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Directions:
Read the following four texts. Answer the questions after each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on the ANSWER SHEET. (40 points)
①It is curious that Stephen Koziatek feels almost as though he has to justify his efforts to give his students a better future.
①Mr. Koziatek is part of something pioneering. ②He is a teacher at a New Hampshire high school where learning is not something of books and tests and mechanical memorization, but practical. ③When did it become accepted wisdom that students should be able to name the 13th president of the United States but be utterly overwhelmed by a broken bike chain?
①As Koziatek knows, there is learning in just about everything. ②Nothing is necessarily gained by forcing students to learn geometry at a graffitied desk stuck with generations of discarded chewing gum. ③They can also learn geometry by assembling a bicycle.
①But he's also found a kind of insidious prejudice. ②Working with your hands is seen as almost a mark of inferiority. ③Schools in the family of vocational education “have that stereotype ... that it's for kids who can’t make it academically,” he says.
①On one hand, that viewpoint is a logical product of America's evolution. ②Manufacturing is not the economic engine that it once was. ③The job security that the US economy once offered to high school graduates has largely evaporated. ④More education is the new principle. ⑤We want more for our kids, and rightfully so.
①But the headlong push into bachelor's degrees for all—and the subtle devaluing of anything less —misses an important point: That's not the only thing the American economy needs. ②Yes, a bachelor's degree opens more doors. ③But even now, 54 percent of the jobs in the country are middle-skill job, such as construction and high-skill manufacturing. ④But only 44 percent of workers are adequately trained.
①In other words, at a time when the working class has turned the country on its political head, frustrated that the opportunity that once defined America is vanishing, one obvious solution is staring us in the face. ②There is a gap in working-class jobs, but the workers who need those jobs most aren’t equipped to do them. ③Koziatek's Manchester School of Technology High School is trying to fill that gap.
①Koziatek's school is a wake-up call. ②When education becomes one-size-fits-all, it risks overlooking a nation's diversity of gifts.
21. A broken bike chain is mentioned to show student's lack of______.
[A] academic training
[B] practical ability
[C] pioneering spirit
[D] mechanical memorization
22. There exists the prejudice that vocational education is for kids who______.
[A] have a stereotyped mind
[B] have no career motivation
[C] are financially disadvantaged
[D] are not academically successful
23. We can infer from Paragraph 5 that high school graduates______.
[A] used to have more job opportunities
[B] used to have big financial concerns
[C] are entitled to more educational privileges
[D] are reluctant to work in manufacturing
24. The headlong push into bachelor's degrees for all______.
[A] helps create a lot of middle-class jobs
[B] may narrow the gap in working-class jobs
[C] indicates the overvaluing of higher education
[D] is expected to yield a better-trained workforce
25. The author's attitude toward Koziatek's school can be described as______.
[A] tolerant
[B] cautious
[C] supportive
[D] disappointed
①While fossil fuels—coal, oil, gas—still generate roughly 85 percent of the world's energy supply, it's clearer than ever that the future belongs to renewable sources such as wind and solar. ②The move to renewables is picking up momentum around the world: They now account for more than half of new power sources going on line.
①Some growth stem from a commitment by governments and farsighted businesses to fund cleaner energy sources. ②But increasingly the story is about the plummeting prices of renewables, especially wind and solar. ③The cost of solar panels has dropped by 80 percent and the cost of wind turbines by close to one-third in the past eight years.
①In many parts of the world renewable energy is already a principal energy source. ②In Scotland, for example, wind turbines provide enough electricity to power 95 percent of homes. ③While the rest of the world takes the lead, notably China and Europe, the United States is also seeing a remarkable shift. ④In March, for the first time, wind and solar power accounted for more than 10 percent of the power generated in the US, reported the US Energy Information Administration.
①President Trump has underlined fossil fuels—especially coal—as the path to economic growth. ②In a recent speech in Iowa, he dismissed wind power as an unreliable energy source. ③But that message did not play well with many in Iowa, where wind turbines dot the fields and provide 36 percent of the state's electricity generation—and where tech giants like Microsoft are being attracted by the availability of clean energy to power their data centers.
①The question “what happens when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine?” has provided a quick put-down for skeptics. ②But a boost in the storage capacity of batteries is making their ability to keep power flowing around the clock more likely.
①The advance is driven in part by vehicle manufacturers, who are placing big bets on battery-powered electric vehicles. ②Although electric cars are still a rarity on roads now, this massive investment could change the picture rapidly in coming years.
①While there's a long way to go, the trend lines for renewables are spiking. ②The pace of change in energy sources appears to be speeding up—perhaps just in time to have a meaningful effect in slowing climate change. ③What Washington does—or doesn’t do—to promote alternative energy may mean less and less at a time of a global shift in thought.
26. The word “plummeting” (Line 3, Para.2) is closest in meaning to______.
[A] stabilizing
[B] changing
[C] falling
[D] rising
27. According to Paragraph 3, the use of renewable energy in America______.
[A] is progressing notably
[B] is as extensive as in Europe
[C] faces many challenges
[D] has proved to be impractical
28. It can be learned that in Iowa,______.
[A] wind is a widely used energy source
[B] wind energy has replaced fossil fuels
[C] tech giants are investing in clean energy
[D] there is a shortage of clean energy supply
29. Which of the following is true about clean energy according to Paragraphs 5 ＆ 6?
[A] Its application has boosted battery storage.
[B] Its continuous supply is becoming a reality.
[C] It is commonly used in car manufacturing.
[D] Its sustainable exploitation will remain difficult.
30. It can be inferred from the last paragraph that renewable energy______.
[A] will bring the US closer to other countries
[B] will accelerate global environmental change
[C] is not competitive enough with regard to its cost
[D] is not really encouraged by the US government
①The power and ambition of the giants of the digital economy is astonishing—Amazon has just announced the purchase of the upmarket grocery chain Whole Foods for $13.5bn, but two years ago Facebook paid even more than that to acquire the WhatsApp messaging service, which doesn’t have any physical product at all. ②What WhatsApp offered Facebook was an intricate and finely detailed web of its users’ friendships and social lives.
①Facebook promised the European commission then that it would not link phone numbers to Facebook identities, but it broke the promise almost as soon as the deal went through. ②Even without knowing what was in the messages, the knowledge of who sent them and to whom was enormously revealing and still could be. ③What political journalist, what party whip, would not want to know the makeup of the WhatsApp groups in which Theresa May's enemies are currently plotting? ④It may be that the value of Whole Foods to Amazon is not so much the 460 shops it owns, but the records of which customers have purchased what.
①Competition law appears to be the only way to address these imbalances of power. ②But it is clumsy. ③For one thing, it is very slow compared to the pace of change within the digital economy. ④By the time a problem has been addressed and remedied it may have vanished in the marketplace, to be replaced by new abuses of power. ⑤But there is a deeper conceptual problem, too. ⑥Competition law as presently interpreted deals with financial disadvantage to consumers and this is not obvious when the users of these services don’t pay for them. ⑦The users of their services are not their customers. ⑧That would be the people who buy advertising from them—and Facebook and Google, the two virtual giants, dominate digital advertising to the disadvantage of all other media and entertainment companies.
①The product they’re selling is data, and we, the users, convert our lives to data for the benefit of the digital giants. ②Just as some ants farm the bugs called aphids for the honeydew they produce when they feed, so Google farms us for the data that our digital lives yield. ③Ants keep predatory insects away from where their aphids feed; Gmail keeps the spammers out of our inboxes. ④It doesn’t feel like a human or democratic relationship, even if both sides benefit.
31. According to Paragraph 1, Facebook acquired WhatsApp for its______.
[A] digital products
[B] user information
[C] physical assets
[D] quality service
32. Linking phone numbers to Facebook identities may______.
[A] worsen political disputes
[B] mess up customer records
[C] pose a risk to Facebook users
[D] mislead the European commission
33. According to the author, competition law______.
[A] should serve the new market powers
[B] may worsen the economic imbalance
[C] should not provide just one legal solution
[D] cannot keep pace with the changing market
34. Competition law as presently interpreted can hardly protect Facebook users because______.
[A] they are not defined as customers
[B] they are not financially reliable
[C] the services are generally digital
[D] the services are paid for by advertisers
35. The ants analogy is used to illustrate______.
[A] a win-win business model between digital giants
[B] a typical competition pattern among digital giants
[C] the benefits provided for digital giants’ customers
[D] the relationship between digital giants and their users
①To combat the trap of putting a premium on being busy, Cal Newport, author of Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, recommends building a habit of “deep work”—the ability to focus without distraction.
①There are a number of approaches to mastering the art of deep work—be it lengthy retreats dedicated to a specific task; developing a daily ritual; or taking a “journalistic” approach to seizing moments of deep work when you can throughout the day. ②Whichever approach, the key is to determine your length of focus time and stick to it.
①Newport also recommends “deep scheduling” to combat constant interruptions and get more done in less time. ②“At any given point, I should have deep work scheduled for roughly the next month. ③Once on the calendar, I protect this time like I would a doctor's appointment or important meeting,” he writes.
①Another approach to getting more done in less time is to rethink how you prioritize your day— in particular how we craft our to-do lists. ②Tim Harford, author of Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives, points to a study in the early 1980s that divided undergraduates into two groups: some were advised to set out monthly goals and study activities; others were told to plan activities and goals in much more detail, day by day.
①While the researchers assumed that the well-structured daily plans would be most effective when it came to the execution of tasks, they were wrong: the detailed daily plans demotivated students. ②Harford argues that inevitable distractions often render the daily to-do list ineffective, while leaving room for improvisation in such a list can reap the best results.
①In order to make the most of our focus and energy, we also need to embrace downtime, or as Newport suggests, “be lazy.”
①“Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as Vitamin D is to the body… [idleness] is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done,” he argues.
①Srini Pillay, an assistant of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, believes this counter-intuitive link between downtime and productivity may be due to the way our brains operate. ②When our brains switch between being focused and unfocused on a task, they tend to be more efficient.
①“What people don’t realize is that in order to complete these tasks they need to use both the focus and unfocus circuits in their brain,” says Pillay.
36. The key to mastering the art of deep work is to______.
[A] keep to your focus time
[B] list your immediate tasks
[C] make specific daily plans
[D] seize every minute to work
37. The study in the early 1980s cited by Harford shows that______.
[A] distractions may actually increase efficiency
[B] daily schedules are indispensable to studying
[C] students are hardly motivated by monthly goals
[D] detailed plans may not be as fruitful as expected
38. According to Newport, idleness is______.
[A] a desirable mental state for busy people
[B] a major contributor to physical health
[C] an essential factor in accomplishing any work
[D] an effective way to save time and energy
39. Pillay believes that our brains’ shift between being focused and unfocused______.
[A] can result in psychological well-being
[B] can bring about greater efficiency
[C] is aimed at a better balance in work
[D] is driven by task urgency
40. This text is mainly about______.
[A] ways to relieve the tension of busy life
[B] approaches to getting more done in less time
[C] the key to eliminating distractions
[D] the cause of the lack of focus time
Directions:
Read the following text and answer the questions by choosing the most suitable subheading from the list A-G for each of the numbered paragraphs (41-45). There are two extra subheadings which you do not need to use. Mark your answers on the ANSWER SHEET. (10 points)
[A] Just say it
[B] Be present
[C] Pay a unique compliment
[D] Name, places, things
[E] Find the “me too”s
[F] Skip the small talk
[G] Ask for an opinion
Conversations 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 first move and start a conversation with strangers.
41.____________________
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 feelings and here is my advice just get it out.
Just think: that is the worst that could happen? They won’t talk with you? Well, they are not talking with you now!
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”.
42.____________________
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.
43.____________________
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 a conversation from there and then move outwards, you will find all of a sudden that the conversation becomes a lot easier.
44.____________________
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, you can feel the conversation.
45.____________________
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 thing you can automatically become investor in their wellbeing. 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!