单选题
Section A MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS In this section there are several passages followed by ten multiple-choice questions. For each multiple-choice question, there are four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. Choose the one that you think is the best answer and mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET TWO. Passage One (1) The Clyde whom Samuel Griffiths described as having met at the Union League Club in Chicago, was a somewhat modified version of the one who had fled from Kansas City three years before. He was now twenty, a little taller and more firmly but scarcely any more robustly built, and considerably more experienced, of course.
(2) For since leaving his home and work in Kansas City and
coming in contact with some rough usage in the world—humble tasks, wretched rooms, no intimates to speak of, plus the compulsion to make his own way as best he might—he had developed a kind of self-reliance and smoothness of address such as one would scarcely have credited him with three years before. There was about him now, although he was not nearly so smartly dressed as when he left Kansas City, a kind of conscious
gentility (文雅) of manner which pleased, even though it did not at first arrest attention. Also, and this was considerably different from the Clyde who had crept away from Kansas City in a box car, he had much more of an air of caution and reserve.
(3) For ever since he had fled from Kansas City, and by one humble device and another forced to make his way, he had been coming to the conclusion that on himself alone depended his future. His family, as he now definitely sensed, could do nothing for him. They were too impractical and too poor—his mother, father, Esta, all of them.
(4) At the same time, in spite of all their difficulties, he could not now help but feel drawn to them, his mother in particular, and the old home life that had surrounded him as a boy—his brother and sisters, Esta included, since she, too, as he now saw it, had been brought no lower than he by circumstances over which she probably had no more control. And often, his thoughts and mood had gone back with a definite and disconcerting
pang (一阵剧痛) because of the way in which he had treated his mother as well as the way in which his career in Kansas City had been suddenly interrupted—his loss of Hortense Briggs—a severe blow; the troubles that had come to him since; the trouble that must have come to his mother and Esta because of him.
(5) On reaching St. Louis two days later after his flight, and after having been most painfully
bundled out (赶，匆忙打发) into the snow a hundred miles from Kansas City in the gray of a winter morning, and at the same time relieved of his watch and overcoat by two brakemen who had found him hiding in the car, he had picked up a Kansas City paper—
The Star—only to realize that his worst fear in regard to all that had occurred had come true. For there, under a two-column head, and with fully a column and a half of reading matter below, was the full story of all that had happened: a little girl, the eleven-year-old daughter of a
well-to-do (小康的) Kansas City family, knocked down and almost instantly killed—she had died an hour later; Sparser and Miss Sipe in a hospital and under arrest at the same time, guarded by a policeman sitting in the hospital awaiting their recovery; a splendid car very seriously damaged; Sparser's father, in the absence of the owner of the car for whom he worked, at once
incensed (激怒) and made terribly unhappy by the folly and seeming
criminality (犯罪行为) and recklessness of his son.
(6) But what was worse, the unfortunate Sparser had already been charged with
larceny (盗窃) and
homicide (杀人), and wishing, no doubt, to minimize his own share in this grave catastrophe, had not only revealed the names of all who were with him in the car—the youths in particular and their hotel address—but had charged that they along with him were equally guilty, since they had urged him to make speed at the time and against his will—a claim which was true enough, as Clyde knew. And Mr. Squires, on being interviewed at the hotel, had furnished the police and the newspapers with the names of their parents and their home addresses.
(7) This last was the sharpest blow of all. For there followed disturbing pictures of how their respective parents or relatives had taken it on being informed of their sins.
(本文选自An American Tragedy)
Passage Two (1) More and more of the world is working in English. Multinational companies (even those based in places such as Switzerland or Japan) are making it their corporate language. And international bodies like the European Union and the United Nations are doing an ever-greater share of business in
the world's new default language. At the office, it's English's world, and every other language is just living in it.
(2) Is this to the English-speaker's advantage? Working in a foreign language is certainly hard. It is easier to argue fluently or to make a point subtly when not trying to call up rarely used vocabulary or construct sentences correctly. English-speakers can try to bulldoze opposing arguments through sheer
verbiage (冗词), hold the floor to prevent anyone else from getting a word in or lighten the mood with a joke. All of these things are far harder in a foreign language. Non-natives have not one hand, but perhaps a bit of their brains, tied behind their backs. A recent column by Michael Skapinker in the
Financial Times says that it's important for native English-speakers to learn the skills of talking with non-natives successfully.
(3) But, as Mr Skapinker notes, there are advantages to being a non-native, too. These are subtler—but far from trivial. Non-native speakers may not be able to show off their brilliance easily. It can be an advantage to have your cleverness highly rated, and this is the luck of verbally fluent people around the world. But it is quite often the other way round: it can be a boon to be thought a little dimmer than you really are, giving the element of surprise in a negotiation. And, as an American professor in France tells Johnson, coming from another culture—not just another language—allows people to notice stumbling blocks and habits of thinking shared by the rest of the natives, and guide a meeting past them. Such
heterodox (非正统的) thinking can be wrapped in a bit of disingenuous cluelessness: 'I'm not sure how things work here, but I was thinking...'
(4) People working in a language not their own report other
perks. Asking for a clarification can buy valuable time or be a useful distraction, says a Russian working at
The Economist. Speaking slowly allows a non-native to choose just the right word—something most people don't do when they are excited and emotional. There is a lot to be said for thinking faster than you can speak, rather than the other way round.
(5) Most intriguingly, there may be a
feedback loop (反馈回路) from speech back into thought. Ingenious researchers have found that sometimes decision-making in a foreign language is actually better. Researchers at the University of Chicago gave subjects a test with certain traps—easy-looking 'right' answers that turned out to be wrong.
Those taking it in a second language were more likely to avoid the trap and choose the right answer. Fluid thinking, in other words, has its downside, and
deliberateness (审慎) an advantage. And one of the same researchers found that even in moral decision-making—such as whether it would be acceptable to kill someone with your own hands to save a larger number of lives—people thought in a more
utilitarian (功利的), less emotional way when tested in a foreign language. An American working in Denmark says he insisted on having salary negotiations in Danish—asking for more in English was excruciating to him.
(6) All this applies regardless of the first language. But in the modem world it is English
monoglots (只懂一种语言的人) in particular who work in their own language, joined by non-native
polyglots (通晓数种语言人) working in English too. Those non-native speakers can always go away and speak their languages privately before rejoining the English conversation. Hopping from language to language is a constant reminder of how others might see things differently, notes a Dutch official at the European Commission. (One study found that bilingual children were better at guessing what was in other people's heads, perhaps because they were constantly monitoring who in their world spoke what language.) It was said that Ginger Rogers had to do every step Fred Astaire did, but 'backwards, and in high heels'. This, unsurprisingly, made her an outstanding dancer.
(7) Indeed, those working in foreign languages are keen to talk about these advantages and disadvantages. Alas, monoglots will never have that chance. Pity those struggling in a second language—but also spare a thought for those many monoglots who have no way of knowing what they are missing.
(本文选自The Economist)
Passage Three (1) Have you ever thought about what happens to your employees right before they get to work? Sometimes we all wake up on the wrong side of the bed and just find it hard to get our bearings. At other times, we might start out fine, but have a horrible commute or a screaming match with a teenager just before going to work. Paying attention to the morning moods of your employees can pay dividends. In my research with Steffanie Wilk, an associate professor at the Fisher College of Business at the Ohio State University, we found that this start-of-the-day mood can last longer than you might think—and have an important effect on job performance.
(2) In our study, 'Waking Up On The Right Or Wrong Side Of The Bed: Start-Of-Workday Mood, Work Events, Employee Affect, And Performance', we examined customer service representatives (CSRs) in an insurance company's call center over several weeks. We sent CSRs periodic short surveys throughout the day. We studied their mood as they started the day, how they viewed work events such as customer interactions throughout the day, and their mood during the day after these customer interactions. We used the company's detailed performance metrics to investigate how their mood at work related to their performance.
(3) We found that CSRs varied from day to day in their start-of-day mood, but that those who started out each day happy or calm usually stayed that way throughout the day, and interacting with customers tended to further enhance their mood. By contrast, for the most part, people who started the day in a terrible mood didn't really climb out of it, and felt even worse by the end of the day—even after interacting with positive customers.
(4) One interesting (and counterintuitive) finding was something we called 'misery loves company.' Some CSRs who felt badly as they started the day actually felt less badly after interacting with customers who were themselves in a bad mood. Perhaps this was because, by taking their customers' perspectives, these CSRs realized their own lives were not so terrible.
(5) Most importantly, we discovered strong performance effects when it came to quality of work and productivity. Employees who were in a positive mood provided higher-quality service: they were more articulate on the phone with fewer 'ums' and verbal tics, and used more proper grammar. Employees who were in a negative mood tended to take more frequent breaks from their duties to cope with the stress and get themselves through the day. These small breaks piled up, leading to a greater than 10% loss of productivity.
(6) How can managers use these findings to help employees cope with stress and boost performance? While it can be difficult, it is not impossible to hit the reset button and try to help employees shake a negative morning mood. For example, managers might send out
morale-boosting (鼓舞士气的) messages in the morning, or hold a regular team huddle to help people transition and experience positive mood as they start their workday. Feeding people and celebrating accomplishments is always a morale booster as well. Alternatively, managers can allow employees a little space first thing in the morning, for example to chat with colleagues before an early meeting. People also need time to 'recover' from the night before so managers may want to think twice before launching a late-night
barrage (轰炸) of e-mails as this might set employees up for a bad start to the next day. And if an employee arrives a few minutes late, confronting him or her about it later on instead of immediately may yield a more productive conversation and a more productive workday.
(7) Employees, for their part, may want to take steps to lose their own negativity before arriving at work, creating their own 'intentional transition'. This might involve taking a different route to work, giving themselves
a pep talk, stopping for coffee, or listening to inspiring music. Finally, the best thing they can do is take a deep breath before walking in the door, to focus on making the most of the new day.
(本文选自Harvard Business Review)