Multitasking
What is the first thing you nitice when you walk into a shop? The products displayed (展示) at the entrance? Or the soft background music?
But have you ever notice the smell? Unless it is bad, the answer is likely to be no. But while a shop’s scent may not be outstanding compared with sightsand sounds, it is certainly there. And it is providing to be an increasing powerful tool in encouraging people to purchase.
A brand store has become famous for its distinctive scent which floats through the fairly dark hall and out to the entrance, via scent machines. A smell may be attractive but it may not just be used for freshening air. One sports goods company once reported that when it first introduced scent into its stores, customers’ intension to purchase increased by 80 percent.
When it comes to the best shopping streets in Pairs, scent is just as important to a brand’s success as the quality of its window displays and goods on slaes. That is mainly because shopping is a very different experience to what it used to be.
Some years ago,the focus for brand name shopping was on a few people with sales assistants’ disproving attitude and don’t-touch-what-you-can’t-afford displays. Now the rise of electronic commerce (e-commerce) has opened up famous brands to a wider audience. But while e-shops can use sights and sounds, only bricks-and-mortar stores (实体店) can offer a full experience from the minute customers step through the door to the moment they leave. Another brand store seeks to be much more than a shop, but rather a destination. And scent is just one way to achieve this.
Now a famous store uses complex man-made smell to make sure that the soft scent of baby powder floats through the kid department, and coconut (椰子) scent in the swimsuit section. A department store has even opened a new lab, inviting customers on a journey into the store’s windows to smell books, pots and drawers, in search of their perfect scent.According to the passage, what is an increasingly powerful tool in the success of some brand store?
| A．Friendly assistant. | B．Unique scents. |
| C．Soft background music | D．attractive window display. |
E-shops are mentioned in the passage to _______ .
| A．ashow the advantages of brick-and-mortar stores |
| B．urge shop assistants to change their attitude |
| C．push stores to use sights and sounds |
| D．introduce the rise of e-commerce |
The underlined word “destination” in Paragraph 5 means _______ .
| A．a platform that exhibts goods |
| B．a spot where travelers like to stay |
| C．a place where customers love to go |
| D．a target that a store expects to meet |
The main purpose of the passage is to ______ .
| A．compare and evaluate | B．examine and assess |
| C．argue and discuss | D．inform and explain |
One morning, Ann’s neighbor Tracy found a lost dog wandering around the local elementary school. She asked Ann if she could keep an eye on the dog. Ann said that she could watch it only for the day.
Tracy took photos of the dog and printed off 400 FOUND fliers（传单）, and put them in mailboxes. Meanwhile, Ann went to the dollar store and bought some pet supplies, warning her two sons not to fall in love with the dog. At the time, Ann’s son Thomas was 10 years old, and Jack, who was recovering from a heart operation, was 21 years old.
Four days later Ann was still looking after the dog, whom they had started to call Riley. When she arrived home from work, the dog threw itself against the screen door and barked madly at her. As soon as she opened the door, Riley dashed into the boys’ room where Ann found Jack suffering from a heart attack. Riley ran over to Jack, but as soon as Ann bent over to help him the dog went silent.
“If it hadn’t come to get me, the doctor said Jack would have died,” Ann reported to a local newspaper. At this point, no one had called to claim the dog, so Ann decided to keep it.
The next morning Tracy got a call. A man named Peter recognized his lost dog and called the number on the flier. Tracy started crying, and told him, “That dog saved my friend’s son.”
Peter drove to Ann’s house to pick up his dog, and saw Thomas and Jack crying in the window. After a few moments Peter said, “Maybe Odie was supposed to find you, maybe you should keep it.”What did Tracy do after finding the dog?
| A．She looked for its owner |
| B．She gave it to Ann as a gift. |
| C．She sold it to the dollar store. |
| D．She bought some food for it. |
How did the dog help save Jack?
| A．By breaking the door for Ann. |
| B．By leading Ann to Jack’s room. |
| C．By dragging Jack out of the room. |
| D．By attending Jack when Ann was out. |
What was Ann’s attitude to the dog according to Paragraph 4?
| A．Sympathetic | B．Doubtful |
| C．Tolerant | D．Grateful |
For what purpose did Peter call Tracy?
| A．To help her friend’s son. |
| B．To interview Tracy |
| C．To take back his dog. |
| D．To return the flier to her. |
Well I decided to cut my front lawn （草坪）today, especially since I live on a main street downtown with lots of traffic. Anyway, I finished mine and decided to cut my neighbor—Jean’s grass while I was at it. She is a sweet person who has gone through some trying times in the last year. Her brother passed away of cancer last year; her sister (who lives with her) is mentally challenged—yet so sweet!
It was a difficult time with physical and mental challenges that led her employer in our local hospital to let her go after 25 years of service! Lastly, my neighbor Jean, who is a nurse in our local hospital, was diagnosed with esophageal （食道） cancer in December. She went through radiation and a long recovery—but thankful she is in remission（缓解）.
Anyway, in short I was leaving my house this afternoon and she stopped me to thank me for cutting her grass. She told me her dad passed away on Friday and she just arrived home from the funeral service, so she didn’t know when I would have time to cut her grass. So, when she arrived home and saw it cut she was more than happy and grateful! I said to her “You are welcome, just a small act of kindness for a neighbor.”
I did it for exercise and shared pleasure not knowing it meant more to her than just doing a neighbor a favor!Although a lot of unfortunate matters happened to Jean, she is still _____.
| A．pessimistic | B．optimistic |
| C．depressed | D．disappointed |
What’s the meaning of the underlined word “trying” in the first paragraph?
| A．Happy. | B．Exciting. | C．Simple. | D．Hard. |
What can we learn from the first three paragraphs?
| A．Jean is unlucky. |
| B．Jean lives happily. |
| C．Jean has retired. |
| D．Jean’s employer doesn’t like her. |
How does Jean feel about the author helping her cutting grass?
| A．She feels sad. |
| B．She feels only happy. |
| C．She feels very happy and thankful. |
| D．She feels easy. |
Half of the world’s population is affected by Asian monsoons（季风）, but monsoons are difficult to predict. American researchers have put together a 700-year record of the rainy seasons, which is expected to provide guidance for experts making weather predictions.
Every year, moist （潮湿的）air masses，known as monsoon，produce large amounts of rainfall in India, East Asia, Northern Australia and East Africa. All this wet air is pulled in by a high pressure area over the Indian Ocean and a low pressure area to the south.
According to Edward Cook , a weather expert at Columbia University in New York., the complex nature of the climate systems across Asia makes monsoons hard to predict. In addition, climate records for the area are too recent and not detailed enough to be of much use. Therefore, he and a team of researchers spent more than fifteen years traveling across Asia, looking for trees old enough to provide long-term records. They measured the rings, or circles, inside thousands of ancient trees in more than 300 places.
Rainfall has a direct link to the growth and width of rings on some kinds of trees. The researchers developed a document they are calling a Monsoon Asia Drought Atlas. It shows the effect of monsoons over seven centuries, beginning in the 1300s.
Professor Cook says the tree-ring records show periods of wet and dry weather. “If the monsoon basically fails or is a very weak one, the trees affected by monsoons at that location might put on a very narrow ring. But if the monsoon is very strong, the trees affected by that monsoon might put on a wide ring for that year. So, the wide and narrow ring widths of the chronology that we developed in Asia provide us with a measure of monsoon variability.” With all this information, researchers say they can begin to improve computer climate models for predicting the behavior of monsoons.
“There has been widespread famine and starvation and human dying in the past in large droughts. And on the other hand, if the monsoon is particularly heavy, it can cause extensive flooding.” said Eugene Wahl, a scientist with America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “So, to get a sense of what the regional moisture patterns have been, dryness and wetness over such a long period of time in great detail, I would call it a kind of victory for climate science.”What’sthe passage mainly about？
| A．The effects of Asian monsoons. |
| B．A breakthrough in monsoon prediction. |
| C．The achievements of Edward cook. |
| D．The necessity of weather forecast. |
It is difficult for experts to predict Asian monsoons because_________
| A．it is hard to keep long-term climate records. |
| B．they are formed under complex climate systems. |
| C．they influence many nations. |
| D．there is heavy rainfall in Asia. |
What can be inferred from the passage?
| A．Long and details climate records can offer useful information for monsoon research. |
| B．The Monsoon Asia Drought Atlas has a monsoon record for about 1,300 years. |
| C．The trees affected by monsoon grow fast if the monsoon is weak. |
| D．The rainfall might be low although the monsoon is strong in monsoon-affected areas. |
What do we know about the research according to Eugene Wahl?
| A．It will help people prevent droughts and floods. |
| B．It should include information about human life in the past. |
| C．It has analyzed moisture models world wide, |
| D．It is a great achievement in climate science. |
Which of the following best describes the tone of this passage?
| A．Humorous | B．Pessimistic |
| C．Matter-of –fact | D．Friendly. |
2011 Top Education News
| "Tiger Mother" became well known both in the US and China after the publication of the Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua, a professor of Yale University and a Chinese immigrant mother. In the book, Chua describes how she educates her two daughters in a strict "typical Chinese" way. |
The South University of Science and Technology of China (SUSTC), became "China's first independent university"-the only university to recruit students through its independent exam rather than the National College Entrance Exam adopted by almost all public universities in China. |
| Wuhan schoolboy Huang Yibo, 13,known as the deputy chief of all Wuhan's young pioneers, became an overnight sensation after blogging about watching prime time news on China's Central Television since he was two years old and reading People's Daily since the age of seven because his father asked him to do so. |
The First Experimental Elementary School of Weiyang district in Xi'an, Shaanxi province, hit the headlines for requiring students with a poor performance to wear a green scarf, distinguishing them from the good performance of the red scarf, a symbol for the Young Pioneer organization. |
| Dong Fan, a professor from Beijing Normal University, the director of the university’s real estate research center, refused to see any of his students who do not possess 40 million yuan by the time they are 40. Dong said people who had received high-level education should be ashamed if they do not live a wealthy life. |
The No 4 classroom building on the campus of Tsinghua University, one of China's elite colleges, took on the name of a popular clothing company, the Hong Kong-based Jeanswest Clothing in May. A golden-colored plate bearing the name of the company was affixed on to the wall of the teaching building. |
How many pieces of the news above have something to do with family education?
| A．4 | B．3 | C．2 | D．5 |
Which of the following statements is True according to the news above?
| A．Tsinghua University became "China's first independent university". |
| B．Students caring about environmental protection will wear a green scarf. |
| C．“Tiger Mother” is famous for her book about how she educates her two daughters. |
| D．Huang Yibo began to read People's Daily at the age of two. |
We can infer from the news about Dong Fan that _______.
| A．he tends to measure success by money |
| B．he spares no efforts to help his students |
| C．he works hard |
| D．he is a professor of Yale University |
All the six pieces of news above deal with the subject of ______.
| A．education | B．parents | C．students | D．Schools |
One kind of female butterfly mates only once in its life -- and then closes its wings to avoid "harassment" when pursued by persistent and unwanted males, a Japanese researcher said.
Observations of the Small Copper Butterfly, a colourful orange and black butterfly, showed that some females closed their wings when males flew by, but only when they were males of their own species, said Jun-Ya Ide, an associate professor at Kurume Institute of Technology in Fukuoka, western Japan.
"When we looked into why, the males were courting the females. They do this very stubbornly, so the females sometimes try to get away -- or prefer to stay unobserved," he added.
Ide and his colleagues brought a model of a male butterfly near the females to test their reactions and found that young females that had yet to mate kept their wings open, but those that had already mated closed them.
Not only can the persistent attentions of unwanted suitors harm the delicate females, fleeing from them -- with the male often in pursuit -- uses up strength and can even shorten their lives, he added.
"Closing their wings makes them less visible, helping them avoid communication with their own species. We figured they were trying to avoid harassment by males," Ide said.What does the word “harassment”mean in the paragraph？
| A．attack | B．embarrassment |
| C．sexual invasion | D．threat |
Why some some females closed their wings when males flew by？
| A．because they close their wings to avoid "harassment" when pursued by persistent and unwanted males. |
| B．because the female butterfly mates only once in its life. |
| C．because they don’t like the male butterfly at all. |
| D．because they are afraid of the male butterfly. |
According the the passage, which is correct?
| A．The females closed their wings when males flew by. |
| B．Only the model of a male butterfly can make the young female butterflies to keep their wings open. |
| C．The female butterfly mates only once in its life |
| D．Not only can the persistent attentions of wanted suitors harm the delicate females, fleeing from them with the male often in pursuit -- uses up strength and can even shorten their lives. |
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