“No, no, no, dear, I want that wrapped in red paper.” A middle-aged woman came through my line and talked to me as if my IQ were that of a grade school kid. When I first started working, it was simply a way to decrease (减少) the time I spent at home and make my parents happy. I never thought that a year and a half later, I would still be at Marshalls, waiting for this woman to get through my line.
I smiled and said, “Oh, that’s no problem.” She bent over the counter to look at the computer and made sure I was doing my job correctly. Her sweater grazed my hand and she smiled like she meant well. I wanted to roll my eyes but instead I just smiled. Ever since I started working here, I’ve tried not to let people like her get to me. And forget judging a book by its cover, because I have been proved wrong time and time again. The wealthy middle-aged women were far ruder than the teenage boys. At first, I was constantly surprised. Now, I tried not to even guess how the person coming near my line was going to act, because it was never the way I imagine.
I never expected people to be so rude and at the same time nice. But for every rude person I saw, at least five pleasant customers came through my line.
“Here you go,” I handed the woman her receipt and hoped her $5 wine glass was wrapped to her liking. “Have a nice day!” I said. And just as I thought I was fed up, the next customer came through. “She had about one more minute and I was going to tell her to get out of line,” she whispered (小声说) to me with a smile.Why did the writer work at Marshalls?
| A．To have more time to go out. |
| B．To make money for the family. |
| C．To find a way to be happy. |
| D．To improve her IQ on doing business. |
What surprised the writer in her work at first?
| A．The rich customers behaved themselves well. |
| B．The young boys could be both rude and nice. |
| C．Some rich women customers were more impolite. |
| D．Wealthy women are pleasant customers. |
It can be inferred that the middle-aged woman .
| A．admired the writer for the good service |
| B．was a customer easy to deal with |
| C．had patience to do the shopping |
| D．cared much about the wrapping of goods |
What the next customer said implied that .
| A．she was angry with the middle-aged woman |
| B．she couldn’t wait one more minute in line |
| C．she would drive the middle-aged woman away |
| D．she might get out of the line for a while |
Here is your best chance to travel around the UK in 2015: More than 200 B&Bs (bed & breakfast) across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are selected to offer you amazing services for your stay at their lowest prices! Don’t miss it. Just collect the vouchers (活动券) in our B&B Daily and book the stays for your travel following the terms and conditions below:
●The offer includes a room for the night and a breakfast the next morning.
● The offer is valid for a basic twin or double room only.
● The stay must be booked directly with the chosen B&Bs before 28/04/2015.
● Each voucher can only be used by the holder to book one room for one night.
●The offer is ￡20 per room, per night. If voucher holders book additional services such as lunch, evening meal or activities, an extra charge is required. Please check directly with your chosen B&Bs to see what extra services are available.
● Vouchers must be presented on arrival. If no vouchers are presented, the B&Bs may reserve the right to charge at full price for every night of stay.
● Vouchers may not be used together with any other offer.
● The voucher holders must pay for the stay in full at the time of booking. Meanwhile, additional ￡10 has to be paid to confirm the booking and will be returned on arrival.
● The B&Bs reserve the right to refuse voucher holders’ bookings for people under the age of 18.How much should be paid for a two-night stay when you book a room with vouchers?
| A．￡75. | B．￡35. | C．￡50. | D．￡55. |
What right do the B&Bs reserve?
| A．To request extra charges as tips. |
| B．To refuse bookings for guests under the age of 18. |
| C．To charge at full price for stays not confirmed. |
| D．To charge extra￡10 for bookings with no vouchers. |
According to the passage, the voucher holders can ________.
| A．book the stays through B&B Daily |
| B．use the B&B offer together with other offers |
| C．book either a basic twin or double room at the chosen B&Bs |
| D．have lunch or evening meal without paying any extra money |
Educating girls quite possibly outputs a higher rate of return than any other investment (投资) available in the developing world. Women’s education may be an unusual field for economists, but raising women’s contribution to development is actually as much an economic as a social problem. And economics, with its emphasis on motivation, provides an explanation for why so many girls can’t receive education.
Parents in low-income countries fail to invest in their daughters because they do not expect them to make an economic contribution to the family: girls grow up only to marry into somebody else’s family and bear children. Girls are thus seen as less valuable than boys and are kept at home to do housework while their brothers are sent to school—the prediction turns into reality, trapping women in a vicious circle (恶性循环) of neglect.
An educated mother, on the other hand, has greater earning abilities outside the home and faces an entirely different set of choices. She is likely to have fewer but healthier children and can insist on the development of all her children, ensuring that her daughters are given a fair chance. The education of her daughters then makes it much more likely that the next generation of girls, as well as of boys, will be educated and healthy. The vicious circle is thus transformed into a good circle.
Few will disagree with it that educating women has great social benefits. But it has enormous economic advantages as well. Most obviously, there is the direct effect of education on the wages of female workers. Wages rise by 10 to 20 per cent for each additional year of schooling. Such big returns are impressive by the standard of other available investments, but they are just the beginning. Educating women also has a significant influence on health practices, including family planning.The author argues that educating girls in developing countries is ________.
| A．troublesome | B．rewarding |
| C．labor-saving | D．expensive |
What does the underlined part probably mean?
| A．Girls will turn out to be less valuable than boys. |
| B．Girls will be capable of realizing their own dreams. |
| C．Girls will eventually find their goals in life beyond reach. |
| D．Girls will be increasingly discontented with their life at home. |
The author believes that a vicious circle can turn into a good one when ________.
| A．women care more about education |
| B．girls can gain equal access to education |
| C．a family has fewer but healthier children |
| D．parents can afford their daughters’ education |
The passage mainly discusses ________.
| A．unequal treatment of boys and girls in developing countries |
| B．the potential earning power of well-educated women |
| C．the major contributions of educated women to society |
| D．the economic and social benefits of educating women |
Finding time to enjoy life is becoming harder and harder. As the average workweek lengthens, leisure time drops. Yet some of the world’s busiest people are able to develop rewarding careers and also make time for family and leisure activities. Here is their best advice plus that of time-management experts:
1. Use your peak hours wisely.
People tend to be most alert in late morning and midevening. Afternoon brings an increase in sleepiness. Use your high-efficiency hours to handle difficult jobs or engage in creative thinking. For low-efficiency times, concentrate on cleaning up or sorting your mail. By adapting to your mental condition, you can accomplish more in less time.
2. Make a plan.
Just 20 minutes of organizing can save an hour of extra effort remembering what must be done. “Don’t try to carry your life around in your head,” says Lucy Hedrick, author of Five Days to an Organized Life. “Write things down so you can free your brain for more inventive pursuit (追求).”
3. Discourage drop-ins.
The person who welcomes every visitor will get plenty of conversation but won’t accomplish much.
The trick is to develop harmless ways to protect yourself from minute-stealing interruptions. David E. Levy, a public-relations consultant (顾问), uses an alternative to the open-door policy by keeping his door half open. The message is clear: he really doesn’t want you to come in, but you can if it is important.
4. Tame (驯服) the telephone.
Few devices save more minutes—or waste so many more—than the telephone. Signal the end of your conversation with a phrase such as “Before we hang up…” You can save even more time by not taking every incoming call.
Keep a record of when people you call regularly are least busy and call them at those times. Even better, make appointments to call important contacts.
To help us gain an extra hour every day, a clockmaker in Dallas has created a timer measuring each minute at 57.6 seconds. The 2.5 seconds borrowed from each minute add up to an extra 60 minutes at the end of each day.According to Lucy Hedrick, you should ________.
| A．carry out your plans when you are free |
| B．stop occupying your mind with lots of things |
| C．forget everything annoying when taking a walk |
| D．enjoy your life whenever you can |
Why does David E. Levy keep his door half open?
| A．To show drop-ins are not welcome at all. |
| B．To tell drop-ins to come if they want. |
| C．To keep unimportant visitors from dropping in. |
| D．To indicate he is expecting a visitor. |
Who works most efficiently according to the passage?
| A．An editor who is trying to produce a title for his article in the afternoon. |
| B．A manager who is designing selling plans with his office door open. |
| C．A visitor to a mayor without making an appointment. |
| D．A student in class without taking any incoming calls. |
What’s the best title of the passage?
| A．Gain an Extra Hour Every Day |
| B．Live One Day at a Time |
| C．How to Live Your Life to the Fullest |
| D．Create Your Own Opportunities |
Thomas Brodie-Sangster’s cars and action figures weren’t just toys. “They would always be characters, and I would always put on stupid voices,” says Thomas (Born on 16 May 1990). For him, acting was just a matter of moving childhood games to a set.
Maturity and independence came to Thomas early as he started work at ten. After his first audition (试镜), he learned about rejection. Though hurt and disappointed, he took a part in a tiny, unknown TV film in 2001. No one noticed his performance – no one except screenwriter Richard Curtis. Two years later, he played Sam, a twelve-year-old in love in Curtis’s Love Actually. After that hit film, he played actor Colin Firth’s son in Nanny McPhee. Firth then joined a film called The Last Legion and supported Thomas for its lead role. As a result, the boy played Rome’s final ruler in the action-adventure.
At about 16, Thomas had to make a decision. Did he really want to devote his life to acting? Many people in the public “aren’t letting you be you because they see you as something special”, he says. Also, friendship made during filming was often broken soon after the project finished. Despite these things, he found enough joy and satisfaction in the work to continue. Actually, Thomas seems to find joy in difficulty itself. He played 10-year-old Adolf Hitler in a TV movie and a teenage Paul McCartney in Nowhere Boy. The subject of his film Death of a Superhero made it his most challenging film. Still, he found a positive message in its story of a schoolboy with cancer.
Thomas now enjoys roles in Game of Thrones and the upcoming Maze Runner films. Popular as those projects may be, most still recognize him as Sam in Love Actually. Sam seems to run after Thomas, just as he ran through Heathrow airport to his sweetheart.Thomas Brodie-Sangster reached maturity early probably because of ________.
| A．his failure in the first audition |
| B．his starting acting as early as ten |
| C．his being supported by adult actors |
| D．his acting in a tiny unknown TV film |
The underlined word “rejection” in the second paragraph is closest in meaning to ________.
| A．recovery | B．respect |
| C．response | D．refusal |
What can be considered as one of the negative aspects of acting according to Thomas?
| A．Pressure from the public. |
| B．Long-term working friendship. |
| C．Finding joy in difficulty itself. |
| D．Reading scripts and memorizing lines. |
Thomas played the lead role in ________.
| A．Love Actually | B．Games of Thrones |
| C．The Last Region | D．Nanny McPhee |
In modern society there is a great deal of argument about competition. Some value it highly, believing that it is responsible for social progress and prosperity (繁荣). Others say that competition is bad; that it sets one person against another; that it leads to unfriendly relationship between people.
I have taught many children who held the belief that their self-worth relied on how well they performed at tennis and other skills. For them, playing well and winning are often life-and-death affairs. In their single-minded pursuit (追求) of success, the development of many other human qualities is sadly forgotten.
However, while some seem to be lost in the desire to succeed, others take an opposite attitude. In a culture which only values the winner and pays no attention to the ordinary players, they strongly blame competition. Among those who are against competition are young people who have suffered under competitive pressures from their parents or society. Teaching these young people, I often observe in them a desire to fail. They seem to seek failure by not trying to win or achieve success. By not trying, they always have an excuse: “I may have lost, but it doesn’t matter because I really didn’t try.” What is not usually admitted by them is the belief that if they had really tried and lost, that would mean a lot.
Such a loss would be a measure of their worth. Clearly, this belief is the same as that of true competitors who try to prove themselves. Both are based on the mistaken belief that one’s self-respect relies on how well one performs in comparison with others. Both are afraid of not being valued. Only as this basic and often troublesome fear begins to disappear can we discover a new meaning in competition.What is the best title of this passage?
| A．Competition! Why friends turn into enemies. |
| B．Competition! What self-respect depends on. |
| C．New meaning found in competition. |
| D．Two mistaken beliefs about competition. |
Why do some young people suffering from competitive pressures seek failure?
| A．Because they are aware that they will not succeed in competition. |
| B．Because they don’t think it worthwhile to compete with others. |
| C．Because they are afraid that they would not be valued if they lost. |
| D．Because they are fed up with the great efforts needed to compete with others. |
Which of the following will the author probably agree with?
| A．One should treat competition as a life-and-death affair. |
| B．One should make every endeavor to avoid competition. |
| C．One should get rid of the fear of failure in competition. |
| D．One should be given rewards after competing with others. |
The true competitors and those with a desire to fail both believe _______.
| A．one’s self-worth comes from how well he performs in comparison with others |
| B．one’s dream can be achieved if he has mastered good communication skills |
| C．one’s failure happens when he is suffering from emotional problems |
| D．one’s success is based on how hard he has tried |
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