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provider based in the north-east of England. ―Providers offering broadband for rock-bottom prices are notorious for poor service, with regular breakdowns and heavily congested (拥堵的) networks. It is always advisable for businesses to look beyond the price tag and look for a business-only provider that can offer more reliability, with good support.‖ Such services don‘t cost too much—quality services can be found for upwards of ￡30 a month.
The benefits of broadband to the occasional home worker are that they can access email in real time, and take full advantage of services such as internet-based backup or even internet-based phone services.
Internet-based telecoms, or VoIP (Voice over IP) to give it its technical title, is an interesting tool to any business supporting remote working. Not necessarily because of the promise of free or reduced price phone calls (which experts point out is misleading for the average business), but because of the sophisticated voice services that can be exploited by the remote worker—facilities such as voicemail and call forwarding, which provide a continuity of the company image for customers and business partners.
By law, companies must ―consider seriously‖ requests to work flexibly made by a parent with a child under the age of six, or a disabled child under 18. It was the need to accommodate employees with young
children that motivated accountancy firm Wright Vigar to begin promoting teleworking recently. The company, which needed to upgrade its IT infrastructure (基础设施) to provide connectivity with a new, second office, decided to introduce support for remote working at the same time.
Marketing director Jack O‘Hern explains that the company has a relatively young workforce, many of whom are parents: ―One of the triggers was when one of our tax managers returned from maternity leave. She was intending to work part time, but could only manage one day a week in the office due to childcare. By offering her the ability to work from home, we have doubled her capacity—now she works a day a week from home, and a day in the office. This is great for her, and for us as we retain someone highly qualified.‖
For Wright Vigar, which has now equipped all of its fee-earners to be able to work at maximum
productivity when away from the offices (whether that‘s from home, or while on the road), this strategy is not just about saving on commute time or cutting them loose from the office, but enabling them to work more flexible hours that fit around their home life.
O‘Hern says: ―Although most of our work is client-based and must fit around this, we can‘t see any reason why a parent can‘t be on hand to deal with something important at home, if they have the ability to complete a project later in the day.‖
Supporting this new way of working came with a price, though. Although the firm was updating its systems anyway, the company spent 10-15% more per user to equip them with a laptop rather than a PC, and about the same to upgrade to a server that would enable remote staff to connect to the company networks and access all their usual resources.
Although Wright Vigar hasn‘t yet quantified the business benefits, it claims that, in addition to being able to retain key staff with young families, it is able to save fee-earners a substantial amount of ―dead‖ time in their working days.
That staff can do this without needing a fixed telephone line provides even more efficiency savings. ―With Wi-Fi (fast, wireless internet connections) popping up all over the place, even on trains, our fee-earners can be productive as they travel, and between meetings, instead of having to kill time at the shops,‖ he adds.
The company will also be able to avoid the expense of having to relocate staff to temporary offices for several weeks when it begins disruptive office renovations soon.
Financial recruitment specialist Lynne Hargreaves knows exactly how much her firm has saved by
adopting a teleworking strategy, which has involved handing her company‘s data management over to a remote hosting company, Datanet, so it can be accessible by all the company‘s consultants over broadband internet connections.
It has enabled the company to dispense with its business premises altogether, following the realisation that it just didn‘t need them any more. ―The main motivation behind adopting home working was to increase my own productivity, as a single mum to an 11-year-old,‖ says Hargreaves. ―But I soon realised that, as most of our business is done on the phone, email and at off-site meetings, we didn‘t need our offices at all. We‘re now saving ￡16,000 a year on rent, plus the cost of utilities, not to mention what would have been spent on commuting.‖
1. What is the main topic of this passage?
A) How business managers view hi-tech.
B) Relations between employers and employees. C) How to cut down the costs of small businesses. D) Benefits of the practice of teleworking.
2. From the research conducted by the communications provider Inter-Tel, we learn that .
A) more employees work to full capacity at home
B) employees show a growing interest in small businesses C) more businesses have adopted remote working solutions D) attitudes toward IT technology have changed
3. What development has made flexible working practices possible according to Andy Poulton?
A) Reduced cost of telecommunications. B) Improved reliability of internet service.
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C) Availability of the VoIP service. D) Access to broadband everywhere.
4. What is Neil Stephenson‘s advice to firms contracting internet services?
A) They look for reliable business-only providers. B) They contact providers located nearest to them. C) They carefully examine the contract. D) They contract the cheapest provider.
5. Internet-based telecoms facilitates remote working by __________.
A) offering sophisticated voice services B) giving access to emailing in real time C) helping clients discuss business at home D) providing calls completely free of charge
6. The accountancy firm Wright Vigar promoted teleworking initially in order to __________.
A) present a positive image to prospective customers B) support its employees with children to take care of C) attract young people with IT expertise to work for it D) reduce operational expenses of a second office
7. According to marketing director Jack O‘Hern, teleworking enabled the company to __________.
A) enhance its market image B) reduce recruitment costs C) keep highly qualified staff D) minimise its office space
8. Wright Vigar‘s practice of allowing for more flexible working hours not only benefits the company but
helps improve employees‘ .
9. With fast, wireless internet connections, employees can still be __________ while traveling. 10. Single mother Lynne Hargreaves decided to work at home mainly to __________. PartⅣ Reading Comprehension(Reading in Depth)(25 minutes) Section A
Directions: In this section, there is a short passage with 5 questions or incomplete statements. Read the passage carefully. Then answer the questions or complete the statements in the fewest possible words. Please write your answers on Answer Sheet 2.
Questions 47 to 51 are based on the following passage.
Many countries have made it illegal to chat into a hand-held mobile phone while driving. But the latest research further confirms that the danger lies less in what a motorist‘s hands do when he takes a call than in what the conversation does to his brain. Even using a ―hands-free‖ device can divert a driver‘s attention to an alarming extent.
Melina Kunar of the University of Warwick, and Todd Horowitz of the Harvard Medical School ran a series of experiments in which two groups of volunteers had to pay attention and respond to a series of moving tasks on a
computer screen that were reckoned equivalent in difficulty to driving. One group was left undistracted while the other had to engage in a conversation using a speakerphone. As Kunar and Horowitz report, those who were making the equivalent of a hands-free call had an average reaction time 212 milliseconds slower than those who were not. That, they calculate, would add 5.7 metres to the braking distance of a car travelling at 100kph. They also found that the group using the hands-free kit made 83% more errors in their tasks than those who were not talking.
To try to understand more about why this was, they tried two further tests. In one, members of a group were asked simply to repeat words spoken by the caller. In the other, they had to think of a word that began with the last letter of the word they had just heard. Those only repeating words performed the same as those with no distraction, but those with the more complicated task showed even worse reaction times—an average of 480 milliseconds extra delay. This shows that when people have to consider the information they hear carefully, it can impair their driving ability significantly.
Punishing people for using hand-held gadgets while driving is difficult enough, even though they can be seen from outside the car. Persuading people to switch their phones off altogether when they get behind the wheel might be the only answer. Who knows, they might even come to enjoy not having to take calls.
47. Carrying on a mobile phone conversation while one is driving is considered dangerous because it seriously
distracts .
48. In the experiments, the two groups of volunteers were asked to handle a series of moving tasks which were
considered .
49. Results of the experiments show that those who were making the equivalent of a hands-free call took to
react than those who were not.
50. Further experiments reveal that participants tend to respond with extra delay if they are required to do . 51. The author believes persuasion, rather than , might be the only way to stop people from using mobile
phones while driving. Section B
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Passage One
Questions 52 to 56 are based on the following passage.
There is nothing like the suggestion of a cancer risk to scare a parent, especially one of the over-educated, eco-conscious type. So you can imagine the reaction when a recent USA Today investigation of air quality
around the nation‘s schools singled out those in the smugly（自鸣得意的）green village of Berkeley, Calif., as being among the worst in the country. The city‘s public high school, as well as a number of daycare centers, preschools, elementary and middle schools, fell in the lowest 10%. Industrial pollution in our town had
supposedly turned students into living science experiments breathing in a laboratory‘s worth of heavy metals like manganese, chromium and nickel each day. This in a city that requires school cafeterias to serve organic meals. Great, I thought, organic lunch, toxic campus.
Since December, when the report came out, the mayor, neighborhood activists（活跃分子）and various parent-teacher associations have engaged in a fierce battle over its validity: over the guilt of the steel-casting factory on the western edge of town, over union jobs versus children‘s health and over what, if anything, ought to be done. With all sides presenting their own experts armed with conflicting scientific studies, whom should parents believe? Is there truly a threat here, we asked one another as we dropped off our kids, and if so, how great is it? And how does it compare with the other, seemingly perpetual health scares we confront, like panic over lead in synthetic athletic fields? Rather than just another weird episode in the town that brought you protesting environmentalists, this latest drama is a trial for how today‘s parents perceive risk, how we try to keep our kids safe—whether it‘s possible to keep them safe—in what feels like an increasingly threatening world. It raises the question of what, in our time, ―safe‖ could even mean.
―There‘s no way around the uncertainty,‖ says Kimberly Thompson, president of Kid Risk, a nonprofit group that studies children‘s health. ―That means your choices can matter, but it also means you aren‘t going to know if they do.‖ A 2004 report in the journal Pediatrics explained that nervous parents have more to fear from fire, car accidents and drowning than from toxic chemical exposure. To which I say: Well, obviously. But such concrete hazards are beside the point. It‘s the dangers parents can‘t—and may never—quantify that occur all of sudden. That‘s why I‘ve rid my cupboard of microwave food packed in bags coated with a potential
cancer-causing substance, but although I‘ve lived blocks from a major fault line(地质断层) for more than 12 years, I still haven‘t bolted our bookcases to the living room wall. 52. What does a recent investigation by USA Today reveal?
A) Heavy metals in lab tests threaten children‘s health in Berkeley. B) Berkeley residents are quite contented with their surroundings. C) The air quality around Berkeley‘s school campuses is poor.
D) Parents in Berkeley are over-sensitive to cancer risks their kids face. 53. What response did USA Today‘s report draw?
A) A heated debate. B) Popular support. C) Widespread panic. D) Strong criticism.
54. How did parents feel in the face of the experts‘ studies?
A) They felt very much relieved.
B) They were frightened by the evidence. C) They didn‘t know who to believe. D) They weren‘t convinced of the results.
55. What is the view of the 2004 report in the journal Pediatrics?
A) It is important to quantify various concrete hazards. B) Daily accidents pose a more serious threat to children. C) Parents should be aware of children‘s health hazards. D) Attention should be paid to toxic chemical exposure.
56. Of the dangers in everyday life, the author thinks that people have most to fear from __________.
A) the uncertain B) the quantifiable C) an earthquake D) unhealthy food Passage Two
Questions 57 to 61 are based on the following passage.
Crippling health care bills, long emergency-room waits and the inability to find a primary care physician just scratch the surface of the problems that patients face daily.
Primary care should be the backbone of any health care system. Countries with appropriate primary care resources score highly when it comes to health outcomes and cost. The U.S. takes the opposite approach by emphasizing the specialist rather than the primary care physician.
A recent study analyzed the providers who treat Medicare beneficiaries（老年医保受惠人）. The startling finding was that the average Medicare patient saw a total of seven doctors—two primary care physicians and five specialists—in a given year. Contrary to popular belief, the more physicians taking care of you don‘t guarantee better care. Actually, increasing fragmentation of care results in a corresponding rise in cost and
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medical errors. How did we let primary care slip so far? The key is how doctors are paid. Most physicians are paid whenever they perform a medical service. The more a physician does, regardless of quality or outcome, the better he‘s reimbursed (返还费用). Moreover, the amount a physician receives leans heavily toward medical or surgical procedures. A specialist who performs a procedure in a 30-minute visit can be paid three times more than a primary care physician using that same 30 minutes to discuss a patient‘s disease. Combine this fact with annual government threats to indiscriminately cut reimbursements, physicians are faced with no choice but to increase quantity to boost income.
Primary care physicians who refuse to compromise quality are either driven out of business or to cash-only practices, further contributing to the decline of primary care.
Medical students are not blind to this scenario. They see how heavily the reimbursement deck is stacked against primary care. The recent numbers show that since 1997, newly graduated U.S. medical students who choose primary care as a career have declined by 50%. This trend results in emergency rooms being overwhelmed with patients without regular doctors.
How do we fix this problem?
It starts with reforming the physician reimbursement system. Remove the pressure for primary care physicians to squeeze in more patients per hour, and reward them for optimally (最佳地) managing their diseases and practicing evidence-based medicine. Make primary care more attractive to medical students by forgiving student loans for those who choose primary care as a career and reconciling the marked difference between specialist and primary care physician salaries.
We‘re at a point where primary care is needed more than ever. Within a few years, the first wave of the 76 million Baby Boomers will become eligible for Medicare. Patients older than 85, who need chronic care most, will rise by 50% this decade.
Who will be there to treat them?
57. The author‘s chief concern about the current U.S. health care system is __________.
A) the inadequate training of physicians B) the declining number of doctors C) the shrinking primary care resources D) the ever-rising health care costs
58. We learn from the passage that people tend to believe that __________.
A) the more costly the medicine, the more effective the cure B) seeing more doctors may result in more diagnostic errors C) visiting doctors on a regular basis ensures good health D) the more doctors taking care of a patient, the better
59. Faced with the government threats to cut reimbursements indiscriminately, primary care physicians have to
__________ .
A) increase their income by working overtime B) improve their expertise and service C) make various deals with specialists
D) see more patients at the expense of quality
60. Why do many new medical graduates refuse to choose primary care as their career?
A) They find the need for primary care declining. B) The current system works against primary care. C) Primary care physicians command less respect. D) They think working in emergency rooms tedious.
61. What suggestion does the author give in order to provide better health care?
A) Bridge the salary gap between specialists and primary care physicians. B) Extend primary care to patients with chronic diseases. C) Recruit more medical students by offering them loans.
D) Reduce the tuition of students who choose primary care as their major. Part V Cloze (5 minutes)
McDonald‘s, Greggs, KFC and Subway are today named as the most littered brands in England as Keep Britain Tidy called on fast-food companies to do more to tackle customers who drop their wrappers and drinks cartons (盒子) in the streets.
Phil Barton, chief executive of Keep Britain Tidy, 大62家 its new Dirty Pig campaign, said it was the first time it had investigated which 大63家 made up ―littered England‖ and the same names appeared again and again.
―We 大64家 litterers for dropping this fast food litter 大65家 the first place but also believe the results have pertinent (相关的) messages for the fast food 大66家. Mc-Donald‘s, Greggs, KFC and Subway need to do more to 大67家 littering by their customers.‖
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He recognised efforts made by McDonald‘s, 大68家 placing litter bins and increasing litter patrols, but its litter remained ―all too prevalent‖. All fast food chains should reduce 大69家 packaging, he added. Companies could also reduce prices 大70家 those who stayed to eat food on their premises, offer money-off vouchers (代金券) or other 大71家 for those who returned packaging and put more bins at 大72家 points in local streets, not just outside their premises. A 大73家 for McDonald‘s said: ―We do our best. Obviously
we ask all our customers to dispose of litter responsibly.‖ Trials of more extensive, all-day litter patrols were 大74家 in Manchester and Birmingham.
KFC said it took its 大75家 on litter management ―very seriously‖, and would introduce a programme to reduce packaging 大76家 many products. Subway said that it worked hard to 大77家 the impact of litter on communities，大78家 it was ―still down to the 大79家 customer to dispose of their litter responsibly‖. Greggs said it recognised the ―continuing challenge for us all‖, 大80家 having already taken measures to help 大81家 the issue.
62. A) elevating B) convening C) launching D) projecting 63. A) signals B) signs C) commercials D) brands 64. A) condemn B) refute C) uncover D) disregard 65. A) around B) toward C) in D) off
66. A) industry B) career C) profession D) vocation 67. A) exclude B) discourage C) suppress D) retreat
68. A) incorporating B) including C) comprising D) containing 69. A) unreliable B) unrelated C) unimportant D) unnecessary 70. A) for B) about C) with D) to
71. A) accessories B) merits C) incentives D) dividends 72. A) curious B) mysterious C) strange D) strategic 73. A) narrator B) spokesman C) mediator D) broker 74. A) in season B) at risk C) off hand D) under way
75. A) responsibility B) liability C) commission D) administration 76. A) around B) by C) on D) above
77. A) divert B) minimize C) degrade D) suspend 78. A) if B) whether C) so D) but
79. A) individual B) concrete C) unique D) respective 80. A) except B) without C) despite D) via 81. A) deal B) tackle C) cope D) dispose PartⅥ Translation (5 minutes)
82. How long does a jacket like this last me? — (这要看你多长时间穿一次). 83. The theory he advanced has proved (对许多传统概念的一种挑战).
84. The manager (本可以亲自参加会议), but he was called away for some urgent business abroad. 85. Both research and practical experience have shown that a (均衡的饮食对健康是必不可少的). 86. Much (我感到遗憾), I was unable to finish the work on time.
Part Ⅲ Listening Comprehension (35 minutes) Section A
Directions: In this section, you will hear 8 short conversations and 2 long conversations. At the end of each conversation, one or more questions will be asked about what was said. Both the conversation and the questions will be spoken only once. After each question there will be a pause. During the pause, you must read the four choices marked A), B), C) and D), and decide which is the best answer. Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre.
11. A) They would rather travel around than stay at home. B) They prefer to carry cash when traveling abroad.