (  ).  3.According to the author, today’s birds of passage want  (  ).  4.The author suggests that the birds of passage today should be treated (  ).    5.The most appropriate title for this text would be(  ).

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For years, studies have found that first-generation college students—those who do not have a parent with a college degree-lag other students on a range of education achievement factors. Their grades are lower and their dropout rates are higher. But since such students are most likely to advance economically if they succeed in higher education, colleges and universities have pushed for decades to recruit more of them. This has created “a paradox” in that recruiting first-generation students, but then watching many of them fail, means that higher education has “continued to reproduce and widen, rather than close” an achievement gap based on social class, according to the depressing beginning of a paper forthcoming in the journal Psychological Science.But the article is actually quite optimistic, as it outlines a potential solution to this problem, suggesting that an approach (which involves a one-hour, next-to-no-cost program) can close 63 percent of the achievement gap (measured by such factors as grades) between first-generation and other students.The authors of the paper are from different universities, and their findings are based on a study involving 147 students (who completed the project) at an unnamed private university. First generation was defined as not having a parent with a four-year college degree. Most of the first-generation students (59.1 percent) were recipients of Pell Grants, a federal grant for undergraduates with financial need, while this was true only for 8.6 percent of the students with at least one parent with a four-year degree.Their thesis—that a relatively modest intervention could have a big impact—was based on the view that first-generation students may be most lacking not in potential but in practical knowledge about how to deal with the issues that face most college students. They cite past research by several authors to show that this is the gap that must be narrowed to close the achievement gap.Many first-generation students “struggle to navigate the middle-class culture of higher education, learn the ‘rules of the game,’ and take advantage of college resources,” they write. And this becomes more of a problem when collages don’t talk about the class advantage and disadvantages of different groups of students. Because US colleges and universities seldom acknowledge how social class can affect students’ educational experience, many first-generation students lack sight about why they are struggling and do not understand how students like them can improve.1.Recruiting more first-generation students has ( ).2.The authors of the research article are optimistic because ( ). 3.The study suggests that most first-generation students ( ). 4.The author of the paper believe that first-generation students ( ). 5.We may infer from the last paragraph that( ).

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Every Saturday morning, at 9 am, more than 50,000 runners set off to run 5km around their local park. The Parkrun phenomenon began with a dozen friends and has inspired 400 events in the UK and more abroad. Events are free, staffed by thousands of volunteers. Runners range from four years old to grandparents; their times range from Andrew Baddeley's world record 13 minutes 48 seconds up to an hour.Parkrun is succeeding where London's Olympic "legacy" is failing. Ten years ago on Monday, it was announced that the Games of the 30th Olympiad would be in London. Planning documents pledged that the great legacy of the Games would be to level a nation of sport lovers away from their couches. The population would be fitter, healthier and produce more winners. It has not happened. The number of adults doing weekly sport did rise, by nearly 2 million in the run-up to 2012-but the general population was growing faster. Worse, the numbers are now falling at an accelerating rate. The opposition claims primary school pupils doing at least two hours of sport a week have nearly halved. Obesity has risen among adults and children. Official retrospections continue as to why London 2012 failed to "inspire a generation." The success of Parkrun offers answers.Parkun is not a race but a time trial: Your only competitor is the clock. The ethos welcomes anybody. There is as much joy over a puffed-out first-timer being clapped over the line as there is about top talent shining. The Olympic bidders, by contrast, wanted to get more people doing sports and to produce more elite athletes. The dual aim was mixed up: The stress on success over taking part was intimidating for newcomers.Indeed, there is something a little absurd in the state getting involved in the planning of such a fundamentally "grassroots", concept as community sports associations. If there is a role for government, it should really be getting involved in providing common goods-making sure there is space for playing fields and the money to pave tennis and netball courts, and encouraging the provision of all these activities in schools. But successive governments have presided over selling green spaces, squeezing money from local authorities and declining attention on sport in education. Instead of wordy, worthy strategies, future governments need to do more to provide the conditions for sport to thrive. Or at least not make them worse.1.According to Paragraph1, Parkrun has(  ).2.The author believes that London's Olympic "legacy" has failed to (  ).  3.Parkrun is different from Olympic games in that it (  ).  4.With regard to mass sport, the author holds that governments should (  ).  5.The author's attitude to what UK governments have done for sports is(  ).

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Last weekend Kyle MacDonald in Montreal threw a party to celebrate the fact that he got his new home in exchange for a red paper clip. Starting a year ago, MacDonald bartered the clip for increasingly valuable stuff, including a camp stove and free rent in a Phoenix flat. Having announced his aim (the house) in advance, MacDonald likely got a boost from techies eager to see the Internet pass this daring test of its networking power. “My whole motto (座右铭) was ‘Start small, think big, and have fun’, ” says MacDonald, 26, “I really kept my effort on the creative side rather than the business side.”Yet as odd as the MacDonald exchange was, barter is now big business on the Net. This year more than 400,000 companies worldwide will exchange some $10 billion worth of goods and services on a growing number of barter sites. These Web sites allow companies to trade products for a virtual currency, which they can use to buy goods from other members. In Iceland, garment-maker Kapusalan sells a third of its output on the booming Vidskiptanetid exchange, earning virtual money that it uses to buy machinery and pay part of employee salaries. The Troc-services exchange in France offers more than 4,600 services, from math lessons to ironing.This is not a primitive barter system. By creating currencies, the Internet removes a major barrier—what Bob Meyer, publisher of Barter News, calls “the double coincidence of wants.” That is, two parties once not only had to find each other, but also an exchange of goods that both desired. Now, they can price the deal in virtual currency.Barter also helps firms make use of idle capacity. For example, advertising is “hugely bartered” because many media, particularly on the Web can supply new ad space at little cost. Moreover, Internet ads don’t register in industry-growth statistics, because many exchanges are arranged outside the formal exchanges. Like eBay, most barter sites allow members to “grade” trading partners for honesty quality and so on.. Barter exchanges can allow firms in countries with hyperinflation or nontradable currencies to enter global trades. Next year, a nonprofit exchange called Quick Lift Two (QL2) plans to open in Nairobi, offering barter deals to 38,000 Kenyan farmers in remote areas. Two small planes will deliver the goods. QL2 director Gacii Waciuma says the farmers are excited to be “liberated from corrupt middlemen.” For them, barter evokes a bright future, not a precapitalist past.1.The word “techies” (Line 4, Para 1) probably refers to those who are(  ).2.Many people may have deliberately helped Kyle because they (  ).  3.The Internet barter system relies heavily on (  ).  4.It is implies that Internet advertisements can help (  ).  5.Which of the follow is true of QL2 according to the author?

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It is true that CEO pay has gone up — top ones may make 300 times the pay of typical workers on average, and since the mid-1970s CEO pay for large publicly traded American corporations has, by varying estimates, gone up by about 500%. The typical CEO of a top American corporation —from the 350 largest such companies — now makes about $18.9 million a year.The best model for understanding the growth of CEO pay is that of limited CEO talent in a world where business opportunities for the top firms are growing rapidly. The efforts of America’s highest-earning 1% have been one of the more dynamic elements of the global economy. It’s not popular to say, but one reason their pay has gone up so much is that CEOs really have upped their game relative to many other workers in the U.S. economy.Today’s CEO, at least for major American firms, must have many mere skills than simply being able to “run the company”. CEOs must have a good sense of financial markets and maybe even how the company should trade in them. They also need better public relations skills than their predecessors, as the costs of even a minor slipup can be significant. Then there’s the fact that large American companies are much more globalized than ever before, with supply chains spread across a larger number of countries. To lead in that system requires knowledge that is fairly mind-boggling plus, virtually all major American companies are beyond this major CEOs still have to do all the day-to-day work they have always done. The common idea that high CEO pay is mainly about ripping people off doesn’t explain history very well. By most measures, corporate governance has become a lot tighter and more rigorous since the 1970s. Yet it is principally during this period of stronger governance that CEO pay has been high and rising. That suggests it is in the broader corporate interest to recruit top candidates for increasingly tough jobs.Furthermore, the highest CEO salaries are paid to outside candidates, not to the cozy insider picks, another sign that high CEO pay is not some kind of depredation at the expense of the rest of the company. And the stock market reacts positively when companies tie CEO pay to, say, stock prices, a sign that those practices build up corporate value not just for the CEO.(1)Which of the following has contributed to CEO pay rise?(2)Compared with their predecessors, today’s CEOs are required to(  ) .(3)CEO pay has been rising since the 1970s despite(  ).(4)High CEO pay can be justified by the fact that it helps(  ).(5)The most suitable title for this text would be(  ).

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The hugely popular blog the Skint Foodie chronicles how Tony balances his love of good food with living on benefits. After bills, Tony has £60 a week to spend, £40 of which goes on food, but 10 years ago he was earning £130, 000 a year working in corporate communications and eating at London’s best restaurants at least twice a week. Then his marriage failed, his career burned out and his drinking became serious. “The community mental health team saved my life. And I felt like that again, to a certain degree, when people responded to the blog so well. It gave me the validation and confidence that I’d lost. But it’s still a day-by-day thing.’’ Now he’s living in a council flat and fielding offers from literary agents. He’s feeling positive, but he’ll carry on blogging---not about eating as cheaply as you can--- “there are so many people in a much worse state, with barely any money to spend on food” ---but eating well on a budget. Here’s his advice for economical foodies.1.                                                Impulsive spending isn’t an option, so plan your week’s menu in advance,making shopping lists for your ingredients in their exact quantities. I have an Excel template for a week of breakfast, lunch and dinner. Stop laughing: it’s not just cost effective but helps you balance your diet. It’s also a good idea to shop daily instead of weekly, because, being human, you’ll sometimes change your mind about what you fancy.2.                                                                 This is where supermarkets and their anonymity come in handy. With them,there’s not the same embarrassment as when buying one carrot in a little greengrocer. And if you plan properly, you’ll know that you only need, say,350 g of shin of beef and six rashers of bacon, not whatever weight is prepacked in the supermarket chiller.3.                                                You may proudly claim to only have frozen peas in the freezer—that’s not good enough. Mine is filled with leftovers, bread, stock, meat and fish. Planning ahead should eliminate wastage, but if you have surplus vegetables you’ll do a vegetable soup, and all fruits threatening to “go off” will be cooked or juiced.4.                                                 Everyone says this, but it really is a top tip for frugal eaters. Shop at butchers, delis and fish-sellers regularly, even for small things, and be super friendly. Soon you’ll feel comfortable asking if they’ve any knuckles of ham for soups and stews, or beef bones, chicken carcasses and fish heads for stock, which, more often than not, they’ll let you have for free.5.                                                 You won’t be eating out a lot, but save your pennies and once every few months treat yourself to a set lunch at a good restaurant—£ 1.75 a week for three months gives you £21 —more than enough for a three-course lunch at Michelin-starred Arbutus. It’s £16.95 there—or £12.99 for a large pizza from Domino’s: I know which I’d rather eat.

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Robert F. Kennedy once said that a country's GDP measures “everything except that which makes life worthwhile.” With Britain voting to leave the European Union, and GDP already predicted to slow as a result, it is now a timely moment to assess what he was referring to.The question of GDP and its usefulness has annoyed policymakers for over half a century. Many argue that it is a flawed concept. It measures things that do not matter and misses things that do. By most recent measures, the UK's GDP has been the envy of the Western world, with record low unemployment and high growth figures. If everything was going so well, then why did over 17 million people vote for Brexit, despite the warnings about what it could do to their country's economic prospects?A recent annual study of countries and their ability to convert growth into well-being sheds some light on that question. Across the 163 countries measured, the UK is one of the poorest performers in ensuring that economic growth is translated into meaningful improvements for its citizens. Rather than just focusing on GDP, over 40 different sets of criteria from health, education and civil society engagement have been measured to get a more rounded assessment of how countries are performing.While all of these countries face their own challenges, there are a number of consistent themes. Yes, there has been a budding economic recovery since the 2008 global crash, but in key indicators in areas such as health and education, major economies have continued to decline. Yet this isn't the case with all countries. Some relatively poor European countries have seen huge improvements across measures including civil society, income equality and the environment.This is a lesson that rich countries can learn: When GDP is no longer regarded as the sole measure of a country's success, the world looks very different.So, what Kennedy was referring to was that while GDP has been the most common method for measuring the economic activity of nations, as a measure, it is no longer enough. It does not include important factors such as environmental quality or education outcomes — all things that contribute to a person's sense of well-being.The sharp hit to growth predicted around the world and in the UK could lead to a decline in the everyday services we depend on for our well-being and for growth. But policymakers who refocus efforts on improving well-being rather than simply worrying about GDP figures could avoid the forecasted doom and may even see progress.1.Robert F. Kennedy is cited because he(  ).2.It can be inferred from Paragraph 2 that (  ).  3.Which of the following is true about the recent annual study?4.In the last two paragraphs, the author suggests that (  ).  5.Which of the following is the best title for the text?

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That everyone’s too busy these days is a cliché. But one specific complaint is made especially mournfully: There’s never any time to read.What makes the problem thornier is that the usual time-management techniques don’t seem sufficient. The web’s full of articles offering tips on making time to read: “Give up TV” or “Carry a book with you at all times” But in my experience, using such methods to free up the odd 30 minutes doesn’t work. Sit down to read and the flywheel of work-related thoughts keeps spinning-or else you’re so exhausted that a challenging book’s the last thing you need. The modern mind, Tim Parks, a novelist and critic, writes, “is overwhelmingly inclined toward communication…It is not simply that one is interrupted; it is that one is actually inclined to interruption”. Deep reading requires not just time, but a special kind of time which can’t be obtained merely by becoming more efficient.In fact, “becoming more efficient” is part of the problem. Thinking of time as a resource to be maximized means you approach it instrumentally, judging any given moment as well spent only in so far as it advances progress toward some goal immersive reading, by contrast, depends on being willing to risk inefficiency, goallessness, even time-wasting. Try to slot it as a to-do list item and you’ll manage only goal-focused reading-useful, sometimes, but not the most fulfilling kind. “The future comes at us like empty bottles along an unstoppable and nearly infinite conveyor belt,” writes Gary Eberle in his book Sacred Time, and “we feel a pressure to fill these different-sized bottles (days, hours, minutes) as they pass, for if they get by without being filled, we will have wasted them”. No mind-set could be worse for losing yourself in a book.So what does work? Perhaps surprisingly, scheduling regular times for reading. You’d think this might fuel the efficiency mind-set, but in fact, Eberle notes, such ritualistic behavior helps us “step outside time’s flow” into “soul time”. You could limit distractions by reading only physical books, or on single-purpose e-readers. “Carry a book with you at all times” can actually work, too-providing you dip in often enough, so that reading becomes the default state from which you temporarily surface to take care of business, before dropping back down. On a really good day, it no longer feels as if you’re “making time to read,” but just reading, and making time for everything else.1.The usual time-management techniques don’t work because(  ).2.The “empty bottles” metaphor illustrates that people feel a pressure to(  ).  3.Eberle would agree that scheduling regular times for reading helps (  ).  4.“Carry a book with you at all times” can work if (  ).  5.The best title for this text could be(  ).

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