and beauty.”
—Jim Rohn
“ A very special one-day relationship between a wise mentor and his struggling but eager protégé. What a delightful story for everyone to read, and from which to benefit greatly!”
— Bob Burg “ The Angel Inside” is truly one of the most inspiring, encouraging motivational books I have ever read. Once I got started, I found it impossible to stop reading. And I say this as a man who has never read friction; I’ve always said that when I get all of the truth, then I’ll start reading fiction. It was a wonderful thrill to read a work of fiction that contains an enormous amount of truth and encouragement.”
— Zig Ziglar 56. What is probably the theme of the book The Angel Inside? A. Following your passion
B. Recommending a new career C. Solving the mysteries in life D. Starting with action
57. What does the underlined word “captivate” mean?
A. Instruct B. Attract C. Prevent D. Convince 58. What does Zig Ziglar mainly want to tell us?
A. Before reading fiction, it’s necessary to get all the truth. B. The Angel Inside is a thrilling work of science fiction. C. Fiction contains lots of truth and encouragement. D. Readers can benefit a lot from The Angel Inside.
B
The first time we started using it, we thought it would just be a bit of fun, a one-time thing. __A__
“Let’s just give it a try,” my fiancée said. I was a bit nervous, but I knew some of our friends were already into it, and they said it was fine and that I should relax because everyone was doing it.“OK,” I agreed, convinced it would be harmless. ___B___
Before long, we were using it once a week. Then it became twice a week. We went from using it after work to using it in the mornings, and then at lunchtime, too.
Suddenly we reached a point where we were using it every day. Even when I wasn’t using it, I was thinking about using it. ___C___
That’s when I realized the terrible truth. We couldn’t stop.
Dear readers, it shames me to admit it, but I am an addict of online shopping site Taobao. And I don't think I’m the only one. __D__
I see the telltale signs every where: People with bags under their eyes, clearly exhausted after staying up late browsing items they might one day need (but probably won’t)，like the 1940s leather aviator cap I bought in the event I ever need to become an aviator in the 1940s. I see co-workers furtively (偷偷摸摸地）sneaking down to the mailroom, eyes darting around suspiciously.
I know what's going through your mind as you read this.
“This isn’t me，” you’re thinking, “I can stop anytime I want.” But can you?
In China you can get same day delivery for just about anything you buy online. In Australia, my home country, the same item would take weeks to arrive.
“It's the convenience,\ “That’s why we're hooked.”
But is that convenience worth the risk of waking up one morning to discover you’ve been buried alive in masses of brand new women’s shoes?
In my case it’s probably not, especially because I suspect my fiancée won’t realize I'm missing until weeks later, when my credit card stops working and I've long since expired. So what can you do to battle this terrible addiction?
Never fear, dear readers, because I've created a special five-step list to help you stop online shopping.
Step one: Acknowledge you have a problem. Resist buying adult-sized, Star Wars Stormtrooper outfit on Taobao. You don’t really need it.
Step two: Try not to feel guilty about buying adult-sized, Star Wars Stormtrooper outfit on Taobao.
Step three: Put the computer and smartphone away, get back to nature, and take a walk in the park.
Step four: Try not to feel guilty about buying a new outfit for your walk in the park. I mean, it was on sale, right?
Step five: Buying a book on how to quit Taobao...from Taobao. On second thoughts, maybe don’t listen to me, after all.
59. Where should the sentence “I have never been so wrong in my entire life.” be put in the passage?
A. In blank A. B. In blank B. C. In blank C. D. In blank D. 60. The author writes the underlined paragraph to show ________. A. Taobao is a popular and successful online shopping site B. online shopping is an effective way to help relax
C. people today are fond of the 1940s leather aviator cap D. quite a lot of people are hooked on online shopping 61. The author concludes this passage with a tone of________.
A. confidence and optimism B. disappointment and disapproval C. uncertainty and humor D. confusion and sympathy
C
You’re probably aware of the basic trends. The financial rewards to education have increased over the past few decades, but men fail to benefit.
In elementary and high school, male academic performance is lagging. Boys earn three-quarters of the D’s and F’s. By college, men are clearly behind. Only 40 percent of bachelor’s degree go to men, along with 40 percent of master’s degree.
Thanks to their lower skills, men are dropping out of the labor force. In 1954, 96 percent of the American men between the ages of 25 and 54 worked. Today, that number is down to 80 percent. In Friday's jobs report, male labor force participation reached an all-time low.
Millions of men are collecting disability benefits. Even many of those who do have a job are
doing poorly. According to Michael Greenstone of the Hamilton Project, annual earnings for average prime-age males have dropped by 28 percent over the past 40 years.
Men still dominate (主宰) the top of the corporate ladder because many women take time off to raise children, but women lead or are gaining nearly everywhere else. Women in their 20s outearn men in their 20s. Twelve out of the 15 fastest-growing professions are dominated by women.
Over the years, many of us have employed a certain theory to explain men's economic decline. It is that the information-age economy rewards qualities that women are more likely to possess.
To succeed today, you have to be able to sit still and focus attention in school at an early age. You have to be emotionally sensitive and aware of context. You have to communicate smoothly. For genetic and cultural reasons, many men are not good at these.
But, in her fascinating new book, The End of Men, Hanna Rosin suggests a different theory. It has to do with adaptability. Women, Rosin argues, are like immigrants (移民) who have moved to a new country. They see a new social context, and they flexibly adapt to .new circumstances. Men are like immigrants who have physically moved to a new country but who have kept their minds in the old one. They speak the old language. They follow the old customs. Men are more likely to be rigid; women are more fluid.
This theory has less to do with born qualities and more to do with social position. When there’s big social change, the people who were on the top of the old order are bound to stick to the old ways. The people who were on the bottom are bound to experience a burst of energy. They are going to explore their new surroundings more enthusiastically.
Rosin reports from working-class Alabama. The women she meets are flooding into new jobs and new opportunities — going back to college, pursuing new careers. The men are waiting around for the jobs left and are never coming back. They are strangely immune (免疫的）to new options. In the Auburn-Opelika region, the average female income is 140 percent of the average male income.
Rosin is not saying that women are winners in a global gender (性别) war or that they are doing super simply because men are doing worse. She's just saying women are adapting to today’s economy more flexibly than men. There’s a lot of evidence to support her case.
A study by the National Federation of Independent Business found that small businesses owned by women outperformed male-owned small business during the last recession (衰退). In finance, women who switch firms are more likely to see their performance improve, whereas men are likely to see theirs decline. There's even evidence that women are better able to adjust to divorce. Today, more women than men see their incomes rise by 25 percent after a marital breakup.
Forty years ago, men and women stuck to certain theory, what it meant to be a man or a woman. Young women today, Rosin argues, have abandoned both feminist (女权主义者）and prefeminist preconceptions. Men still stick to the masculinity (大男子主义的）rules, which limit their vision and their movement.
If she's right, then men will have to acknowledge that they are strangers in a strange land.
62. Which of the following statements is TRUE?
A. Male labor force participation has declined by 80% since 1954.
B. More men than women take time off to raise children now.
C. Good communication is one of the qualities that women possess. D. Men are still taking most top and fastest-growing professions.
63. In Hanna Rosin’s opinion, male performance is falling behind because _______. A. men are less likely to sit still and focus in school at early age B. men are more rigid and less able to adapt to new circumstances C. women are doing better for genetic and cultural reasons D. it is more and more difficult for men to get bachelor’s degree 64. What is the passage intended to convey? A. The differences between men and women.
B. The reasons why men do no better than women. C. The social status of men and women.
D. The reasons why men fail compared with women.
D
It appears that the police now have a device that can read license plates and check if a car is unregistered, uninsured or stolen. We already know that National Security Agency can dip into your Facebook page and Google searches. And it seems that almost every store we go into these days wants your home phone number and ZIP code as part of any transaction (交易）.
So when Edward Snowden — now cooling his heels in Russia — revealed the extent to which the NSA is spying on Americans, collecting data on phone calls we make, it's not as if we should have been surprised. We live in a world that George Orwell predicted in 1984. And that realization has caused sales of the 1949, dystopian (反乌托邦）novel to spike dramatically upward recently — a 9,000% increase at one point on Amazon. com.
Comparisons between Orwell’s novel about a tightly controlled totalitarian (极权主义的） future ruled by the ubiquitous (无所在的）Big Brother and today are, in fact, quite similar. Here are a few of the most obvious ones.
Telescreens — in the novel, nearly all public and private places have large TV screens that broadcast government propaganda (宣传), news and approved entertainment. But they are also two-way monitors that spy on citizens, private lives. Today websites like Facebook track our likes and dislikes, and governments and private individuals hack into our computers and find out what they want to know. Then there are the ever-present surveillance (监控) cameras that spy on the ordinary people as they go about their daily routine.
The endless war — In Orwell’s book, there's global war that has been going on seemingly forever, and as the book's hero, Winston Smith, realizes the enemy keeps changing. One week we’re at war with Eastasia and friends with Eurasia. The next week, it's just the opposite. There seems little to distinguish the two adversaries (对手), and they are used primarily to keep the people of Oceania, where Smith lives, in a constant state of fear, thereby making disagreement unthinkable — or punishable. Today we have the so-called war on terror, with no end in sight, a generalized societal fear, suspension of certain civil liberties, and an ill-defined enemy who could be anywhere, and anything.
Newspeak — the fictional, stripped-down English language, used to limit free thought. OMG (Oh my God), RU (Are you) serious? That's so FUBAR (Fucked Beyond Ail Recognition). LMAO (Laugh My Ass Off).
Memory hole — this is the machine used in the book to change or disappear embarrassing documents. Paper shredders (碎纸机） had been invented, but were hardly used when Orwell wrote his book, and the concept of wiping out a hard drive was years in the future. But the memory hole foretold both technologies.
So what’s it all meant? In 1984, Winston Smith, after an intense round of ^behavioral modification” — read: torture— learns to love Big Brother, and the difficult world he was born into. Jump forward to today, it seems we've willingly given up all sorts of freedoms, and much of our right to privacy. Fears of terrorism have a lot to do with this, but dizzying advances in technology, and the ubiquity of social media, play a big part.
There are those who say that if you don't have anything to hide, you have nothing to be afraid of. But the fact is, when a government agency can monitor everyone's phone calls, we have all become suspects. This is one of the most frightening aspects of our modem society. And even more frightening is the fact that we have gone so far down the street, there is probably no turning back. Unless you spend your life in a wilderness cabin, totally off the grid, there is simply no way the government won’t have information about you stored away somewhere.
What this means, unfortunately, is that we are all Winston Smith. And Big Brother is the modem surveillance state.
65. What caused 1984 to sell well on Amazon.com?
A. The fact that authorities have access to our personal information. B. The worry that our government agencies can monitor our phones. C. The surprise at how Americans are spied on by the government. D. The similarities between the world we live in and that of 1984. 66. Which of the following statements is TRUE?
A. When Orwell wrote 1984, paper shredders didn't exist.
B. Winston Smith loves Big Brother due to the fears of terrorism. C. Telescreens arc used to broadcast and spy on citizens’ privacy. D. The war with Eastasia makes people in Oceania fearful.
67. What docs the underlined word “this” in Paragraph 8 refer to? A. Willingness to abandon freedom and privacy. B. Addiction to social media.
C. A round of “behavioral modification”. D. The phone calls being monitored.
68. The underlined part in the passage replies that _______. A. we are walking along the street too far to go back home B. it is impossible for us to return to our initial path
C. if s very difficult for us to change the current situation
D. the government can find out which street we are going down 69. Which of the following is the best title for the passage? A. We’re living “1984” today. B. Big Brother is watching you. C. We are all Winston Smith.
D. The NSA is spying on Americans.
70. What is the writer's attitude towards the phenomenon? A. Optimistic. B. Concerned. C. Angry. D. Enthusiastic.