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When Microsoft bought task management app Wunderlist and mobile calendar Sunrise in 2015, it picked up two newcomers that were attracting considerable buzz in Silicon Valley. Microsoft’s own Office dominates the market for “productivity” software, but the start-ups represented a new wave of technology designed from the ground up for the smartphone world.Both apps, however, were later scrapped, after Microsoft said it had used their best features in its own products. Their teams of engineers stayed on, making them two of the many “acqui-hires” that the biggest companies have used to feed their insatiable hunger for tech talent.To Microsoft’s critics, the fates of Wunderlist and Sunrise are examples of a remorseless drive by Big Tech to chew up any innovative companies that lie in their path. “They bought the seedlings and closed them down,” complained Paul Arnold, a partner at San Francisco-based Switch Ventures, putting an end to businesses that might one day turn into competitors. Microsoft declined to comment.Like other start-up investors, Mr. Arnold’s own business often depends on selling start-ups to larger tech companies, though he admits to mixed feelings about the result: “I think these things are good for me, if I put my selfish hat on. But are they good for the American economy? I don’t know.”The US Federal Trade Commission says it wants to find the answer to that question. This week, it asked the five most valuable US tech companies for information about their many small acquisitions over the past decade. Although only a research project at this stage, the request has raised the prospect of regulators wading into early-stage tech markets that until now have been beyond their reach.Given their combined market value of more than $5.5 trillion, rifling through such small deals—many of them much less prominent than Wunderlist and Sunrise—might seem beside the point. Between them, the five biggest tech companies (Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Facebook) have spent an average of only $3.4 billion a year on sub—$1 billion acquisitions over the past five years—a drop in the ocean compared with their massive financial reserves, and the more than $130 billion of venture capital that was invested in the US last year.However, critics say that the big companies use such deals to buy their most threatening potential competitors before their businesses have a chance to gain momentum, in some cases as part of a “buy and kill” tactic to simply close them down.1. What is true about Wunderlist and Sunrise after their acquisitions?2. Microsoft’s critics believe that the big tech companies tend to ___.3. Paul Arnold is concerned that small acquisitions might _.4. The US Federal Trade Commission intend to _.5. For the five biggest tech companies, their small acquisition have ___.

With the global population predicted to hit close to 10 billion by 2050, and forecasts that agricultural production in some regions will need to nearly double to keep pace, food security is increasingly making headlines. In the UK, it has become a big talking point recently too, for a rather particular reason: Brexit.Brexit is seen by some as an opportunity to reverse a recent trend towards the UK importing food. The country produces only about 60 per cent of the food it eats, down from almost three-quarters in the late 1980s. A move back to self-sufficiency, the argument goes, would boost the farming industry, political sovereignty and even the nation’s health. Sounds great—but how feasible is this vision?According to a report on UK food production from the University of Leeds, 85 percent of the country’s total land area is associated with meat and dairy production. That supplies 80 per cent of what is consumed, so even covering the whole country in livestock farms wouldn’t allow us to cover all our meat and dairy needs.There are many caveats to those figures, but they are still grave. To become much more self-sufficient, the UK would need to drastically reduce its consumption of animal foods, and probably also farm more intensively-meaning fewer green fields, and more factory-style production.But switching to a mainly plant-based diet wouldn’t help. There is a good reason why the UK is dominated by animal husbandry: most of its terrain doesn’t have the right soil or climate to grow crops on a commercial basis. Just 25 per cent of the country’s land is suitable for crop-growing, most of which is already occupied by arable fields. Even if we converted all the suitable land to fields of fruit and veg-which would involve taking out all the nature reserves and removing thousands of people from their homes-we would achieve only a 30 per cent boost in crop production.Just 23 per cent of the fruit and vegetables consumed in the UK are currently home-grown, so even with the most extreme measures we could meet only 30 per cent of our fresh produce needs. That is before we look for the space to grow the grains, sugars, seeds and oils that provide us with the vast bulk of our current calorie intake.1. Some people argue that food self-sufficient in UK would ___.2. The report by the University of Leeds shows that in the UK _.3. Crop-growing in the UK is restricted due to _.4. It can be learned from the last paragraph that British people _.5. The author’s attitude to food self-sufficient in the UK is ___.

“Reskilling” is something that sounds like a buzzword but is actually a requirement if we plan to have a future where a lot of would-be workers do not get left behind. We know we are moving into a period where the jobs in demand will change rapidly, as will the requirements of the jobs that remain. Research by the World Economic Forum finds that on average 42 per cent of the “core skills” within job roles will change by 2022. That is a very short timeline.The question of who should pay for reskilling is a thorny one. For individual companies, the temptation is always to let go of workers whose skills are no longer in demand and replace them with those whose skills are. That does not always happen. AT&T is often given as the gold standard of a company that decided to do a massive reskilling program rather than go with a fire-and-hire strategy. Other companies had also pledged to create their own plans. When the skills mismatch is in the broader economy, though, the focus usually turns to government to handle. Efforts in Canada and elsewhere have been arguably languid at best, and have given us a situation where we frequently hear of employers begging for workers, even at times and in regions where unemployment is high.With the pandemic, unemployment is very high indeed. In February, at 3.5 per cent and 5.5 per cent respectively, unemployment rates in Canada and United States were at generational lows and worker shortages were everywhere. As of May, those rates had spiked up to 13.3 per cent and 13.7 per cent, and although many worker shortages had disappeared, not all had done so. In the medical field, to take an obvious example, the pandemic meant that there were still clear shortages of doctors, nurses and other medical personnel.Of course, it is not like you can take an unemployed waiter and train him to be a doctor in a few weeks. But even if you cannot close that gap, maybe you can close others, and doing so would be to the benefit of all concerned. That seems to be the case in Sweden: When forced to furlough 90 per cent of their cabin staff, Scandinavian Airlines decided to start up a short retraining program that reskilled the laid-off workers to support hospital staff. The effort was a collective one and involved other companies as well as a Swedish university.1. Research by the World Economic Forum suggests ___.2. AT&T is cited to show _.3. Efforts to resolve the skills mismatch in Canada _.4. We can learn from Paragraph 3 that there was _.5. Scandinavian Airlines decided to ___.

It’s not difficult to set targets for staff. It is much harder,（1）, to understand their negative consequences. Most work-related behaviors have multiple components.（2）one and the others become distorted.Travel on a London bus and you’ll（3）see how this works with drivers. Watch people get on and show their tickets. Are they carefully inspected? Never. Do people get on without paying? Of course! Are there inspectors to（4）that people have paid? Possibly, but very few. And people who run for the bus? They are（5）. How about jumping lights? Buses do so almost as frequently as cyclists.Why? Because the target is（6）. People complained that buses were late and infrequent.（7）, the number of buses and bus lanes were increased, and drivers were（8）or punished according to the time they took. And drivers hit these targets. But they（9）hit cyclists. If the target was changed to（10）, you would have more inspectors and more sensitive pricing. If the criterion changed to safety, you would get more（11）drivers who obeyed traffic laws. But both these criteria would be at the expense of time.There is another（12）: people became immensely inventive in hitting targets. Have you（13）that you can leave on a flight an hour late but still arrive on time? Tailwinds? Of course not! Airlines have simply changed the time a（14）is meant to take. A one-hour flight is now billed as a two-hour flight.The（15）of the story is simple. Most jobs are multidimensional, with multiple criteria. Choose one criterion and you may well（16）others. Everything can be done faster and made cheaper, but there is a（17）. Setting targets can and does have unforeseen negative consequences.This is not an argument against target-setting. But it is an argument for exploring consequences first. All good targets should have multiple criteria（18）critical factors such as time, money, quality and customer feedback. The trick is not only to（19）just one or even two dimensions of the objective, but also to understand how to help people better（20）the objective.

Write an essay based on the following chart. In your writing, you should (1) interpret the chart, and (2) give your comments. You should write about 150 words on the ANSWER SHEET. (15 points)

Suppose you are going to study abroad and share an apartment with John, a local student. Write him an email to (1) tell him about your living habits, and (2) ask for advice about living there. You should write about 100 words on the ANSWER SHEET. Do not use your own name. Use “Li Ming” instead. Do not write your address. (10 points)

Most people would define optimism as being endlessly happy, with a glass that’s perpetually half full. But that’s exactly the kind of false cheerfulness that positive psychologists wouldn’t recommend. “Healthy optimism means being in touch with reality,” says Tal Ben-Shahar, a Harvard professor. According to Ben-Shahar, realistic optimists are those who make the best of things that happen, but not those who believe everything happens for the best. Ben-Shahar uses three optimistic exercises. When he feels down--say, after giving a bad lecture--he grants himself permission to be human. He reminds himself that not every lecture can be a Nobel winner; some will be less effective than others. Next is reconstruction. He analyzes the weak lecture, learning lessons for the future about what works and what doesn’t. Finally, there is perspective, which involves acknowledging that in the grand scheme of life, one lecture really doesn’t matter.

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 message of this survey of the British land art--the most comprehensive to date--is that the British variant, 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 Portishead beach laid out on the gallery floor, represents the elegant, rarefied side of the form. The Boyle Family, on the other hand, stand 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 and 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 from Samuel 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. [A] originates from a long walk that the artist took. Stone Circle [B] illustrates a kind of landscape-orientated light conceptual art. Olaf Street Study [C] reminds people of the English landscape painting tradition. Across the Park [D] represents the elegance of the British land art. Towards Avebury [E] depicts the ordinary side of the British land art. Seven days [F] embodies a romantic escape into the Scottish outdoors. [G] contains images from different parts of the same photograph. A、[A]B、[B]C、[C]D、[D]E、[E]F、[F]G、[G]

What would you do with $590m? This is now a question for Gloria MacKenzie, an 84-year-old widow who recently emerged from her small, tin-roofed house in Florida to collect the biggest undivided lottery jackpot in history. If she hopes her new-found fortune will yield lasting feelings of fulfillment, she could do worse than read Happy Money by Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton. These two academics use an array of behavioral research to show that the most rewarding ways to spend money can be counterintuitive. Fantasies of great wealth often involve visions of fancy cars and extravagant homes. Yet satisfaction with these material purchases wears off fairly quickly. What was once exciting and new becomes old-hat; regret creeps in. It is far better to spend money on experiences, say Ms Dunn and Mr Norton, like interesting trips, unique meals or even going to the cinema. These purchases often become more valuable with time--as stories or memories--particularly if they involve feeling more connected to others. This slim volume is packed with tips to help wage slaves as well as lottery winners get the most “happiness bang for your buck.” It seems most people would be better off if they could shorten their commutes to work, spend more time with friends and family and less of it watching television (something the average American spends a whopping two months a year doing, and is hardly jollier for it). Buying gifts or giving to charity is often more pleasurable than purchasing things for oneself, and luxuries are most enjoyable when they are consumed sparingly. This is apparently the reason McDonald’s restricts the availability of its popular McRib--a marketing trick that has turned the pork sandwich into an object of obsession. Readers of Happy Money are clearly a privileged lot, anxious about fulfillment, not hunger. Money may not quite buy happiness, but people in wealthier countries are generally happier than those in poor ones. Yet the link between feeling good and spending money on others can be seen among rich and poor people around the world, and scarcity enhances the pleasure of most things for most people. Not everyone will agree with the authors’ policy ideas, which range from mandating more holiday time to reducing tax incentives for American homebuyers. But most people will come away from this book believing it was money well spent. 1、According to Dunn and Norton, which of the following is the most rewarding purchase?2、The author’s attitude toward Americans’ watching TV is___.3、McRib is mentioned in Paragraph 3 to show that_.4、According to the last paragraph, Happy Money_.5、This text mainly discusses how to__.

An article in Scientific America has pointed out that empirical research says that, actually, you think you’re more beautiful than you are. We have a deep-seated need to feel good about ourselves and we naturally employ a number of self-enhancing strategies to achieve this. Social psychologists have amassed oceans of research into what they call the “above average effect,” or “illusory superiority,” and shown that, for example, 70% of us rate ourselves as above average in leadership, 93% in driving and 85% at getting on well with others--all obviously statistical impossibilities. We rose-tint our memories and put ourselves into self-affirming situations. We become defensive when criticized, and apply negative stereotypes to others to boost our own esteem. We stalk around thinking we’re hot stuff. Psychologist and behavioural scientist Nicholas Epley oversaw a key study into self-enhancement and attractiveness. Rather than have people simply rate their beauty compared with others, he asked them to identify an original photograph of themselves from a lineup including versions that had been altered to appear more and less attractive. Visual recognition, reads the study, is “an automatic psychological process, occurring rapidly and intuitively with little or no apparent conscious deliberation.” If the subjects quickly chose a falsely flattering image--which most did--they genuinely believed it was really how they looked. Epley found no significant gender difference in responses. Nor was there any evidence that those who self-enhanced the most (that is, the participants who thought the most positively doctored pictures were real) were doing so to make up for profound insecurities. In fact, those who thought that the images higher up the attractiveness scale were real directly corresponded with those who showed other markers for having higher self-esteem. “I don’t think the findings that we have are any evidence of personal delusion,” says Epley. “It’s a reflection simply of people generally thinking well of themselves.” If you are depressed, you won’t be self-enhancing. Knowing the results of Epley’s study, it makes sense that many people hate photographs of themselves viscerally--on one level, they don’t even recognize the person in the picture as themselves. Facebook, therefore, is a self-enhancer’s paradise, where people can share only the most flattering photos, the cream of their wit, style, beauty, intellect and lifestyles. It’s not that people’s profiles are dishonest, says Catalina Toma of Wisconsin-Madison University, “but they portray an idealised version of themselves.” 1、According to the first paragraph, social psychologists have found that __.2、Visual recognition is believed to be people’s_.3、Epley found that people with higher self-esteem tended to_.4、The word “viscerally” (Line 2, Para. 5) is closest in meaning to_.5、It can be inferred that Facebook is a self-enhancer’s paradise because people can___.

When the government talks about infrastructure contributing to the economy the focus is usually on roads, railways, broadband and energy. Housing is seldom mentioned. Why is that? To some extent the housing sector must shoulder the blame. We have not been good at communicating the real value that housing can contribute to economic growth. Then there is the scale of the typical housing project. It is hard to shove for attention among multibillion-pound infrastructure projects, so it is inevitable that the attention is focused elsewhere. But perhaps the most significant reason is that the issue has always been so politically charged. Nevertheless, the affordable housing situation is desperate. Waiting lists increase all the time and we are simply not building enough new homes. The comprehensive spending review offers an opportunity for the government to help rectify this. It needs to put historical prejudices to one side and take some steps to address our urgent housing need. There are some indications that it is preparing to do just that. The communities minister, Don Foster, has hinted that George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer, may introduce more flexibility to the current cap on the amount that local authorities can borrow against their housing stock debt. Evidence shows that 60,000 extra new homes could be built over the next five years if the cap were lifted, increasing GDP by 0.6%. Ministers should also look at creating greater certainty in the rental environment, which would have a significant impact on the ability of registered providers to fund new developments from revenues. But it is not just down to the government. While these measures would be welcome in the short term, we must face up to the fact that the existing £4.5bn programme of grants to fund new affordable housing, set to expire in 2015, is unlikely to be extended beyond then. The Labour party has recently announced that it will retain a large part of the coalition’s spending plans if it returns to power. The housing sector needs to accept that we are very unlikely to ever return to the era of large-scale public grants. We need to adjust to this changing climate. 1、The author believes that the housing sector___.2、It can be inferred that a stable rental environment would_.3、According to Paragraph 5, George Osborne may_.4、It can be learned that affordable housing has_.5、The author believes that after 2015, the government may___.

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 cannot 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 is 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 words, 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?

Thinner isn’t always better. A number of studies have 1 that normal-weight people are in fact at higher risk of some diseases compared to those who are overweight. And there are health conditions for which being overweight is actually 2 . For example, heavier women are less likely to develop calcium deficiency than thin women. 3 , among the elderly, being somewhat overweight is often an 4 of good health. Of even greater 5 is the fact that obesity turns out to be very difficult to define. It is often defined 6 body mass index, or BMI. BMI 7 body mass divided by the square of height. An adult with a BMI of 18 to 25 is often considered to be normal weight. Between 25 and 30 is overweight. And over 30 is considered obese. Obesity, 8 , can be divided into moderately obese, severely obese, and very severely obese. While such numerical standards seem 9 , they are not. Obesity is probably less a matter of weight than body fat. Some people with a high BMI are in fact extremely fit, 10 others with a low BMI may be in poor 11 . For example, many collegiate and professional football players 12 as obese, though their percentage body fat is low. Conversely, someone with a small frame may have high body fat but a 13 BMI. Today we have a(n) 14 to label obesity as a disgrace. The overweight are sometimes 15 in the media with their faces covered. Stereotypes 16 with obesity include laziness, lack of will power, and lower prospects for success. Teachers, employers, and health professionals have been shown to harbor biases against the obese. 17 very young children tend to look down on the overweight, and teasing about body build has long been a problem in schools. Negative attitudes toward obesity, 18 in health concerns, have stimulated a number of anti-obesity 19 . My own hospital system has banned sugary drinks from its facilities. Many employers have instituted weight loss and fitness initiatives. Michelle Obama has launched a high-visibility campaign 20 childhood obesity, even claiming that it represents our greatest national security threat.

Suppose your university is going to host a summer camp for high school students. Write a notice to (1) briefly introduce the camp activities, and (2) call for volunteers. You should write about 100 words on the ANSWER SHEET. Do not use your own name or the name of your university. Do not write your address. (10 points)

Write an essay based on the following chart. In your writing, your should (1) interpret the chart, and (2) give your comments. You should write about 150 words on the ANSWER SHEET. (15 points)

Think about driving a route that’s very familiar. It could be your commute to work, a trip into town or the way home. Whichever it is, you know every twist and turn like the back of your hand. On these sorts of trips it’s easy to lose concentration on the driving and pay little attention to the passing scenery. The consequence is that you perceive that the trip has taken less time than it actually has. This is the well-travelled road effect: People tend to underestimate the time it takes to travel a familiar route. The effect is caused by the way we allocate our attention. When we travel down a well-known route, because we don’t have to concentrate much, time seems to flow more quickly. And afterwards, when we come to think back on it, we can’t remember the journey well because we didn’t pay much attention to it. So we assume it was shorter.

[A] You are not alone [B] Don’t fear responsibility for your life [C] Pave your own unique path [D] Most of your fears are unreal [E] Think about the present moment [F] Experience helps you grow [G] There are many things to be grateful for Some Old Truths to Help You Overcome Tough Times Unfortunately, life is not a bed of roses. We are going through life facing sad experiences. Moreover, we are grieving various kinds of loss: a friendship, a romantic relationship or a house. Hard times may hold you down at what usually seems like the most inopportune time, but you should remember that they won’t last forever. When our time of mourning is over, we press forward, stronger with a greater understanding and respect for life. Furthermore, these losses make us mature and eventually move us toward future opportunities for growth and happiness. I want to share these old truths I’ve learned along the way. 41. ___. Fear is both useful and harmful. This normal human reaction is used to protect us by signaling danger and preparing us to deal with it. Unfortunately, people create inner barriers with a help of exaggerating fears. My favorite actor Will Smith once said, “Fear is not real. It is a product of thoughts you create. Do not misunderstand me. Danger is very real. But fear is a choice. ” I do completely agree that fears are just the product of our luxuriant imagination. 42. _. If you are surrounded by problems and cannot stop thinking about the past, try to focus on the present moment. Many of us are weighed down by the past or anxious about the future. You may feel guilt over your past, but you are poisoning the present with the things and circumstances you cannot change. Value the present moment and remember how fortunate you are to be alive. Enjoy the beauty of the world around and keep the eyes open to see the possibilities before you. Happiness is not a point of future and not a moment from the past, but a mindset that can be designed into the present. 43. _. Sometimes it is easy to feel bad because you are going through tough times. You can be easily caught up by life problems that you forget to pause and appreciate the things you have. Only strong people prefer to smile and value their life instead of crying and complaining about something. 44. _. No matter how isolated you might feel and how serious the situation is, you should always remember that you are not alone. Try to keep in mind that almost everyone respects and wants to help you if you are trying to make a good change in your life, especially your dearest and nearest people. You may have a circle of friends who provide constant good humor, help and companionship. If you have no friends or relatives, try to participate in several online communities, full of people who are always willing to share advice and encouragement. 45. _____. Today many people find it difficult to trust their own opinion and seek balance by gaining objectivity from external sources. This way you devalue your opinion and show that you are incapable of managing your own life. When you are struggling to achieve something important you should believe in yourself and be sure that your decision is the best. You live in your skin, think your own thoughts, have your own values and make your own choices. A、[A]B、[B]C、[C]D、[D]E、[E]F、[F]G、[G]

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 colleges don’t talk about the class advantages and disadvantages of different groups of students.” Because US colleges and universities seldom acknowledge how social class can affect students’ educational experiences, many first-generation students lack insight 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 authors of the paper believe that first-generation students _.5、We may infer from the last paragraph that ___.

Even in traditional offices, “the lingua franca of corporate America has gotten much more emotional and much more right-brained than it was 20 years ago,” said Harvard Business School professor Nancy Koehn. She started spinning off examples. “If you and I parachuted back to Fortune 500 companies in 1990, we would see much less frequent use of terms like journey, mission, passion. There were goals, there were strategies, there were objectives, but we didn’t talk about energy; we didn’t talk about passion.” Koehn pointed out that this new era of corporate vocabulary is very “team”-oriented--and not by coincidence. “Let’s not forget sports--in male-dominated corporate America, it’s still a big deal. It’s not explicitly conscious; it’s the idea that I’m a coach, and you’re my team, and we’re in this together. There are lots and lots of CEOs in very different companies, but most think of themselves as coaches and this is their team and they want to win.” These terms are also intended to infuse work with meaning--and, as Rakesh Khurana, another professor, points out, increase allegiance to the firm. “You have the importation of terminology that historically used to be associated with non-profit organizations and religious organizations: terms like vision, values, passion, and purpose,” said Khurana. This new focus on personal fulfillment can help keep employees motivated amid increasingly loud debates over work-life balance. The “mommy wars” of the 1990s are still going on today, prompting arguments about why women still can’t have it all and books like Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, whose title has become a buzzword in its own right. Terms like unplug, offline, life-hack, bandwidth, and capacity are all about setting boundaries between the office and the home. But if your work is your “passion”, you’ll be more likely to devote yourself to it, even if that means going home for dinner and then working long after the kids are in bed. But this seems to be the irony of office speak: Everyone makes fun of it, but managers love it, companies depend on it, and regular people willingly absorb it. As a linguist once said, “You can get people to think it’s nonsense at the same time that you buy into it.” In a workplace that’s fundamentally indifferent to your life and its meaning, office speak can help you figure out how you relate to your work--and how your work defines who you are. 1、According to Nancy Koehn, office language has become ___.2、“Team”-oriented corporate vocabulary is closely related to _.3、Khurana believes that the importation of terminology aims to _.4、It can be inferred that Lean In ___.5、Which of the following statements is true about office speak?

A new study suggests that contrary to most surveys, people are actually more stressed at home than at work. Researchers measured people’s cortisol, which is stress marker, while they were at work and while they were at home and found it higher at what is supposed to be a place of refuge. “Further contradicting conventional wisdom, we found that women as well as men have lower levels of stress at work than at home,” writes one of the researchers, Sarah Damaske. In fact women even say they feel better at work, she notes, “It is men, not women, who report being happier at home than at work.” Another surprise is that the findings hold true for both those with children and without, but more so for nonparents. This is why people who work outside the home have better health. What the study doesn’t measure is whether people are still doing work when they’re at home, whether it is household work or work brought home from the office. For many men, the end of the workday is a time to kick back. For women who stay home, they never get to leave the office. And for women who work outside the home, they often are playing catch-up-with-household tasks. With the blurring of roles, and the fact that the home front lags well behind the workplace in making adjustments for working women, it’s not surprising that women are more stressed at home. But it’s not just a gender thing. At work, people pretty much know what they’re supposed to be doing: working, making money, doing the tasks they have to do in order to draw an income. The bargain is very pure: Employee puts in hours of physical or mental labor and employee draws out life-sustaining moola. On the home front, however, people have no such clarity. Rare is the household in which the division of labor is so clinically and methodically laid out. There are a lot of tasks to be done, there are inadequate rewards for most of them. Your home colleagues--your family --have no clear rewards for their labor; they need to be talked into it, or if they’re teenagers, threatened with complete removal of all electronic devices. Plus, they’re your family. You cannot fire your family. You never really get to go home from home. So it’s not surprising that people are more stressed at home. Not only are the tasks apparently infinite, the co-workers are much harder to motivate. 1、According to Paragraph 1, most previous surveys found that home ___.2、According to Damaske, who are likely to be the happiest at home?3、The blurring of working women’s roles refers to the fact that _.4、The word “moola” (Line 4, Para. 4) most probably means _.5、The home front differs from the workplace in that ___.

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